As we head into the last quarter of 2016, many credit unions are already looking ahead to 2017, setting business goals and creating or updating their strategic plans. Yet, all too often, those strategic plans become dusty documents on an office shelf.
How can we get better at turning our strategic plans into reality? In 2014, Elevations Credit Union received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation's highest presidential honor for quality and organizational performance excellence. We learned much while on this journey, including the value of not only having an approach to strategic planning but also the leadership processes required to deploy and integrate the plan throughout the organization.
We've seen first-hand the benefits of better strategic planning, but we've also seen what does — and doesn't work — when it comes to achieving those benefits. The following three tips outline the actions we found most helpful in taking our strategic plan from concept to success.
- Communicate and delegate. Once your strategic plan has been approved by the Board of Directors, it's up to your credit union's leadership to make sure it's understood and enacted on a day-to-day basis. At Elevations, we use our strategic plan to create short-term business plans that outline budgets and actionable items for the next 12 to 18 months. In addition to the organization's plan, each department also has its own business plan, ensuring alignment with and execution of the strategic plan at all levels.
Make sure employees understand — and have a say. At Elevations, fully 94 percent of employees say they know what their role is and how it fits into the organization's plans for the future.
To bridge that knowledge gap, our executives present the strategic plan directly to our leadership team in order to provide them the understanding they need to go over the strategic plan with each of their employees. As a result, these staff members can play a much more insightful role in creating their department-level business plans. They also create department and individual goals tied to these business plans, which fosters strategic alignment with all of our team members.
When everyone in the organization understands why we have chosen the actions planned we are much more proficient in staying on track and meeting our goals. They also feel more empowered to speak up when an activity or idea doesn't seem to fit in with the strategic plan.
Never stop planning. Strategic planning is a process, but it's a process of continual motion. Though we set aside dedicated strategic planning time with our board each year, strategy is also the focus of every meeting we have with our directors — and this approach is echoed through all levels of the organization.
For example, our board meets in person once a month, but prior to each meeting, we conduct many routine actions through an online portal. This way, when the actual meeting convenes, we can ratify the online actions and then focus on forward-thinking, high-level activities related to the strategic plan.
While going through the Baldrige framework, we found that much of our success as an organization depends on having the right people in the right room, with the right information, discussing the right things, at the right time, in order to make the right decisions for our members, employees and community. It's easy for boards and leadership to get buried in tactical items. By making strategy a priority, we're better able to tackle big-picture questions and make course corrections as needed.
A strategic plan can be a useless document, or it can be a road map for the future of your credit union that enables it to realize its potential. The difference lies in how your plan is incorporated into your institution's daily activities, at every level. Communication, employee buy-in, and prioritization can help keep your strategic plan front and center — and off of that dusty shelf.
Steve Schmidle is chief strategy & performance officer at Elevations Credit Union, a $1.7 billion CU in Boulder, Colo.
