KANSAS CITY, Mo.-Brandon Michaels, president and CEO of $476-million Mazuma Credit Union, believes if an organization does not get culture right, "nothing else matters."
To prove it, in 2012 he hired Matt Monge to be Mazuma's chief culture officer. According to Michaels, the development of this newly created position has "fueled our success."
"Without a strong and vibrant culture, member experience suffers," Michaels told Credit Union Journal. "The term 'culture' has to be more than just window dressing. It has to be a key organizational initiative, with buy-in from everyone affiliated with the credit union-and that is what we have here at Mazuma. What good do member service initiatives do if the team members are miserable at work? Happy team members make happy members, not the reverse of that."
Monge, who also was selected to be a member of the Filene Research Institute's i3 group last year, previously was VP of people and development for $446-million Fort Campbell FCU, Clarksville, Tenn. He said that role had many of the same elements as being the chief culture officer for Mazuma.
"Brandon Michaels had a pretty specific vision for me," Monge said. "He wants us to be one of the most respected credit unions in the country. We want to make Kansas City a better place to live and work, and organizational culture is a big part of that. Many factors are important: how you treat employees, how you structure your organization, the way people interact. Culture is an organization's DNA."
No Stopping
According to Monge, it is important to think about building culture as an ongoing goal. He said it is not as if Mazuma-or any organization looking to develop culture-will simply get to a certain point and stop.
"But I do see us having forward progress and momentum," he declared. "Our people are embracing it and taking ownership. They realize it is a 'we' thing. It is no more my thing than their thing. That is how we know we are doing a good job-when people start living the culture and embracing those values."
Mazuma's culture is built around four "simple ideas," Monge explained:
One: Mazuma CU wants to have a positive, fun environment and it wants its people to have a positive, fun attitude.
Two: The credit union is seeking to maintatin a collaborative, group-minded feel. "We want people to look out for each other and lock arms and work together," he said.
Three: Learning and growth are important, both as humans and professionals. "We do not want to divorce the two. They are human beings who are professionals, and we want them to interact as human beings. That means be formal and be informal; do not be confined. To get super nerdy about it, most adult learning in the workplace takes place outside the classroom."
Four: Seek better or new ways of doing things.
In regards to the latter, Monge said management is not saying there has to be a constant reinvention of the wheel, or that the staff has to do its job in a manner no one else has ever done.
"Innovation and creativity is expressed every day," he said. "It could be someone figuring out a different way to do a report. There are so many ways people employ their creative mental facilities to do stuff better, and that is what we want to encourage. We want people to think about how to make things better for members, for their fellow employees, for the community."
CEO Michaels noted the chief culture officer position oversees training and development, human resources, and marketing.
"Why marketing? Because marketing is a credit union's internal culture flipped outward," he said. "The culture and the values a credit union has must permeate throughout the entire institution, from the phone system to marketing. We are in the people business so it absolutely makes sense to have someone in charge of the culture."
Monge said the reason most companies do not pursue building a culture is they do not have specific steps to embrace such an effort. Most organizations, he said, are "big clumps of units," whereas human beings are "imperfect and awesome, flawed and unpredictable."
'Creative People, Cool Things'
"When you get a bunch of people together you do not know exactly what is going to happen," he said. "Over time you learn to better predict things as you get a feel for an organization, perhaps read people's habits. But at all times everybody is trying to figure each other out."
Going forward, Monge said he and Mazuma will continue to work day by day to build culture.
"There are so many different pieces, there is not one project that sticks out," he said. "We have many creative people doing cool things, so our job as leaders is to help them shine."
