Where Has All The Creativity Gone?
Posted by Andy LaFlamme on April 9th, 2008
Creativity, despite being one of the things that people cite as the reason they love their job, is one of the hardest things to accomplish in a typical financial institution. So many executives and marketing directors get so caught up in the ROI and the numbers that creativity gets lost in the background.
Now, this isn’t meant to fault those people. Tracking the effectiveness of a marketing campaign is essential to their position. What if you could get some help?
When I say “get some help” you might reply, “We don’t have the budget to hire on a bunch of new marketing people!” Let me offer an idea that might kill several birds with one stone.
Innovate Your Institution
The hierarchal structure of most financial institutions makes it very difficult for lower level employees (Tellers and MSR’s) to bring up ideas. Typically the proper channel of communication ends up smothering the idea as unusable, or it gets lost before it makes it to somebody who might care.
Front line staff, MSR’s, and Loan Reps are the people who have the most contact with your member base. Why shouldn’t their ideas be considered just as highly as anyone else’s…if not more? They may see an opportunity where nobody else does.
There is so much creative power located in your teller, member service, and loan departments that almost never sees the light of day. What might come out of this collective group if given the opportunity to throw out ideas in a community environment, bounce them around, and create something of value?
Give people the opportunity to be creative and you’ll find a fountain of unique, interesting, and valuable ideas for products or processes that might have never come to light.
Retain Your Valued Employees
If you are looking to retain employees (tellers especially) there needs to be a sense that their position offers something of value to the whole, especially when trying to retain younger, GenY employees. Giving people, regardless of position or “silo”, the sense that what they have to say makes a difference can be very powerful.
Create a wiki, or discussion board, anything that gives people the opportunity to discus new ideas or concepts in an environment that is free from the fear of rejection. So often people are afraid to share because they feel that their idea will be shot down from the get-go and the possibility of humiliation makes them shy away from unleashing their creativity.
Create an environment that is open, collaborative, and free from this fear and you might just end up with a great source for creativity within your institution.
Your next question might be, “Well how do we get these people to come up with ideas? Do they really care enough to contribute?”
Create Evangelists
Credit Unions have a built in advantage when it comes to encouraging this kind of participation. There is an underlying cause behind credit unions that goes way beyond gaining profit.
I recently made a trip to BarCampBank New England on April 5th. It was held at America’s Credit Union Museum and it has inspired me beyond words. Seeing how it all started has given me new direction, inspiration, and dedication to my work at Maine State Credit Union.
The best way to get people excited about working at a credit union is to tell them the story. Show them what a credit union really is, what it stands for, and why it started in the first place. People find it much easier to get behind a cause than just a company. Share with them the powerful message behind their job. Show them the meaning of the institution and the movement as a whole and they might just be inspired to help move it along. It happened to me, it can happen to anybody.
Create a place for collaborative brainstorming, get people motivated behind the cause, and allow them to express ideas in an open environment where their say counts and you’ll end up with credit union evangelists…who just so happen to work on your teller line.
Andy is a Marketing Specialist at Maine State Credit Union in Augusta, Maine. After being a teller for 3 years he was offered the opportunity to bring new ideas on communication and youth marketing to the table. He currently writes a blog, TheLoop, which details his ideas and opinions regarding the Credit Union Industry.
What a great post! Many times we sit down with our credit union clients for a creative discussion and the first words the frontline staff members will say is “Don’t expect me to be creative!” Anybody can be creative.
Staff are an incredible source for the seeds of inspiration – what are members saying, thinking, wondering about when they come into the branch? – and just need a little help turning those thoughts into creative that will connect with members.
Brainstorming always starts with one rule: There are no bad ideas. To reinforce this, always put the craziest idea down first and go from there. Editing of ideas comes later.
Andy, your post presents a well developed outline for any credit union to use as the basis for their personnel policy. In so many instances these policies focus on the “don’ts” you highlight the “dos”. There is a young head teller at our credit union who is ready for your message. I’ll be seeing him tomorrow and will be introducing him to you through this post.
The only thing I’d add is that we need to make sure we give good ideas a fair chance. Allowing an idea to see the light of day is a nice start, but organizational support will make or break even the best innovation. Buy-in from all levels of the organization, as well as adequate budget, are as necessary as the idea itself.
Love this post Andy! I concur with Nala that staff are an incredible source for inspiration – especially those in the frontline. Who better to identify a solution than those who deal directly with members on a daily basis?
Want to see a working model of an innovative credit union that harnesses the creativity & nurtures the collaboration of all their staff – look at Mt. Lehman CU. I know that Gene Blishen won’t blow his own horn, so I’m doing it for him.
Simply wonderful post.
Another home run for an emerging CU slugger.
Higher ups often develop a concept or product and then train the front-line staff about it. But I wonder what kind of training the front-line staff, if given the chance, would do for the higher-ups?
There was a study done a few years ago that was focused on what caused certain people to be creative, while others were not. After much research, the study concluded that people who considered themselves creative were more inclined to be in creative professions. People who didn’t think they were creative gravitated toward non-creative endeavors.
It was simply a matter of personal perception. The moral of the story: if we nurture creativity, we can actually inspire people to be creative.
Great post, thanks for sharing Andy.
Andy: very good article. Too many business organizations stifle the creativity, problem solving skills and intelligence of their rank-and-file employees.
I eagerly look forward to more of your discussion topics! Ron
Andy – you make good points while openly acknowledging your passion for the Credit Union story. That’s contagious!
Idea rich organizations of any kind have a much higher likelihood of success.
Idea rich means the organization knows how to generate many ideas, assess them and strategically choose the one’s they will make a day to day reality within the operation.
My experience of working with clients in the financial services industry including Credit Unions is that they are often “idea poor”.
The organizational cultures do not give make room for the number of ideas the organization needs to succeed.
As you note, the hierarchal structure gets in the way!
You’ve got my mind racing with this post.
Keep creating…a story worth repeating, Mike
Thanks for all the great comments everybody!
CU Warrior brings up a good point as well. Without the support of upper management the ideas that might come out of this kind of culture are useless. Management has to be open to looking at the ideas and, as Mike says “strategically choose the one’s they will make a day to day reality”.
@caleb Gene Blishen should be an inspiration to us all. I met him at BCBNE and he blew me away with his insight and dedication to his credit union’s members and the movement. A true example of embracing a culture that fosters creativity and advocacy.
Andy, you are onto something. For a great “C-suite” discussion of innovation and how to make it happen, check out the January 2008 McKinsey Quarterly. And if anybody makes headway in making creativity happen, let us all know.
Kurt – With two other colleagues I’ve been kicking around an “innovator’s in residence” model to address the sustainable practice of creativity and innovation within an organization.
Most have approached creativity/innovation as a training issue. With that assumption some sort of training event is offered to employees as the solution.
The training proves to be a fun day, good things are learned and a vision for the creative/innovative organization reinforced.
But the practice of of creativity/innovation is not sustained when the day to day demands of operations intervenes.
“Innovator in residence” is a concept we’re working to promote sustained individual and organizational behavior.
Andy’s post and the comments here suggest to me the subject is the right one to be focusing on.
Keep creating…Mike
I feel bad taking so long to read this post.
Nala is right. Sometimes when having a creative meeting – if the pump needs priming, we will throw out the worst ideas we can come up with. This gets people laughing, having a good time and knocks back the fear of throwing out a “clinker”. Whiteboards are great for this.
In my experience, the biggest hurdle to creativity in the financial industry is fear. Fear that someone will be offended, fear that something is too edgy, fear of breaking tradition.
We have had clients come to us because they want something “Fresh and new”. Taking their brand into consideration and their target, we present what we think is the right directon and creative. The marketing department gets excited. Everyone is on board until it gets to the top (CEO or Board or even VP of Marketing).
Edits are made, concepts are watered down to make them more inclusive (less targeted) until, yes, it looks like every other campaign that they have run in the past 5 years.
It is scary to be creative. When you are creative, you have to throw something out to the world for scrutiny. There is that fear of rejection, or ridicule or embarassment. There are plenty of creative people who are afraid of exposure, so they keep their mouths shut.
I see the challenge as a two-parter. You have to make your team feel comfortable in expressing themselves and you have to be willing, at the management level, to be a little uncomfortable by trying out those suggestions.
It should be a cooperative effort.