Independent Banker - September 2017 - 5

From the Chairman
By Scott Heitkamp, chairman of ICBA
Planning for success
I
Now is a great time to think
about your strategic vision,
consider new ideas and see
how your community bank
stacks up.
Congress return to Washington from their summer
recess. But we should also take a moment
to pause and look at our own community banks.
What is going well? What could we do better?
Are we measuring up to our strategic goals? Are
we planning for the future?
These are all questions that community bank
leaders think about daily (if not hourly), but I
encourage you to use this time, as we get back
into the groove following the summer months,
to really think about what you can do to make
your community bank even better. Is it leveraging
technology in a new and exciting way? Is it
educating your future leaders by sending them
to ICBA's LEAD FWD Summit in November?
The opportunities run the gamut.
And that's how we need to look at these
things-as opportunities.
Now is a great time to think about your
strategic vision, consider new ideas and see
hope you all had a great summer. Hopefully,
you got some well-deserved R&R following
a very busy fi rst half of 2017. We'll certainly
need all the energy we can muster for the fall,
which is shaping up to be an incredibly important
time for our industry. That's why you'll see
so many references to grassroots support for
the CLEAR Relief Act throughout this issue of
Independent Banker.
Advocacy continues to be a hot-button issue
for the industry, and we'll all need to renew our
push for sensible regulatory relief as members of
how your community bank stacks up. Take,
for instance, succession planning. If you don't
already have a succession plan in place, or
don't even know where to begin, this issue of
Independent Banker is for you. Even if you do, I
bet you can learn something new. This month's
story on succession planning on page 32 outlines
how successful community banks are threading
this needle; we even hear from a community
bank that is moving from four co-presidents to a
single CEO.
If you're in a real rush, there's a sidebar that
sums it up, with fi ve hallmarks of a truly strategic
succession plan.
It's all truly fascinating from a business
perspective-not just in terms of succession
planning, which is something that is so pivotal
for this time in our industry, but also for technology
and other opportunities that can help us
better serve our customers and create new ways
to be more effi cient and robust.
As I travel around the country and meet with
ICBA members, I love to hear about all of the
ways community banks are planning for the
future and making their banks even better. As
your ICBA chairman and as a fellow community
banker, I know that you are all incredible leaders
who want to do what's right for your community
banks, your staff, your customers and the communities
you serve.
I'm so proud to be one of you, and I'm so
proud that we are all in this together, with ICBA
right there with us. Together we can turn any
challenge into an opportunity with the right attitude,
the right support and the right planning.
R. Scott Heitkamp is president and
CEO of ValueBank Texas in Corpus
Christi. Follow him on Twitter,
@sheitkamp.
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Independent Banker - September 2017

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