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I came into this role based on my prior experiences with leading Six Sigma projects and serving in many different Kaizen teams throughout my career. I am always looking for ways to improve upon things; I have a resilient nature and embrace change willingly. I try not to accept the status quo when I feel there is an easier and better way to approach something.

Part of what I enjoy most about my role is being able to quantify data-driven insights to see the full impact for the value of what our solutions provide. Our directors and business leaders use that data to help them determine strategic initiatives and make better business decisions.

I am very fortunate to be a part of a team with talented and collaborative employees and empowering leadership. I report to our Director of Enterprise Solutions, Matt Eifler, and we have been working very hard over the last few months to develop the framework behind the Continuous Improvement (CI) program for 2022.

We recently formed a CI Steering Committee and a CI Project Team and actively solicit ideas and feedback from all of Team United. The committee drives the prioritization of which solutions we tackle, based on the needs of the credit union and our members, and the project team works on finding and determining the right solutions. I also calculate and quantify all CI savings (time saved, processed saved, costs saved, etc.) and value-added gains from each solution. I communicate and report out the total amounts saved through our Vice President of Solutions Delivery, Laura Mock, who then updates our Senior Leadership Team of our progress on a quarterly basis.

Success as a company with continuous improvement means making continued and consistent, small incremental changes that all together add up to one large change. To rapidly move processes from Point A to Point Z without careful forethought would result in chaos. Continuous improvement looks to change many different processes in small incremental points so that each change is well-managed, well-communicated, and easily understood by employees.

Our IT Solutions Delivery stream also embraces a continuous innovation lifecycle that doesn’t accept an end-point as an end-result. The lifecycle looks to continuously innovate our solutions, deliver them in a timely manner, supports, and optimizes the value back to employees and to our members.

My goal is to help United embrace continuous improvement by using the philosophy of trust when building relationships. I want to ensure that there is a safe space in which Team United can openly talk about challenges and new ideas, and is excited about partnering with CI and other departments to get the results they desire. We always want continuous improvement to be a positive and impactful area within United. We also celebrate our wins and recognize our achievements as a crucial part of the CI culture.

Culture doesn’t change overnight. It takes a village of progress-minded individuals to embrace change in order to properly eliminate waste in their workplace. Waste-in equals waste-out and our employees want to do work that has value. Our senior leaders and management team all share the vision of what continuous improvement aims to achieve. I feel very supported and encouraged by them to continue driving our mission forward for continuous improvement.

To be successful, our Continuous Improvement initiative has to go beyond a shared vision. That’s why we also strive to educate employees on how to look for processes or challenges that take away from their productivity or that are an inefficient use of time. Success for our teams means identifying those problems and then removing those time-wasters so that employees can re-direct their tasks and efforts towards tasks that actually bring value and productivity to improve the member experience.

The real change in culture will occur when employees think “CI first” when approaching problem-solving and can put an accurate measurement behind the savings, even if they don’t use my direct assistance to help them think through the problem.

During my career, I have learned that developing reciprocal long-term relationships with others and gaining trust and respect is the best recipe for meaningful progress. Trust is often gained through a number of incremental promises that are kept over a period of time. This shows someone that you are dependable and that there is value in the expertise you have. My experiences in member service and the financial industry have given me a very unique way of empathizing with the pain points that employees share and guides me in asking the appropriate questions in order to get down to the root cause of an issue. I pull together the big picture of the problem and am empowered to question any gaps that still exist. It really goes back to providing a “Wow” level of service.

For me, it’s all about how well our various teams and departments collaborate together in order to solve problems. I also enjoy that employees will seek out others to bounce ideas off of and ensure that they include other stakeholders in finding solutions. There is true teamwork happening within the company when employees realize that we work better together than in silos.

The culture of the company also strongly promotes respect and kindness towards each other. We all work to broaden our understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which means representation of people, thoughts, and ideas, while providing a safe-space in which all employees can be their true authentic self. That is extremely important to me, and I love that United has made it a top-priority and a core value.