Three Critical Components of a Strategic Plan

For a while strategic planning sessions spent an inordinate amount of time on mission statements, vision statements and core values descriptions. It became an exercise in semantics and took the focus off the three most important areas of a strategic plan: operations, finance, and the market.

1. Operations -- how you take care of the credit union, your employees, and your member experience -- is an area that must get total attention. Without solid operations you can lose good employees, inefficiently operate internal processes, and lose members because your technology is old, your fees are too high or you just aren’t fun to do business with anymore. What are the cutting edge ideas in this area you need to be incorporating? How are you planning on retaining your best talent? Who is trying to "steal" your members? Those are just some of the questions to be researched and addressed under operations.

2. Finance is also a critical area for in-depth planning to ensure safe and sound business practices, to comply with federal or state regulations, and although credit unions are non-profit organizations, sounds financial ledgers provide better services to members and better benefits to employees; not to mention, better positioning for future growth opportunities. What would it take to have every member consider your credit union their PFI? Could you handle it if it happened?

3. The market is also a critical area for strategic planning for the simplest of reasons: credit unions do not operate in a vacuum. A shift in local employers, a shift within current SEGs, and a new competitor in town can all have an impact on shaping your future strategic vision. The market is where you touch your members through advertising, with a sales culture, and with the products and services you offer. The right mix can have you flush with membership growth; the wrong mix can have you in a dire situation.

The planning and decisions in these three areas should be the foundation to making any credit union visions a reality.

-- Russell