FORUM Solutions is currently looking for a senior level (5+ years) .NET developer. For those that do not know, Solutions is the technology arm of FORUM Credit Union and we are located in Fishers, Indiana, just north of Indianapolis. We do a lot of development for in-house projects and have been known to sell some of our work to other credit unions. We have a great team already in place but the list of new projects is growing rapidly and it’s time for an addition. Please check out the the official job posting and let us know if you know anyone who might be a good candidate!
Our credit union friends at Vantage have launched a first of its kind mobile banking platform leveraging Twitter. Two quick thoughts on their innovative efforts:
1. Controlling your own destiny is an innovation enabler. As Tim McAlpine from Currency Marketing says better than I can – lay claim to being first at something can be a viable business strategy or at least an important component of a successful strategy. I think the first mover advantage depends on the scenario and I am not using this space to argue about the pros and cons of first mover advantage. I am not looking for a debate on that topic. What I do want to proclaim is that controlling your own destiny instead of depending on a third party can be a huge innovation enabler. Vantage CU built their Twitter mobile application off of their own internet banking source code that they control. It helped them jump to the head of the class and get to market first. If you don’t have this control you are often times at the mercy of a third party who has many customers who want to be first and you often times have numerous fast followers.
2. No critics = lame idea. I was trading messages with my friends at Vantage CU this evening and they were sharing they have had both positive feedback to their launch and their share of critics. I reminded them that a healthy dose of criticism likely means they are on to something special. Another equation for this point is: critics = I might just have something special and if I don’t, life is just too short not to try.
Bottomline: Kudos to Vantage CU for having the courage to try and the stewardship to improve the access their members have to their credit union.
On Friday, Indiana credit unions lost a dear friend in Millie Cox . Millie was a credit union evangelist for the Indiana Credit Union League for 26 years. She was a constant credit union advocate both in Washington D.C. and Indianapolis and her efforts directly contributed to advancing the progress of credit unions here in the Hoosier state. I appreciate all she did for credit unions.
This morning I will be making a guest appearance along with my teammates Jenny and Jeff on FNN:15. FNN:15 is a webcast hosted here at FORUM Credit Union by our master of training, Andy Janning.. The 15 minute webcast takes place every other Friday morning (on paydays) and is available to all credit union employees. The webcasts cover a variety of topics. Today’s topic – leadership. I am to share a success and a failure related to leadership from my experience at the credit union. I have plenty to share, especially the failures, but this is one topic that I try to avoid – not the failures, but leadership. Two topics that I try to avoid speaking about lately – leadership and social media. Why? Because there are no easy answers, no right or wrong answers, and there are so many voices already talking about these topics what else do I have to add? Seriously, search for leadership or social media on Amazon and you will get a ton of hits.
Keep in mind we only have 15 minutes so I am thinking with bumper time at the beginning and end that leaves us with 11 minutes. Divided by three and you get why I don’t like my chances of being able to clearly articulate my leadership tidbit. Thus, I will be referring interested people (both of you) to this post for details on my leadership tidbit. Here it is. Consistently maintain high expectations for you and your teammates. If I am forced to pick just one tip on leadership this would be it. If you think of great leaders you have seen or encountered they likey did just this – they held themselves and their teammates to a standard of excellence. It sounds so easy, yet is so difficult to consisently achieve. Why? Because it is easy to drift to the human nature comfort zone of accepting good or okay performance instead of excellent performance or it is easy to drift in to a comfort zone where you hold some teammates to a higher performance standard than others. This last situation is where you can really lose your star teammates because nothing is more frustrating to a star teammate than seeing their leader hold a fellow teammate to a lesser standard. There are numerous complimentary behaviors that surround this concept of maintaining high expectations such as frequent conversations with your teammates when they meet these high expectations and telling them when they fell short of these expectations. Frequent, honest, two-way conversations, even when neither one of you feel like a conversation, is a key ingredient to keeping on top of this leadership tidbit. Want a story about how I learned this and a funny side story, then read on…
An experiment conducted by our retail team here at FORUM:
Yeah, doing good by the environment is fine, but GOING GREEN WITH ENVY is great! We are jealous if a member has something at another financial institution. So what are we going to do about it? We are going to ASK for that business…we are GREEN WITH ENVY! IF and only IF you wear GREEN on Friday, you can wear jeans for FREE! (No open toed shoes and other standard dress code guidelines apply.) Don’t you think it will make it a lot easier to ask for everyone’s business, if we are all wearing GREEN and a member asks “What’s up with the GREEN?” Who’s the most jealous?
Do you think it will work? Doesn’t cost anything and I like the attempt – beats the status quo. Will let you know how it goes.
Thank you to the credit unions who made the trip to FORUM CU for the collections roundtable. We appreciate Joe Weber from NCCI providing lunch and showcasing how his company can help with credit union collection efforts. He discussed their field calls, loss mitigation strategies and even a new product they are preparing for a launch involving the assessment of real estate owned (REO). With this new solution a credit union can submit an address and receive not only the present value of the home, but also a future value of the property in question. This can help credit unions determine as to if they should quickly sell a property owned or hold on to it until the right bid comes along. Credit unions in attendance agreed that field calls will be an important strategy moving forward given the current economic situation. Some good discussions and some networking after the presentations.
We are honored to be included among seven credit unions recognized by the CUNA Technology Council as innovators. We are in good company with the credit unions that received awards. This award is a reflection of the stellar team we are blessed to have here at FORUM Solutions. We would like to thank the CUNA Technology Council for their hard work in facilitating these awards. We wish we could have come to San Francisco for the award ceremony.
Innovators Hailed by CUNA Tech Council 8/19/2009
Seven credit unions were honored with 2009 CUNA Technology Council Best Practices Awards at the group’s recent 14th annual summit meeting in San Francisco.
Category winners were $1.9 billion Tinker FCU of Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma (technology infrastructure), $311 million Nassau Financial FCU of Westbury, N.Y. (sales/management and marketing), $18 billion State Employees’ CU of Raleigh, N.C. (information/security privacy), and $230 million Envision CU of Tallahassee, Fla. (miscellaneous.)
Three credit unions also received honorable mention awards at the Aug. 5-8 gathering: $1 billion FORUM Credit Union in Indianapolis for an interactive intelligence program, $1.3 billion Technology CU in San Jose, Calif., for an online banking administrative tool, and $140 million Beehive FCU of Rexburg, Idaho, for its in-branch video display software switching system.
Winner presentations and more information about the awards are available by selecting the “Best Practices” link at CUNA Technology Council