3. Make strategy everyone's everyday job;

4. Make strategy a continual process; and

5. Mobilize change through executive leadership.

In the modern knowledge-based economy, intangibles such as capabilities and leaderships, are critical and all need to support the corporate strategy. Looking at the first two principles, employee knowledge about the products and corporate operations helps them to better advise on internal process improvements. Those in turn provide an improved customer/member experience in terms of quality service through improved training and efficient operations that help members get out the door and on with their day faster, and pricing that translates to better revenue growth and profitability. Breaking the strategy down into goals at the individual branches provides clarity of expectations, allowing branch managers better insight into what's required of the various employees. From there, employees can see how their work directly contributes to the credit union's success.

Number three is the one we'll hone in on: Employees must understand the strategy, believe it is being followed and determine how many serve as ambassadors of the strategy, passing it along to others. While credit unions and other companies claim their employees are their strongest asset, most companies don't check in with them frequently enough. They try to apply a simple solution, like increasing compensation, to keep employees happy, but they also need to feel like part of something bigger, which is why communicating the strategy and the role they play in it is critical. Plus, your tellers and MSRs are not the highest paid employees at the credit union so another method must be employed to communicate to them their value to the credit union's overall success. Once the employees understand how they fit into the corporate strategy, teams and individuals can identify their own objectives for supporting the broader goal. Tellers and member service representatives have excellent opportunities to make referrals and drive cross-selling. Often, they cannot because they don't know or understand the corporate strategy and their place within it. Tracking their steps toward their goal reinforces the strategy and success.

Linking successful outcomes to shared rewards, whether in terms of compensation or extra training that will boost their career, also helps to align the employees to the strategy, and they will better comprehend why certain expectations are set and how they're factored into the performance management system. Extra, high-quality cross-selling training is an excellent example of a benefit that helps the employee and the credit union. Intrinsic rewards are also important to employee engagement and achievement, and opportunities abound at credit unions. Feeling good about helping a member save for college or stave off bankruptcy is its own reward. Celebrate those!

Keeping employees fully engaged requires a lot of energy, but is essential to the overall health of your credit union. Gallup discovered from a recent survey that just 13% of employees are vigorously engaged at work. That means, on average, 87% of employees are not engaged, and that tallies up to real dollars in higher absenteeism, higher stress levels leading to more expensive employee benefits programs, and other physical and mental health issues that affect both employees' home life and work performance. In the book, "Your Mother Was Right," Sandra McDowell writes that more than $350 billion a year is lost to disengaged employees in North America alone! On the flip side, she pointed to an Aon Hewitt report that found a 5% increase in employee engagement correlates to a 3% increase in revenue.

All of this builds to the next principle of the Balanced Scorecard: Make strategy a continual process. Setting goals and consistently measuring against them, keeps it top of mind. Adjusting operations as you go along to mesh with the strategy based on suggested improvements from above and below, and continuous education at all levels aids in following this principle.

Finally, systems, operations and employees must be mobilized through strong executive leadership. Advocacy from the highest level is key to successfully executing on the strategy. Demonstrate that you care about the employee and the credit union's success by regularly repeating the strategy and sharing how your credit union is measuring up. 

Siri Chakka is chief strategy officer for gameFI. She can be reached at [email protected].