CUES Podcast

Knowledge is key to success in business lending, according to Jim Devine, co-founder, CEO and chairman of Hipereon, a financial training company based in Washington state, and lead faculty member for CUES’ School of Business Lending, which starts April 1.

In this latest episode of the CUES Podcast, Devine says his aim with the school each year is to “make sure ... that everybody going out the back door has the foundational skills that give them confidence that they can take a set of financial statements from a prospective borrower, do a diagnostic assessment of the performance of that business, link it to their debt service coverage policies and guidelines, and determine whether” they’re willing, as a fiduciary, to let their members’ money fund the credit request.

In this show, Devine demonstrates that his own knowledge of business lending runs deep—both in terms of the structures and procedures credit unions need to have in place to do it well and the impacts that the economy and other factors have on credit unions’ success with it.

The show opens with a discussion of the business lending environment and what to look out for in 2024, including interest rates and the repricing of loans. The show also gets into the importance of using analytics well to best determine if credit should be granted to a particular applicant.

“You’re not trying to figure out a way to say, ‘yes,’” Devine says in the show. “You're trying to figure out whether yes is the right answer. And again, in order to do that, you have to have the analytical skills to do it.” 

Devine also makes the case that credit unions need to consider how to broaden their business lending portfolios to also include loans for business operations.

“People are going to have to start looking at the feasibility of figuring out how to make more operating loans to operating businesses and not have such a huge concentration risk in a loan portfolio linked to commercial real estate,” he says.

The show also gets into:

• Key fundamentals of business lending, such as “If the cash don’t flow, the loan don’t go” and also the importance of researching whether a business has more than one source of possible repayment.
• More details about what’s covered in the School of Business Lending
• How Devine plans to personalize this year’s school more than ever

Links for this show:

• Transcript
• School of Business Lending
• Goldman Sachs article about business lending at smaller financial institutions

Fintech, including artificial intelligence, is at the top of many credit union leaders’ worry list for 2024.

The guest in this episode of the CUES Podcast, Scott Snyder, has ideas for how to approach these concerns that should be steadying. A recognized thought leader in technology and innovation, Snyder has more than 30 years of experience in emerging technologies, business strategy and innovation, and digital transformation for Global 1000 companies.

When it comes to emerging and potentially disruptive technology, Snyder says, “the biggest fear of any leader, and I'll throw boards into that as well, is being on either side—either investing too early and too much or being too late and being caught flat-footed and … getting left behind.”

Snyder recommends in the show two approaches leaders can take to best manage this kind of technology. The first is “bottoms up, rapid experimentation.”

“Let certain populations in your company actually play with this technology … so they … (can) see what's possible and actually see, ‘Can it drive the impact we think?’” he says in the show.

“Then we should work future-back, using things like scenarios of how this could play out,” he continues. “How could it fundamentally change the way we operate or make money? Because that will get us thinking about what's possible in the long term.

(The) “bottom line is yeah, you need to do bottoms up, rapid experimentation. You can't just sit around and wait. You've got to play with these technologies,” he summarizes. “But also you need to think future-back of what they could really do to your organization to think of those ‘big I’ innovation opportunities.”

Snyder says credit unions will benefit from considering both short-term and long-term potential of fintech, including AI. 

"You have to start with responsible innovation,” he says. “And you've got to have your own responsible innovation framework that includes things like ethics and transparency and fairness.”

He recommends sharing this responsible innovation framework across your organization, “because then that provides the backdrop of like, what do we really care about when we're innovating these solutions and make sure there's clear areas we don't choose to pursue technology use cases that fit.”

He recommends evaluating possible fintech and AI initiatives with “three Rs”: responsibility (such as do no harm), reliability (the need to work right may be different for marketing brainstorming than for a virtual member assistant, for example) and return on investment. 

Links:

• Goliath’s Revenge: How Established Companies Turn the Tables on Digital Disruptors
• Gartner hype cycle
• CUES Virtual Classroom: Leading in an AI-First Future
• The Looming Algorithmic Divide: Navigating the Ethics of AI
• European Union Artificial Intelligence Act
• CEO Institute: FinTech
• Transcript

The 2023 CUES Emerging Leader says the best advice he got about the CUES Emerge program was not to go into it with a preconceived notion about what his business case for the competition phase would be.

In this episode of the CUES Podcast, Jayde DelGado, CCM, branch manager for $1.8 billion Harborstone Credit Union, Lakewood, Washington, tells the story of a 1:1 meeting with his CEO, CUES member Geoff Bullock and the 2017 winner of the challenge, then called Next Top Credit Union Exec. DelGado brought several ideas for problems his business case could help solve.

"Forget about all that,” DelGado recalls Bullock saying. “Don’t go in there with your business plan already done in your mind. Go in there with an open mind. Be open to learning. Be open to hearing. You very well might come out of this program with a completely different concept than you had ever thought, completely different than what you have in mind for your business case now.”

“And I did just that,” DelGado says. “I put it all aside, went in there, was really, really listening to the problem identification lecture that we had on how to ideate what some of the challenges are, how to identify those challenges.

“And it really helped because … I could see … how easy it would be to go in there looking through the lens of, ‘I have one problem. I know how I’m going to solve this problem.’ But to be able to go in there with that open perspective and kind of see everything that came, I think really helped me get to the point where I was able to get the business case that I had.” DelGado’s business case was a transitional housing loan program.

DelGado also recalls Bullock encouraging him to apply for the experience. “What have you got to lose?” Bullock asked him.

If you’re considering applying for CUES Emerge, DelGado would say pretty much the same thing.

"I can’t really think of a reason to not do it,” he says in the show. “It’s professional development. It’s something that needs to be invested in. At times it can be challenging with … the workload, but if it was easy, everyone would do it, and that’s part of professional development … learning how to balance your time and learning how to prioritize.

“If you’ve thought about it, if you’re thinking about it, if you’re considering it, just do it,” he emphasizes.

In the show, DelGado also gets into:

• the three phases of the CUES Emerge program: application, education and competition
• how teamwork is important in all things, credit union work, the CUES Emerge competition and more
• details about his business case for a transitional housing loan
• why DelGado thinks credit unions are such financial services standouts

Links for this show:

• CUES Emerge
• DelGado’s pitch during the CUES Emerge 2023 pitch show
• DelGado won a free registration CUES Advanced Management Program from Cornell University and leadership coaching from Envision Excellence
• The 5-second rule that DelGado describes in the show
• Transcript

• McKissick’s vision for magnifying the good that credit unions and their leaders are doing all the time—and how CUES can support that
• The value of credit union industry players having conversations that would support taking the ongoing cooperative work of credit unions to the next level
• How McKissick applies her ideas about resilience to potentially disruptive technology like generative AI
• The importance of learning about new technology from credible sources
• How CUES can help credit union leaders and their organizations build resilience going forward, which in turn will build CUES’ resilience

• McKissick’s “banana bread column”
• McKissick is the guest in this video: Resilient Leaders Leverage Dynamic Integration
• CUES Emerge
• CEO Institute: FinTech
•  Transcript

Erica Taylor says her best advice for credit unions on how to best further their DEI journeys is to listen, really listen, to staff and their communities. 

“Start with listening and truly listening to hear..., listening to understand people,” says Taylor, VP/communications and community relations for $20 billion Golden 1 Credit Union, headquartered in Sacramento, California, which was named the inaugural John Pembroke Catalyst for Change Award winner in 2023. “It’s powerful stuff. It builds trust. It empowers everyone that is listened to. … It’s good all around.”

Like all credit unions, Golden 1 CU was founded on ideas of equity and helping one another. More recently, the organization has formalized its DEI journey, starting with assessments of staff and leadership to really listen to what credit union team members had to say about their sense of workplace belonging. 

“We know that diversity of backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, life makes us a stronger credit union and really makes us a stronger community,” explains Taylor, a CUES member, in the show. “That’s something that’s been a big part of our history. 

“But we want to ensure that we’re acting on that right? It’s not just a belief; we need to take actions, to make sure that we are fostering an inclusive culture that ... our tagline of ‘stronger together’ is more than just a tagline, it’s an ethos. It’s something that we live every day.” 

Internally, Golden 1 CU has launched a podcast featuring the lived experiences of employees, formed six employee resource groups and undertaken unconscious bias training. 

“Being open to a history of background that’s different than yours can really open doors to growth, to rich and honest conversations and help us be better leaders help us be better employees and help us be a better credit union,” Taylor says of the unconscious bias training. 

Externally, the CU listened to the needs of the Del Paso Heights area of Sacramento to find out what leaders thought was needed to address community needs, which include a safe park for birthday parties, an eyeglasses shop and a financial institution. The CU has dedicated $10 million over five to 10 years to the community and opens a financial resource center there this month. 

“These communities know what they need. We just have to listen. We have to ask and see where we can plug in and help,” Taylor says. “And I’m thrilled that we were able to do that. I really love how we designed this, and I can’t wait to see it succeed.” 

Links for this show: 

• John Pembroke Catalyst for Change Award application information and list of winners 
• CUES Net ERG Community, a benefit of CUESmembership 
• CU Management magazine’s DEI content collection 
• CUES’ DEI Resource Center 
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Cornell Certificate Program (starts March 27, 2024) 
• Transcript

In this episode, Lesley Sears talks about the implications of research showing that newly promoted employees are more likely to leave your organization—and what you can do to mitigate their flight risk.

“When we promote somebody, we’re assuming we’re building loyalty,” says Sears, CUES’ VP/consulting. “We’re … really feeding into and developing this person. But statistics have shown us that that’s not always the case.

“ADP has come out with a research study that shows 29% of the people that were newly promoted left, transitioned out versus 18% that normally would have.”

Spoiler alert: Sears says successfully fixing the problem comes down to strengthening your organizational climate.

“The culture … is really … the byproduct of how everything in the credit union is working,” she explains. Whatever the challenges are at the credit union will show up in the climate and culture. “So, address the culture,” she asserts, “and thereby you can address a lot of your challenges in the credit union itself.”

In the show Sears also discusses:

• Specific elements of climate/culture that might be leveraged to mitigate the flight risk of newly promoted employees
• How the nine elements of culture are highly intertwined
• Why it’s important for credit unions to have the kind of climate/culture that makes newly promoted—and other—employees want to stay
• What results a credit union can get from doing a climate assessment
• How a credit union’s climate ultimately impacts its members
• How CUES Consulting’s Burn Bright offering can help develop resilent leaders at a credit union

Links for this show:

Sponsor: GoCo

Transcript

CUES Consulting

Purposeful Talent Development blogs by Sears:

• A Culture of Learning Builds Resilience
• 5 (of 9) Dimensions of Organizational Climate
• Four More Dimensions of Organizational Climate

Podcast: The Nine Dimensions of Climate

Terrance Williams says it was his dad who taught him to be a leader who listens, an intern who asked him how he knows insurance is still the right career for him and his parents together who instilled in him his mantra of “paying it forward.”

In this episode of the CUES Podcast, Williams, the new president/CEO of CUESolutions provider TruStage®, illustrates his leadership style by describing his approach to having lunch.

“I want to make sure that everyone’s comfortable engaging with me,” says Williams. “When I go get lunch, I talk to everyone in the cafeteria, regardless of their role, and regardless of what they do, and I want them to view and see me as someone that's approachable as someone that they can talk to and engage with—and give me feedback, give me a suggestion, give me a thought. (That) doesn’t mean we’re going to do everything that comes my way, but I always want to maintain that open forum, so that people are comfortable coming to me and approaching me."

Williams explains in the show how he was able to respond to an intern’s question about whether Williams had made the right decision to pursue a career in insurance. He is certain that he has.

“I …  believe what we do genuinely matters,” he says. “When you think about the ability to transfer risk, the ability for me to live my life without the worry of being able to take care of the unexpected, without having to worry about what might happen with the loss of a loved one, … our role, when you boil it all down … is really to ensure that we can help rebuild lives to the degree money and caring can. That’s what we do. And I would like us to talk about that more as an industry.”

Williams adds that one of TruStage’s strengths is its mutual structure. “This belief in this notion of people helping people, the ability for us to make long-term decisions that really are centered around the member, the ability to ensure that we can invest today with the recognition that we will benefit someone tomorrow.”

The show also gets into:

• Williams’ mantra, paying it forward, and how he wears that idea on his arm (see photo) 
• How Williams won a national award for chief marketing officers without being a CMO
• The job during Williams’ career that was most formative for him as a leader
• Diversity, equity and inclusion

Links for this show:

• TruStage
• TruStage’s CUESolutions provider page
• Key Strategies for Setting Up a Diversity & Inclusion Program with Angela Russell from TruStage
• CUESolutions providers are trusted credit union suppliers
• Transcript

Chris Jones and his team have formed a new company named to represent well what they do. Jones is a senior benefits consultant and partner in PARC Street Partners. PARC stands for plan, attract, retain and compensate—all key elements of the company’s work to help credit unions create a succession plan, attract, retain and compensate key executives so that both the executives and the credit union “win the financial game.”

In the end, he says in the show, the credit union’s members win too.

“If the credit union is winning the financial game, the executive should win the financial game,” he says. “And as the result of those two, ultimately, keeping the member in the center, … the member is winning the financial game. When the organization is healthy and moving forward, the member is winning.”

PARC Street Partners specializes in helping credit unions, executives and boards put in place supplemental executive retirement plans so that everyone can win the financial game together. But in the show, Jones emphasizes that SERPs are just part of the larger succession planning picture.

“Succession planning is a process,” he explains. “It’s not a SERP. The SERP is a tool that is used to support the process. The succession plan should stand in and of itself, on its own. … And then the question is, do we need a SERP to support that? We think often you do, but the plan should stand on its own.”

The show also gets into:

• How SERPs play into today’s recruiting processes
• How having conversations about succession planning and SERPs can help clarify details about executives’ retirement plans that have previously not be discussed
• What will change and what will not change for Jones' team and clients of PARC Street Partners 
• The difference between the two main kinds of SERPs—457(f) and split-dollar plans—and examples of situations when each might work best

Links for this show:

• PARC Street Partners
• Article Bruce Smith of PARC Street Partners: Turn Your Credit Union’s SERP Liability Into Net Income 
• CUES Unlimited+ member video featuring Chris Jones: A Myth Boards Hold About Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans
• Become a CUES Supplier member
• Download a transcript

Hybrid, remote and in-person work gets talked about a lot these days. The conversations are often about which companies are staying remote, which are calling every employee back to the office, and which jobs can truly be done effectively from someplace other than a physical location.

But a topic that’s been less talked about so far is the impact of our new choices about where we work in terms of career development. And this is the topic Deedee Myers, Ph.D., delves into deeply in this episode of the CUES Podcast. Myers is the president of DDJ Myers, an ALM First Company, the CUESolutions provider for succession planning and the sponsor of CUES’ Advancing Women publication.

In this show, Myers emphasizes the need to both slow down and focus on people in a variety of areas related to people strategy and career development.

For example, Myers says executives are exhausted from having to manage several groups of people—those who are in the office all the time, those who are in the office part of the time and those who are in the office none of the time—and not having the training to lead in this way.

“It’s going to take some courage and commitment for us to slow down and relearn how to ... be effective leaders” in this environment, she asserts.

She cites recent research that says people who are in the office a few days a week are more likely to get promoted than people who are fully remote “because they’re seen, they’re there, they’re in the meetings, it’s easier to have conversations.” 

Because of this, she recommends figuring out “how to be seen on those two, three days that you’re in the office, or how you can keep connecting with others in a meaningful way.”

The show also gets into:

• What kind of person is now needed to lead the people development and talent strategy parts of what was traditionally called “HR”
• How to connect more effectively with young employees
• What aspiring CEOs need to know about the impact of hybrid work on their careers

Links for this show:

• DDJ Myers, an ALM First Company
• Recent CUES videos featuring Deedee Myers: 
  • Considerations for Women Who Want to Be CEO
  • How CEOs Can Design Organizations of the Future (Unlimited+ membership required)
• Become a CUESolutions provider

From a past episode of the CUES Podcast, we already know that Scott Hackworth is an able data guy. In this show, he talks about the compensation data and corresponding trends that stand out in this year’s CUES Executive Compensation Survey and CUES Employee Salary Survey.

He also describes the suite of data analysis tools included in the CUES compensation surveys and how they may be helpful to both credit unions and their team members.

“The year-over-year comparisons are still very high,” in the latest survey data, Hackworth says in the show. He is a CPA and president of Industry Insights, CUES’ partner in producing the annual surveys. This year’s increases are in the “high single digits, whereas in ‘21, it had been the low double digits. But we’re still in that 7, 8, 9% year-over-year change—and that’s on a same-sample basis. So, looking at the same groupings of companies, same employees largely, we are seeing 7, 8, 9% pay increases. That’s significant."

In addition to the overall upward trend, Hackworth talks about significant increases for CEOs and chief member solutions officers. Then he describes how to use the data analysis tools included in the CUES survey offerings. 

Listen in to get all the details.

Links for this show:

• CUES Executive Compensation Survey
• CUES Employee Salary Survey
• Industry Insights
• CUES’ CU Management magazine’s coverage of the surveys in its October 2023 issue

Peter Glyman finds it fun to say “yes” to a fintech integration with a Jack Henry product.

Glyman is managing director of corporate strategy at Jack Henry, a CUES Supplier member and the sponsor of this episode. In the show, he talks about his fintech experience as the co-founder in 2006 of personal financial management tool Geezeo, which Jack Henry acquired in 2019 and subsequently integrated with its Banno Digital Platform.

In the show, Glyman says a best practice for credit unions when it comes to fintech might be “getting involved.” This could be watching fintechs directly; starting a credit union service organization to work together with other CUs in monitoring the environment; or partnering with a larger group like Jack Henry that’s vetting fintechs and choosing which to integrate into its products.

Glyman also talks about application programming interfaces—or APIs—what they are,
why they’re important and the value of knowing a fintech has published theirs. And in addition to talking about Jack Henry-fintech integrations he thinks are particularly excellent, he also describes financial technology he’s been following.

“I spent a fair amount of time the last couple of years looking at blockchain and crypto for Jack Henry and how that is relevant for our credit union clients,” he says in the show. “… We're looking at wealth tech as an area of interest, allowing credit union members to be able to buy fractional shares of stocks or create portfolios. I think that's a missing piece in the member experience with their credit.”

He also invited credit union leaders to reach out to him via LinkedIn about the technology they’re interested in—or just to talk fintech in general. “What areas are you interested in?” he asked. “What new technologies interest you? I'd love to hear that."

Links for this show:

• Jack Henry
• Jack Henry's Banno Digital Platform
• Peter Glyman on LinkedIn
• Three Important Findings From Jack Henry's 2023 Strategic Priorities Benchmark Study
• Four Ways Technology Can Improve Efficiency for Credit Unions and Members
• CEO Institute: FinTech
• Transcript

In the latest episode of the CUES Podcast, Lesley Sears defines the differences between climate and culture and explains how they together create the workplace your staff members experience every day. 

VP/consulting for CUES, Sears then rises to the challenges of describing each of the nine elements of climate in two minutes or less. In that short span, she defines each, explains what to look for if they’re healthy or unhealthy dimensions, and what to do to bring each along toward health. 

The nine dimensions of culture Sears highlights are: 

1. Challenge and engagement 
2. Freedom 
3. Trust and openness 
4. Idea time 
5. Playfulness and humor 
6. Conflict 
7. Idea support 
8. Debate 
9. Risk-taking 

Credit unions want high numbers for every dimension except conflict, Sears says.. 

“Debate is different than conflict,” she explains. “Debate is healthy conversation. Conflict is not healthy. So, it's the sniping. It happens when people genuinely don't like each other. There's a dislike in the climate. So again, as much as playfulness and humor ... can be a good representation of a healthy climate, conflict can often be a very good representation of a not very healthy climate.”

What are some things you can do to promote low conflict at your credit union? Sears suggests identifying common goals. “Distract the attention from the conflict itself and focus on the healthy stuff,” she advises. “How are we all moving toward the same goals? How are we doing that? What dimensions around conflict can we do better at?”

Listen to the full show for more about each dimension.

“I love how a climate is made up,” Sears summarizes. “And I love that behavioral psychologists have really been able to bring these dimensions together. So, I'm passionate about them. I think they are truly a way of measuring who you are as a credit union.

Sears advises using the results of a climate assessment to help you focus your talent development efforts. “Like we've got ‘x’ number of resources,” she says. “How can we get the most that we possibly can out of those resources? And I think these dimensions help us really do that well.”

Links for this show: 

• Transcript
• More content from Lesley Sears 
• CUES Consulting 
• From new CUES CEO Heather McKissick, I-CUDE: Addressing Talent Challenges Requires a Holistic and Innovative Approach

According to Deedee Myers, Ph.D., in this latest episode of the CUES Podcast, more and more CEOs are looking at their organizations and asking themselves, “What does it need to be in the future?” The answer to that question, she says, has to be put in the context of unprecedented times with the hybrid remote work environment taking hold and the need for leadership skills really changing.

“As humans, we need to ‘North Star’ right now,” says Myers, CEO of DDJ Myers, an ALM First company, a CUESolutions provider and the sponsor of CUES’ Advancing Women publication. “We need a reason to come to work. We need to come together with one voice and have a place to go. Call it a vision or North Star organizing principle, we need to know why we matter every day. That’s lost right now in a lot of organizations. That's why a lot of CEOs are looking at the organization of the future. What is that compelling reason?”

Myers suggests that when CEOs are designing the organization of the future, they should talk with many stakeholders about “three time zones.” That is, they should have conversations about the credit union’s past, where it has been, what it has done; the credit union’s present, where it is, what is working, what is not working, what has stayed the same, what is changing; and of course, the credit union’s future, what it could be.

Myers suggests CEOs listen to not only what board members have to say but also executives, middle-level leaders, front-line staff and trusted vendors, including fintechs.

Going on such a “listening tour,” Myers emphasizes in the show, requires CEOs to look to remove their biases so they can get a fresh perspective and practice really good listening skills.

“I think the CEO has to shape themselves in a way that people will want to share and go below the surface,” she says. For example, it might seem simpler to have this conversation with the whole board at once. “But when we pick up the phone and talk to each board member, we get to hear really what they care about, and what they’re concerned about.”

The show also gets into:

• How to set the ground rules to support a successful listening tour
• The value of CEOs having a personal centering practice to help them listen to all feedback, even the difficult-to-hear feedback
• The value of intention and awareness in being a good listener
• Special considerations for new CEOs and female CEOs
• What to do with the information collection on a listening tour
• Identifying both low-hanging fruit leaders can address readily and deeper work the organization needs to do

Links

• DDJ Myers, an ALM First company
• Become a CUESolutions provider
• DDJ Myers sponsors Advancing Women
• Podcast 73: How to Smash a CEO Interview, with guests Deedee and Peter Myers

Omar Jordan says a mantra he lives by personally and professionally is, this one from Tony Robbins: "Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and start being excited of what could go right." 

As founder/CEO of the credit union service organization Coviance, Des Moines, Iowa, Jordan believes that credit unions would benefit from not being afraid to take a risk to see what good could come of it—especially a calculated risk related to home equity lending, lending automation and working with fintechs. 

“In this industry, as you know, … we're good at managing risk,” Jordan says in the show. “And that's primarily what I hear. ‘We manage risk, we manage risk.’ And to that I say, … 'Everything is scary until it's not.’ And so, it's okay to take risks every now and then as long as we're not putting one out of business. Let's … continue along the path of innovation.” 

In this episode of the CUES Podcast, Jordan talks about trends in the HELOC market. 

“We've been actually predicting home equity lending demand to rise, and our predictions became reality,” he says. “We're seeing industry headwinds such as high interest rates, home values being on the rise [and] lack of demand for refinance and purchase mortgage turn into opportunity or tailwinds for credit unions, and especially credit unions who are looking to expand on their TAM, their total addressable market and their member share of wallet.” 

In addition to describing Coviance’s lending automation offering and its potential to bring a credit union a return on its investment, Jordan also offers his thoughts about partnering with fintechs that will enhance your core business versus compete with it. 

“There are competing fintechs, and they … are going after our credit union members—and not just on the lending side but nearly every product that credit union offers,” he says in the show. "And there are fintechs, such as Coviance, [that] … are primarily focused on providing credit unions the technology solutions, the product … they need ... to lend at ... the speed of today's borrower—because your members’ expectations today aren't what your members’ expectations were five years ago.” 

The show also gets into: 

• the difference between lending automation tools and loan origination systems—and how credit unions can benefit from having both.  
• what the Coviance system offers 
• Jordan’s big-picture thoughts about how credit unions can best partner with fintechs 
• ideas worth considering regarding digital transformation, digital optimization and innovation. 

Links for this show: 

• Coviance 
• Transcript 

In this episode of the CUES Podcast, Lesley Sears says she loves the commercial in which “Polly Pratz wore many hats.” While the commercial is for an online university, Sears loves the many hats idea as it relates to having an organization-wide skills taxonomy—a system for deeply understanding the skills of each employee and the organization overall. 

Having a skills taxonomy can help an organization not just think about their people within the boundaries of their position or role (such as teller or chief marketer) but rather think broadly about what they can or could do—their current and developable skills (such as accuracy or setting marketing strategy), explains Sears, , CUES’ VP/consulting services who heads up CUES Consulting.

In the commercial, the female protagonist “has on a firefighter’s hat and the coach’s hat and … all of these different things that she has done in the past,” Sears says. “The skills taxonomy really begins to identify that for the organization, … so people really understand who their workforce is and what they’re bringing to the table on any given day.”

In the show, Sears says a skills taxonomy is like a biological taxonomy that classifies plants or animals into kingdom, phylum, class and so on. The difference, of course, is that a skills taxonomy organizes people’s skills.

Having an organizational skills taxonomy opens the door to being better able to address skills gaps both in the organization overall and in individual employees; understand the skills big picture when hiring new team members (e.g., what additional skills would we like in the new loan officer to fill out our organizational taxonomy?); and knowing how to build better cross-departmental teams, Sears explains. Skills-based talent strategy built on a skills taxonomy can help streamline people processes, saving both time and money.

“So, you, the CEO, the CFO, … everybody within the credit union, understands what the objectives are, … the mission, the vision, … the objectives and anything that the people strategy can do to make that work better, or … make your resources go further,” she says. “You've got a team of people that want to move toward that objective.” In other words, focusing on skills helps to align the organization and move it toward its overall goals.

Sears acknowledges that developing a skills taxonomy might seem overwhelming at first. But fortunately, talent development research has illuminated a set of common skills that your organization might have—or might want to have. So, it’s just a matter of finding out. And again, research has helped refine effective ways to dig in and find out, Sears says.

Links for this show:

• Transcript
• CUES Consulting
• More content from Sears, including her monthly Purposeful Talent Development blogs 
• TalentNEXT, for HR, talent and people execs

A decade before CUES member Dana DeFilippis, CCE, became CEO of Merck, Sharp & Dohme Federal Credit Union in Chalfont, Pennsylvania, she decided she wanted the job.

Coming to credit unions from public accounting, DeFilippis prepared for the CEO role by adding leadership of the IT department to her duties as VP/finance of the $825 million institution, excelling at opportunities her CEO gave her to present to the board, attending CUES’ CEO Institute and earning her certified chief executive designation, and getting to know every part of the organization.

Now CEO for two years, DeFilippis has leveraged the knowledge she gathered to help her use technology and teamwork to promote staff innovation and better serve members.

“So, our ultimate goal is that we free up our employees’ time (from) doing mundane things, so that they can be more innovative; they can think about how things are being done and how do we, you know, continue to improve our processes, improve our products and services that we’re offering to our men members,” DeFilippis explains, noting that automating month-end close by implementing SkyStem’s ART month-end close system was one way that’s been done. “So yes, the ultimate goal is because we’re … pretty lean … to be able to really free up people's time so that they can be more innovative and think about ways to be more productive."

CUES thanks SkyStem for sponsoring this show and for being a CUES Supplier member at the supporting level.

The episode also gets into DeFilippis’ advice for aspiring CEOs, including strategies for learning; the benefits she got from attending CUES' CEO Institute; her deep-seated belief in teams with representation from across the organization; Merck, Sharp and Dohme FCU’s recent mobile banking implementation; and inspiration for taking on new challenges.

Links for this show:

•  Merck, Sharp & Dohme Federal Credit Union
• SkyStem and ART, its month-end close system
• CUES’ CEO Institute
• Five Signs It’s Time for Your Credit Union to Automate Month-End Close
• Why Every Credit Union Should Value and Optimize Flux Analysis
• Podcast: Easing the Pain of Month-End Close
• Transcript

Tyler Leet takes credit union cybersecurity very seriously. For him, it’s not just a job. It’s a duty.

“We have an obligation,” says Leet, director of risk and compliance services for the regulatory compliance group at CSI, Paducah, Kentucky, the sponsor of the latest episode of the CUES Podcast. “Businesses have an obligation, credit unions have an obligation to keep their members secure, their data secure, their money secure.”

In this show, Leet shares his 20 years of experience in information security, risk and compliance by describing best practices in “going on offense” to defend your credit union and the data it generates against hackers. These best practices include knowing:

• The key differences between “vulnerability assessments” and “penetration testing” as well as between “compliance” and “security” 
• The value of assessments and tests—and how to put each in context
• How to build a well-balanced cybersecurity program

Leet urges credit unions to not be afraid of the results they might get from doing vulnerability assessments and penetration tests—even though it might be disappointing to find holes in your defenses against cyberattacks.

“It’s a learning exercise,” he explains. “I mean you’re looking to improve. It's not about just making the document to make examiners happy. It’s: ‘What are we figuring out along the way? What insights are we gaining into our organization?’”

Leet also reminds every listener that they contribute to overall organizational security, even if they’re not in IT:

“You are an end user, whether you’re a teller or a loan officer or an executive,” he says. “You have access to systems, and you are a potential target. You are a potential avenue into that network and can make a mistake that could cost your organization. So, while you’re not expected to be a security expert, you can learn basics about good security hygiene and to avoid being one of the reasons your organization gets compromised.”

Links for this show:

• CSI
• More great content on cybersecurity from CU Management magazine
• Transcript

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations are central to the corporate social responsibility program for $8 billion United Nations Federal Credit Union, New York.

These goals such things as living wages, clean water, ending poverty and empowering women and girls, explains Yma Gordon in this episode of the CUES Podcast. Gordon is VP/Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact for UNFCU and the Executive Director of the UNFCU Foundation. 

“Credit unions are known to have purpose,” Gordon says. “And so for us, it's about really living that value to put people, planet and prosperity ahead of profit.”

Gordon makes an important distinction between “CSR” and another common buzzword, “ESG”—or environmental, social, governance. 

To Gordon, CSR has to do with the work of delivering on the mission of its members—employees of the United Nations—to leave the world a better place. So that includes “our collective action, our policy, our investments,” work done both internally and externally.

“Corporate social responsibility is an extension for us of our mission to serve the people who serve the world, and that we first of all hold up sustainability, for example, as a value,” she explains. “And so for us, that means really conducting business as a good corporate citizen. That's important to us.”

In contrast, Gordon says, ESG is more about measuring the work of CSR. 

“It is how we see that our stakeholders can understand, rate and score our risk and value of the work … that we're doing in terms of CSR,” she says. “Increasing in our ESG journey makes total sense in terms of the (overall) journey that we're on.”

The show also gets into:

• the history of UNFCU’s CSR program
• the work of the UNFCU Foundation
• how the United in Sustainability Network supports other credit unions in their efforts
• UNFCU’s sustainability-minded product offerings
• what’s next for UNFCU’s CSR work

Links for this show:

• Transcript
• United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
• UN Global Compact Action Manager (free assessment tool)
• United in Sustainability Network
• United in Sustainability Summit
• Get added to the United in Sustainability email list or ask a question about UIS 
• United in Sustainability on LinkedIn
• ABCs of ESG whitepaper

In this episode of the CUES Podcast, Alex Johnson underscores the idea that knowledge is power when it comes to credit unions' success in understanding and making decisions about fintech. The creator and author of the Fintech Takes newsletter, Johnson describes ways credit union leaders can track trends in fintech and even recommends several of his favorite fintech resources. 

In the show, Johnson also emphasizes the importance of credit unions staying strategic as they contemplate fintech and how to engage with it.

“I think when you’re trying to decide … what’s hyped or overhyped or maybe not hyped up enough, … it needs to be done through the lens of … who are members or customers and what problems are we trying to solve for them? And how does this technology contribute to that goal?” he says.

“We don’t have unlimited resources to throw at this stuff,” he adds. “We don’t have an unlimitedly large technology staff or sometimes any technology staff at all. We don’t have a huge budget for this stuff. And so you do have to pick your spots very carefully."

In the show, Johnson uses P2P, digital account opening and chatbots like ChatGPT as examples of technology that might be super interesting to credit union leaders. And yet, he says, sorting out where to spend your time in fintech must be driven more by member needs than by a keen interest in any particular technology or a desire to keep up with a competitor.

“If you ever find yourself making a decision around technology or fintech that is in any way motivated by a feeling of, ‘We’re missing out, oh, it’s embarrassing that we don’t have this and our peers do,’ that’s just a terrible motivation,” he says in the show. “And I would try almost to sort of train your brain to recognize that motivation because it’s very natural, and it creeps in that drives all of our decision-making all the time. But to the degree you can identify and sort of stamp out that motivation when making these decisions, I think that’ll help in focusing on the things that really are strategically the most important.”

The show also gets into

• Fintech trends Johnson recommends credit unions follow most closely
• The value of looking to solve members problems in “financial services-adjacent” spaces
• Whether credit unions should be partnering with fintech companies

Links for this show

• Transcript
• Fintech Takes by Alex Johnson
• What 4 Wildly Optimistic Visions of P2P Tell Us About the Future of Moving Money
• CUESolutions provider Cornerstone Advisors‘ report, “What’s Going on in Banking?”
• Andreeson Horowitz fintech newsletter
• Fintech Business Weekly podcast by Jason Mikula
• This Week in Fintech newsletter
• CEO Institute: Fintech, prework due March 21, in-person event April 17-20 in New York
• CEO Dialogue, a place to get perspective on financial service-adjacent spaces

This episode of the CUES Podcast covers the key connection between skilled and authentic leadership and management and organizational and employee well-being.

“This is really what we need to focus on ... as leaders and as organizations,” says guest Laurie Maddalena, MBA, CSP, CPCC, CEO of Envision Excellence. “How do we support the well-being of our cultures and create cultures that cultivate well-being and also well-being for our employees in their personal lives? 

In the show, Maddalena offers these concrete steps to take: 

• Audit your culture. Is what’s in practice what you say it should be? 
• Assess the quality of the work of your leaders and managers. Are they modeling the behaviors you want to be part of your culture? (eg, Are they constantly connected?)  
• Know your business model. This will help you determine which ways you can offer flexible work and to which employees. 
• Root out such traditional and unhealthy leadership practices. Micromanaging, not giving feedback, reprimanding rather than coaching, and not investing in an employee’s growth may have worked 30 years ago, but they don’t anymore, Maddalena says. 
• Stop promoting people into managerial and leadership roles based on excellent technical skills and/or tenure. Also, prepare potential managers and leaders for managing and leading long before you promote them into such a role.

Maddalena says making sure the right people are managing and leading “is a place that executives and CEOs can really shift your culture.”  

“It doesn't happen overnight, obviously, and it's really a slow shift, but (you) can accelerate it if you make sure that you're evaluating your management quality,” Maddalena explains. “That is the biggest piece in my mind of creating a great culture, keeping your employees engaged, keeping your talent and creating this sense of well-being. 

“And all of these challenges and the complexities that come with leadership will become easier because you have people in place who ... really understand it at the fundamental level of why this is important,” she adds. 

The show also gets into: 

• how to know which of your team members can develop into good leaders and managers 
• whether leadership and management ability is innate or whether it can be taught 
• The constant evolution of leadership 

Links for this episode:

• Laurie Maddalena has hosted CUES’ RealTalk! Programs 
• Maddalena and her team have provided coaching for the CUES Emerge program 
• Get Maddalena's Beware of Compare Reframing Tool  (free with registration)
• Find Maddalena on LinkedIn 
• In the episode, Maddalena recommended all of Ryan Holiday's books, especially Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave and Discipline Is Destiny  
• Check out a related CUES video: Level-Setting Expectations for Yourself and Others