High Performance Culture Building for Credit Unions
Building a Stronger Team to Ensure Your Long Term Success
For years business culture was talked about as the key to success. Then it seemed to go out of vogue for while and was replaced by various approaches to day-to-day management, team building and organizational performance. Then along came Jim Collins and his team with their insights in the best-selling book Good to Great, and culture was back on the table.
The reason is simple. Good to Great reminded everyone that the people matter and that without having the right people on the right bus, business success would never be achieved. Furthermore, the book reinforced an emerging and important notion that if you allow people to spend most of their time doing the things that they do well (i.e., in the right seats on the bus), you will build a better company.
Dr. Hudson firmly believes in this core concept and works with credit unions to make culture building a key part of everything they do. It’s not just about calling your employees a team. That’s an important first step, but if the team doesn’t know what they stand for, if they are not committed to working as a team, if they are not being rewarded for working as a team, and if they are not allowed to spend their time doing things they do well, the entire concept falls apart.
In his work with credit unions in culture building initiatives, Dr. Hudson strives to help teams come together around a clearly defined set of values and beliefs that guide their day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month interactions. By integrating the development of your culture with your strategic plan and your leadership development efforts, he will help you build a stronger organization—an organization where everyone is on the same page, where teamwork actually works, and where the culture becomes so powerful that it ensures your long term success.
There are several ways in which Dr. Hudson works with credit unions to accomplish this:
- Engaging your team in defining the values and beliefs that guide your credit union and your employees… putting it in writing so that it is clearly understood and creating accountabilities that make it part of the way you do business each day;
- Conducting events that bring your team together to share experiences that bond them to your credit union and help them develop stronger personal relationships that will support on-the-job success… creating a true sense of team and showing the team you value them by making the time for such special events;
- Creating ongoing reinforcement programs that remind everyone of the values and beliefs of your credit union and recognize actions that have been taken to demonstrate those values and beliefs… going beyond the basic employee of the month approach to turn powerful ideas into daily behaviors; and
- Empowering your team to take action every day to push themselves to live up to the culture that they have defined… ensuring that the right people are on the bus and in the right seats to support the sustained growth of the credit union.
- Implementing a series of experiences that develop the leadership capacity of everyone in your credit union and engage them in pursuit of personal learning plans that will improve their knowledge, skills, abilities, and experiences…all in the context of your organization’s leadership model; and
- Defining a long-term process and putting the necessary supports into place to make leadership development a natural and logical step in the development of your team… so that it becomes viewed not as a one-time event, but as an ongoing part of the building of both individual and team capacity.
Inviting Dr. Michael Hudson to our team at the Delaware State Police Federal Credit Union has proved to be a great investment for us, which has provided many positive returns to our credit union membership. Since 2007, Michael’s insight, knowledge, experience and direction have helped enhance the working relationship and cohesiveness of our Board of Directors, Management Team and family of employees. We have successfully become more creative in thinking and planning for our future as the result of our sessions with Michael. Collectively, I believe that our vision, strategic plans and future goals have become more realistic and attainable because of the assistance that Michael has provided along the way. I strongly encourage others to look into what Michael may have to offer and/or help them meet the specific needs of their respective organizations.
— Jeffrey Weaver, Board Chairman,
Delaware State Police Federal Credit Union
