Speaker A To do is get a little bit of their views and how they see this and how they came about it. Sean Jackson. What about you?
Speaker B What happened?
Speaker A What was the big thing that brought you?
Speaker B Well, it's probably a combination of necessity and good luck. The necessity came out of actually a result of both a customer survey and employee survey that we had done millwood, Brown Goldbark had conducted and we had conducted among our branch employees as well because we wanted to test the gaps between our customers and their employees. One of the questions happened to be how would you rate morale overall in your branch for a regional financial institution? And at members it was fine. I actually can't even recall what the score was, but there was no issue. But among employees it was 32% of all our ranch employees rated morale as low. And when we looked at management versus non management, non management was in fact lower. The result was 25%. And management raised morale at as low as being 39%. So that was a necessity. We knew we had something that was missed partially. The good fortune was created just after that, hired someone who actually used to work with yachts, so had a solution for us and put us in touch with Nick Forrest, who's done a lot of work with yachts. And I remember at one of the sessions among our executive team, it's nothing like getting hit between the eyes by a consultant. The remark was, you people are amazing. You created this wonderful organization where there really is niagara Ridge is an hour from here. We are the leading financial institution. Too bad Rob's not going to hear that, but he would know it. Now it's only that corner of the project of the country. So we had created something truly remarkable. But then came a kicker with crafty leadership. And our results were telling that, yes, we had excellent service. Our customers weren't seeing it, but internally our employees were telling us we weren't dealing with performance issues. So that was the combination of necessity and good fortune. And similar to some of the other speakers that I've heard today, it just seems to make sense.
Speaker A And so you read up, you read.
Speaker B The same book, requisite organization. Absolutely.
Speaker A How did you get morale?
Speaker B Well, I mentioned earlier the survey results, but the earlier statement that change can't come from within. Interesting, I don't perhaps the US. Army is so large, such an institution is true in that case. But I had been with the organization about 15 years or 14 years, something in that order, and I had a sense of where my contribution could be. And I believe people want to be part of something grander than themselves. I'm not a great athlete, but I was on a provincial championship football team before I stopped growing. It's a wonderful experience to be on part of something that is really adding value. And recently, when I was having an Mor meeting, I actually was on a recruitment. So the candidate said to me, gee, I hear you. It sounds like financial evangelism. What's more important than people and what Yachts described, it's true that when you've got a bureaucratic top down culture, that's not liberating, it's not having employees do the most that they're capable of doing. And that's what employees are entitled to. So it comes out, I think, a sense of genuine concern for others. And I guess it's true compared to other sides of companies that I just oversaw amalgamation. So my crazy now we have 1000 employees, so before that it was around 500, but even 500 to get the sense that it's up to you as well as the survival of the organization. Because Rob described it's a tough industry and it's only getting I get teased because I love the word phenomenal. We have a shock to be phenomenal and this is a part of the key ingredients being clear on value. There's other ingredients, but what is it going to take? And trying to take every employee, being an excellent employee, not being a tiger wood, not being a waning bread, being the best you can be, and being suited for the role that's appropriate for you, and having what we call open and honest conversations.
Speaker A How did you start this open?
Speaker B Well, sometimes practice isn't as neat and tidy as theory. We actually started on a leadership development program, which was sort of a backdoor way of implementing the principles. We come up with eleven leadership practices, setting context and the rest of them we began with our executive team, then all of their direct reports and cascaded down and we thought we were off on a great journey, except when we got down to Stratum, two to one. And then we came to a screeching halt because we discovered that actually similar to what Rob described, within branches we had chaos. We only had 20 branches, so it wasn't that great a number, all within a concentrated geographical territory. And yet there were 20 different ways of doing things. And what was saddest was repeatedly being told, well, my branch manager tells me my job is to create no problems for him. In other words, he just regarded himself as a senior advisor and not responsible for accountable for the entire branch. After a couple of months we came to his preaching halt and we said we've got to look at this another thing, we have no choice because we can't continue the rollout of these leadership practices because the roles are all confused. So we took a couple of months, that was from April. And then we stepped back and did a lot of work and took a lot of hits in terms of whenever you eliminate titles and deal with status issues. But that was all within space of four months and made it very clear what we were going to hold stratton to accountable for which that clarity hadn't been there before. So I mean if I had to do it in reverse, I should have realized let's do that work up front.
Speaker A But were there some low hanging fruit that you were able to grab quickly and be successful?
Speaker B Well actually, I don't know if you call it low hanging fruit, but probably one of the biggest advocates of our NLR meeting if employees just embrace the opportunity to meet with their manager's boss and the objective we had was because our core strategy is customer intimacy or so build deep relationships. And if we can't do that incrementally among our employees, how are we going to do it with our customers? And the fact that we were demonstrating to our employees that they were worth the time their manager boss employees absolutely love, probably that's the most rewarding. And of course they have to cascade down. And actually I loved it taking the time with sors really finding out what they were doing. And of course it's a real art, it's interesting, but it does properly, it builds incredible trust, it builds alignment. Probably I focus on the MLR any.
Speaker A Different you do starting this next group of companies?
Speaker B Well, actually I've had the good fortune of having the opportunity to do again because four months ago we amalgamated with another credit union. So in essence doubled overnight. This time I've done it in a better order. And actually being the CEO of one of the predecessor crates, I have to demonstrate that we were going to be principal basis, this is how our new Crating was going to operate and that it would start at the top and that the strategy has to drive the structure. And it was interesting because I was sharing this with a group of executives and some who would remain at the organization and some who would want to remain but not able to, and others who would. But I found being very clear on what I was intending to do, why presenting it, having discussions? Not everyone agreed but at least they saw plainly that it was rational, it was principle based and there weren't any hidden agendas. Then the actual selection process ended up hiring an external recruitment firm called Worldwide Partners to assist to demonstrate that impartiality. So that I didn't do the first. Certainly I encourage being clear on what your core business functions are. What I still haven't done and what I've learned from today is actually being rigorous and fully looking at all of the work. So I appreciate this learning opportunity. But the other thing which I did this time, which I didn't do the first time was there was one section of our business dealing with services to commercial operations that I did not declare it before. And basically it had been growing 20% per year. It's a huge contributor. You were bottom line, you had good people, so why upset the apple cart? And everyone agreed with me. So it would have been a tough decision. And frankly, that's to have the courage to make tough decisions. Because when you get compression doesn't matter who the people are. You have more courage to do than.
Speaker A You had in the search.
Speaker B Yeah. Nothing like experience. What do you think made Rob and.
Speaker C You guys different from many other guys having the same positions that have seen this theory really say this is the.
Speaker B Way it works, but still they don't.
Speaker C Go ahead and pull the implement. And what is it that they don't have or you do have that is.
Speaker B The full yeah, I don't know Rob well, so I can't speak of him, but Larry mentioned we had dinner last evening and something came up. Which I think is very true, that certainly in North America where there's developed almost a cult around CEOs, that it's all about the CEO. And that has to end. It's about the organization. It's about the people who work in the organization, the stakeholders. We serve in the organization. We only have the privilege of leading the organization for a period of time, and our charge is to leave it in better shape than when we inherited it. But I think it's those leaders who see that who realize that no, it's a huge responsibility to lead, are more willing to embrace this than those who are more concerned about their ego persona.