Do you have a vision for your bank but struggle to get your team to execute? Or are you so focused on addressing the challenges of today that you can’t think about next year?
Maybe it’s time to look at growth again. Or perhaps you’re simply evaluating new facilitators for your Board or executive planning retreat.
Regardless of the motivation, we know that while most bank Chairs and CEOs are eager to update their strategic plan, many worry about using outside facilitators. Common complaints include:
- Spending hours wordsmithing mission statements
- Coming out of the retreat with vague, hard to measure “strategies”
- Strategies that are devoid of any competitive, HR, compliance or technology reality checks and can never be implemented
- The paralysis of analysis from reviewing dozens of spreadsheets and hundreds of financial ratios
- A 3 ring binder and 50 page plan that is so unwieldy that it ends up on a shelf until the examiners are on-site
Goals of the One Page Bank Strategic Plan™
You won’t hear those complaints coming out of our session. Our process when facilitating your bank strategic planning session is designed to:
- Draw out the best ideas from all participants to identify opportunities, confront realities and collaborate on solutions
- Identify the top 3-5 winning strategies that can be implemented to drive real, measurable results
- Force prioritizations. Community and small regional banks do not have the resources of the Big Banks so they must focus on the most important strategies.
- Get the strategic plan down to one page. Strategy cannot be executed if it cannot be communicated.
- Force accountability. Each annual and quarterly strategy requires a due date, a name and a clear way to measure that it’s been completed.
Facilitated Bank Planning: What We Do
We gather financial performance data, conduct market and competitive research and interview key members of the planning team to learn about your markets, products, delivery capabilities, technology and culture.
Then in a 2-day on-site working session, we construct the following:
- Your core values and purpose
- Your single mid- to long term goal (Jim Collins calls this your Big Hairy Audacious Goal, or “BHAG”)
- Your brand promise and how to measure it
- Your 3-5 year financial targets and the Top 5 strategies to get you there
- Your 1 year financial targets and the Top 5 strategies to get you there
- Your next quarter financial targets and the Top 5 strategies to get you there
- The key metrics to track your progress and individual accountabilities towards these goals
After the session, we’ll document this into your One Page Bank Strategic Plan™ and provide supporting documentation. Then we’ll revisit the plan with you at the next quarter, make any adjustments to the annual plan and develop the plan for the next quarter. We’ll also have a monthly check in call to gauge progress and provide coaching on execution.