Holly Fearing
(00:11): Hello everyone and welcome to the Filene Fill-In. I'm Holly Fearing with Filene. The Filene Fill-In is the podcast where we fill you in on what's been going on here at Filene's homebase and out and about in the financial services world. Today, we have a very smart episode of the podcast. Of course it is because it comes to us courtesy of our research team. If you recall, the last time we podcasted about findings in a research report, we were talking about all things reg tech from the center for emerging technology. Today, we're talking about the first of a three-part series from the center for organizational entrepreneurship. Open Book Management, the Power of Engagement and Member Advocacy is a report introducing the concept of you guessed it, open book management. So check it out. The data is compelling and it's definitely something all credit unions should take some time to consider.
(00:59): I was fortunate to be able to speak with one of the authors of the report, Dennis Campbell, who is a Filene fellow and Dwight P Robinson, Jr. Professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School. And what you're about to hear Dennis breaks down the concept of open book management into its most foundational principles to give credit unions a headstart on reports two and three, where we look at how one might apply these principles to operations day-to-day. Dennis also shares an incredible amount of data and anecdotal evidence that points to the business value of such a model and it gives us a look at some successful use cases outside of the financial industry. Hang tight throughout the interview. Dennis drops a lot of knowledge bombs on us, and if you like the cut of his jib, you'll want to mark your calendar now for June 14th, where everyone is invited to our research colloquium in Boston. There, Dennis has promised he'll bring together a number of his colleagues from Harvard, for fruitful conversations and takeaways that will help credit unions ever improve their value as a financial player. Please be sure to download the Open Book Management, Power of Engagement report on Filene.org.
(02:05): And now here's Dennis. Thank you again for being here with us to talk about this report. We are talking about the first of three reports on open book management. This report is called the Power of Engagement and Member Advocacy publication 446. And really simple question before we get into more complicated questions, this is an overview of open book management. So can you start us off by talking a little bit about what is open book management?
Dennis Campbell
(02:36): Yeah, open book management, I think actually the term is a little bit misleading because I think in people's minds it implies that open book means you literally open up the financials to everybody in the organization, but it's actually not quite that, you know. It's really a collection of practices that are around getting employees engaged in thinking and acting like owners. And, you know, when you think about what that entails, it entails partly getting them engaged in results that are important to the organization. It gets them engaged in thinking strategically about how to drive those results. And it gets in place, again throughout the whole organization engaged in sharing in those results as well. And so I think the bottom line is it's really just a collection of practices that are aimed at engaging employees to act like owners in their daily work.
HF
(03:24): Yeah, something I was just reading in this report really caught my eye. It talks about how credit unions face the same tensions as any business would to achieve acceptable short-term returns while also building out the long-term sustainability of the business. And you say in this report that the academic literature is clear that employee ownership and however that's defined, but this sense of ownership is key to resolving those tensions. Can you talk a little bit more about what's at the essence of that fact?
DC
(04:00): Yeah, I mean, the idea is that, you know, leadership of credit unions or leadership of any organization, you can't do everything you need to delegate to people. If you want to implement strategy, we need to delegate to people. We need people making good decisions on behalf of our members. We need, you know, people making trade-offs that affect the short-term and long-term health of the credit union. This could be as simple as, you know, employees deciding whether or not to lend to a particular customer. It could be around employees making big decisions that affect your operations and strategy and so we need employees really making trade-offs. So we'd like them to be making trade-offs and decisions that if we could make them all we would make if we were in their shoes, but we can't be everywhere at once. So we need employees thinking and acting like owners if we want to delegate effectively, if we want to implement our strategies effectively. And so, you know, how do we guide that? You know, how do we get in place thinking and acting like owners and engaged in that process? And so the open book management is really just a framework and a set of tools and practices that you can use to engage employees in that way. But I think this idea of, you know, in any business where we as leaders can't do everything and we need to delegate the people that by definition, if we can get people that we empower to think and act like owners, we're going to be better off as an organization.
HF
(05:16): And it's particularly interesting to me for the credit union industry, because the credit union is structured as a cooperative business. And so ownership is a familiar term, or at least it should be a familiar concept with that business model. We're doing three reports. You're working on three reports with Filene on this topic. So clearly it's something that you feel is important for the credit union industry. Why do you feel like this is particularly an important topic for the credit unions industry?
DC
(05:51): I think it's important in any organization, but I think for the credit union space, if you think about some key characteristics of credit unions and why this might even be more important in this space, I think a few things come to mind and the first is that credit unions compete against their large bank rivals in large part on the quality of their employees and their interactions with their members. I mean, if you think of credit unions, you know, you look at the outside data and you think about their advantages relative to traditional financial institutions. There are certainly some things around offering better rates on deposits, offering better rates on loans and so on, but those things are relative commodities. It's easy for people to copy those aspects of differentiation. What's much harder to copy is the things that really truly lead to customer satisfaction in credit unions.
(06:39): I think a lot of that comes through interactions with employees, how employees are treating members. And so I think that way of differentiating through employees through better service, that is a hallmark of credit unions and credit unions, to some extent because of the ownership structure they have, they don't have the same natural pressures that say a large publicly traded bank might in terms of squeezing customers in terms of not investing in customer and member service. And so again, credit unions are in a place where competing on customer service and doing that in large part through employee interactions can be a big differentiator. And so I think this idea of getting employees that are the face of the credit union that really drive differentiation to be thinking and acting like owners in their interactions with members, in the way that they implement our strategies, I think that that is, you know, it's key for any organization, but for credit unions, I think there's big advantages to be had.
HF
(07:34): Credit unions, just like any other business out there, whether they're not-for-profit or they are a for-profit financial institution, any of these types of businesses are looking to find that differentiator and of course grow their revenue as any business should. Do you feel that open book management could be an effective strategy for helping a credit union grow its revenue?
DC
(07:57): I think if we just look at what the research says actually about employee ownership, that what the research shows is pretty clear, employee ownership traditionally, right? The way that most people think about it as employees either literally have ownership and that might be through employee stock option plans, but it doesn't have to be that kind of ownership. It could be ownership like incentives where whatever the results you're trying to drive, if you achieve them, employees get some pay based on that. They get some stake in that sort of outcome that people have looked in the research and employee ownership broadly defined, right? Employees have ownership like stakes or incentives in the firm. It doesn't have to be direct in the form of an ESOP or something. But the research that's looked at these broad forms of employee ownership i's kind of clear. What it says actually is that, that alone doesn't itself drive performance, but that's an important ingredient, but it's a necessary, but not sufficient condition.
(08:50): The other aspect of this is what people in the literature have called participative management and that is kind of a collection of practices around sharing results widely. Getting employees engaged in understanding how to drive results and getting employees engaged in thinking and developing strategies, identifying problems and implementing strategies to solve those problems. In short, if you have participative management, plus you have employee ownership, what the research shows is that those are the firms that tend to perform better. So it's very clear that, you know, ownership itself traditionally defined, participative management itself traditionally to find those things alone, aren't enough to drive performance. But when you put those two things together, there's big performance gains and it could be in growing revenue. It could be in reducing costs, growing profits. That's where the benefits are coming when you look at those two things together, right?
(09:40): Ownership like incentives, coupled with participative management, again, transparency and results, engaging employees and thinking strategically, those two things together, that's really what open-book management is about. And so, you know, long story short, the research shows, I think in general, that companies that employ those practices together, the practices we collectively refer to as open-book management, they tend to perform better on a variety of financial dimensions. And so when you take this into the credit union space, I don't see any reason to, you know, believe that there would be any difference there and in fact, in the second report that we have coming out, we've done some extensive data gathering where we've surveyed credit unions to gauge the extent to which they're employing collectively these practices, we call open-book management and we find very similar results there. That the credit unions that collectively employ these practices tend to perform better and in particular, the area where we see that coming out is in growth and membership. And so I think, you know, long story short, I think both the prior data and the prior empirical studies coupled with this new data we have coming in the second report would suggest very strongly that OBM well implemented, could have these same sorts of impacts for credit, you know?
HF
(10:50): Yeah, that's very interesting and important for credit unions to learn about because I think a lot of credit unions are looking to grow membership, grow their revenue asset size and have maybe tapped out traditional strategies for achieving that and this could be a new direction that many have not attempted yet.
DC
(11:12): Yeah, that's right. And if I could just say one more thing on that, if you just ask why it's the case actually like what's the mechanism that leads to these performance gains; and really the idea here is, there's several different avenues through which this could be driving performance. And, you know, one is just the idea that the very reason that leaders delegate, empower people below them is because you can't take every decision and because you might not even have the knowledge to take the best decision, actually. That employees are the ones that are face-to-face with the customers they're on the ground with your operational processes. They're the ones that are really on the ground, implementing your strategy. They're getting a lot of information you don't have, they know what works and what doesn't, and once you empower them, and once you start to give them the transparency and information they need to improve things and you give them the motivation incentives to improve, they can actually be a big source of innovation, you know. And I think that that's where a lot of this comes as that when you're unleashing and unlocking more potential for innovations, both large and small, when you engage employees widely and thinking and acting like owners and so we get to a better place. The other is just from a standpoint of pure execution, that employees tend to be more motivated and they tend to put more effort when they are, you know, partly it's incentives, but that's clearly from the research, not the only piece the other is that people feel more motivated when they have that transparency into how their activities actually affect larger results, how they fit into a larger strategy. And so I think that the transparency aspect of open book management in itself can be quite motivating for people to help them really see themselves as part of something larger and to be engaged in, you know, how their work is really impacting something bigger.
HF
(12:50): Absolutely. I mean, this sounds like it's not just an effective business strategy, but it is clearly an employee value. It's a way to better treat the work relationship with your employees. And a couple of things you mentioned, that in the report, it talks about the pillars that are important to open book management, principles of transparency, trust and fair treatment. Those all sound like ways to create a more engaging employee base. Can you talk a little bit about why those three pillars are so important to effective open book management?
DC
(13:30): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think when you just take the trust piece alone, right? Just the inherent in this open book management approach, it's one that fosters trust because by definition, you're going to empower people when you trust them to do the right thing, but the very act of sharing results with employees and getting them engaged in thinking about the business that shows that you trust them actually, that when you empower and when you engage them in driving the results of the business, that shows that you trust that they can actually use that empowerment effectively. So that trust angle, I think, is a big deal and in fact, I'm thinking of a study that was done by a while back, maybe a decade back and it was in an economics journal and what they did was to ask how much would people be willing to give up in pay in order to get jobs with certain other characteristics?
(14:16): Right? So if people couldn't get a job where they could develop more skills, for example, how much pay would they give up? If they can get a job where there was more advancement opportunity, for example, what would they give up and pay? And a couple of the things that stood out were one, you know, one of the biggest things was if you could get a job where you trusted your manager more, or where your manager trusted you more, how much would you give up? And they found that a job with more trust from your manager was worth the equivalent of a 36% pay raise. Another way to look at that as people would give up on average 36% in pay in order to be in a job where they had the trust and earned the trust of their managers. And I think when you look at that, people value that and they value it for a lot of reasons.
(14:57): One is that when you have that, it makes the work environment better. It gives people more chance to be empowered and show what they can do. It gives people potentially the idea that they're developing human capital as a result of that kind of trusting environment. It gives them a sense that the way things are done in the organization is fair. It's more transparent so I understand what it takes to advance. And so long story short, I think this idea of fairness and trust that's inherent in open book management, because you are sharing results, you're engaging them and driving results, you're empowering them. And at the same time you are sharing the gains from their efforts, that those things, collectively foster environments of more trust, more fairness, more transparency. And I think the research on that is clear that, you know, people value those things and they become more engaged when you create environments that have those three pillars.
HF
(15:46): That context is really powerful. Do you have any real world case studies or success stories that you believe would help the credit union industry learn from the value of these examples of open book management that you could share?
DC
(16:06): Yeah, you know, there's a lot and in fact, we talk about some of these in the report and you know, we're not allowed sometimes to say the company's name is because a couple of my colleagues that are engaged in this research, they were really on the ground, helping these companies implement this stuff and so they could share kind of the general results. But I think, you know, in terms of confidentiality, you can't really say the companies, but I can tell you the nature of them. So, you know, one is a large travel agency. They have multiple branches in various places and what's interesting is that a couple of my colleagues implemented open-book management in some of the branches of this travel agency, but not others. And what that meant is they sort of engaged employees in thinking about what's the definition of winning? What does it mean to win in this business?
(16:47): What are the key metrics that we should be focusing on that would tell us if we're winning, right? And so it could be things like a new client acquisition, new bookings and so on, but they came up with a sort of just a very, like a few key metrics that they all kind of agree, collectively agree that this is going to be our definition of winning. They then start engaging employees and thinking about how do we drive these, how do we improve? And then they started in those branches, implementing those ideas, being very transparent about it, being very transparent about how the implementation of the ideas are actually affecting results and they also added on top of that, a broad reward sharing program that look, if we achieve these results, that we'll all collectively be better off and we'll share in the rewards of that.
(17:26): So it wasn't ownership in the sense of stock options. It was really, there's a few key metrics we all agree on as a definition of winning that we all start having regular processes where we're meeting to discuss collectively, right? We're involving everybody in thinking about how to drive those metrics. What are the ideas, we're putting those into action. We're circling back and we're doing that feedback loop and letting people sort of see how their ideas are being implemented and are affecting the results and then again, when we reach our milestones, we're all in this together, right? A rising sea carries all ships. And I think that that came across very well. And why I'm mentioning this one in particular is because it became in a way like a controlled experiment where you have some branches in the same company implementing this, others not, because they rolled it out in a particular way. And it was very clear that the results in terms of growth and customers, in terms of profitability of the bookings, in terms of all the traditional performance metrics, actually improved quite dramatically in the branches that implemented these practices relative to those that did not and so I think there is an interesting one where we had a controlled experiment on the impact of these practices.
HF
(18:29): And do you know if there are any financial institutions that are using open-book management practice?
DC
(18:35): You know, I don't just because we have not really looked there specifically, but that said, there's no reason to believe financial services would be any different. I mean, if you look at like this travel company, this is a service business, and you think about financial services that, what are the key metrics that we would want to drive around customer loyalty, for example, around financial goals. There's no reason to believe that would be sort of any different, right? I mean, this is a service industry and so I think there's lots of examples of service-based businesses where we've seen this work very well. There's lots of examples of manufacturing based businesses. There's examples of extending this principle down throughout all levels of the organization, down to the frontline, which, you know, again, in financial services you have tellers and people engaged in operations on the front line, just like you would in any other kind of service business.
(19:22): And so, you know, I don't know of specific examples, but that's more just because we haven't looked there yet. That said as part of this three projects that we're doing this year, we are looking more deeply into this in credit unions. And in fact, as I mentioned in the second project, we've already gotten broad based survey evidence from credit unions showing that many of them actually are implementing many of these principles collectively, whether they call it open-book management or not. And we do see the results that are coming from that and so the third project that's going to build on that is that we are going to be doing a deep dive with a few credit unions we've identified through that data. We're going to do a deep dive with them to see how they're implementing this. What does it look like? What kind of results they're seeing? What are the challenges, what are the opportunities? But the long story short, we will have more examples of that going forward, but I don't think there's any reason to believe that financial services would be any different in terms of being able to benefit from the same kind of approach.
HF
(20:17): Yeah that's great. I can't wait to see those further iterations in the next two reports. When the data is so clear and the research is really, really clear that this is making a difference in the organizations that implement it, do you have a sense of maybe how widespread this practice is and why maybe organizations are not utilizing this process?
DC
(20:43): So I think the second question, ironically, it's easier to answer than the first. I mean in terms of how many are doing this, I think the hard part about that is that we can find out things like there's all sorts of data out there on like what percentage of organizations have either direct ownership type incentives like ESOP's or what percentage have ownership like incentives, right? Incentives tied to key performance metrics. And that's a huge portion. Of course, you know, if you just said, ESOP's right, that's small and that's maybe like, you know, 15, 20%. If you said, really incentive-based pay-like reward sharing programs, for example, tied to key metrics, that's going to be a much larger portion, but that's not just what open-book management is about right? That's just one piece of it and maybe not even the most important piece, right? The other stuff on transparency, trust, fairness, and implementing practices that drive that. That's kind of the bigger piece and that's the harder one to see like how many organizations truly have that. And I think, you know, it's far fewer than the organizations that have the reward sharing type programs. And I think there's a reason for that, which is that's the stuff that's harder to implement, but it's also the practices that will give you, I think, the bigger results. And so why is it harder to implement and why do we see few organizations doing that? I think if you just sort of ask, how do you implement fairness, trust, transparency, that's really about the culture of the organization and you have to change a lot to implement those things, right? So think about, first of all, let's agree on what it means to win. What are the metrics? And we could design a reward sharing program. That part is relatively easier. The harder part is these other aspects of OBM around those pillars.
(22:21): Because as a manager, as a leader, if you don't already trust your employees, if you don't already have that level of trust, you have to develop it. You have to be comfortable sharing results. You have to be comfortable engaging employees and empowering them in the first place, to actually generate ideas, to act on those ideas, to do things differently than you might think is right in the moment. And so I think this notion of having to be comfortable to empower people, to trust that they can do great things with that empowerment and to create an environment where you are transparent in where the business is at, where it's going and how they're contributing to it. I think that there's real leadership challenges there and I think not every leader is equipped to do it and not every leader is as comfortable with those parts of open book management. So, in short, I think those are the things that are harder to implement, but the flip side of that is that they are where you'll get most of the performance gains.
HF
(23:13): And how would you define or measure the success of an organization's implementation of open-book management?
DC
(23:21): You know, I think it would be where the second project, where we have a survey can come in handy because we have a set of questions in that survey where we're trying to gauge the extent to which these practices are widespread in the organization. And so I think there are things that we could look at that would say, do you have these practices in place or not, right? And so the reward sharing again is easy. What's harder I think actually even on that end, is, is there a clear definition of winning, right? What's the metric or set of metrics that are really key that everybody agrees on? I think that part is harder and in fact, I think even harder in credit unions than in traditional organization, because the financial part of it right, is that we have to be financially viable to offer service to our members, but the objective isn't to maximize necessarily financial performance, they ROI, right?
(24:08): The objective is to drive performance in a way that allows us to build our capital base, which then allows us to offer great services, products, and so on to our members. So to some extent, you know, member value added and member loyalty, are we meeting their needs? Those are really the objectives, but at the same time, the financial stuff right, is incredibly important because we need to run a responsible financial institution. We need to manage risk. We need to be able to serve existing members, but also grow and serve our membership base more widely. And so in short, you know, you think of any credit union and any board of a credit union, right, has to really think about balancing a bunch of different performance metrics. And so coming up with kind of, how do we think about what it means to win and what are the metrics that are truly kind of we're driving and everybody agrees on are important.
(24:58): That's I think even harder in credit unions. And so I think getting agreement on that and, you know, one sign I would want to look for in short is on that front, to what extent is there kind of widespread agreement in the organization on what it means to win. You know, what is it that we're really, truly trying to drive? What is the metric or metrics that we really have a shared understanding are the most important to really be looking at? I think that that's one pillar of OBM is that having consensus on a clear definition of winning. So that's one thing I'd like to look for, I think in terms of the other pillars around fairness, transparency, and trust, that's something that, you know, again, we could look at to what extent employees are actually empowered in their day-to-day work. You know, how much freedom do they have in their day-to-day work to make trade-offs for customers, to implement new ideas in operational processes, for example. You know, to what extent is their real empowerment, that is not just on paper, but actually in practice with employees, that's one sign of success, right?
(25:56): That they're using that empowerment. That they're actively engaged. The other is, you know, employee general sense of motivation and wellbeing. If we've truly created this environment, we should see this coming through, not just in the financials and the way that we think about the definition of winning, but also in employee satisfaction, in employee turnover going down. In, you know, general employee enthusiasm for the company and their shared values. And so I think that would be in my mind, a metric of success from this. So, you know, I think those sorts of things, right, you know, clear sort of agreement on what it means to win. I'd want to look for that. I'd want to look for the sense that there's real empowerment and that there's actual real innovations that are coming from people on the front line that are actually being implemented. And that we're seeing that add up to an environment where employees are actually more motivated, more engaged, however, we measure that.
HF
(26:50): The report talks about that framework of having a clear definition of winning and active involvement, getting employees actively involved in driving the results and having a clear incentive plan that helps share the results with everyone. I think you can see that play out in service organizations that we deal with all the time. And it's really enlightening to know maybe that's what's going on behind the scenes, but oftentimes when you get on the phone with customer support and they take care of your issue, in an unexpected way, it's, I suspect now that maybe that's what's some sort of incentive plan is behind that behavior and it's really great for the customer as well, as I'm sure it's great for the employee and the business. I wanted to know though, it seems like of those three kind of components of this framework, that clear definition of winning, like you said, is potentially the most difficult. Do you have any sense of how an organization might know if they have a good winning number?
DC
(28:01): So first of all, I wouldn't say it's the hardest thing. I think it's harder for credit unions than for other organizations because of these conflicting objectives around having to, you know, be financially viable, grow your capital base at the same time as having to really, you know, really pursued non-financial objectives around providing member value added. That's what makes it hard, right? And so then we end up with so many metrics that we have to monitor as a credit union with no clear sense of what it is we're trying to really maximize or achieve in a given period. So I think it's harder for credit unions. I think, if you think about how to develop it, right, how would you think about coming to consensus on what it means to win, right? What is the metric or set of metrics that's gonna really tell us?
(28:44): I think that's got to start with strategy. And so I think having clarity and strategy about what you're trying to achieve, what are the goals that might lead you to say, look, you know, the strategy here is we can best serve our membership by scaling up our mission and bringing in more of our potential members, right? And so this leads you to look, there's a lot of things we have to do. There's a lot of metrics that are important, but a clear definition of winning here will be our, you know, our membership growth, for example. It might be that we need to become more profitable, show our bar capital base so that we can do more lending for example, or whatever it might be, you know, whatever the strategy is, how are we differentiating? What are the goals that should sort of lead you to that critical performance metric or set of performance metrics.
(29:28): But I think that's the idea is you have to have clarity and strategy first, which then lead to clarity and objectives, which should then lead to clarity and, you know, what are the small set of metrics that really truly matter in this sort of defined time period? I think that that's really the key issue. So I would say clarity and strategy is the driver there. And then that's one piece of it, but I think the other side of the one thing, the other thing I would say on that as the other piece of that, it's not just defining it, right. It's actually getting consensus on it. And I think that rather than viewing that as a top down process where we define at the top, you know, what the strategy is, what the key metrics are, I think proponents of open book management would say, you should be involving in place more widely in that discussion. You know, what is it that we're really trying to achieve as a credit union and what should our goals be? What should our strategies be in? How would we measure if we're successful at that process of choosing the definition of winning, if nothing else to get buy in should actually not just be a top-down process and should involve people more widely. That would actually be more in the spirit of open book management.
HF
(30:27): Before we wrap up, I wanted to get your thoughts on, kind of, if there's any argument against using open book management or any reason why you would see it not being an advantageous avenue for a business to take on?
DC
(30:43): The only thing I can really think of, because if you just step back here, these are, you know, to some extent, common sense principles that are often hard to put into practice, and we need to be reminded that collectively they work together. That, I think this idea of empowering people, engaging them more to get the best work out of people and to unlock potential for innovation, that is something, any business I think should want to do. And again, when you just go back to the research, if you're willing and ready to do these things collectively, right? The practices that collectively define open-book management, I can't think of a reason why you really wouldn't want to do it. I think the issue though, is that, are you ready to do it? So I would say that any organization that is looking at this or any leader, that's looking at this and thinking of doing it piecemeal. Piecemeal in the sense of the easy thing to implement might be doing a reward sharing program and not all this other stuff, right?
(31:33): Not all the other stuff around transparency, around getting consensus, around involving people in defining what it means to win around, you know, giving people empowerment, for example. Around allowing employees to innovate and to drive results. I think that if you're not ready to do those things, you know, simple reward sharing is not going to be the thing that's going to drive results in effect. You know, reward sharing alone, if you're doing it on the wrong metrics and you don't have a clear sort of sense of direction or a clear definition of winning, that alone might even have dysfunctional consequences. So, you know, long story short, I think if you're not willing to sort of do the practices collectively and not ready as an organization, then, you know, that to me would be probably the biggest constraint in wanting to implement something like this.
HF
(32:17):That's a great point. So on June 14th of this year, you will be leading Filene research event for the Center of Organizational Entrepreneurship, out at Harvard. We'll be talking about this report and the next two yet to come. Is there anything that you want listeners to know about that event?
DC
(32:38): No, other than I think it's going to be a great event and I'm going to try to be bringing together, you know, various faculty that, you know, may not directly talk about OBM. I certainly will and I'll be sharing the results from the research we've done with specifically, with credit unions in that survey and talking about the implications there, but I'm also going to bring together faculty that have done some really interesting research in various aspects of open book management. Like how is transparency established in organizations? What forms does it take? What kind of effects does it have? You know, I'll bring people that will maybe talk about, you know, the range of ways we could think about this idea of reward sharing to create ownership like incentives that don't involve direct employee ownership, which obviously can't happen necessarily in a credit union. And so I think the event will be a good one where it will be a good blend of credit union specific research on these practices and their impact and their challenges, but also cutting edge research from faculty that are doing deep dives into various aspects of this practice that we collectively call open-book management.
HF
(33:38): Awesome, that's so great. Thank you so much for your time today, Dennis. And I just want to remind everyone to be on the lookout for the other two reports coming out on this topic this year and more information about that colloquia coming up. So again, thank you for joining us today.
DC
(33:57): Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.
HF
(34:01): All right, that's it for the Filene Fill-In folks. Thanks again for listening. A huge thank you to Dennis for taking the time to share his knowledge with us today. And of course, to our amazing research team at Filene for pulling this together so beautifully, once again. If you liked this episode, go out and rate us on Apple Podcasts so more people can find us, then make sure you're subscribed to the Filene Fill-In podcast so you can keep up with what's going on at Filene. You'll find us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to get in touch about today's show, email me at [email protected], or find us on Twitter at, @FileneResearch. Until next time. Thanks everyone.