Behind the Scenes of ACU Strategic Growth Conference

0:00 Do you come back and your energize. It's like, oh, we could do this, we could do this, we could do this, and there's all great ideas and then life gets in the way. There's multiple different sessions that will be beneficial now or maybe later in your line of business. Download all of it while you're there. Sometimes the best ideas don't always come from the agenda or from the speakers. It's from having lunch with the guy across from me who's got the same problem I have. Maybe pick small things to do, like it doesn't have to be we're going to. Change our entire contact center strategy. We're going to do a very small AI chat pilot in one thing. So thinking about how you can maximize your credit union's time at a strategic growth can be overwhelming.

0:43 So how do you turn what you learned into action? So we're going to talk about how to prioritize, implement, and keep the momentum going going back into your credit union. So Barry Drew, how can teams prioritize all of the ideas that they hurt at strategic growth with getting overwhelmed with just the sheer amount of things that you could spend time on. Well, I think it's going to start with one, how many people you have going to the conference, right, So there's some credit unions going to send multiple people. There's gonna be some credit unions going to send one person and getting a download one before you go, and prioritizing where you want to start at the conference. Is it with vendors, is it specific types of topics that you want to bring back to the credit union? Then setting up you know, if it's multiple individuals, who's going to cover what part of the conference? If it's one single individuals, are there people from the credit union that are going to decipher that they want to learn more about X, Y and z, And how do you bring that action item back to the credit union based on how many people you have at the conference?

1:45 Yeah, And I think also these are typically more seasoned professionals going to these conferences, so they usually would have a team of people maybe reporting to them. And so I always found with these sorts of conferences, it was always useful to at least share the agenda before you go to the conference with your team, see if there are other topics that may not necessarily be of interest to me as the attendee, but certainly others on my team may be thinking about that, So try and sort of get ahead of it a little bit and understand that which sorts of topics are going to be most important and most salient for the credit union strategy. I think on that too, like the majority of the time there's credit union professionals from the credit union that are going to these conferences. But we've been to multiple conferences where someone from the Board of Directors is there and the Board of Directors has this holistic view of you know, all things from growth perspective, get a download from the internal teams before the Board of Directors comes back, and then bring it back to the el T post that post the conference.

2:45 What sort of personas do you see attending? And I think Barry you said that you know, it tends to be more kind of senior leaders the credit union. Is it across different areas where lending member services or like, how do you think about that? And maybe that difference for the size of the credit union too, of how many people they say and what levels. They are, I think size of the credit un but also the topic of the conference of self strategic growth. To me, there's more of a connotation of more of that. The chief strategy officer, maybe a chief operations officer, the marketing folks certainly would be interested in going to it from a from a growth perspective. Those are usually the personas that that we encounter at these conferences. But understand that there's topics there for everyone throughout throughout the credit un many different competencies that there's gonna be some great ideas come out of it. And now how do we actually take those great ideas and actually turn them into actionable items for a credit UNI.

3:37 Yeah, and that's a I guess kind of a great follow up question. Like you know, as you you send people to conferences, you're you know, you're spending money as an organization, you want to get something out of it. They may have their board of directors members there, So how do you think about maybe ideas where leaders could help build that accountability and and uh and kind of turn some of those things into actionable items when they come back. You have, in any line of it business some type of strategic planning session, and you should have a strategic planning session around conferences if you're going to multiple conferences, whether it be strategic growth or GAC or all these other different conferences the ACU runs. Have a dedicated team to again going back to what I was saying, have a team dedicated to X problem. Why problem? Then bring that back internally and then how can you create internally of the strategic plan something that's going to be looked at on an ongoing basis. So you have quarterly business reviews as your line of business pretty standard. Are you coming out of these conferences and looking at these actual items actually taking place or have they kind of gone back into the repository of things that aren't as important.

4:44 Maybe having some type of plan like that. You know, that's a good point because I think a corely check in on this is so important. It used to be just full disclosure. As a former credit and CEO charged with making sure the strategic plan was updated on an annual basis, way back in the day, we would complete the strategic plan and it almost went on the shelf a little bit. It wasn't really looked at as much anymore. And I think now the strategic plan can really be used to center the entire organization around what the vision emission is and then the tactics I think come out of that strategic plan. The timing of this growth conference is very beneficial because being in August, you start to see a lot of strategic plan conferences and I should say within the Credit Union board, strategic retreats and someone happening in the fall in order to get into planning and budgeting for the next fiscal year.

5:39 So that's again the timing is great, but let's just make sure that what we're taking from that strategic plan is not just kept within the strategic plans, it's being looked at on a regular basis, and again centering things around st. Yeah, and you think about like the lending space and just financial services in general evolves so much in a month two months. You never know what's going to come in the news. Maybe something that you said in a session at a conference doesn't pertain to your business today, but it could in two months as things shift with it within your internal rails. Yeah. So I think that there's probably any any number of topics that they're hearing about any conference, but particularly as strategic growth. How do they think about maybe finding the right topics that can have the fastest impact because you do have these like planning cycles.

6:28 You've got to plan for next year get. Things into the budget and into the both the people, people and money resources. But what are some of the big takeaways that. You think from a product strategy that could drive the fastest growth. Yeah. I think a lot of times we go to these conferences, we get these new ideas and we're like, oh, well, we have some maybe we don't have the systems in place to actually operationalize it's the way we want to and sometimes bringing on new systems and bringing on new vendors that can be a year long process. There's a whole lot of due diligence required and the whole vendor management process that maybe has to front the ability to actually execute on a new idea. I mean, credit unions have a lot of systems today and aren't necessarily harnessing all the power of it. Like, maybe there are some ways that we could operationalize some of these new ideas.

7:18 It may not be perfect, it may not be the optimum member experience that you want, but let's at least get some quick wins and some quick successes. And in parallel, if you think that there's another system or another vendor who you think could do it better, you can in parallel look through that whole vendor management process. But at the same time, let's get some quick wins now with utilizing the tools. That we already have and on that too. There's multiple different sessions that will be beneficial now or maybe later in your a lot of business. But download all of it while you're there, and then going back time to the kind of to these QBRS sessions. Just because something isn't viable to your business in the short term within the next two or three months, make sure you're able to again download all of that and be able to come back and look and say, Okay, this probably makes sense for us now we have this integration conversation that we had with X y Z vendor. This might make sense for us now, and then you can re explore it.

8:13 Yeah, I think very one of the things you said made a lot of sense. Like you know, maybe pick small things to do, Like it doesn't have to be we're going to change our entire contact center strategy. It could be that we're going to do a. Very small AI chat pilot in one thing like helping with account opening or something specific, so you can you don't need to kind of all the ocean you can. You can try to pick some meaningful use cases and test pilots out there too. Yep, small bites of the apple. Right, Yep, absolutely, I think. And then you know, as you think about that, like new partnerships, new vendors, identifying the ones that are worse than spending more time on you know, what are some of the what are some of the recommendations you'd make to credit union leaders as they're thinking about like how to do that, like how to figure out what.

8:58 Is most meaningful and where to start eating that apple? Well, I think at any conference, I've always in my past, same as Barry prior to CEO Credit Union, go hit all of the vendors. They may not be the vendor for you right, but they may be the vendor for you in six years, six months. What have you get the full download from all of them. Another thing that you're going to get at a conference that you're not going to get over zoom teams what have you is you're going to get a general sense of the potential engagement of that vendor or that relationship that you have with that vendor. You're going to be able to get all of that at a conference rather than again on a zoom So make sure, you says side time at any conference that you go to to hit all of the vendors and get their perspective on what they can offer to your credit union, and then you can utilize that as part of your short term long term strategy.

9:44 Yeah, and use your network. I mean, if I know that Lynn deals with XYZ company, and I know Linn personally and I can get together for coffee or cocktail after the conference, then let's talk about how has that relationship been going for you. Did it meet your expectations, is it growing in concert with your growth potential within your credit union? Do they hit their slas their service level agreements? Just sort of simple things like that. Because partnerships are so important now for credit unions, you cannot do everything that you need to do in order to move your member experience further with just internally with You're going to need help from others, and that help can vary. You know, Sometimes that help can hinder, sometimes that help can amplify your credit union value proposition in such a way that really does give you a really unique place in the marketplace and really sort of drives things forward from a member experience perspective. So use your network for that.

10:42 They are the people who can tell you whether this is going to work for you or not. Yeah, And I like something I think Drew said about, you know, getting in front of folks, You're kind of getting a sense for who they are as people, what they would be like to work with, versus just what is the tech, because I think sometimes the tech can be a little bit harder to sess out differentiation. But like, are these people who are going to be business partners of yours like extensions almost like staff augmentation to help you do the things that you can't do internally. And how do they support you once you are in that implementation process or using their products? I think on that too. If you do meet with a specific vendor and that meets your strategy right now you're in person, any vendor or potential partner is going to take the coffee or the cocktail you're If you're interested in what they're saying right now, you can elaborate on that while in person, rather than setting up some random thirty minute to an hour meeting a month from now, and then you could take that back to your team and it could be something a benefit.

11:40 Sure, And I think you know we talked about the timing. Right now, you're kind of going into the fall planning cycle, planning for next year, but like a lot of these things or longer term projects or maybe as you said, things that are meaningful. A year from now but maybe are not your top priority. How can credit unions going to keep that moment to them going after the event reps like keep these ideas fresh, keep that kind of roadmap moving forward, even if they can't tackle everything today. From personal experience being at these conferences, you come back and your energize, it's like, oh, we could do this, we could do this, we could do this, and there's all great ideas and then life gets in the way, your your normal business gets in the way. Or now there's a problem that I've got to I've got to drop everything to solve and you know, next thing, you know, it's two weeks, it's two months after and you know that all those ideas are still there, but nothing's really been operationalized. So it is critically important to actually you've got to schedule time for yourself to actually get these ideas down on paper, to engage with those in your credit union who can help you push these ideas forward.

12:44 To actually be able to take meaningful steps towards making the change that you want to make. But you've got to You've got to create that time for yourself. Otherwise it just gets soaked up with the day to day that that tends to sort of permeate everything that we do. And if you can build a team around it, right, if you have a team that is dedicated to conference strategy, are there specific check ins? How often are those check ins? Going back to the QBR type of sense. If they're able to kind of run the whole strategy of what conferences bring for value to a credit union and you're doing monthly check ins there, then it doesn't go on the shelf, right sure? True? I think something maybe the credit unions could also pick up on that we tend to do a tech companies like Upstart, is this idea of hack weeek. I you know where you have like little teams that maybe you can't.

13:33 Allocate resources fully to. Say an innovation team or more of an R and D team, but can you have like kind of competitions between different teams. Do see what you can do in small little bite See what that the people who are doing the work can come up with using the tools that they have. Hack Week is a perfect metaphor here because I know some credit unions do have some sort of a Hack Week type of event, not many of them, but really all should in some respects because think of it from upstarts perspective. How many new innovations have we come up with? There are new ways of thinking have we come up with in terms of approaching a problem from Hack Week. We've even created solutions to problems we didn't even know we had through Hack Week. And think about taking that same concept at the crediting space. It could be very very powerful to again move your company forward the way you want.

14:25 Even if it's not Hack Week or whatever you want to classified as it's not that much time in essence to build long term short term strategy. As it relates to this, even if you were to set aside a day or two days, if there was a dedicated timeframe of being able to do this, then to burious point you'd be able to get more out of the scope of what you're trying to accomplish. And I think from an employee development and engagement too, if people feel like they have a voice and they're not just being kind of told what what innovation looks like and what to do like. You may come up with some great ideas that aren't visible except for somebody who kind of doing that job day to day whom I see it. And that's where you get that stuff, is you have dedicated times set away from not doing your day to day that you get solutions and you get people thinking, and it translates into better types of things across.

15:14 The I mean, I love that point about It could be anyone in your credit UNI who's going to sort of have that bright idea to move things forward. It's ironic that management teams tend to be the ones to go to conferences and come up with these solutions to member issues. When how much member contact do they have? Usually when I was CEO, I had member contact usually when there was a problem. Sure, when it was a real problem, or you. Know, certainly when we had events and so on, a lot of handshaking and kissing babies and so on and so forth. But for the most part, I'm getting problems, right, someone who's really really mad at us. But guess what my tellers, my senior loan officers, my branch managers, my contact certed people are dealing with people daily, and they are the ones who can tell you, do we really have a good value problem position out there? Are we really executing on what we want to do for our membership or not? And they can probably even tell you some of the things you could do better or the reasons why you're not actually performing as well as you think you should. So I think it's even more important to bring those people into these sorts of brainstorming sessions to try and find the real Lindstaff.

16:24 For the core of why you're doing what you're doing right. Great, Well, if you're enjoying these insights, please leave us. A rating on Spotify helps more industry leaders discover the show, and your support means we can keep the conversation going all right. Next we are going to talk factor fiction, So we're breaking down real opinions about conferences, deciding if we're on board with the time and resources that it takes to attend them or not. So there's some people who may think that you can learn more from LinkedIn in a week than at a three day conference. So what is that various? A little bit of a skeptical face. Going, how's your LinkedIn feed looking lately it's a little bit.

17:04 You know, Facebook is at some point not to slag on linkedinn because LinkedIn is a very useful tool, I think, especially in our business as we network with others in the industry and so on. And look, there are some ideas that come through LinkedIn, but I find that the idea itself from LinkedIn is more a click or too away from actually being something that I can act, that I can utilize. So I want to I don't just want Lend's opinion on I actually want to look at the source of this information that's being provided to me and sort of discern it for myself. Conferences are are still a valuable resource in order to get those new ideas, and I'll tell you that sometimes the best ideas don't always come from the agenda or from the speakers. It's from having lunch with the guy across from me who's got the same problem I have, or is looking at implementing the same solution, or even better, has already put in the same solution that I'm considering. And that's where I'm getting the really valuable idea. I don't know what your experience has been.

18:01 No, I agree, I'm on point with you as it relates to the scope of what LinkedIn looks like now. But LinkedIn you're able to go find things right and it's going to give you something in return. But generally speaking, what's on LinkedIn is not as much of a download that you can get at a conference or even in a Wall Street Journal article. It's very tailored to whatever the post is about. Emojis always are part of the post, whereas at a conference you're still able to pick and choose, but you're getting that full breadth of relationship building elaborating on whatever the session entailed at a further discussion. So I would say, if we're going to define factor fiction that I would say fiction. Yeah, I'd say fiction as well. And one other thing with the conference is you're in sessions with experts and you actually have the ability usually in these sessions to be able to have a Q and A after So, you know, I've got a burning question that I've been really looking for an idea or an answer to you, I should say, and perhaps there's an opportunity to do that in the session, or perhaps you catch that person afterwards, you know, after the crowd is left, then you can engage in that one on one conversation with that expert and perhaps get a little bit of a deeper answer to the questions.

19:13 Yeah, the sessions are spaced out far enough in advance. I remember I was at Strategic Growth maybe two years or so ago, presenting on behalf of Upstart, and the amount of people that came up to me to ask all things upstart as part of the presentation. It was kind of overwhelming. But exactly, you could just walk up and they're going to have that dialogue with you if they want to get further clarification. Right two years ago, AI and lending, Yeah, I mean was a big topic. So I'm sure you're a very popular guy. I was. You always are a popular guy, but. Let's be honest, extra popular. Yeah, that's maybe a cautionary tale on use of LinkedIn. If you're using things like chad GPT to help write your LinkedIn posts, that last prompt that says would you like me to do X y Z, don't copy and paste that into your LinkedIn Occasionally I see that and it clearly into ca They missed removing that line, so I think you touched on it a little bit.

20:04 Already vary about where some of the best value can be added, but but there can't. Some people have this perception that conferences maybe are just a little bit of echo chambers. You know, the same. Speakers, same topics, you know, not really challenging the status quo. What do you both think about that? I would say that's fiction. Again, every conference that I've been to, I've always come back with ideas or maybe some concepts that I hadn't really considered before. And again, whether that came from a speaker in the agenda, whether that came from a conversation with another attendee, but no, this is pushing my thinking forward. So yeah, I.

20:48 Would agree on fiction. Going back to your point earlier, Barry, you have multiple people there that are probably reoccurring speakers vendors, but things evolve. What they said last year at the conference could be different, and if you're in those sessions, it's much easier to get their expertise as it relates to that at this current state in comparison to the prior conference. They're experts because they are experts, and they're exactly they're regular invities to speak because. They add value. Yeah, exactly. All right, So so last one and we actually talked about this a little bit about you know, whether how many people they can send from different sized organizations and what the value is for the attendees. But do conferences maybe only perception that they benefit the biggest credit unions who have these large teams and maybe particularly like an innovation or transformation group that can go.

21:42 Factor of fiction. So the bigger credit unions, they already have a very built base of their institution, right, they know what they want to do on a short term, long term strategy. Getting off of that track is probably much harder than for smaller institutions. So I think the benefit of conferences is actually greater for small institutions because they get a further depth of what can be offered to create a growth strategy as part of their smaller institutions all hedge. It's a little bit of a factor and a little bit of a fiction. So I was CEO of a credit UNI that was about two hundred and seventy five million assets, and I would ceeover credit U there's almost a billion. So the ability for us in the smaller credit union to take some of these actionable ideas, they weren't very actionable for us because we either didn't have the resources. We didn't have the car, we didn't have the expense budget for it, we didn't have the revenue to support the potential expense that this would be. So our ability to actually turn this into actionable AMS was somewhat new to it, a little bit at a larger credit union, a lot more resources, a lot more people, and I'll say even from a board perspective, the board's expectations at larger credit UNI were a little bit broader, a little bit larger than just sort of a shorter term service strategic objective that we were really charged with moving this organization forward as fast as we could, because although okay, billion dollar credit UNI is big, not so much anymore. I mean, you know, credit unis are getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and so I had to compete in a very large metropolitan area with five and ten billion dollars and twenty billion dollar credit unies. So again,

23:14 you know, our ability versus what they could do is somewhat nearer to do as well. But yeah, i'd say it's a little bit of a fact and in fiction, but I would not let that dissuade anyone from attending the conference, because you're going to get an idea that's going to be helpful for you in some way, shape or fashion. A mean it is what you make of it, right, if you bring it back and you can implement, or if you can even learn some new things, they can help you do the things you're doing better. That they're in it of itself has value. Thank you so much for listening to leaders in lending. We will see you next time.