Your credit union team needs to know what you know

The key in real estate has always been location, location, location. The key in leadership today may well be communication, communication, communication.

The business world is too complex to believe an individual can develop a plan and lead other people to deliver on the plan. There are too many moving parts, and industry dynamics are constantly changing. To be successful, you really have to take a team approach and leverage the expertise and experience of different people. During that exchange of information and ideas, you get to a common platform of understanding. You want to make sure everyone understands what, as an organization, you’re trying to accomplish as well as how you’re going to get there.

As an example, we are changing the culture at CUES. As a team, we created our vision—what we aspire to do—and in doing that we asked ourselves, “What kind of culture do we need to have to accomplish this—what common beliefs, practices and behaviors?” We defined effective communication as one of our values.

There isn’t a culture light switch you can turn on and off; this takes time. But we already have good traction, including buy-in across the organization. We’re evolving our culture to help us deliver on member needs and have the greatest possible industry impact.

Communication among senior leaders is important because when they share information with each other, knowledge and ideas go down to each leader’s team members, and throughout the organization.

Seem easy enough? It’s not, really. Good communication takes discipline. We’re all so busy that if you don’t put opportunities to share ideas on people’s calendars, it doesn’t happen. While always having your office door open and informally sharing things you learn is a part of the equation, I also make it a point to set up standing meetings with the senior leadership team, department heads and all staff, to keep information flowing, and solidify our platform of common understanding.

It also takes discipline to create ongoing opportunities to review what’s strategically important to your organization. At CUES, we develop our strategic plan as a team, sign off on it as a team, and actively review it as a team. We make sure we take the time to assess the opportunities and challenges, talk through them, support the plans in place, and refine and adjust our plans to achieve the end goal.

The opportunity to attend educational events, conferences and seminars as a team definitely is something that can help. The ability for everyone to hear the same message, learn the same lesson and network together with peers can solidify common understanding. That’s the thinking behind CEO/Executive Team Network (slated for Nov. 8-11 in Scottsdale, Ariz.), to which CEOs and their executive teams are invited to attend together, and CUES Symposium: A CEO/Chairman Exchange (slated for Jan. 31-Feb. 4 in Maui), designed specifically to strengthen the CEO-chair bond.

The beauty of teamwork is you get diverse opinions and perspectives you can leverage. What are your plans to make sure your entire team knows what you know, so you can all pull together toward success?

John Pembroke

John Pembroke

As president/CEO of CUES, John Pembroke came full circle in his career. His first exposure to business was a high school internship working in his father’s church credit ... Web: www.cues.org Details