Put innovation into action
“Hope is not a strategy,” Dave Serlo used to tell our team at PSCU when I worked with him there. What he meant was that leaders can’t just dream up ideas; they have to execute. They have to know how to marry innovation with strategy and operations.
Fortunately, CUES learning events are designed to help leaders succeed in putting strategic innovation into action.
For example, CEO/Executive Team Network (slated for Nov. 2-5 in Amelia Island, Fla.) will start with general sessions on hot topics. Then, attendees will roll up their sleeves and work with our team of leadership coaches to transform what was learned in the general session into practical, implementable ideas.
Offered in partnership with Cornell University, our new blended learning courses seek to minimize travel and maximize learning, while also making sure attendees will know how to apply what they learn. CUES VP/Professional Development and Innovation Christopher Stevenson explained this well in his recent CUES Skybox blog post, “When You Graduate From Flight School, Don’t Walk Home.”(The first two blended learning courses, “Leadership Brand and Shadow” and “Women who Lead,” launch this September.)
And lest anyone think CUES just recently figured out the value of making sure learning gets applied back in members’ CUs, let me close by noting that attendees of CUES’ longtime flagship program—the three-year CEO Institute—speak highly of the benefits of doing the between-segments projects required for achieving the Certified Chief Executive (or “CCE”) designation.
These projects require them to apply the theories they learned in the classroom to initiatives actually going on at their credit unions. (Read about three such projects—an innovative loan program, a new back-office facility that chased away organizational silos, and making the most of a community charter in Credit Union Management magazine.)
“How to take the theory in the books and make the strategic plan and the operational plan work together” is a key question credit unions wrangle with, noted Terence Roche in a 2010 Credit Union Management magazine article that includes a sidebar that will help you rate your current strategic execution ability). Roche is principal of CUES Supplier member and strategic partner Cornerstone Advisors, a strategy and technology consulting firm in Phoenix.
I hope you’re already well along on your path of helping your executives and staff members implement their best innovations and latest learnings. CUES is here to help. Please email me and let me know how we’re doing.
