Independent Banker - December 2021 - 21

PORTFOLIO LEADERSHIP AT ALL LEVELS
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Moving from idea to implementation
By Lindsay LaNore, ICBA
T
he subject of last month's
column was how to brainstorm
eff ectively. In other words, how do
you come up with ideas to move
your bank forward? This begs the
question: Once you have those ideas,
what comes next?
It's all about pattern recognition
and moving the information you have
gathered into neater piles or buckets.
You don't want people to leave
the brainstorming session feeling
uneasy because they were heard but
the results seem unorganized and
overwhelming. " You want them to
feel like you landed somewhere, "
says Jana Jurukovska, ICBA's vice
president of marketing and creative
director. " You want recognition that
there's a path forward. "
Identify and prioritize your next
steps. If the session was about
coming up with tactics and resulted
in a laundry list of things to do, it's
important to assign responsibility
for those next steps. Create a list of
action items with names attached
to them.
If, however, the session was
about determining a strategy, group
items together based on which
direction you can go in. Jurukovska
recommends asking your team to
take two minutes to choose one, two
or three actions that they believe are
the most important. That way, you'll
have a clear idea of what to prioritize.
Alternatively, ask them to sort
ideas into a bar graph of actions
that are easiest and hardest to
implement, as well as those that are
least and most impactful. Look for
the easy ones that have the highest
impact and get those done fi rst. Plan
an initiative for getting the harder
steps going next year. Suddenly, the
list is much more actionable.
Once ideas have been grouped and
patterns recognized, you can identify
and discuss potential paths forward.
" That's where potential critics come
out, because everybody wants their
idea to happen. The phrase that's
really useful for unsticking the critics
is, 'What would have to be true?' "
Jurukovska says.
" For example, you like idea A but
not idea B. What would have to be
true with idea B for it to be the correct
choice for us to take? It automatically
turns you from a critic to a creative
problem solver. If we had more
resources or hired an additional
person, then idea B is workable. "
The answer highlights a resource
barrier that is of concern, but it
doesn't mean that the idea isn't a
viable option. Plus, it helps draw out
the actual problem that people are
seeing with one route or another.
Terms like ideation and innovation
have become buzzwords in our
industry, but it takes great leaders
to translate exciting ideas into
real value. Optimize your creative
implementation process and make
2022 your most innovative year yet. 
Lindsay LaNore (lindsay.lanore@
icba.org) is ICBA's group executive
vice president and chief learning
and experience off icer
independentbanker.org Q 21
http://www.independentbanker.org
Independent Banker - December 2021

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