Three Reasons Your Credit Union Does Not Have a Real Bench

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

You have a good team. Things are running great.

But when someone asks you who steps up if your COO walks out the door tomorrow, or who is ready to take on a bigger role in the next 12 months, you get a little quiet. And you are not totally sure you have a great answer.

This comes up in almost every credit union I work with. And the more I dig into it, the more I find that it really comes down to three things. So let's dive in.

1, The leader becomes the bottleneck.

So when we think about this, it makes a lot of sense on the surface. Someone gets promoted because they are really good at what they do. And they bring all of that knowledge and capability into the new role.

The problem is that all of that knowledge stays with them. And because it takes time and it takes a real system to transfer what you know to the people around you, most leaders just keep carrying it. A little bit of "I'll get to that eventually" turns into years of being the only person who really knows how things work.

And I do think it's really important to mention that this goes way past just being busy. It becomes way more than a time issue. It becomes a cultural issue. The team learns to wait. They stop taking ownership because the leader is always the answer. And now you have a bottleneck wearing a leadership title.

You guys know what I'm talking about, right?

2, There is a trust gap nobody is talking about.

One thing I noticed is that a lot of credit union leaders do not fully trust the people they have to grow into bigger roles. And instead of making some hard decisions, moving people around, or sometimes letting the wrong person go so the right person can step in, they compromise.

They take a little bit more onto their own plate. They make exceptions. They keep hoping the situation works itself out.

And there might be something there worth looking at honestly. Because sometimes it is a trust issue. But sometimes it is the wrong people in the wrong seats. And until that gets addressed, succession planning stays a conversation instead of a plan.

3, There is no real scorecard.

A lot of credit unions just do not have a clear picture of who is on their team, what they are capable of, and what it would take to get them ready for the next level.

No strengths assessments. No Three C's framework to really drill down on who is committed, capable, and coachable. No honest look at who is ready now, who is ready soon, and who is ready down the road.

And so they cannot cast a real vision. They cannot build a real development path. They know they need a bench. They just have not built the system to see who belongs on it.

I touched on this a lot with leaders across the country. And the pattern is always the same. Leadership pipelines do not build themselves. And without a scorecard, succession planning is just hope dressed up as a strategy.

So where do you start?

The same place I start with every credit union I work with. Get the ground truth. Find out who you actually have, where they actually are, and what it is going to take to get them ready.

Because you cannot build a bench you cannot see.

Lead Boldly

~MW