Strategic Planning for Your Credit Union
Achieve the Goals of Your Credit Union with Customized Strategic Plans
Dr. Michael Hudson provides a comprehensive range of strategic planning services for your credit union, including facilitation of planning sessions, definition of action plans, and support for the implementation of action plans to achieve the goals of your credit union.
Dr. Hudson has a lifetime of experience as a credit union member with over 25 years experience as a business planning consultant working with a diverse array of businesses across a number of industries. When combined with his background as an educator, this allows him to connect with the members of your planning team and guide them to engage in true strategic thinking.
Unfortunately, too much of what passes for strategic planning is nothing more than setting annual targets that lead in the general direction of longer term goals that are never seriously discussed, considered, or defined. That doesn’t happen when you hire Dr. Hudson as your planning consultant.
He works with your team to create your customized strategic plan focused on the specific needs of your credit union using the following process:
- Reviewing your credit union’s current plan and past performance to develop a perspective on the unique challenges and opportunities it faces;
- Assessing the environment within which your credit union is operating, including site visits if requested and appropriate, and solicitation of staff and member input;
- Interviewing your CEO, Board Chair, Board Members, and C-Level Executives to gain a broader understanding of the credit union;
- Developing a custom framework for the planning session to ensure desired outcomes are achieved and reviewing this with your CEO and Board Chair prior to the planning session;
- Facilitating the planning process with Board, Senior Leadership team and any other designees, using various approaches to surface critical issues and guide your team toward decisions;
- Coordinating with your senior leadership team to create a focused action plan with timelines, responsibilities, and targets that will support the implementation of the plan; and
- Interacting with your planning team during the implementation phase of the plan via telephone, e-mail, and/or face-to-face meetings, and preparing quarterly updates in the form that will work best for your team.
This process focuses on improving the strategic thinking process so that strategic decisions are linked to day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month activities. By making sure that the team does not become overwhelmed by trying to do too many disparate things and keeping the strategic plan at the core of senior executive and board activities and conversations, the plan becomes a living part of your credit union, instead of a dusty document on the shelf that is never consulted. Because the planning process is built around your individual credit union and is not a fill-in-the-blanks type of plan, your credit union gets more buy-in from stakeholders at all levels.
Strategic Planning was just another boring chore until we hired Dr. Michael Hudson to facilitate our meetings. Michael challenged us to think long-term; to speak frankly and respect the input of everyone at the table; and most importantly, to consider change, all kinds of change! With Michael on our team we have become one of top performing Credit Unions in the region.
— Steve Cimo, President,
Delaware State Police Federal Credit Union
Michael Hudson has added immeasurably to the quality of our planning process. We’ve had other strategic planners, but none have matched Michael in depth of our planning or in the results. We’ve met or exceeded every goal we set for ourselves and none of these achievements would have been possible without the coaching, perseverance and skill of Michael Hudson. I have enjoyed our strategic planning process and look forward to it each year, as does every one of our board staff. It is truly the highlight of the year for the management team.
— Charles D. Miller, Board Executive Committee, Chair-Elect,
Dover Federal Credit Union
Dr. Michael Hudson of Big Idea Guru is excellent at facilitating the strategic planning process. He has the uncanny ability to ask the necessary questions and to solicit responses from the team to aid in developing long-term goals. He helped us clarify what we needed to do and helped us to develop a new direction and vision for our credit union. I highly recommend Dr. Hudson to any credit union looking to undertake strategic change in the marketplace.
— Blanche Jackson, Executive Vice President,
Delaware State Police Federal Credit Union
