Last month, I had the pleasure of speaking at the 2018 Allied Solutions Credit Union Conference. If you couldn’t make the event, here are the five biggest takeaways.
1) Which employees are the most productive?
First, according to Morten Hansen, Author of Great at Work, Great by Choice, and Collaboration, there are 4 levels of productivity in employees.
- Those that accept more and more work, then stress out about the work and then don’t actually do more. These are your least productive employees.
- Those that do less (by only agreeing to take on a limited amount), then don’t stress out. Strangely, these employees produce about the same as the next category.
- Those that do more, and then stress out. According to Morten, taking on more work just means you are distracted and while you may be spinning more plates, you don’t actually accomplish more.
- Finally, there are those employees that do less and then obsess. Essentially this is like the Jim Collins Good to Great hedgehog principle.
Over the past years, I have been on a journey to determine how to make a business the most productive it can be. I’ve been looking at data and hearing compelling stories of how getting this right can be highly impactful. Most of us as leaders are distracted by trying to be too many things to too many people. We can’t build our business model to appeal to all people. Your credit union needs to pick a couple of aspects that you can be the best at and be hyper-focused on those.
2) How to Build a Value-Oriented Metric
Morten also shared how to create metrics that are not just vanity metrics. The formula is:
Value = Benefit to Others * Efficiency * Quality
This formula really resonated with me and reminded me of one of the most effective metrics Ongoing Operations came up with related to Disaster Recovery. Essentially, we found that the percentage of credit union clients performing Disaster Recovery tests is directly related to client satisfaction and renewals. Now, why is this? Well, the value of the DR test is that it demonstrates the benefit to the credit union of the Ongoing Operations disaster recovery solution, our efficiency in performing the test, and the quality of our engineers to solve random problems.
As a credit union, a vanity metric may be the number of new members. But what if we looked at the metrics like the number of new members who take multiple products on day one or the number of new members that complete the onboarding process in less than 15 minutes? There are a number of ways to demonstrate more value in the new member process rather than just onboarding everyone without a quality or efficiency component.
3) Fat Unicorn Naughty Amber Ale
In Canada, there is a beer called “Fat Unicorn Naughty Amber Ale”. It is delicious, and I found it in a random hipster bowling alley in Banff that I wandered into one evening. I highly recommend it if you can find it!
4) Mission Moments
Mission Federal Credit Union’s CEO, Debra Schwartz shared with us “Mission Moments”. These are moments which are planned celebratory moments that the credit union shares with members when they get a new loan or other service-related opportunities. Mission Federal Credit Union also does them with their employees on key achievements. This is a phenomenal idea and a great way to intentionally build memories with members and employees. We should all be implementing this practice at our businesses.
In addition to Debra Schwarts, there were many outstanding panelists.
Mike Bryan, VP, Digital Strategies, Allied Solutions
Chris Otey, Board Chairman, South Bay Credit Union
Lisa Schlehuber – CEO, Elements Financial
Harry Gunsallus – President & CEO, SRP FCU
This group of credit union leaders shared great wisdom around how they are preparing their credit unions to:
- Compete with Fintechs
- Adapt to Autonomous Vehicle Impacts on Loan Portfolios
- Digitally Engage their Members
- Deal with Board Transitions
- Build Strong Cultures
5) Banff is Amazingly Beautiful
Allied Solutions put on a really great conference, and I highly encourage credit union leaders to attend. This conference is a solid mix of content, networking, and significantly better than average entertainment & activities! Here are just a few of the awesome pictures from the event!
