Thomas Glatt Wows AACUC with Cajun Spin on Strategic Planning

ATLANTA - His presentation at this year's AACUC annual meeting may be one of Thomas Glatt's last before he starts a new job, but that didn't stop him from easily being one of the highlights of the conference. Portland Teachers Credit Union just hired Glatt, who has spent the past 15 years as president of Counterintelligence Associates, a credit union consulting firm. Glatt will start at the $1.9 billion credit union as its executive vice president/COO on Nov. 15. In Atlanta, recently, however, he put a hot sauce spin on strategic planning and seasoned it with vignettes from his native Louisiana spoken in true Cajun dialect. Glatt warmed up the Saturday afternoon luncheon audience of 50 with stories that evoked non-stop laughter as he talked about his wife being his boss and his son, Tom Jr., getting all the business calls now. "When they call, we have to ask do you want to speak to the old one or the young one, the fat one or the thin one, the one with hair or.," Glatt said. He disassembled the notion that a credit union's vision statement has really anything to do with decisions from management. "An effective vision tells where you want the credit union to go not where you want it to end up," Glatt said. Above all else, the strategic planning process must be forward looking because it doesn't matter what the credit union has done in the past to be successful, Glatt said. Part of the plan involves possibly sitting down with the tellers and finding out what the members are really saying, he encouraged. Glatt, a CPA who has served as CFO of 66 FCU and First Financial FCU as well as an audit manager for accounting firm Arthur Young, also said having a strong vision statement is worthless if it's not easy to communicate or can not be explained easily. With that in mind, he also dispelled the notion that people are resistant to change. "People love change, they just fear the unknown," he assured. -msamaad@cutimes.com