2020 Top Initiatives, Bring Them On!!!

Good Day Everyone,

My last post focused on Strategic Planning and it generated a few people to send me some questions that I figured I would answer in this post. The two questions that I received numerous times were: 1) What are your top initiatives for next year and why did you choose them? and 2) How do you decide how many initiatives/projects to do that pushes performance at your credit union but not too many to overwhelm people?

To answer the first question of what our top initiatives are and how did we choose them is very exciting to answer. Here is a brief overview of our top 7 initiatives for 2020:

1. Net Worth Growth - Our primary focus for 2020 is growing our net worth and capital through expense reduction and income generation. There are numerous tactics we are going to deploy to achieve this initiative and the goal we set forth. The reason that this is our top initiative is that there are some excellent opportunities for Horizon to take advantage of in the next 3 years but to leverage those opportunities we need additional capital. I am actually quite disappointed in myself for not having Horizon already in position to leverage these opportunities as one passed us by in September.
2. Student Branches & Reality Fairs - We are working on our first student branch and hosting our first reality fair. This is a top priority for us because it aligns directly with 2 of our core values which are community and education. There is a tremendous amount of satisfaction in educating others. Helping young adults better understand positive financial habits helps build a brighter future for them and our communities.
3. New Identity Protection Service - After a long search of numerous providers, Horizon has decided to partner with Sontiq/EZShield to offer their Identity Protection services to our members. I looked at roughly a dozen providers and Sontiq/EZShield had a very impressive offering and their customer service seems to be strong. I look forward to offering our members this benefit in the new year since identity theft and data breaches are an ongoing problem.
4. Expansion of the Expand Expo - Our large annual credit union training event that we host is moving this year to the Kalahari Resort and dramatically growing in size with the number of training topics we are offering so the logistics of this event will take additional time to plan this year. This event is important to us as it aligns with our community and education core values, provides valuable training to our staff and allows us to practice collaboration in our industry by providing something of tremendous value for all credit unions that want to partake.
5. Roll Out Health Savings Accounts - This product is something our members and community businesses keep asking for and the demand keeps growing. Being able to deliver a need that is sought while deepening the relationship with our members is always a great initiative to tackle.
6. Makeover of our Children & Teen Programs - Delivering products and programs to all of our member segments is crucial. We have identified that there is a lot of opportunity to improve what we are currently offering for our youngest members.
7. Launch New Vendor Management Program - We have decided to move away from our third party vendor management relationship and move the program entirely in-house starting in early 2020. We believe that building our own program will ensure that it better aligns with our expectations, allows us to focus on the aspects of our business partnerships that are the most important to us and will save on expenses. If anyone would like the process and tools we have created, just let me know as we are more than willing to share.

The question of how do you determine the number of initiatives is more difficult to answer because it needs to be specific to each organization. A high-level response for this is that Horizon looks at each initiative we want to do and what it will take to get it accomplished. We then prioritize that list and start assigning our resources while scheduling it sometime throughout the year. We keep filling the calendar and utilizing resources until we believe they are depleted, which determines the number of initiatives we can tackle. On a frequent and on-going basis the management team discusses the progress of our priorities and we shift focus and resources as needed from what we are seeing. If time and resources become available, we go to a list of future projects and determine what can be tackled on that list.

Does anyone else have any suggestions or thoughts of how to determine the right number of initiatives to take on?