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Podcast Transcript 139 Jeff Disterhoft DEI

December 2022

By Jeff Disterhoft

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:04

You're listening to the CUES Podcast, episode 139.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:09

Thank you, CUES Podcast listeners, for tuning in. Today's conversation with Jeff Disterhoft will give you lots of inspiration and ideas for supporting diversity, equity and inclusion with your staff members and communities. A CUES member, Jeff is president and CEO of $11 billion GreenState Credit Union, headquartered in North Liberty, Iowa.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:32

My name is Lisa Hochgraf, and I'm CUES' senior editor as well as your host for this episode. Before we talk more about today's show, let's take a moment for a word from our sponsor.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:45

Executives, managers and board members: Commit to creating a truly aware and inclusive culture at your credit by attending the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Cornell certificate program starting online March 15. Attendees will explore the processes that impact the ways people interact with each other as they learn from top Cornell University faculty. Having an inclusive work environment is not just a nice to have; it can make or break an organization. Commit to going beyond mere compliance and build a truly aware and inclusive work culture at your credit union. Register for the DEI Cornell certificate program today at cues.org/ecornell-dei.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  01:30

I must say that the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Cornell certificate program is near and dear to my heart. I went through the inaugural program in early 2021 and learned so much. I am a stronger contributor to CUES' internal DEI team because of it. Plus, I have been able to apply insights learned in the program to the DEI content we create regularly here at CUES.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  02:00

In today's show, you'll learn more about the impactful DEI work of GreenState Credit Union, the winner of this year's DEI: Catalyst for Change award sponsored by CUNA Mutual group. This annual award goes to a credit union that has demonstrated sustained support for advancing DEI in its workplace, raised awareness of workplace diversity and inclusion issues, been a catalyst for change regarding workplace DEI; and/or supported positive change within the industry, their organization or their community. I think you'll find that GreenState has done all of these things. And it plans to continue.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  02:38

In this show, Jeff talks about his credit union's bilingual strategy, GreenState's two-pronged approach to helping close Iowa's racial homeownership gap. Iowa currently has the sixth largest racial homeownership gap in the nation; the backstory about what inspired Jeff's commitment to lead his credit union on a significant DEI journey; and how GreenStatE has used podcasts to help communicate with staff, along with other internal DEI efforts at the credit union. Jeff also offers useful ideas for other credit unions that are interested in starting or continuing their DEI journey.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  03:17

So let's get started.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  03:22

Welcome to the show, Jeff.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  03:24

Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  03:26

And congratulations on your credit union earning the CUES DEI: Catalyst for Change Award for 2022.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  03:33

Now, thank you so much, you know, we're we're humbled by the recognition. As everybody knows, it's, it really is very much a team effort and we're honored, especially given all the great things that credit unions are already doing across the country these days. So, very humbled and clearly a reflection of the wonderful team that we've we've built here in the last year or two.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  03:50

I've been really enjoying reading about what your team has been doing. And I'm really looking forward to talking more about it. But before we jump into talking about diversity, I wondered if you might have a quote or a mantra that you live by, that you might be willing to share with our listeners.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  04:07

I don't know if I have one that I live by, like all time, but one of my challenges here recently is to, to identify one per week, if you will. And so it's something I kind of reflect back on as I go through the week and maybe the stressful times they're in, and my faith is very important to me. And so my my mantra these days has been, "Let go and let God," because I think sometimes I have a tendency to take control of things that I don't always have control over. And that can make for a stressful life. And so my my mantra here of late has been, "Let go and let God."

 

Lisa Hochgraf  04:38

I love that. There are so many things that are beyond our control. And getting in tune with that can really help us do what we can do.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  04:46

Yeah, yeah, it's there's a natural tendency, especially for anybody that's in a leadership position or otherwise, to look at the world around you and have maybe the maybe a little bit of a warped perception about all the things that you can control and the things that you can't. And so I know I certainly can do a better job of recognizing those things that are in my control and those that are not. So I think that's a life lesson for all of us.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  05:09

Yeah. Yep, indeed. All right. So let's get into the specifics a little bit more. So in your application, I was also reading that GreenState launched last year a 10-year initiative to help close Iowa's racial homeownership gap. And that's a gap that ranks sixth largest in the nation. As I understand it, the goal is to fund more than a billion dollars in mortgage loans to people of color in all the communities you serve. Would you give us some background on how you set this goal and also how it's going?

 

Jeff Disterhoft  05:41

Sure. Well, first of all, as the No. 1 mortgage lender in the state of Iowa, we really felt like we had a responsibility and an opportunity to close that staggering gap in homeownership between BIPOC and white communities. You know, as I'm sure you sense, homeownership, historically has been such a huge generator of generational wealth. And you know, you look back over the last few years is perfect example, if you were a homeowner three years ago, you know, you've probably seen the least up until the summer, you've probably seen the value of your home increase 20, maybe 30% or more in some cases. And so, if you were a homeowner, that's great, but if you weren't, or your family hasn't been a homeowner, you miss out on that, that generational wealth, and that generational wealth has such an impact on subsequent generation's income, and as a result, their education and then as a result, income, and so it becomes kind of this self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  06:38

And so when we convened a couple years ago, you know, our our senior team met with our board. And out of those conversations, we agreed to commit 10% of our assets over the next decade to home lending to people of color in the state of Iowa, which as you said, has the sixth worst homeownership gap in the nation. And so, for us that equated to roughly a billion dollars. We're a $11 billion organization today. And through our special-purpose credit program, we're also able to offer downpayment assistance and other credit counseling, credit counseling services, to those who qualify.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  07:11

And so where we're at today is we've to date, we're about $275 million in not quite the first two years. And so we're in a good spot today. But I don't want to just rest on those laurels. We're actually encouraging other credit unions, at least right now anyway, in the state of Iowa, to join us in that effort. And that effort is to basically commit to doing 10% of their assets over the next 10 years in home loans to people of color to kind of erase that homeownership cap.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  07:39

And so that's the 10-10 program. At the same time, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that, that we also made commitments in three additional areas. In total, we want to commit $20 million to either affordable housing support, racial, immigrant and refugee equity support, or climate and environmental sustainability. And so, at the same time, we made that billion dollar commitment in loans, we also announced a $20 million commitment in just charitable support. So really a kind of a broad-based, broad-based program.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  08:11

Yeah, so affecting the situation in several directions.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  08:15

Yes, yeah.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  08:17

I have a dear friend in public health. And she talks a lot now about how the public health people, and this is even before COVID, were trying to work more upstream, right, to deal with the causes of the problems that they were later treating as disease. So it sounds like you're looking with your charitable arm to maybe claw help close the gaps, that you're also trying to close with loans.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  08:38

Yep. And it's, you know, it's, I feel like, in just one person's opinion, but it's obviously a very polarized political environment that we live in. So it's sometimes harder, I think, for public municipalities, etc, to really move the needle on some of the areas that they might have a passion about, but they just, they, to some extent, may be gridlocked. And in what they're trying to accomplish at the same time, you know, with the economy being a little tighter right now, you know, some of the nonprofits may lack the resources. And so we felt like, as a as a, as a relatively small business, we provided the opportunity to maybe get things done quickly, but also, at the same time, have some resources to dedicate to it. And so if you, you marry those things together, and then throw on top of it the passion that we have, then I think you see what you what you've seen here lately.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  09:28

That sounds like a good recipe.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  09:29

Yeah, I hope so.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  09:31

I was reading in your application for the award that green state established its emergent bilinguals strategy back in 2020. And the goal at that time was to address financial disparities and earn the trust of bilingual communities. Would you tell me more about that strategy and how it's going?

 

Jeff Disterhoft  09:49

Yeah, you bet. So first, a little bit about why we established the strategy, and the short answer is we really wanted to grow among our Latino community. Latinos are the largest minority group in our state. And they're projected to double in size by the year 2050. And so, you know, it's it's a growing part of not just Iowa's or Illinois' demographics but quite frankly, the country's demographics. And so taking better care of the Latino community is, I think one of those rare intersections where doing right also intersects with doing with with good business. In other words, it's, it's right for those communities that may have been historically marginalized. But those are also growing communities. And so that's good for our business.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  10:36

And in terms of our successes, so far, you know, as we look back over the relatively short amount of time that we've been doing this, we've doubled the size or the number of our bilingual staff employees; we began accepting foreign IDs for account opening; we're making our digital platforms available in Spanish. And we're building partnerships with immigrants serving organizations, which is, which is really a journey. But you know, a lot of these communities don't necessarily think of us as GreenState, as the first place they might look to as a resource. And so the first step is becoming a real trusted real resource. But the second part is helping people understand that we're available to them. And we can't do that on our own. We need the we need partnerships with those immigrant-serving organizations to help get the word out. So that's kind of where we're at and what we've done so far.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  10:36

And so we recognize, you know, Latinos fall on a spectrum of language usage, some prefer English, others are bilingual, newer folks, to the to the country may prefer Spanish, so very similar to other immigrant communities. So our goal is to serve them in the language that they feel most comfortable with. And so that's kind of where we're trying to get to.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  11:46

That's really interesting. You know, we were talking before the show about how I grew up in Wisconsin, and I actually spent a couple of summers in Iowa doing dance camps. And I have to admit that when we started preparing for the show, I thought, Iowa? Lots of Spanish speakers? That's not what I remember. Of course, that was 100 years ago. But I tell me a little bit more. I understand the intersection of what's happening with the business opportunity. But can you tell me a little bit more about how your credit union got started on this journey? Was it a personal experience? Was it an enthusiastic employee? The drive of the board? Just what just what is it that pushed this forward for you?

 

Jeff Disterhoft  12:23

It's a little bit of all the above. And I apologize for the length of the story. But I need to kind of tell a story. I grew up in rural Iowa, myself. And when I was in junior high, a young man moved to our community from Cambodia. From the he was an immigrant from the Killing Fields of Cambodia. And as near as I could tell, he was the only person of color not just in my community in eastern Iowa, but quite frankly, probably in the county that I lived in here in eastern Iowa. And so, we quickly became the best of friends. We had a mutual love for basketball. And so we remained friends throughout the rest of his time, our time in high school. And so I sort of grow grew up with this, I think, misperception that I had race all figured out, that I didn't have any unconscious biases.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  13:13

And then, fast-forward, 25 years later, 30 years later, our son was taking a class called, I think, politics and law at the University of Iowa. And every Sunday night, we would drive him home back, or I would drive him back to college. He would grace us with his presence for dinner and in exchange, we got to drive him back to college. And he started, as part of his class, he started asking me questions about my views on race and politics. And a few things became clear over the course of the semester. One, I didn't have it all figured out in terms of the systemic oppression of people of color in our country for hundreds of years. Two, I had a lot of unconscious biases that had not been properly addressed. And three, I could do more as an individual, and I felt like GreenState could do more as an organization.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  14:06

And so that was five or six years ago. And so in the years that elapsed since then, I really tried to immerse myself in understanding, again, the systemic oppression of people of color in our country. And so that involved a lot of reading, a lot of watching, a lot of talking, a lot of lunches, to get different perspectives. And so, again, I guess I set up on this journey to try to learn more about what things I could and should be doing differently or better to, to reverse that, which has been done last 250 years. So I get done with that journey. and at the same time, I kind of get done with that learning process, the George Floyd tragedy takes place. And it was an intersection of time where I felt like "Okay, I had kind of, I've kind of been almost preparing for this timeframe. And so, thankfully, we had a board that was also there was also very and still is very passionate about about improving our service to people of color. And so it was a passion of mine, it was a passion of our board, and it was a moment in time that all came together, that really provided a flat platform for us to, you know, do something more than what we'd been doing. And so that was really kind of the genesis for it in the first place. I apologize for the length of story. But that's that's really how it came to be.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  15:25

Not at all. That's a wonderful story. And I appreciate you telling it very much.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  15:31

I see that GreenState has been doing some podcasting in support of these initiatives, not just the CUES Podcast today, but your own shows. Please tell us about the GreenState of Mind podcast and the GreenState Unplugged podcast, including why you chose the podcast format for the outreach, and where listeners can access the shows.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  15:50

Yeah, so there are two different podcasts and two different kinds of purposes, if you will. First of all, but let me speak to the why, why the podcasts and, you know, we've got roughly 1,000 employees. And to some extent, I think that we approach our employees as we approach our own members, and how we market to them. And some members, you know, prefer videos, some prefer audio, some prefer to read, some prefer digital, some prefer prefer print, etc. And so, with 1,000 employees, we realize that they're all going to want to take in content in different ways as well. And so I think one of the things that we've tried to do in the last few years is to mix it up. So whether it's a podcast, a weekly video that we send out every Friday, a weekly email that also goes out every Friday, we try to meet people where they want to be met, if you will. And so with that in mind, we do have two strictly internal podcasts.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  16:45

The GreenState of Mind is, is a monthly podcast that really just kind of brings people up to speed on what's going on within the organization--might be a topic of the day, might be a particular area of interest. And then we have the GreenState Unplugged, which is more towards our DEI efforts. And we've had four episodes as far as pride, mental health, holiday seasons and race. And so that's also an internal podcast. And it just really again, creates a variety of ways for our employees to learn. And so it's easy thing to kind of have reference, they can listen to him in their car, and they're at their desk while they're working out going home, whatever. So, again, we're just trying to meet people where they where they can be met.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  17:23

I totally hear you as a as a longtime editor in the credit union space, how we've gone from just print mostly print to a few e newsletters to websites to podcasts and videos. And sure, I haven't yet done Tik Tok, we'll see.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  17:38

You and me both or neither, I should say. So.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  17:43

So my understanding is that the GreenState of Mind is internal and GreenState Unplugged. Is something more public is that?

 

Jeff Disterhoft  17:50

Well, actually both of them are internal. Both of them are internal.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  17:53

So this is talking about credit, what the credit union is doing with the staff to reinforce what's going on?

 

Lisa Hochgraf  17:58

Very good. Very cool. I love it. So I happened to notice that GreenState has almost 11 billion or maybe even over 11 billion in assets. What would advice would you give to smaller credit unions that want to start a diversity outreach initiative?

 

Jeff Disterhoft  17:58

Yeah.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  18:13

Yeah, I know that it really depends on the size of the institution. I do think there are some kind of must-have kind of things. First of all, I think you have to have some passion at the top of the organization. By that I mean, both the board and the CEO. You know, I think a successful DEI initiative oftentimes start by just acknowledging what must change internally before implementing an external plan. So if for any reason you feel like you have it all figured out, then this probably isn't the path or you got to recognize that there's going to be some gaps. And if you do, that's a place to start.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  18:45

And so it can also be started by leveraging resources that you have internally, such as the folks that you already have on your team. And then from there, you create a committee, right? And that's the way it often starts: Create a committee that's going to evaluate your staff diversity, how inclusive your workplace is, and how your current policies may or may not be excluding members of color and immigrant members. But again, without that passion at the top, then I think it's as well as it is with any initiative, it's probably tough for it to succeed. But if you get that passion, then I think really good things can happen, because you can in today's day and age, you can attract the right people to your organization, people that see that vision that join in you join with you on that vision. And that's where things get exciting. That's where things get fun.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  19:28

Indeed.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  19:30

So we've talked a lot about your external programs, and we've talked a little bit about the internal podcasts. But can we talk a little bit more about the internal work at the credit union in terms of DEI? What are some things that stand out for you?

 

Jeff Disterhoft  19:44

A couple things come to mind. Now first putting action behind our words by hiring someone dedicated to be our diversity, equity and inclusion coordinator. His daily focus is to continue to build on GreenState's value system and help foster an inclusive environment among amongst other items.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  19:59

So the second thing I'd call attention to is just our Grow Career Development program. It's a career development program that will help employees with their opportunity to achieve their full potential by helping them identify their career goals and providing the tools and resources needed to achieve them. So, the program has three learning pathways, six competencies they're in. So we've partnered with LinkedIn learning and our own internal learning management systems. Doing so staff will have the opportunity to learn and develop in each of those six areas. And so in leveraging diversity, there are more than 25 options for staff to engage in, read, watch and listen to to further them on their own DEI journeys.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  20:38

And the last thing I call attention to, what I mentioned earlier, is just our employee resource groups. They play a significant role within our company. We've got five of them right now: Rainbow Connections, Women's Impact Network, Somos GreenState, the GreenState Association for Black Employees, and Inspiration. So we look forward to adding more in the future. But these spaces are important because they really help us build community and camaraderie across the company. And those involved can see other employees who look like them and discuss ways for our cultures to improve. Because it really is a it's a journey, not a destination, there's never going to come a day where we have it all kind of completely figured out.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  21:15

Yeah, yeah, it's really important to keep to keep on keeping on with this, isn't it?

 

Jeff Disterhoft  21:20

Yep. Yep, very much. So.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  21:22

We want to be respectful of your time today, Jeff. But before we wrap up the show, may I ask you, what is something that I didn't ask you about that you kind of wish I had, and then will you tell me something about that additional topic.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  21:35

Yeah, you know, if that it needed topical, per se, I would just remind everybody that you know, the old saying every journey begins with the first step. And so the first step is, is always the toughest. But once you start on that path, some really amazing things can happen. Second, as we were talking kind of before we started here today, don't underestimate how much your DEI efforts can really resonate with staff throughout the organization. So often in our industry, it's easy to get caught up in the numbers, the dollars and cents, and really forget about the impact we can make on people's lives. And that resonates not only with the communities that you serve, but also with employees who see those communities being served.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  22:11

And then the third and final option, just be prepared to make some mistakes along the way and give yourself some grace. I know, you know, we're relatively new in our journey. And there have some been some difficult conversations. There's been some hurt feelings from time to time, but those are all reflections of our learning, right? And if, if we're making some mistakes, that means we're learning and we're getting smarter as we go. So give yourself some grace. Give some grace to those around you, and get a little bit smarter as you go.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  22:11

And I was talking to a CEO earlier today said there was 1.9 jobs for every er 1.9 jobs for every person who looks for a job right now. And that's helpful, too. When when potential employees see the commitment that you make towards DEI, it can really be a differentiator for, for you as a potential employer. So don't underestimate the value there.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  22:58

Give yourself some grace. Keep learning. I love it. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Jeff.

 

Jeff Disterhoft  23:04

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  23:08

I would like to thank you, our listeners for taking time out of your busy schedules to listen to today's episode of the CUES Podcast. And many thanks to Jeff for sharing so many useful insights.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  23:21

To get more information about the CUES DEI Catalyst for Change Awward and all the CUES awards, visit cues.org/recognition.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  23:31

Find a full transcript of this episode at CUmanagement.com/podcast 139.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  23:40

You can also find more great credit union-specific content at CUmanagement.com. You can also find CUES content specifically about diversity, equity and inclusion at CEU management.com/diversity-equity-inclusion.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  23:58

Thanks again for listening today. CUES is an international credit union association that champions and delivers effective talent development solutions for executives, staff and boards to drive organizational success.

 

Transcript Podcast 138 Zachary Churchill

November 2022

By Zachary Churchill

Lisa Hochgraf  00:03

You're listening to the CUES Podcast, episode 138.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:09

Thank you CUES podcast listeners for tuning in. During today's conversation you'll get to know and be inspired by the 2022 CUES Emerge competition winner, Zachary Churchill. A CUES member. Zachary is the vice president of finance for $1 billion USF Federal Credit Union, headquartered in Tampa, Florida.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:31

My name is Lisa Hochgraf. And I'm CUES' senior editor as well as your host for this episode.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:37

Before we get into more details about the show, let's pause for a word from our sponsor.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:45

Strategic Resource Management, or SRM, is a leading advisory firm based in Memphis, Tennessee, serving credit unions across North America. SRM has helped more than 1,000 clients save over $5 billion and vendor contracts across card networks payments, and PIN point of sale providers, core processing and much more. SRM also offers advisory services to help executives manage digital transformation, improve operational efficiency, enhance member experience and develop strategies to integrate cryptocurrency and digital asset solutions. And now, with the addition of Sievewright and Associates, an SRM company, they offer even more to our credit union clients, including unmatched strategic planning services and the strategic leadership series membership and perspectives reports. Visit SRMcorp.com today to learn how SRM can help you. And follow SRM on LinkedIn for the latest insights and trends impacting your world. SRM. They exist to improve your bottom line.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  01:58

If you want to build a team, you want players who are humble, hungry and people smart. Zachary Churchill says this is not his idea. It's from Patrick Lencioni, founder of The Table Group. But Zachary seems not only to espouse it, but to embody it. The winner of the 2022 CUES Emerge competition, Zachary is not afraid to say he previously entered the competition in 2013 and didn't advance. So that's pretty humble.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  02:28

He is hungry too. He's interested in learning and growing to the point where he would like to become CEO of a credit union one day. Ånd he's already been sharing everything he learns about leadership with other leaders and staffers at his credit union.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  02:44

As for people smart, well, listen to the show to get several examples of how Zachary shines in this area.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  02:51

In the show, Zachary also gets into his experience with both the educational and competition phases of the CUES Emerge program, a sketch of his CUES Emerge business case for building an analytics team, the power of storytelling, his best advice for writing a solid business case and building a winning online presentation, how to become more receptive to feedback, plus advice for aspiring leaders in the credit union movement.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  03:19

So let's get started.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  03:25

Welcome to the show, Zachary. And congratulations on winning the CUES Emerge competition for 2022.

 

Zachary Churchill  03:32

Thank you, Lisa, for having me here. I'm just so excited. This has been, you know, kind of a crazy time. So much positive stuff coming out of the competition. So I'm just feeling so thankful, so grateful for the opportunity and excited to see, you know, kind of what comes next.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  03:47

I'm so glad to have you on the show. Before we get into talking about CUES Emerge itself and your business case on analytics. I like to help our listeners get to know you a bit better. To that end, would you have a quote or professional mantra that you live by that you feel comfortable sharing?

 

Zachary Churchill  04:05

Well, I'll share a quote from Maya Angelou that I think has been very impactful for me. She says, I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. And that's always a quote that I thought is just really beautiful. And then as I've kind of learned and grown, I realized just how much it really means. You know, I used to think that the things we did were what mattered. It was the results that we delivered. That's what really sort of shaped us and others' view of us. But one of the things I've learned is if people don't really enjoy being around you, if you sort of leave them with a bad taste in the mouth and what do those results matter? So you know what if instead you focus on making people feel really great, that every time they interacted with you I hope that's the case interact with me today that you leave thinking wow, that was really great. I enjoyed that time with Zachary. He made me feel positive things you know.

 

Zachary Churchill  05:00

I think back to a while ago, I had a coaching session with an employee that was in a leadership role. And this employee, they were very direct in their communication style. And so sometimes that would rub people the wrong way. And it kind of created a not-so-great view of this, this leader and was affecting their career growth. And so I had to be really honest with this individual about what was going on. And I had to say some things that weren't that flattering, like, it wasn't really a great fun positive conversation. I tried to be supportive, encouraging about how the behavior could change and get better outcomes. But honestly, I was kind of worried that afterwards, the person was going to be down in the dumps, kind of upset with me, and not real happy about me as the leader. But we got back like a week later. And the first thing this leader said to me, huge smile, grin ear to ear, thank you. And I was like, Thank you, I kind of expected grumbling or like a passive-aggressive response. But instead, I got gratitude and thanks. And I asked her, I was like, Why did you handle this bad feedback so positively? And the leader said to me, Well, you gave me bad news, but you believed in me. And so that belief gave this individual the confidence to see that they were capable of improving that this is something that can be changed. And when I think about it, the reason I share it is it was very meaningful for me. Sometimes it brings me almost to tears to think about, like what that was like that going into something, it was kind of a harsh, painful reality, and the person coming back and saying, Thank you, because you believed in me. And so I think that kind of goes back to that, quote. It's how you made somebody feel at the end of the day.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  06:37

That's really awesome. I love my Angelou and that quote, and that's an amazing example of it in action. Thank you for that, Zachary. So let's start talking a bit about the CUES Emerge program. Would you give us a little bit of history? What helped you decide to apply for the program? And what were the steps leading to your involvement?

 

06:56

So I'm kind of old school, when it comes to CUES Emerge, I was actually an applicant in the original iteration, the Next Top Credit Union Executive program back in 2013. And back then, you had to do an application video, it was like a minute or so long video, which is out on the Internet. And as you know, the Internet never forgets. So my application video, still, somewhat embarrassingly, is still out there from 2013. Back then, you had to get social media engagement to move forward in the program. And I'm terrible at social media engagement. So I didn't make too far. But I was proud that I put myself out there and applied. Then, you know, I've been thinking about the program kind of in the back of my mind for several years. And then last year, one of my dear friends, Mark Bowles, who I met as a credit union development educator back in 2018, November best class ever, he had posted online that he had received his Certified Credit Union Manager designation, which is one of the outcomes of completing the CUES Emerge program. And so the day I saw that I was like, oh, I need to do this. And so I put down in my calendar for January 1, my Outlook calendar, to go ahead and put in my application, as soon as the window opened to be able to participate, because I was like, Well, I want to do Mark proud and go in and participate in this program, you know, in the next iteration, and hopefully have a great experience, like, you know, what he had shared he had.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  08:15

Well, I'm so glad you came back. That's a great story. So that in the new version of the CUES Emerge program, everything starts with an education component. I'm curious about your top takeaways from the CUES Virtual Classroom and mastermind sessions that you would have gone through during that phase of the competition.

 

08:34

I love the learning component of the program. I think that's been a really great enhancement that gives a lot of value back to the participants. And so we had three key sessions. One was what's the problem with Dr. Mario Moussa, which was about sort of structuring what is the opportunity that you see in your organization. We talked about the competitive advantage of social capital with Dr. John Burrows, and he spoke about the value of relationships in an organization and how having strong relationships can allow you to accomplish more. And then the last session was the art of powerful communication by Lauren Weinstein. And that was one that really blew me away. One of the big takeaways that I had out of this communication session was shared a difference between typical communicators and top communicators. And the big difference was typical person ask themselves, what do I want to say? And then builds content from that vantage point. But the top communicators ask themselves, What does my audience want or need to hear? And then builds their content from that vantage point. And I think it really requires you to think about the audience. Who are they? What do they value? What information do they come in, to your presentation with? And at the end of the day, your audience really is a customer shopping for a product. It's an experience about learning about something, but also really conveying a bigger message. And so, you know, the product is the product that's sort of the content but your packaging, how you're presenting that and really thinking about what your audience wants and needs to hear can be the difference between making the sale on that product or, in our case, you know, having a pitch that's well received, or an item that just sits on the shelf.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  10:09

And it's interesting to me how much those big ideas that you studied during the educational component actually fit in with your Maya Angelou quote, has not only to do with what you're saying, but how you say it, how it comes across, how people receive it. That's very interesting. So after the education portion, CUES Emerge moves into the competition phase. Would you please give our CUES Podcast listeners a sketch of the business case that you presented on October 5, during the live pitch show on Zoom?

 

Zachary Churchill  10:40

Sure, so the core idea was developing a data analytics team in the credit union. And so I told the story of a member, which is Mrs. Rose, that we were able to get out of a bad financial situation. So we refinanced a high interest rate car loan that she had got from one of those buy here, pay here, type car lots back to the credit union. And sort of the twist in the story was, it's great that we help this one member, but because of siloed data and lack of visibility into into that data, there were dozens of other members in the credit union in a similar type of situation, but we don't know who they are to be able to assist them. And so I laid out kind of a three-phase process for implementing data analytics in the credit union, which I labeled, show it, know it and grow it. And the show it being starting to visualize some of the data, know it being developing data definitions and sort of standard, how do we measure items, and then grow it expanding the information all across the credit union. Since the CUES Emerge program started, I actually worked with some of my team to develop a data analytics proof of concept using Microsoft Power BI software. And we were able to get some daily operational dashboards for the lending team. They've got some key metrics they need to closely manage because we've been in a rising interest rate environment. And so they want to stay on top of how they've priced loans and what their yields look like. And so that proof of concept actually was really valuable for us and was a great demonstration of partnering between my team, the finance group, and the lending teams, how we're able to look at these numbers every day, how to strengthen our partnership, and break down kind of silos that tend to build up between departments and build really strong trust and communication.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  12:17

That's pretty exciting. I'm, I'm still impressed. You're bringing together analytics, but with the people too. And that's a really cool thing to watch someone do. And I really enjoyed your pitch on the show itself. One of the things I've heard about you since then, is that you have been a real standout in terms of receiving feedback well. As an editor that makes a lot of questions jump into my mind, but I'll limit myself to two. First I'm wondering, what was the top piece of advice you received during the CUES Emerge program? And how did you act on it? Okay, maybe that was two but here's another, what would you recommend to other leaders about how to be receptive to feedback?

 

12:57

So one great piece of feedback that I got was from Michael Berger during the program. He said too many words, Zach. And you know, that kind of sounds minor, but it was huge for me. So I'm an analytical thinker. And you know, I like to get all the information out there. It's why I did a data project. And I had to adapt that natural tendency and to create something that was going to be exciting and compelling and get a pitch done in just seven minutes. So when I did my first run through of the pitch, turns out, I was double that. It was 14 minutes long. So I knew I was going to have to become a word count dictator. I had to ruthlessly slash through sentences to eliminate content, things that were important, but not mission-critical. And truthfully, I cringed every time I had to get rid of a thought or comment that I liked. But I realized it wasn't essential to conveying my message. And so ultimately, I was able to cut down the overall structure so that it fit on just a couple pages of written text. Honestly, at times, it was gut wrenching, it was very hard to sort of let go and trust that I could get all the content in such a narrow window of time. But ultimately, it made for a much more interesting and impactful presentation.

 

Zachary Churchill  14:02

And then regarding taking the feedback, I mean, it is difficult, you have to humble yourself and accept that maybe you've got a way of doing things. And maybe it's a good way of doing things. But there could be a better way of doing things. So having to let go of the pride and ego and give a new way a try. For me. ego is the obstacle to personal progress. You know, I tend to think my way is good enough so why change. But the truth is, we're not going to change unless we want something bad enough, or the pain of doing things the way it is now that status quo hurts enough. So in my case, I desperately wanted to do a great job in this year's competition. And that meant I had to let go of my ego at every turn and just do things the way that the experts advised me. And so you know, some of the stuff that I heard was you need to make sure that your attire is professional and on point. So I made sure I had, you know, a dress shirt and a suit jacket that my office was immaculate because it represents you and so I staged the background to be very organized and clutter free. I was told to work on my audio. So I made sure I got a good podcasting microphone. So I sounded clear because if people can't hear me, they can't get my message. It said to improve my video quality., Because it was built-in, the webcam on my laptop was blurry. So I got a nice external webcam. And it was taking sort of all those little pieces that maybe individually won't make a huge difference. But collectively, I think help to convey that message of professionalism and a really good quality pitch. In the end.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  15:25

I can totally commiserate with the having to cut something really hard. Every once in a while this editor asks for 700 words and gets 3,000. Ooh, it can be done. But it's painful at times. And it requires thoughtfulness. And I can tell you that you were doing that on your pitch because it came out so well. And then I love what you're saying about ego is the barrier to our personal progress. Good for you for taking all those little tidbits and bringing them together into such a successful case and pitch.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  15:56

Thank you.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  15:57

Sometimes people participating in the CUES Emerge program have never written a business case before had you prepared one previously?

 

16:06

So I've never prepared a business case in this much detail before. I've done more like one-page proposals on ideas. So I had some level of comfort there in writing a case but not necessarily nearly as extensive. Personally, I'm much better speaker than a writer. So for me, the written phase of the program was definitely the most difficult. I had a hard time organizing my thoughts at first. That was definitely a challenge. And so I ended up having to actually draw out all of my ideas on a sheet of notebook paper, because I couldn't organize it, you know, trying to use Microsoft Word or PowerPoint typing things. I just kept getting lost and going in circles. And so finally scratching out notes on a sheet of paper and sort of laying out here's the structure of what I need to convey that finally helped me get everything written down. And then once I had that, writing the pitch, the written part of the case went much, much smoother. But it was definitely a challenge. It was not easy.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  16:53

Again, very cool. So Zachary, based on that, what advice do you have for leaders crafting a good business case?

 

17:00

So a key learning that I took away from the CUES Emerge program came from one of our speakers who said humans are wired for story. And so as someone on the finance side of the business, I just figured that data and facts will win the day. Everything is so clear, I mean, the numbers prove it, it's in black and white. But that just isn't how we're hardwired as a species. And so, if telling stories matters, then we need to find the story in our own business cases. And my example could have been a challenging one, because data analytics, you know, how do you make a story out of data? And so I really had to think about how could I translate this sort of abstract concept into something concrete? And I spent a lot of time just brainstorming, and I was kind of banging my head against the wall. I'm like, How do I bring this alive? How do I find an example? And then finally, I stumbled across the example of our member, Mrs. Rose. And so the idea of her situation and how we could help her, I mean, sure there's clear benefits to leveraging data analytics. But what is more powerful: if I said, there's strong financial and member benefits to implementing my proposal, or we can transform the lives of our members through data? Let me tell you about Mrs. Rose. So her situation, I think, brought sort of that concept into action and brought it to life. Here's how we're able to transform someone's life, reduce their not only their loan payments and interest rate, but for her was the difference between having electricity and having the power cut off our house in one of our hot Florida summers where air conditioning is mission-critical.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  18:24

Absolutely. I have family in Florida. And when that air conditioning goes out, the mold comes in. So that's a real problem. That's wonderful. I'd love the idea that storytelling helped you tell the numbers story even better. Certainly numbers speak, right? Sometimes graphs and charts really help understanding. And yet, when you bring it down to people again, then the point goes home and to heart. So you've had to do a lot of follow-up speaking after winning. You're here. You've been on CU Broadcast probably other places that I'm not mentioning. How has that been for you? And how does it fit into your long-term vision for yourself?

 

18:59

Yeah, so honestly, I should have expected what was going to happen, and I didn't expect what was going to happen. So the way that I've described that is like I bought a lottery ticket. But you know, I didn't really expect to win, except then the next day somebody shows up at your door with this giant check, you know, and the news media is there. And they want to interview about how you're going to spend your winnings. So I didn't exactly know. I was just so thrilled to be part of the process that honestly, I hadn't thought beyond what the winning meant. I just wanted to do my best and really represent myself and the credit union well. I'm very thankful to have been given this opportunity. And it does align with kind of my career goals. So I have a couple of things I really want to be able to do. One, I aspire to become a credit union CEO one day. And the other thing I love doing is speaking on leadership development topics. I've been blessed to learn from a lot of very wise people, a lot of books that I've read great things and sort of stolen the best of the ideas and compiled it together. And so I really liked to be able to go out and speak and share more on how you can be successful as a leader how you can build strong high performance teams. Not that I know all the answers, but that I've learned some great answers that have benefited me and I think really can benefit others in their professional development and career as well.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  20:06

That's so great. There's wonderful insights in everything you've said. Before we end the show, I would like to know if you have any words of advice for up-and-coming leaders in the credit union space.

 

20:18

Yeah, I'd say step out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself. I mean, it is scary, you could fail. But you'd be like me and enter in 2013, and not even get past the social media phase and have an embarrassing video out there on the web. But then look, nine years later, what happens? So the great things in life, they just don't come easy. And you don't know how much potential you have until you test yourself and see what are you capable of, what are your limits, so give things a shot, try and get involved. And you never know what will happen. For me as a CUES Emerge participant, even if I fell flat on my face again, I would have walked away with 29 new best friends in the credit union world that are there to help me. So there is no way to lose by putting yourself out and just taking a chance and seeing what's possible.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  21:03

Zachary, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you being on the show.

 

Zachary Churchill  21:07

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. I had a great time.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  21:12

I would like to thank you, our listeners for taking time out of your busy schedules to listen to today's episode of the CUES Podcast. And many thanks to Zachary for sharing so many useful insights.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  21:24

Find a full transcript of this episode at CU management.com/podcast 138. You can also find more great credit union-specific content at CUmanagement.com.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  21:37

To get more information about the CUES Emerge program, please visit CUESemerge.com. Thanks again for listening today.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  21:46

CUES is an international credit union association that champions and delivers effective talent development solutions for executives, staff and boards to drive organizational success.

 

Transcript Podcast 137 Bob Bruns Eric Gelly

October 2022

By Bob Bruns, Eric Gelly

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:05

You're listening to the CUES Podcast, episode 137.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:10

Thank you, CUES Podcast listeners, for tuning in.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:13

Today's conversation is about the value of keeping your options open in both CEO succession and mergers.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:21

My name is Lisa Hochgraf. And I'm senior editor at CUES as well as your host for this episode.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:27

Credit unions face lots of challenges these days, not the least of which are CEO retirements and achieving economies of scale. Today's guests, CUES members Bob Bruns, and Eric Gelly, know a lot about staying open to the options with both.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:43

Bruns has led Charlotte Metro credit union in Charlotte, North Carolina, for almost four decades. He will retire on Oct. 31 and celebrate the milestone with a special dinner in early November. In this show, Bob describes how he let his board know several years ahead of his planned retirement and how he was pleased that they responded by generating a variety of options for securing the credit union's future, including launching a CEO search and considering merging into a larger credit union. In the end, the Charlotte Metro CU board completed a merger with a similar sized credit union, Premier Federal Credit Union in Greensboro, North Carolina, creating a new combined credit union of about 1 billion in assets.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  01:25

The board also hired Eric Gelly, who had been serving as president of CUNA Strategic Services, as the organization's new CEO. In this show, Bruns and Gelly describe more details of the transition, including the key role an outgoing executive can have in paving the way for a smooth leadership transition; how they have effectively co-led the credit union during the lead-up to Bruns' retirement, including splitting the president and CEO roles; the value of attending conferences like CUES Symposium during a leadership transition; how to be creative with board and C-suite succession beyond the CEO; and how to help staff embrace such a transition.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  02:05

I'm sure you're going to get a lot of great ideas from the show. Before we get to the conversation with Bruns and Gelly, let's hear a word from our sponsor.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  02:16

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Lisa Hochgraf  03:41

Now, let's get started.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  03:54

Welcome to the show, Eric and Bob.

 

Bob Bruns  03:56

Thank you. We're happy to be here.

 

Eric Gelly  03:59

Thanks for having us, Lisa. Excited to chat with you.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  04:02

Likewise. Before we actually get into the meat of the matter, let's set the scene a little bit for our listeners. Bob, I'm curious, how long have you worked for the credit union?

 

Bob Bruns  04:13

Just wrapping up 39 years, so we'll call it 40,round it?

 

Lisa Hochgraf  04:18

Almost 40 years. Wow.

 

Bob Bruns  04:20

Before that, three years of being a credit union examiner in North Carolina.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  04:25

So you come from the compliance space, interesting. As you joined the credit union, what sort of succession plan did the organization have in place?

 

Bob Bruns  04:35

When I joined?

 

Lisa Hochgraf  04:36

 Yeah.

 

Bob Bruns  04:39

Well, I actually interviewed and there were other candidates and so they were seeking a new CEO and chose me. I don't know at that time whether they had a policy about succession. I doubt they did. I don't remember. It was a long time ago, but I doubt they did.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  04:58

And so as you started to think about retiring, what sort of succession plan did your organization have in place?

 

Bob Bruns  05:06

We pretty much had the boiler plate, that when the CEO gets of a certain age, the board will have a discussion and either open it up for a new CEO candidate and hire a firm and do the head-hunting thing and try to find a new CEO.

 

Bob Bruns  05:23

But it turned into a little bit more discussion than just finding a new CEO. And there were several reasons for that. One was, my management team had been with me my most of my career, the entire time. And so they were aging as well. So it was obviously going to be a rather dramatic change in management to have the whole team go away. So that kind of framed a new discussion of, "Do we want a whole new management team, do we want to choose the CEO, and then let him or her pick a new management team?" All of that was somewhat of a risk because you have a lot of new personalities coming in. And then other discussions evolved into, " Well, what if we merged with an existing credit union that already has a great management team?" which you don't hear many credit unions willing to discuss merger, but our board was very open-minded about it. And we actually explored that aspect of it over the next year, meeting with other credit union boards, mostly larger credit unions than us and talking about what a merger would look like, and how we would fit in and etc. And so it was quite a learning experience for our board to be very open-minded about what the options were.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  06:55

It does sound like they explored a lot of options. Tell me a little bit about what actually ended up happening?

 

Bob Bruns  07:02

Well, that's a, that's a pretty good story. And I may let Eric tell you a little bit about that. Early on, I had actually had Eric in mind to replace me because we had, well, I've known him 25 years-plus, and worked with him. He had facilitated some of our board meetings over the years. Our board was familiar with Eric. And he was clearly my pick. And we had dinner one night, and I said, "What do you think?" And he was like, 'Oh, I'll think about it." You know, he was pretty happy with his assignment at CUNA. So last we met with these other credit unions and explored, and I was not hearing back from Eric. And I was thinking, well, we may have to go the merger route or a new CEO route and just realize that Eric's happy with CUNA. And he, he calls me like, a couple of days before our planning retreat where we're going to make this decision on the direction that we're going in and said, "Are you still interested in me?" And I'm like, "Yes, of course." So I told our board at that planning retreat that Eric is interested. And of course, there were some other things that Eric can expand on that we sweeten, that the fact that he might come, a potential merger that he could bring with him. So that was interesting to our board. And in the end, they chose to go with Eric coming on board and working with me for a year or two, and becoming the CEO and hiring his team to run the credit union. And the merger did work out. So Eric, I'll let you talk about some of that.

 

Eric Gelly  08:54

Well, thanks, Bob. And Lisa, I think just listening to Bob, I think we're off to a great start. He framed it up really well. And functionally, that is exactly as it transpired, Bob came to me and said, "Hey, I'd like for you to come join the team and potentially be a replacement for me," and I was flattered and honored because I've known Bob for a long time. He ran a fantastic credit union with great fundamentals. But because we were so like-minded, we both agreed that the credit union wasn't quite large enough. What were we at the time about about 500 million?

 

Bob Bruns  09:27

Yeah, when we were chatting originally. Yeah. Yep.

 

Eric Gelly  09:31

And having been on the national scene, and understanding scale for credit unions, and Bob said it well, I was having a great time being the president of CUNA Strategic Services. But deep down, I'd always wanted to see what it would be like to run a credit union, and the plan that we came with, was actually the concept of merging Premier in with us, Premier Federal Credit Union out of Greensboro, North Carolina. I had worked with that credit union in the past and was actually working with them on their planning session. And their CEO was intrigued with the idea. So that afternoon when I called Bob right before his planning session, I said, "I know you have two options that you're considering at the moment, considering merging with another large credit union or going, you know staying Charlotte Metro and going it alone." I said, "How about a third option where we do a merger with Premier? And at that point, we get really close to a billion dollars total assets. And it helps us achieve the scale that that we've been hunting. And fortunately, Bob, and their board of directors liked the idea. And last year, we completed that merger with Premier and have been rolling right along ever since.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  10:47

That's an amazing combination of factors, the interest that Bob had in talking with you, Eric, and then the idea you brought about merging the plan for a possible merger with having you come on board. That's all very fascinating and amazing. Another interesting piece, and part of the reason that we asked you to be on the show is that you actually overlapped. Right? You're still both working at the credit union right now even. Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to decide to have both of you lead the credit union for a time and overlap, and how the eventual retirement for Bob will take place now?

 

Eric Gelly  11:24

Let me chime in on this one for a bit, Bob, and then you covered it well. Having seen credit unions go through succession in a variety of ways, some really good, some maybe a little bumpy. As we talked this through, Bob always said to me, "Hey, you're joining the team, you've got to earn earn the CEO role." And I completely looked at it that way that this was a long, ongoing interview process. And I was never promised to be CEO. And I love that. And one of the things that we did talk about was the concept of at a certain point in time, I would become president; he would remain CEO.

 

Eric Gelly  11:59

And I can't compliment Bob enough. From the day I joined the team. He started to hand me the reins, some minuscule things, some very important decisions, but he allowed me to start making those decisions. Yes, I did a pretty good job because he never overruled me.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  12:20

Must be.

 

Eric Gelly  12:21

But we worked very closely and in tandem, for the first, gosh, at least 18 months or so. And I noticed that that Bob was gently slipping more into the background and allowing me to be a bit more in the spotlight. I've compared it before to it's almost like he had a dimmer switch. And he was making the light brighter on me and reducing the light on him and doing it in such a well-orchestrated way that I didn't really notice until we got through the process that he had handed everything, essentially over to me. When when Bob handed me the title of president, I think it made a clear delineation to our staff and to the board that this succession was happening very smoothly. And it gave us you know, that extra opportunity to both be leaders of a higher level, you know, you're out of in a different position when people see you as president. And we stayed that way for quite some time. What was it, Bob? Maybe six months probably?

 

Bob Bruns  13:24

Well, you have to keep in mind, Eric started when COVID hit.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  13:30

Great timing.

 

Bob Bruns  13:32

His first day was March 1 of COVID. And yes, and so he started at a very unique time where our entire operation had to be evaluated on how we were going to handle COVID And, and such. But it all went fine. And he did a great job. And like I said that people were already familiar with Eric in our organization. He had facilitated management and board meetings over the years. So it was a very smooth transition with Eric. And I was gladly turning the reins over to Eric there. Eric is very competent and knows what he's doing. And I already knew that about him. And so it was just very easy for me to start stepping away and having the transition and eventually we just took it to the board and said "Okay, we need to get this done." And they officially tapped him as CEO effective a certain date in in the future. And that has occurred now, and he is and I am just advising him which means we go to lunch and play golf occasionally and talk about the credit union.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  14:43

Sounds perfect. Sounds perfect. Now.

 

Bob Bruns  14:45

It is perfect for me!

 

Lisa Hochgraf  14:47

Eric, you were hired at the credit union as the EVP and chief operating officer for a little bit before you and Bob split the president and CEO title right?

 

Eric Gelly  14:58

That's correct. Yep, yeah. Okay, I can't emmphasize enough to the interesting piece of COVID, the role that it played right, so I started March 1. We were sheltering in place, I think, what eight days later. And Bob, and I are making decisions about branches I have yet to see you or employees I have yet to meet. Because we've just been, you know, in thrown into this COVID era. But it was a really interesting way to learn about an organization; it certainly accelerated my learning. And in certain ways, we got to see the organization a bit in crisis mode, which is not something you get to see often. And I learned an awful lot about our team and how wonderful the team was that Bob had assembled, and how strong they were and how we plowed through those things. So that was, it was an experience I wouldn't want to duplicate, but I wouldn't trade it.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  15:51

It's interesting. It seems like becoming the leader at that time would be an interesting study. It's an opportunity, a time where you really needed to look at every single aspect of the organization very methodically, right? So like you said, wouldn't picked it, but when trade it either. Interesting way to start? Wow.

 

Eric Gelly  16:10

That's right. And Bob alluded to it earlier, but our CFO joined the credit union the same day Bob did, and she's been with him ever since. And then our CIO has been with us for 30,36,37 years? Melanie's been with us? So we had some long-term folks who had been together for quite some time. And I'm sure at times, having this new personality in the room was was interesting for them, I'm sure.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  16:39

Indeed, how is their transition now being planned, if they're approaching retirement as well, as has that been part of the overall planning?

 

Eric Gelly  16:48

It has and it's from my perspective, it's gone well. They both have done just as nice a job as, as Bob has at assisting me to find replacements, to helping me put together the team that's going to move forward with the credit union. Our CIO will retire at the end of the year, this year, and our CFO sometime next year. So the big three are riding off into the sunset together,

 

Lisa Hochgraf  17:11

And doing a lot to help sort of leave things in good stead in their wake. That's, that's really great. So I've heard people say in other organizations that it's really important for a long-time leader to kind of go away when the new leader comes on, so that the organization can embrace the new leader more readily. So you've kind of turned that on its head here. You you've planned an overlap. You've made it work really well. Would you talk a little bit more about the benefits, you've talked a little bit about those, and also any challenges that you faced, maybe with staff, and their thinking as the transition has been going on.

 

Bob Bruns  17:49

I don't think there's been any problem with the transition. It's been smooth as silk. And again, it's because Eric has been well-liked and accepted, even before he came on board, so that Everybody knew I was getting old and I was gonna leave. And here here was the new guy that everybody liked. So it went extremely smooth and continues to be smooth. And you know, it's not easy to be smooth through COVID and through a merger, and Eric's done a great job with it, and everything is running very smoothly, and the future is bright.

 

Eric Gelly  18:25

Thank you. Thanks for the kind words. First of all, this went as smoothly as it's gone because Bob is such a humble and wonderful leader. He has made his mark, and the team knew that he was reaching the age of retirement. He's a phenomenal leader, but he doesn't have a giant ego. And that helps a tremendous amount. ITt probably helps that we knew each other as well as we did as well. But we could, we have great debates, great hard conversations during COVID. And it was it was a pleasure to learn from Bob during some of those really challenging times. And it helped me a tremendous amount in this transition. So I'm eternally grateful to him for his guidance and trust that he's had and things.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  19:10

That's great to hear. I'm glad it's been so smooth for both of you.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  19:14

One of the questions I have is if someone else were considering an overlap, spending some time co-leading, are there some things that you did during this time, besides knowing each other from the past that may have facilitated the handoff going so well. For example, as a CUES staffer, I think it's kind of cool that the two of you went to CUES Symposium together. This is designed for CEOs and board chairs, typically, but it sounds like both of you went. Did your board chair go too, and how does attending a conference together help to smooth the handoff?

 

Eric Gelly  19:44

Yeah, that was that was a great experience for us. And actually, our current chair did not go our vice chair went in preparation for her development and making the switch. So we had Bob as current CEO and myself and our vice chair went and man the experience was, was wonderful. I got to know Adrienne, vice chair really well. We got to talk about direction, where things were going. It was a great experience to go to the Symposium in the way that we did. And I think it was Bob's idea for me to join him. It was; it was great.

 

Bob Bruns  20:19

I had been attending this symposium for years with my chair and got so much out of it. And I'm like, Eric, we got to, we got to keep this going. Because it is an excellent way to get closer to your chair, and in this case, his his future chair. So it turned out to be a great experience having everybody together, and kind of working on that transition together. And the symposium is always top notch with speakers and thought provoking topics. So kudos to CUES.

 

Eric Gelly  20:52

Lisa, I would also add on that transition, where I was president, he was CEO, Bob and our board chair did a great job of including me in every agenda call for board meetings, intention to kind of reduce his reporting to the board push some of those topics that were for me to report to the board and board meetings. I think we went through an NCO exam. He had me lead on that. So so it was very systematic in how he pushed things over to me, particularly once I've taken that prison title.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  21:24

Mm hmm. I like that it sounds like Bob was a very good conductor of the orchestration, if you will, a reference you made earlier, you've kind of touched on some things that you did to get to know the vice chair by going to the conference with Adrian and working together on some big elements of thinking about COVID. Can you talk Eric and Bob a little bit more about specific things that another credit union could do to help facilitate a transition of CEO as it pertains to good relationship with the board and also good relationship with staff?

 

Bob Bruns  22:00

Well, I just say that, for our experience, it was very good to explore all of the alternatives, and not just hire a new CEO but what about a possibility of merger. And even though that didn't happen, meeting with other billion dollar credit unions and their boards and talking about what a merger would look like, and how it would be done, etc, was such a great learning experience. And I'm kind of shocked at how many credit unions are afraid, I don't know if afraid is the word, but reluctant to explore a merger. It really takes an open mind. And as you know, we're in a, we're very small in the financial industry. Even our largest credit union is small compared to most banks.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  22:53

Yes.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  22:53

And so it's clear for us to compete in the future, we have to get larger, and we have to get more sophisticated and more technologically advanced and all that takes money. And so I just, I'm proud of our board to be open-minded enough to go down that route, and freely meet with other credit unions and chat. I don't think there's a lot of credit unions out there that would have gone that route. Now, we didn't merge. And we decided not to, because of the the great option we had with Eric. And that panned out very nicely. But it still was a great learning process and valuable to my board even to this day.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  23:37

To clarify my understanding, what you didn't do is you didn't merge into a larger credit union. But you did have a merger, right?

 

Eric Gelly  23:45

That's correct. Yep, that's correct. And you're spot on. Bob and the board and had lots of conversations with some of the largest credit unions here in the Carolinas. And I don't know that we can emphasize enough going through that process made us such a better merger partner because the board had had those conversations. They understood, you know, some of the challenging asks about control or governance or all the things that can be difficult conversations during merger conversations. Our board was really comfortable with it. And they it's almost like they'd been through this process so when it came time for us to put mergers together, they were very open-minded. They saw things from the other credit union's perspective. They came prepared to roll up their sleeves and really make this a collaborative effort and have the outcome be an amazing credit union. And I don't think that they would be would have been prepared for that had Bob not lead them through the process with these other large credit unions.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  24:49

That's pretty cool. If I had to summarize it, it sounds like part of the success here is the board's willingness to have a variety of conversations about a variety of options before settling on one direction. Is that part of the success?

 

Bob Bruns  25:03

Yep. Yeah.

 

Bob Bruns  25:03

Spot on.

 

Eric Gelly  25:03

And what about the part of staff. Were there some things that were done that helped? I mean, you're merging two staffs, essentially, and bringing in a new leadership trio over time. So talk to me about what was done for staff to help them embrace the new framework, and what would what it would be like to be at this credit union going forward.

 

Eric Gelly  25:23

We drove home what we were trying to build with, we call it the new credit union. And the whys of bringing our two very healthy and strong, thriving credit unions together. And what we would have with that achieved scale. The staff really bought into what we were building and the rationale for why we were doing it. Both shops being in that 300 million to 500 million size, know the frustrations of that no-man's land. So the concept of being larger, more robust, eliminating some redundant expenses, and in turn, just just serving our members to the best way that we possibly can. They bought into it, and they believed in it. And they're very excited about the credit union that we've put together.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  26:08

Bob, do you want to add to that?

 

Bob Bruns  26:10

I will say, putting mergers together and getting management teams together is never easy. And I don't I don't think anybody will tell you it is easy. It's challenging. But I think it's gone relatively well, not perfect, but relatively well and seems to be kind of smoothing out over time. And there's a lot of decisions that go with what policy we're going to do, what fee we're going to charge, what interest rate are we going to have? And so when you have that many decisions, even with my wife, what curtains, what color sofa, whatever, you know, it's it's never easy, right? You got to work through a lot of decisions together. And they're not all gonna go smooth. But it's relatively, I would say it's gone very well. But mergers aren't easy.

 

Eric Gelly  26:58

No, they're not easy. And for us, I think a differentiator that that was helpful is we have made building an amazing culture our No. 1 strategic focus. We know that we're blending two families, and with those families have different nuances of how they do certain things. So we have to create a new way collaboratively, and decide to do those things together as we move forward. And is it easy? No, it's not easy. With intentional focus and trust, we had a lot of trust with that credit union from their board level all the way down through their staff. And that helped helped us get through it in a pretty seamless fashion. Super proud of the team.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  27:40

So exciting. You both have been just a wealth of insights into CEO succession, which I thought we were going to talk about, and mergers, which I didn't realize we're gonna talk about quite so much. It's so amazing. What is a question related to CEO succession or mergers that I didn't ask that you kind of wish I had? And then would you go ahead and answer that question?

 

Eric Gelly  28:03

I don't know if there's other questions, I would just emphasize what Bob was saying, if when you're at that point in succession, please encourage your board to consider all options because it might be a great learning process. It's not always the first choice. easiest choice is just to go find another leader. They went through it in a really interesting fashion. I think it was great leadership by Bob to guide them through that.

 

Bob Bruns  28:28

And don't wait to the last minute. I started when I was 62. I said that at 65 or 66, I'd like to check out so let's get going with this. Don't wait too long to start that process.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  28:42

Great advice. It is definitely a big undertaking. And it's been said before, but it bears repeating that big undertakings take some time so it's good idea to start right away.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  28:53

Thank you both for being on the show today.

 

Eric Gelly  28:56

Absolutely.

 

Bob Bruns  28:58

Fun.

 

Eric Gelly  28:58

Yeah.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  29:02

I would like to thank you, our listeners for taking time out of your busy schedules to listen to today's episode of the CUES Podcast. And many thanks to Bob Bruns and Eric Gelly for sharing their experience with keeping an open mind about two big credit union undertakings, CEO transition and a merger.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  29:22

CUES Symposium which Bruns and Gelly attended with their board vice chair will next be held Feb. 5 through 9, 2023, in Wailea, Hawaii. Learn more and register at cues.org/symposium.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  29:37

A full transcript of this episode can be found at CUmanagement.com/podcast137. You can also find more great credit union specific content at CUmanagement.com.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  29:51

Want to join CUES? You can learn about all the benefits of membership at cues.org/membership.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  29:58

Thanks again for listening today.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  30:01

CUES is an international credit union association that champions and delivers effective talent development solutions for executives staff and boards to drive organizational success.

 

Transcript Podcast 136 Jennifer Stein SkyStem Accounting Close

September 2022

By Jennifer Stein, CPA, CGMA

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:04

You're listening to the CUES Podcast, episode 136.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:09

Thank you CUES podcast listeners for tuning in. Today's conversation will be about ways to make month-end close easier for your accounting team.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:18

Credit unions are growing a lot these days, adding members organically through field of membership expansions and also adding them through mergers. This show dives into the behind-the-scenes question of how do we support this growth and specifically addresses what strategies can help make the month-end close less grueling for your accounting team.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:41

My name is Lisa Hochgraf, and I'm CUES' senior editor as well as your host for this episode.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  00:46

Our guest is Jennifer Stein, who is both a CPA and a chartered global management accountant. A senior product manager, Jennifer is part of the customer happiness team for Skystem, a CUES Supplier member and the sponsor of this show.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  01:02

A former comptroller, Jennifer has extensive experience with month-end accounting and what it means to gather all the data needed to close the books. She can tell you: It's hard work. Her experience with month-end closings has fueled her passion for helping organizations make the process both more effective and easier.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  01:21

In this show, Jennifer talks about several strategies credit unions can leverage to keep their accounting teams happier--so important in this era of the Great Resignation--while still ensuring closing is done accurately and on time.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  01:36

I think you're going to learn a lot, so let's get started.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  04:14

Welcome to the show, Jennifer.

 

Jennifer Stein  04:17

Thanks, Lisa. Thanks so much for having me.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  04:20

I'm so glad to have you on the show. Before we get to talking about how to take the pain out of accounting's end-of-month close. I'd like to help our guests get to know you a little bit. To that end, would you have a quote or professional mantra that you live by that you'd begin to share with our listeners?

 

Jennifer Stein  04:37

Sure, I definitely have a personal quote that I live by but professionally I would say, "Don't put off to tomorrow what you can get done today." Procrastination has been the bane of my childhood in school and something I just got by thriving in chaos but I learned that it's best not to do that. My personal mantra was, "This too shall pass," which also could be applicable professionally.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  05:18

Indeed, both of those crossover really nicely. "This too shall pass" was my mantra when I was a young mom and my son was really small. Anything that was seemed like a huge drama, I would just say "This, too, shall pass," and it has.

 

Jennifer Stein  05:32

That is absolutely true. Yeah.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  05:35

So let's start talking about the growth that credit unions are experiencing, and how growth is impacting the workload of accounting departments.

 

Jennifer Stein  05:45

Sure. So credit unions are experiencing tremendous growth. They have seen membership increase by about 23%, I believe it was, between 2020 and 2021. They're growing by merging and acquiring other credit unions. So the work is increasing. The workload is increasing. However, this is all during the same time as the Great Resignation, right. So we're trying to do more with less, less resources, less time, less people. But it doesn't matter. We still need to get it done.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  06:25

As I mentioned, before the show, I have a very good friend who's an accountant, and she works for a large company in the Midwest. And I don't even call her at month close. It's just too busy. So I have some personal experience with what you're talking about, but I don't have any experience of what to do about it really.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  06:42

Jennifer, can you talk to me about how the growth in membership and the mergers and the things that credit unions are doing that make them bigger, how does that directly come into the accounting? Like, does that mean there's more transactions? Or more member things that have to be tracked by accounting? How does that directly translate into the accounting workload?

 

Jennifer Stein  07:04

Yeah, it could mean more transactions. But also, it could also mean more systems that are being integrated, and you need to find the time to get that integrated, and maybe even bring them all together into one system. So you're converging things. All of that just makes the workload kind of exponential because you're dealing with so many different processes and people maybe that have come into a new environment from an old one, and they need to adapt as well.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  07:36

I think what you're saying, and I'm a wordsmith, but I think what you're saying is that the accounting group at a credit union is pulling from a variety of systems and more and more systems all the time for the information that they need to actually do the month close. Is that a fair assessment?

 

Jennifer Stein  07:53

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Because when one credit union acquires another or merges with another, the systems might not be identical. So you're working off of two, you know, maybe more sets of books. And you've got to get all of that stuff together into one at some point.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  08:11

Yeah, the consolidation work. So maybe there's some increase in volume, but it's also an increase in the complexity of pulling the data that you need.

 

Jennifer Stein  08:21

Correct.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  08:21

Interesting. Yeah. So what is the top thing that you'd recommend a credit union do to try to manage this increase in workload for the accounting team members, especially what they face at month-end.

 

Jennifer Stein  08:33

Um, one thing that I think would really help is what we call a standardization. So not only when you are dealing, like I mentioned, with the Great Resignation, and therefore some transition in a department. And that just automatically means additional training. By standardizing your processes and your reconciliation templates, for example, you're helping new people learn the exact same way that other people are doing things. So by having standardization in process and templates or forms, not only are you kind of teaching these people than the best way to do what you're doing, but also helping on the flip side, the reviewer who's reviewing these things, because they're used to the same format. If you were to give three new employees, three different blank spreadsheets and say here, go reconcile, you know, prepaid insurance, you're going to get three different-looking reconciliations back. So it helps on both sides.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  09:37

I love that sort of get a double payback for the effort to make things more standard. Who's usually in charge of that standardization within the accounting group? Is that usually the manager does that go all the way too like a VP finance or that's a leader job, right?

 

Jennifer Stein  09:52

You need to have the leadership kind of mandate that. Usually it's a comptroller or an assistant comptroller that is in charge of the month-end work and you get buy-in from the team, from the staff. You need to have that top level, that leadership, kind of say and mandate: "This is how we're going to do things." So whatever you've done in the past, because as accountants and I am one, we are and I will say humans, really are averse to change. But really, accountants are even more so. And we're used to doing things the way that we do them. So any change is kind of a change in mindset. And we just have to, you know, be told that this is what this is how we're going to do it. So it does, it will start with leadership.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  10:41

Leadership that can enforce what the change will be, and perhaps show what the likely benefit would be down the road that probably helps to get buy-in too.

 

Jennifer Stein  10:49

It definitely help because they're the ones that are on that flip side, the reviewer side. So it helps in terms of you know, because they don't want to keep training the same or different people, they want to keep their people. So it benefits everyone because the staff that's coming on board has a clear vision as to what needs to be done. And then the reviewers, the leaders, the managers, they also have the benefit of the standardization so they know what they're reviewing, as well as hopefully, their staff wanting to stay on.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  11:24

Love it. So listeners, Skystem has provided an article that's on CUmanagement.com that talks about this idea and several others. And I'm going to ask Jennifer to elaborate on some one more here in the show. But if you want to check out the full article, I will put the URL for that in the show notes for you to click on and go to.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  11:46

So Jennifer, I just promised listeners that you'd give them another tip for how to manage the month-end close workload for the accounting team. What else would you suggest?

 

Jennifer Stein  11:56

I think organization is key. So when I talked about standardization in terms of processes, as well as templates and forms, let's go back to the processes. We want to standardize how we are working our month-end close. Because truthfully, and I have been a controller in the past, that month-end close is pretty cyclical. And we don't want to forget anything, especially for organizations that have a ton of journal entries that need to be made each month. We don't want to forget anything. So having clear and concise checklists and task lists is kind of very much beneficial.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  12:35

Indeed, I have a very good friend who's a pilot. And he talks to me about how important checklists are to pilots, especially pilots of small planes like he is. So they go up and they have a checklist for everything to make sure everything is taken care of before they fly.

 

Jennifer Stein  12:50

You want to hear something funny about that is

 

Lisa Hochgraf  12:52

Definitely.

 

Jennifer Stein  12:53

One of my colleagues, Nancy Woo, she has an award-winning webinar series that is available through, you can look at it you can see what's coming up through our website. But one of her webinars was on both task lists and, believe it or not, checklists in general got their start from the airline industry because that was, I think there was an accident, like a plane had crashed because something had been forgotten. And that was not good, right. So that's where it started was the checklist was with the pilots and the airlines.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  13:27

Yes, and fortunately, in credit union accounting, it's not typically an airplane crash kind of severity situation, but you can see how a checklist could really help.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  13:37

So as I understand it, Skystem also offers software that can help accounting departments at credit unions manage this month-end workload. Can you talk to me a little bit about what is offered and what kind of training accounting employees need to be able to use it well?

 

Jennifer Stein  13:56

Sure, yes, Skystem has a product flagship solution called ART, which is a month-end close automation solution, where it works with your trial balance, and your back-end accounting office to automate processes during the month-end close. Everything from balance sheet reconciliations to those task lists that we mentioned,to balance sheet account fluctuation, analysis and P&L account variance analysis to certification. So from soup to nuts, the whole month-end close in one platform.

 

Jennifer Stein  14:34

As far as the training that's needed. It's not very much. I do handle a lot of the trainings for ART. And we typically have people trained within an hour and a half. And because the system is pretty intuitive, it'll kind of lead you through the proper way to go through it. And I think that as far as what can make or break someone in using it is the mindset. So when I was talking about leadership, and then kind of saying this is how we're going to be doing things, as an accountant, somebody that would be using the solution, it's really your mindset and your willingness to evolve and change and adapt to a new system or a new new way of doing things.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  15:20

I love it. So I'm kind of curious, since we were talking about standardization, and the leadership working on standardizing, and we were talking about checklists, and just how incredibly important and powerful they can be, can you talk to me a little bit about the software setup? I mean, can the leaders help to customize the checklists within it, for example, or to help make the software reflect the processes that they that particular credit union wants to use?

 

Jennifer Stein  15:47

Absolutely. We work with our account with our customers. And they would give us their checklists. And you can start out with a very basic list and let it grow from there. We would get you set up initially with whatever it is that you you have already and then it's very easy, and we train people on how to add to it take away from it, you know, change it altogether, if that's what they find that they need to do. So it is pretty customizable.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  16:18

And so it sounds like maybe there's training that's pretty short for the people that will use it every month-end, to pull the data in and follow the processes and follow the checklist. But it also sounds like there's support for maybe the leader-manager, the comptroller, that would help them if they wanted to leverage the planning, the strategy of the software, sort of the setup of the checklists, and that sort of thing. Is that accurate?

 

Jennifer Stein  16:43

That is correct. We work closely together. We at Skystem prefer to have more of a partnership kind of arrangement more than like a typical software vendor. So we actually consider customer support to be very high on our list of priorities. Our CEO comes from a hospitality background where, you know, customer service is everything. And so it is with us as well. And we have pretty strict metrics in place for getting that support to our customers. We're very responsive. We have, like I said, very strict timelines for that responsiveness and for the resolution of any help that's needed.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  17:24

This is great. So I'm curious, what does it translate to if you have some credit union clients, or some clients and other industries that have been implementing ideas like standardization and organization and having leadership structure the process as a way to manage workload, what kinds of outcomes do you see them at month-end close? Was that look like in practice for the people that are closing the books?

 

Jennifer Stein  17:49

Yeah, that's a great question. And our credit union customers have been able to quantify it a bit. Some of our customers just leverage technology to keep up with the growth that they're experiencing. Some of our credit unions have seen anywhere from a 30% to a 50% reduction in time, reconciliation time or month-end close time, by using the software. So it is a time-saver. It's meant to complement your processes that you've already got in place, not to, in any way shape or form duplicate any work, but to make the efficient give you the efficiencies that you're looking for, in this, you know, new world that we're living in with people working from home, giving them the opportunity to access the site, access the software from home, from wherever they're working, could be from the beach, if they want to do that. But yeah, anywhere it's meant to reduce the time spent typically having in the past on the month-end close.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  18:57

And it seems to me, I think I mentioned we were talking about my friend who's a an accountant for a large company in the Midwest, and that I don't call her at month end. It's just a bad time for her. But it seems like if you can do more of this planning for the structure and streamlining the process and then supporting it with software, that maybe she could occasionally take a day off at the month-end close or there might be more staffing flexibility as a result.

 

Jennifer Stein  19:23

I think that the month-end close is always going to be a time for accountants to be on their, you know, on the job and working. But what you can probably expect to see is maybe not as long a day, you know, whereas we used to work 10-hour days at the end at the month-end close, maybe it's just a regular workday. Or maybe we can shave a day or two or three off of the timeline, you know entirely. So the goal is to when you are using automation like this, you can get a lot of the stuff that was typically done after the month-end done prior to month end, so you can work with preliminary numbers and get a lot of that work done. So that when the books are being closed or when they do close, you're not in such a time crunch.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  20:14

It sounds like a recipe for less stress and fewer mistakes, if it's not quite so intense.

 

Jennifer Stein  20:21

Definitely so.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  20:23

This has been really great information and super interesting for this word Smith to think about accounting close at the end of a month for a credit union. Before we end the show, I want to ask you, what is a question that I didn't bring up that you wish I had and what's your answer to that question?

 

Jennifer Stein  20:41

That is a really great question, too. And I would say maybe something like, what does the future look like for accounting professionals? And my answer to that is really about digitization and digital skills. And an accountant again, being willing to grow their skill set or capacity for around these areas, you know, like, learning how technology can complement and amplify what you're already doing. And it just goes beyond debits and credits. It's about being able to maximize and leverage what you have to make your job easier and less stressful like what you said.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  21:23

I love that CUES, of course, is a talent development organization. So we're all about learning, continuous growth. So I love that the future of accounting is all about learning, in this case about being digital as well as good number people. Jennifer, thank you so much. This has been really great. Appreciate you being on the show.

 

Jennifer Stein  21:41

Thank you so much for having me.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  21:42

I would like to thank you, our listeners for taking time out of your busy schedules to listen to today's episode of the CUES Podcast.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  21:53

And many thanks to Jennifer Stein for sharing such amazing perspectives, and to Skystem for sponsoring this show. You can find sky stem on the web at www.skystem.com.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  22:05

For additional ideas on how to better manage month and close tech house guys dumps article, accounting teams effectively handle the growing demands of month-end close. It's online at CUmanagement.com/060822skybox or find it in the shownotes which can be found along with the full transcript of this episode at CU management.com/podcast 136.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  22:33

You can also find more great credit and specific content at CEU management.com. If you'd like to learn about the benefits of becoming a CUES Supplier member, or a CUESolutions provider, please email kari@cues.org That's kari@cues.org.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  22:53

Thanks again for listening today.

 

Lisa Hochgraf  22:55

CUES is an international credit union association that champions and delivers effective talent development solutions for executives, staff and boards to drive organizational success.

Got grit? 

According to the guest in this episode of the CUES Podcast, getting grit is about having passion and perseverance in pursuit of long-term goals. It’s about going outside of your comfort zone and taking risks to live your best life. As a bonus, the process of getting grit will likely inspire other people to want to behave that way as well. 

“Grit is really defined also by the fact that these are your goals, your unique goals that you want to accomplish,” explains Caroline Adams Miller, author of the books Getting Grit and Creating Your Best Life. “And why is that? Because it's this passion, this inner passion that keeps you going when the going gets tough. And if it's someone else's goal, you're not going to have that. So it has to be your why not someone else's why. 

“People have what I call authentic grit simply by virtue of how they live and how they do hard things,” continues Miller, who will present a keynote about grit at Directors Conference, slated for Dec. 4-7 in Las Vegas. On the other hand, it’s a good idea to try to avoid having what Miller dubs “stupid” grit. 

“Stupid grit is marked by arrogance and a lack of humility,” Miller explains in the show. “Stupid grit is when conditions have changed and you refuse to take in information or data from the environment or other people that would caution you to change course or think a little bit differently about how to behave.” 

Fortunately, authentic grit is contagious. Miller tells in the show about how West Point roomed cadets with somewhat lower grit scores with cadets with higher grit scores. Over time, the overall grit scores went up. 

It’s a great idea to embed people with the qualities of authentic grit “into your organization, on your team, in your school environment, in your family because we know that simply observing and being around it .. has that effect of elevating and uplifting other people's behaviors,” she says. 

The show also gets into: 

• Selfie grit and faux grit 
• The dangers of having raised a “self-esteem” generation 
• Who does not need to develop more grit 

Links for this show:

• Directors Conference 
• Books by Caroline Adams Miller, including Getting Grit 
• More content from Directors Conference speakers
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