Enhancing Performance – Increasing The Outputs That Matter

What is the key to enhancing performance for your financial institution? Is it measuring these ratios?

• Return on average tangible assets before tax
• Net charge-offs to average loans
• Efficiency ratio
• Non-performing loans to total loans (NPAs to total assets)
• Net interest margin
• Operating revenue growth

And how is that done?  It is accomplished by the effort of each individual employee. Your employees are your biggest asset and what will differentiate you from your competition. 

Being busy verses relevant activities.

People like to be busy, have a full plate, many irons in the fire, up to one’s ears in to do lists; but how much do they accomplish?  Is your staff actually productive, or just busy?  People spend over 28% of their work week managing email and another 20% just looking for information. ¹

Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.

Peter Drucker

Productivity starts with goals.  Setting goals helps with maintaining energy and focus.  This leads to greater engagement, intrinsic motivation and both quality and quantity output.  The result is that staff is more effective and less distracted.  They accomplish tasks that matter and tend to have more fun doing it.  They are happier too.  Does everyone on your staff have DAILY goals?

Creating a winning team requires winning leadership.                 

Winning managers lead and motivate their team toward superior performance the same way a winning sports coach would.  A well trained and skilled staff, in a healthy culture, with good processes are what creates a high-performance institution.  Part of the job of management is to figure out what the relevant activities are for themselves and most importantly for their staff.  This is part of “good processes”.  Not only does the staff need to be accurate in the procedures to open the account, but they also need to first be able to identify the needs of the client that would require the new account.   Your staff must create the opportunity to help a client with a new account.  Which outputs of your staff matter?  Do they have a very deliberate approach to their work hours?  Do they know to take their time and attention away from things that don’t really matter to success?  Do they know their DAILY goals?

DAILY goals could be very simple for some of your staff.  Imagine assigning the goal of smiling at every person they see throughout their day.  This may seem automatic for some but how many people on your staff actually do it without thinking?  It might be making 10 outbound calls per day in a focused well-planned manor.  Maybe it’s complimenting everyone who comes to the teller window.  Think what a difference this would make in both client and employee attitude.  Little things make a big difference and add up over time.

Do you invest in your staff’s training and success?  This could be leadership coaching, retail and commercial sales training, delivering memorable service training, or even effective sales management.  The skills learned from these programs help increase employee productivity and satisfaction, which ultimately leads to deeper satisfaction and better ratios. Everyone’s goal is to create raving fans of our clients.  Help your staff know how to do that.

Contact The James Paul Group for a complimentary assessment of your relevant activities and DAILY goals.

¹Chui, M. et al (2012) The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies