Ep. 3: New Research, CU Culture and Centers of Excellence

A New Era of Research: Research Manager Stephanie Galligan joins us on the podcast to explain the first research report ever released as part of our new Centers of Excellence—a study on credit union culture for high performance, from the Center for Organizational Entrepreneurship.

Components of Organizational Culture: The report breaks down culture into core values, employee selection, accountability systems, and boundaries, emphasizing how they shape behavior and impact performance.



Relevance to Credit Unions: It highlights the need for credit unions to align culture with strategy, focusing on how core values prioritize employees, members, and shareholders.


Handelsbanken Model: The successful Swedish bank's model emphasizes decentralization, granting branch autonomy in decision-making on rates, customer relationships, and hiring.



A New Take on What ‘Local’ Means: We discuss the “church spire concept” and how it can serve as a metaphor for the close relationship between credit union branches and their surrounding communities, specifically highlighting the importance of community-centric operations.