The best of the worst community banks
It’s amazing how many community banks seem to be satisfied with the status quo of just getting by, thinking it’s a good day when the regulators don’t write you up. Many are satisfied with being “good enough” or have all but given up. Many don’t have a well thought out strategic business plan, and the ones that do can’t seem to figure out how to implement it. Zig Ziglar was quoted as saying the term, “Stinking Thinking”. This is exactly the type of thinking that leads to a loser mentality of just getting by, or settling for mediocrity, or setting their sites on getting a fair share of a market dominated by average to poor service. The loser community banks and even their king, live in a culture of spending time thinking the wrong things instead of spending their time doing the right things.
Thinking we’re a family
We get it when we hear the statement, “our bank is like a family”. That’s great. You treat your employees well, you respect them, you want to see them thrive. However, one of the dumbest things we see is when a bank has this mentality and some employees take advantage of the family status without consequence. The family concept is a two way street. Too often employees aren’t on board with the family concept unless they are getting their way regardless of what’s good for the bank. They’re really not family. They’re your employees. When your kid wrecks your car you don’t kick her out of the house, she’s your daughter! But… when an employee wrecks your bank by not following the non-negotiables, by not performing to an expected standard, or by not supporting the culture and strategic plan of your bank, then she has to go.
A final FYI… some families are pretty dysfunctional. On second thought, many community banks are pretty dysfunctional. We just might be on to something with this family concept!
Thinking that training solves everything
If training were the answer, every community bank would have an ROA over 2.0. There are some great training materials available to community banks. Our training materials are quite good. But, if you only want us to conduct training at your bank, our response will be, “save your money”. You may be able to order training in a box or download it online, but without implementation, tracking of results, and core scoring or expectations, you’re simply wasting everyone’s time and the bank’s money. You may feel good about yourself, but you’re not going to do anything for the bottom line. Here’s a simple truth, if you have a front-line employee that says he can’t sell because he needs more “sales” training, beyond the basic training to do the job, then you have an employee that is trying to move the focus from his weakness in sales to a perceived lack of sales training. It’s a classic tactic that far too many fall for.
Thinking you fulfill your brand statement
Thinking you are fulfilling your brand statement and not living up to it is a sad reality in many Community Banks. How do you support what you’re thinking or saying? Here are some comments we hear… “we have the best people”, “we provide the best service”. Seriously? Just because you say it or just because you’re a community bank, therefore we must be better than the big banks, doesn’t make it so. Here are a few brand statements we’ve seen recently…
- The way banking was meant to be
- World Class Service
- The relationship bank
- Community banking the way it should be
- Treating you like family
We could list dozens more but it just makes us kind of sad. We’ve shopped the banks with these brand statements. Everyone of them missed the brand and failed to live up to their claim. Just goes to show that everything on the internet really isn’t true.
Understanding it, Believing it, Doing it
The losers, and even their king, do a lot of thinking. The winners, the best community banks, are about doing. They have a well thought out strategic plan, they believe in their plan, and they do it or implement it. They pay their best performers and celebrate their excellence. The losers celebrate the team for trying and don’t hold those accountable that aren’t meeting basic expectations.
- The best community banks understand. Leadership has a clear enough vision of where the bank is headed.
- The best community banks believe. Employees have rallied around this optimistic vision of the future.
- The best community banks do it. They are taking the shots to implement the vision, managing it, and tracking it.
One final note… Don’t be complacent in your market. It’s not enough to be the best of the worst, The King of the Losers. Who want’s to be good enough, when you can be remarkable? Remember, even the worst of the best is going to be significantly greater than the king of the losers.
