Three questions

I joined Finance of America in April of last year and asked loan officers three questions.

What do you think we should START doing?

What do you think we should STOP doing?

What do you think we should KEEP doing?

Wow...did i ever get an earful. Anything from "We need a new Kurig in the break room" to "We need a digital mortgage."

Then I asked our referral sources; our staff, our warehouse partners, the agencies, business partners, vendors, and past customers the identical three questions. An even bigger earful!

Here's what i learned.

The bigger the company, and the faster it is growing, the harder it is to keep everyone on the same page. The problem, of course, is that there isn't a single page around which to align. Instead, as I processed the answers from these three questions, there were more than a few ideas each describing our vision, values, strategies, goals and a few more on what to do first.

A wise man once told me that many people have dreams. However, a vision is a dream with a plan. So following the three questions from wise men, our leadership team created a One-Page Plan to become the best lender in America. We wanted a single page around which we could align everything. One our branch leaders said it best, "We need to get it down; so we can get it right." It worked so well that we required all our loan officers to write down their One-Page Production Plans.

So to summarize, the One Page Plan provides leaders with:

1. A framework that details where your company is going (vision).
2. A common language to express that vision.
3. A well-developed document to share with all your stakeholders.

It is a simple yet powerful tool that helps you edit down answers to three questions and create a single, action-oriented vision - for the company and each loan officer. Next article I will share with you our One-Page vision summary along with a succinct way to communicate your vision to your people.