In our experience, banks that are clear on its purpose and consistently live out a set of corporate values tend to deliver both consistent performance and strong employee satisfaction.
Alternatively, many banks that failed began to chase growth outside of its stated purpose and/or in conflict with its stated values. If a bank’s stated purpose is to be the economic engine in a certain community then you wouldn’t expect that half its portfolio would be in CRE two states away. And if teamwork was a core value, you wouldn’t expect it to hire a bunch of lone wolf super star performers.
Two other personal observations on values:
Documenting Your Values
Your bank’s values serve as the cornerstone for your bank culture and help you answer the basic question of “should we or shouldn’t we”. They typically are first defined by your founder though they may evolve over time. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, has a great tool for defining and testing your values.
I encourage clients to identify three to seven core values with each core value being a single word (eg, teamwork) or short phrase (eg, do the right thing). Just make sure they are words or phrases your organization already uses daily. No “corporate speak”. Then for each core value, include a few brief descriptors to help employees understand the meaning. You can sometimes create an acronym of your values that reinforces a theme or your most important value but don’t alter your values just to create an acronym.
Regardless of format, values must be authentic to be believable. They are not aspirational. They need to already exist within your organization.
And most importantly, they must be alive in your organization. Otherwise, they will come off as a meaningless list of words from a leadership team that doesn’t understand what’s really going on.
Making Values Come Alive
Yes, you need to post your values on the walls, but you need to go beyond that to make them come alive. Just as parents use rituals to reinforce family values (eg, grace at dinner, prayers at bedtime, church on Sundays), leaders need to create opportunities to communicate and reinforce values so they become part of the fabric of your organization. Here are five ways to make your values come alive:1. Recruit for values
You can’t train values. People either share yours or they don’t. Include your values in your job postings (eg, “are you a hard-working, team-oriented…”) to self-screen and then design your interview questions to determine whether the candidates align with each of your core values.2. New employee orientation
Make sure your values are explained in your employee handbook and include them in your new employee onboarding process.3. Performance reviews
Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, built a very simple performance review system. GE measures every employee on two scales; performance and alignment with company values. They learned that the most destructive person in their organization was the high performer that didn’t live by the company’s values. Because of their high performance, managers would often let these culture killers live by a different set of rules thereby undermining everything management was espousing to all the other employees.The GE review process is a very effective way to hold people accountable for their behaviors. If “teamwork” is a value (for example), you will need to discipline the manager that routinely takes all the credit for his team’s performance.
4. Recognition and reward
Find ways to publicly recognize employees that live out your values. Before your next quarterly or annual all-employee meeting, invite employees to send in stories recognizing their peers for living out your values. Have a committee pick the best example and then recognize the winning employee at the meeting. Take a picture of the CEO presenting them with a gift and include it with a story in your annual shareholder report.If you have a company newsletter, highlight a value in each issue and include stories of employees living out that value.
And a thoughtful email from an executive to an employee can go a long way…“Susan, I really appreciate the great “teamwork” you showed getting the Acme deal closed yesterday. You jumped in, stayed late and helped us deliver great service to our customer. That teamwork is what helps separate ABC Bank from everyone else.” Make sure you copy their manager, too.
5. Day to day management
Incorporate values into your meeting rhythms. Rotate values of the week and start your weekly meeting with a short story or example or a personal challenge around the value of that week. Even better, invite others to share their examples or stories.When making difficult decisions, relate it to a value. When customer issues come up, discuss how it could have ideally been handled in accordance with your values. And continue to look for opportunities to reinforce your company values.
To become a values-centered, performance-driven bank, leaders must first hold themselves accountable to corporate values. They also must communicate and coach their team members on the bank’s values, reward those that live by the values and hold those that don’t accountable.
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