90% of all leaders and managers seem to be hopelessly looking for that proverbial, silver bullet that will solve all problems while at the same time, magically produce record profits within the next three tmonths. After that, they’re off to the next silver bullet they read about in that article, written by that guy, from that bank none of us ever heard of. Been there, done that? Almost all community bankers have. The funny and often sad thing is that while the search goes on for the silver bullet, a big, beautiful elephant is standing right there in front of everyone having the life taken from him every time he’s hit by one of those errant bullets. That huge elephant is everything you should be doing but are afraid to or don’t have the discipline to. Most people look at that elephant as much too big to deal with, extremely scary and too heavy to move.
Ok, enough of the metaphors… here’s the point. We’ve been working with community banks for over 20 years and we always get the same comment from leadership and management at some point in the process of building a relationship-based culture… “What you’re doing with us isn’t anything new, it’s all common sense.” Exactly! Unfortunately, common sense usually doesn’t reign supreme in banking. Common sense is recruiting remarkable people, not hiring career, job hoppers. Common sense is setting expectations and holding employees accountable to them. Common sense is keeping score (tracking sales, phone shops, etc.). Common sense is rewarding your best employees with incentives for remarkable performance. Common sense is listening to the innovative and remarkable employees and ignoring the complaining, status-quo protectors. Common sense tells us to stop shooting the elephant in the room with misdirected, silver bullets. As the new year begins, pack up the bullets and embrace your elephant.
