Transcription:
When Change Management and Strategic Planning Met A Pandemic

Bill Klaproth (Host): When you've been searching for the right insight, advice and information on financial marketing, you know where to go, the Speakeasy, the exclusive source for financial marketing insights, with a shot of human. Staring Kelly Hellickson and Hillary Reed from EmpowerFi, strategy infused data-driven marketing solutions for financial institutions nationwide.

I'm your host, Bill Klaproth. And on this episode, we talk with Brian Grytdal from Horizon Credit Union in Spokane, Washington. Brian is a driven leader of growth initiatives, project completion, and change management through the alignment of marketing and organizational objectives, which turns a strategic plan into action. And we're going to be talking about when change management and strategic planning met a pandemic. Brian, welcome to the Speakeasy podcast.

Brian Grytdal, MBA (Guest): Thank you. It's great to be here.

Host: Yeah, well it is great to talk with you, Brian. So if you could, start us off and give us some background on yourself.

Brian: Okay, I'm here at Horizon Credit Union in Spokane, Washington. I have been with the credit union, for, I'm on my 28th year now. And I started as a teller and just worked my way up, through the growth of the credit union. And now I'm, Vice President of Facilities and Marketing. Everybody kind of raises their eyebrows a little bit and that kind of came together as being head of marketing and then with facilities, there's a lot of design aspects and branding to bring that brand into our member experience. So, that is how those two parts came together. So, I'm excited to be here today.

Hilary Reed (Guest): Wow. Thanks, Brian. I'm so excited to have you. Brian and I go way back. We served on the CUNA Executive Committee together. Are you still on the EC there Brian?

Brian: I will be, the chair next year, following Jason, yeah.

Hilary Reed (Guest): Wow, look at us, we have a celebrity among us. He's going to be the chair of the CUNA Marketing Council, which is awesome. I knew we had good one here today, so, yeah. Thanks for coming in. I know that you've been at your credit union for so long. I actually didn't know that you were facilities and marketing, which I've actually never heard before. It sounds so funny. So I'm sure you get that quite a bit,

Brian Grytdal, MBA (Guest): Quite a bit.

Hilary Reed (Guest): But, when it comes to strategic planning, I'm sure you have, your hands in all of that strategic planning and marketing and all that. When you hear change management, I know we're going to talk a little bit about that today. When you hear change management, what exactly does that mean for you? Like at your credit union, when you hear change management?

Brian Grytdal, MBA (Guest): Well, you know, what's interesting is, people are, yes, we like change unless it, happens to be us that needs to change, right? So it's like, great, I love change until, you have to wake up at five in the morning and it's like, well, I don't really like change anymore.

Hilary Reed (Guest): Not that kind of change.  

Brian: And so,

Hilary Reed (Guest): Change management here are Horizon is, our CEO, our senior management team, we worked, kind of putting out the plan and what we are focused on for the next year. As we have grown, because when I first started, we were at 90 million and we have constantly been changing over the course of time to where now, at our size we have to be further in tune with our members. What their expectations are. And that means we have to show up differently. And so we are constantly changing whether we call it change or not, but for us, it's just a matter of managing through that. Like for us, the biggest one this last year in 2020 is we just finished up a large merger, which brought on over a hundred, new employees plus $350 million in assets. So, that's a big change for everybody in the credit union, right? Just to say change management, it really takes everybody when you're looking at something like that.

Yeah. Do you think you would say that you are the head of change management at your credit union? Or is that something that the CEO is really good at there?

Brian: It's the CEO and our senior management team. I mean, to get where I'm at right now, it's all about who you surround yourself with, right? We've got a great senior management team that we've been together for long time and been through a lot of changes. And so we work really well through those changes. And then obviously all the people in our departments that have also been here for little while as well. And they know what to expect and what these things look like when they go through them. So I wouldn't say I was the head of it. That would basically be our CEO and he likes letting us know when we're going to have a change.

Hilary Reed (Guest): Well, that's great that have to have a good team to manage that kind of change. That's some significant change management right there and for the listeners, what is your asset size now, Brian? And how many members do you have and how many staff?

Brian: We're about 1.6 billion in assets. We have 104,000 members let's see here. We've got, 28 branches now in four states.

Hilary Reed (Guest): Wow. Okay. So, yeah, I think it was important to give a little bit of size and scale reference to what we're talking about here. Being that large, you have to be good at change. Do you guys see that you're building change into your strategic plan every year? And when I say building change, like what does that look like? Do you have certain initiatives that are like, what do we call those bee hags? Those big, hairy, audacious goals that are like all about change or do you just build it in to everything else? How does that look in your strategic plan?

Brian: For us, it's basically in each part of the plan so that, as far as the big, hairy goals, we do have those, and they're more, I guess, financially based, in 10 years you want to be this asset size and this many States, something like that. Whereas I think our change management is built into each one of our projects under our strategic action plan for each year, whether it's changing products and services or little nuances in that versus the type of team members that we're hiring. So, I think it's in each one of those projects under the strategic plan.

Hilary Reed (Guest): Yeah, absolutely. It's so hard not to just sit and be okay with the status quo when it comes to strategic planning. I mean, we do a lot of that. Right? And we see, the gamut really. We see a credit union who are all about change management and thinking outside the box and being innovative. And we also see credit unions who are okay with status quo and really don't build change management too much.   It's a little scary, to build that in. And of course that's where we come in and that's our job to make people think differently about change. But I think that's a   great way of doing it is building it within each of the individual projects.

Brian: Then you can kind of take it more into bite sized pieces, instead of all of the sudden everything changes all at once. So, I kind of look at it if I'm just on a project and there's just some change within that project, it's a little bit more appealing, whereas take a large merger; now everybody's got to show up differently, right? And that takes a little bit more planning, training, it's a little bit longer of a timeline, right?

Hilary Reed (Guest): Yeah. And you really have to have your game together, right? I mean, when it comes to culture, you have to be confident in your culture and your marketing and your brand and all of that. So, how many mergers have you done since working for Horizon?

Brian Grytdal, MBA (Guest): I've been

Brian: a part of eight now. There was a time that we had three in about 18 months that was

Brian Grytdal, MBA (Guest): really moving.

Hilary Reed (Guest): Moving. That's a really kind word for that. Moving I'd say, Oh my gosh. And then,

Brian Grytdal, MBA (Guest): so bringing in -

Well we don't get bored.

No,

Hilary Reed (Guest): I guess not, I guess not. You guys like moving fast they're on the West Coast.

Brian: Well, and change, right? When you talk about change, we're always changing.

Hilary Reed (Guest): That's amazing. So bringing marketing into the discussion here a little bit, I'm curious in your marketing efforts, since, you deal with the mergers, you deal with the change management, and the strategic planning and the marketing as well. Do you find that your marketing plan, your strategic marketing plan has to be a little bit more reactive to the change that the organization is making? Or do you find that marketing sometimes leads that change? Where does marketing fall into the change management of all of that?

Brian: We try to be, with our marketing plan, progressive in some way. When we get the action plan that we're doing for the next year, we build our marketing plan around that in the subsequent budget. But when you have large changes like COVID or a merger, or both in the same year, you really are reacting to a lot of things at that point.

Hilary Reed (Guest): That's absolutely true. I guess it should be a little bit of both on both sides. Wow. That's amazing. So, what recommendations do you have for other credit unions going into 2021? Obviously 2020 was a huge change for all of us, whether we were ready for change management or not, we had to pivot and had to change.

Let me ask you first, what did 2020 do to, or for your organization as a whole? I'd imagine that they are sitting in assets and deposits quite a bit with everybody else, but anything in particular that happened to you guys in 2020?

Brian: I will say that, we did deploy some, ITMs, at the beginning, well, last year, and then, we had more that we were going to deploy this year. Those ITMs did help us in a way in the fact that like everybody else, when we closed our lobbies, we still had a way of servicing our members. With face-to-face, service and extended hours at that point. So, we're doing 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM through our ITMs right now.

Then of course, you know, online went crazy even with our branch lobbies closed through our drive-throughs and our call center and online services it hasn't been perfect for the membership as far as again, everybody's had to change and, duck and dodge through the different changes that have happened, but we've been able to be there for our membership throughout this.

Hilary Reed (Guest): Yeah, that's Yeah, that's amazing. We've had a couple of clients actually who have ITMs. They already had them in place or they were building more just like you said. They really stood out, among the rest of the competition because, one thing that I thought was just so amazing is that this, shared branching platform was built for this type of situation. And then this type of situation happened, and all of the shared branching shut down because the branches were shut down. So it really wasn't a backup plan like we thought it was. It turns out the ITMs were the backup plan for quite a few credit unions. So I'm glad to hear that you guys had that.

One last question, Brian, what advice or recommendations do you have for credit unions of any size, really, who still want to grow in 2021 but implementing change management into 2021?

Brian: My recommendation would be, you know, we've learned quite a bit through 2020 with just how consumers have pivoted to other delivery channels really fast. I think for what you look at for 2021, the world's still moving as fast as it was even with the new regulations and recommendations and all that, but so you still got to get out there, plan for what you're doing for 2021, because I know like us, we're still planning, branches, new services, new products.

2021. Isn't looking any different than any other year for us. And so that's the one thing I think we all have to, even though we're all, in different levels of lockdown, right? It's still happening out, business is happening around us. Things are still moving.

So plan for what 2021 is going to look like for you and still be competitive. So, I would say push. Keep pushing because 2021, it's going to be here within a couple of weeks and everything's still going past us at a hundred miles an hour, right?

Hilary Reed (Guest): That's so true. So you still have to plan for 2021 as if you were before. Don't let 2020 derail your 2021 plans basically. And you know, some of us might have to catch up on the balance sheet a little bit, but you still continue to plan, as if 2020 never happened.

Brian: And I know a lot of us would hope that it didn't happen, but we can't go backwards now, we've got to keep pushing forward.

Hilary Reed (Guest): Thank you so much, Brian

Brian: And Hilary, it's always great to talk to you.

Hilary Reed (Guest): You too. You too. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks.

Host: And our thanks to Brian Grytdal. And for more information on strategic planning, please contact the team at EmpowerFi today at empowerfi.org. This is the speakeasy financial marketing podcast. Thanks for listening.