What High-Performing Banks Dare to Do Differently
This replay of a recent panel discussion focuses on what separates top-performing banks from the rest. Hear how leading institutions are driving durable growth in commercial banking, elevating treasury management as a strategic engine, using real customer research to redesign small business offerings, and building cultures that attract top talent while accelerating digital innovation.
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[On-Demand Panel Discussion] Lessons From America's Top-Performing Banks
Transcript
Cheryl Brown
Hello, and welcome to The Purposeful Banker brought to you by Q2, where we discuss the big topics on the minds of today's best bankers. I'm Cheryl Brown. Welcome to the show.
Today I’m sharing the replay of a panel discussion we did a couple of months ago. We decided to host this panel to see if we could identify the secret sauce, if you will, that drives the banks and credit unions that have received recognition as top performers by organizations such as Forbes, American Banker, and J.D. Power.
So we asked three leaders from top-performing institutions to give us a peek into what drives them. We were joined by Allison Townsend, SVP and director of Treasury Management for United Community Bank, Nate Dube, senior managing director and head of platforms and profitability for Webster Bank, and Brittany Adams, senior digital product manager of SMB engagement for Valley National Bank.
Together, they dig into:
- Durable growth and deposits—how they’re treating treasury management as a strategic growth engine, not a support function.
- SMB and commercial experience—using research-driven product design and bundled services to meet small business expectations while freeing up commercial teams.
- Culture, talent, and digital innovation—the mindsets and operating models that support better hiring, faster change, and smarter digital investment.
Stick around to hear how these leaders are building banks that are both top-performing and purpose-driven.
Kirk Coleman
Welcome, everyone, to Lessons From America's Top-Performing Banks, a panel discussion presented by Q2. I'm Kirk Coleman, your moderator for today.
Today, we're going to be talking with three leaders from three different banks, all recognized for being top-performing institutions by publications like Forbes, American Banker, and J.D. Power, and they've been recognized for excellence in their performance, the ways that they serve their communities, and the efficiency in profitability with which they run their businesses. We're going to be digging into topics like digital innovation and treasury management. We're going to be talking about culture, because they all put culture front and center, and I'm really looking forward to today's discussion.
With me today is Alison Townsend from United Community, Nate Dube from Webster, and Brittany Adams from Valley National. Good morning, y'all.
Nate Dube
Good morning.
Brittany Adams
Good morning.
Alison Townsend
Good morning.
Kirk Coleman
So first question, when I say that your bank has been recognized as a top-performing bank, what does that mean to you both personally, and also what does it mean to your organization?
Alison, we'll start with you.
Alison Townsend
Well, first, I'm a really competitive person, so I like to be recognized in any of these awards because of the fact that we want to perform, and we want to be recognized by our customers as a top-performing bank. And so the J.D. Power is very important to us at our institution, and it really starts from the top down. It is our board, our executive team, all the way down to the individual teller, or treasury management support associate. We are all very engaged in recognizing what we need to do to be legendary, and it very much aligns with my own personal goals of just being the best we can for our customers, whether they're internal or external.
Kirk Coleman
Thank you, Alison. Nate, how about you?
Nate Dube
Yeah, first I just want to say thank you to the Q2 team. This is an excellent event. Really looking forward to the panel today.
I think it's really personal to me. I think we show up every day for our clients, and this is a way that we see some validation that what we're doing, both from a strategic perspective, as well as a personal perspective, really matters and really makes a difference. We like to say at Webster that we punch above our weight class, can compete with any of the big banks on the street, and this is a validation of just that. Our customers tell us we do a good job, and we like to hear that, but it's nice to be recognized with our peers on lists like these, and publications as well.
Kirk Coleman
Brittany, round us up.
Brittany Adams
Yeah, thank you so much for having us here. It's wonderful to represent Valley. So when I see that kind of recognition, I think, Alison, to what you said, from the executive suite, all the way to the bank tellers, we're putting the customer relationship front and center. From my perspective, as somebody working in digital, we're making data-driven, customer-centric decisions, but it's a special culture when everybody, from the CEO to the person that's in front of those customers, is always coming to you with opportunities to improve the customer experience. So that leads to a good Q2 (second quarter) like we had last quarter, but definitely tells us that we're building things in the right way for these people.
Kirk Coleman
Excellent, excellent. Well, one thing that all three of you have in common is kind of strong strategic growth. Outside the banking industry, I think people paint banks with one big broad brush like they're all one thing, but your communities that you serve are unique. The types of businesses and individuals, the strategies to serve them are also unique and differentiating. So I know one of the things that each of you focus on is what's that durable growth? What are the things that we're doing to help make it not just a one-quarter performance, but something that we can do repeatedly well? And so let's talk a little bit about that.
Nate, I'm going to start with you if you could talk a little bit about what that means for you and Webster and how you think about that.
Nate Dube
Yeah, sure. I think the banking industry is always trying to figure out how to allocate that next dollar of capital. It's always the question that we get asked either from a profitability standpoint or from a community standpoint, or sort of any strategic goal that we have. At Webster, I think we're constantly trying to balance what you said: the impact that we can have in the communities, and the way that we serve our partners, but as well as the customers. We try to meet them where they're at and try to understand the growth levers that we can pull internally for us to have good shareholder performance and everything like that, but also to help customers do what they're trying to do. We're trying to not only just build a great company, but we're also trying to help others build great companies, and we want to be able to support them in any of the needs that they have.
Kirk Coleman
Brittany, how about at Valley?
Brittany Adams
Yeah. I have to say, being in the digital space, one of the things that really I would drive home for anybody when you're pursuing the strategic goals is user research. So we obviously had our executive team set these big, hairy, audacious goals. We had this incredible opportunity where our leadership came to me and said, "Go figure out small business onboarding." What started as “go figure out small business onboarding” became, through user research, “we are not offering a small business product bundle and treasury service mix that is actually meeting our customers where they are and meeting their expectations.” What's funny is when you think about how you're going to create something that helps influence the bank strategically, especially in a digital sense, how this manifested was we had small business customers saying, "It costs too much for me to turn on treasury services, and it takes too long for me to enable them."
Well, the business, some of our commercial and treasury leaders, were saying, "The small business segment doesn't convert, so it's not necessarily the biggest priority," and that is where the customer research really came into play. And so I think with being able to take an experience, distill it down into all these different individual pieces, talk to your customers, your stakeholders, your colleagues in the bank, and then stitch that back together with an eye on the business goal, we are able to innovate while making sure it's strategic, and the small business bundle and what we're doing there is really exciting for the bank.
Kirk Coleman
Yeah, we'll come back to small business maybe in a minute. It's a really interesting topic. But before I do, Alison, how about you? What do you think about durable strategic growth?
Alison Townsend
Yeah, I think for me, we are United Community, and I think at the corporate level, we're United Community banks, so our footprint is very unique. We have a large presence in north Georgia from a retail, small business perspective, but down in Florida a lot of that is more wealth management, C&I, commercial. And so we have to meet the customers where they are, right? Our CEO talks a lot about being big but small. So that's a message we carry on through treasury management because I am one of those areas where we are big from a technology perspective with partners like Q2's help. But how we deliver to the customer is on a very small basis. We want it to be local, we want it to be impactful, and we want to meet the customer where they are.
Another thing that we talked about last year, so I've been here three years now, and our president, someone asked him, where have you spent money in the last 18 months, and where do you plan to spend money in the next 18 months? And his answer to both were treasury management. And so from a strategic perspective, what we're doing in treasury management is very much a part of the strategic plan for the bank, which is so exciting to be a part of. But I think everything that we do has to be focused on delivering big, but still continuing to deliver that small service that the customer wants in our community bank.
Kirk Coleman
Stay with that topic for just a second on treasury management, then, Brittany, I'm going to come right back to you, talk about how that applies to small business also. You don't have to go back that far, like 2019 and prepandemic, treasury management and a lot of the deposit goals, I would say the incentives weren't evenly distributed across the commercial bankers. It just wasn't as much of a focus, where today it's so front and center in everything that you all do, and obviously really important, the fee income, and how you think about what's the total book of business, what are all those operating accounts, those really sticky, good, strong commercial relationships. But that takes on a lot of different forms, doesn't it, in terms of both really large customers and smaller customers? How do you think about that, Alison, at United Community in terms of trying to get that just right?
Alison Townsend
I think it's interesting because, especially for our team, we are a jack of all trades, so we've got to be able to take care of all kinds of kinds. So I think for us, it's really about ... I still see that the large corporations still enjoy having that local touch, but we have to have the expertise to be able to deliver the things that they need and do it at a speed which ultimately probably is better than the larger institutions. And so that's a huge focus for us, for sure.
Kirk Coleman
So, Brittany, if I come back to you, you started to talk about this a little bit, bridging large-scale, big treasury management, to how do you also fit that to the small business space and everything in between. Maybe talk a little bit about that in terms of how you're thinking about that.
Brittany Adams
Well, Alison and I had some great table talk yesterday at the commercial advisory board meeting talking exactly about this. So what was so fascinating when we started doing the research and talking to customers and analyzing data for the small business segment is that, if I spoke to our sales team, everybody would tell me that every small business has their own pro forma. But if you look at the data, there's actually a very consistent pattern with the price point for ACH wires and positive pay for small businesses. What was so enjoyable, it took us a while to get there, but what I think was a huge benefit from the strategic work we did is that with the small business bundle, you get an account and a suite of treasury services for one monthly price.
That is a subscription model that came from outside the banking industry, and is innovating in its own way. But with that, these services are enabled using Q2's APIs from the moment somebody opens their small business account with Valley, and what that means for my treasury partners is that they now save several minutes with every onboarding application. Our treasury sales team can go further upstream with bigger clients for bigger revenue goals because the branches are handling these small business bundles. There were plenty of conversations to teach our commercial banking leadership and to show them, with technology, we can actually give you more time while also meeting the segment's needs.
Kirk Coleman
Nate, I turn to you, just building off of that. I know you think really hard about, how do I think about a total relationship? So if we're in the commercial banking space, which you have a lot of focus on at Webster, what's the total relationship look like, and how does that ebb and flow? So maybe talk a little bit about how you think about not just winning that new relationship, really critically important, but also as it goes and it evolves and they need different products, different types of credit, what's that look like?
Nate Dube
Yeah, it's near and dear to my heart looking at relationship profitability versus all things else, but I think it starts with a little bit of an education. We came through a period where deposits weren't as important. When rates are low and money is free, we all sort of have deposits and the focus shifts. And to your point, I think it was more about shifting that education and that incentive back to making sure that people are looking at relationships holistically. Cue pandemic and cue rising interest rates, and we are all where we are now, all of a sudden deposits are very important, and they are the lifeblood of any bank, even if some of us may have forgotten that when they were free.
So we sort of spend a lot of time with our bankers really educating them on what the value of deposit is, how to think about deposits, and then how to make those deposits much more sticky, which is where the treasury management and all those product sets come in to help make sure that we're showing value to that customer above and beyond just giving them the highest rate, because obviously that's not the most profitable thing we can do. So we spend a lot of time there trying to make sure that they have all the tools that they need to go sell effectively.
Kirk Coleman
So let's shift gears just a little bit. When we were prepping for this, we got to this point in the preparation and we got into a really good discussion about talent and culture. So let's take that detour now. I think we all agreed that there's so much great talent in the banking industry, but there's probably not enough. And so it's very competitive to find the very best at all the different positions. It's not just the bankers and the treasury management officers, but it's the people that work at deposit operations, or in customer service, and tellers and everywhere else.
So obviously each of you have focused both individually and in your organizations on culture and what that means for you, but also how that helps attract talent. But maybe let's talk a little bit about how you see this opportunity, let's say, in terms of attracting the very best, I think it's the best institutions are going to win the best talent. They're going to have the best talent, develop the best talent, and what that looks like inside your organizations.
And then I'm going to come right back and I want to hear a little bit about your own personal stories in terms of how you got to where you are. But let's talk bankwide first.
Brittany, you want to kick us off on this topic?
Brittany Adams
Yeah, sure. My career journey absolutely influences my point of view on this topic. And I'd say being at the epicenter of digital, coming from an ecommerce background and working in banking now, the bank and the digital experience feel like they're one and the same. They're more and more blended every day. And I am a big advocate for us looking, especially when it comes to digital experiences, outside of the banking industry. So maybe the team does not need somebody that's grown an online banking experience from 250 to 500,000 users. Maybe you need somebody that optimized every drop of engagement conversion out of cross-sell ecosystems at Walmart or Shopify.
And so there's just this really interesting intersect where the questions are, what can people be taught? What can they learn in a regulated industry and be very conscientious of, but also everything touches digital, so how do you optimize that and get the best results with people in and outside of the banking industry?
Kirk Coleman
Alison, how about you? How do you think about the talent equation?
Alison Townsend
Yeah. So I think for us it's unique in the sense, I think, as a community bank, we are very, very focused on culture, and we almost hire with culture in mind first, and relatable skills that can help someone be successful in a specific role. It's very important to us. Because of the uniqueness of our bank, I would say that culture is always first in our minds as it relates to hiring. And I think that it's also a place where people like me that have worked at several large organizations and you want to be somewhere where you can make an impact as an individual contributor. It's that place for us. And so I think that you have to find people that want that and want to be a part of the journey, and have the right mindset and the right attitude to be successful in a growing organization.
Kirk Coleman
Yeah, nothing more powerful than doing meaningful work with people you like. Nate, talk a little bit about how are you finding the next generation of great commercial bankers or other important functions in the bank?
Nate Dube
Yeah, I love the question. I think you have to be willing to look anywhere. I think the heuristic was always that you came up in an accounting and a finance background, you did a credit program, and then you became an underwriter, and then a PM, and then a relationship manager. I think in today's environment, that's just not the case anymore. You have to be willing to, as Alison said, look at any industry, look at any resume that comes across your desk and just find good people.
Good people will learn anything you teach them and will help emanate that culture that you're really trying to maintain. I think that is the most challenging thing to do is to maintain that culture as you get larger and larger. And as you have more and more people coming from outside your organization into the fold, the culture doesn't shift, and it doesn't become something that you didn't want it to become.
So we're really looking sort of anywhere and everywhere through referral networks and things like that for people that want to do good work, that want to work hard, and that want to have fun.
Kirk Coleman
Speaking of looking just everywhere for good talent, Brittany, you didn't really have a traditional path into banking, I don't think?
Brittany Adams
Definitely not, no. So I started my career in product management at Expedia, ecommerce in the travel industry, and celebrating my five years at Valley this month. It was actually a chief product officer at the time when he hired me that was looking for people to grow the digital experience with experience outside of banking. I've certainly found my industry and my place to be. I'm very happy in this industry now, but that's absolutely just a walking testament to finding good people that want to solve big problems from outside of your wheelhouse.
Kirk Coleman
Alison, how about you? How did you get into banking?
Alison Townsend
Well, I've grown up in banking. As soon as I turned 18, I walked in the door and got a job in Birmingham, Alabama. And so I think, for me, it's been a great ride for 28 years now. I think that the biggest thing for me is always hustling to really excel to the next level. Some of that meant moving. So of course I left Birmingham, Alabama in 2011 and moved out to Phoenix, Arizona. And so the type of experience I got out there, spent some time in Houston, the different experience there, and now living in Nashville, I think that was the biggest change for me, was just being willing to make those moves has really driven me to where I am today.
Kirk Coleman
Nate, how about you?
Nate Dube
I had a very nonlinear path into banking. I started my career as an electrical engineer working on large power systems for buildings, and coincidentally enough, one of the buildings that we were designing, the bank that I started at was financing. And so we literally met at a ribbon cutting, and I said, "Hey, that might be interesting."
I think one of the things that we talked on it in our pre-call was that we have to let employees develop the way that they want to develop. The engineering firm, God bless them, but they want engineers, the bill, to do the work. And I think in the banking industry we have a little bit more flexibility for our talent when they want to go do something new and not necessarily stay in the credit analyst underwriter path that I was in, and go look in profitability, or pricing, or finance, or marketing, or any other, we tend to be a little bit more flexible, which I think is the most important factor we can have to keeping good talent because talent will go if you can't help them develop the way they want to develop.
Kirk Coleman
Thanks for sharing that, y'all. I think it's so important for us to be talking about this in the industry, about developing talent, how people find their way into banking and all the different roles. It's a very diverse place, though. Thanks for sharing that.
Not surprisingly, I want to turn to digital. Let's talk about digital just a little bit, digital innovation and operational resiliency. Obviously, digital is kind of infused in every aspect of banking today, and we think about scalable, durable, these resilient systems. There's a lot of things wired together in your technology environments, a lot of different players in that. And so that can both be an accelerant to how you think about innovation and who you're doing innovation with, but also it can be a lot to manage. So let's talk a little bit about that. What's innovation, digital innovation, look like inside your organizations today? Maybe talk a little bit about some of the ways that you personally think about what digital innovation means, but then also you sort of think about companywide initiatives, or if you maybe go out over the horizon just a little bit, what's that digital innovation going to look like in terms of making your banks even better?
So, Brittany, you want to kick us off?
Brittany Adams
Sure. My goodness, so we could have a whole conversation just on defining innovation and what it looks like for each of us. So something that's actually worked for me to kind of overcome intimidation around the term innovation is I've realized the majority of innovation is not industry-creating, industry-defining innovation. The best thing that I saw when we created these small business bundles is, like I said, we deconstructed things as we knew them into their individual components. We sprinkled in some new things with a subscription model from outside of our industry, built it back up, and the customer responded by saying, "Ha, how come it was never this way?"
And that's my sign. That's what innovation looks like to me. In having conversations with our risk and fraud teams, our governance teams, I’ve got to tell you, I have not met a risk partner that does not like customer insights and user data. So starting conversations with them around, we see a customer need, and hence we want to pursue it, but then also the ability to deliver in an iterative way.
I'll put this to anybody who's watching in Q2 as well, there are potential fintechs that we could partner with, but I want to run a proof of concept before I sign a $500,000 contract. I don't think we're perfectly structured to do that with all of the fintechs yet, but for us on the digital, we have to be iterative. We have to look at work in phases, and that keeps us agile, but it also lets our risk and fraud partners comfortably move along with us because it's not one big bang when we're turning something on.
Kirk Coleman
Yeah, I think this is such a big difference from if we think ... I don't know how far back you have to go, Alison, but if we sort of think even just 10 years ago our planning around innovation looked a lot more like waterfall. It's October, we're doing budgeting, let's figure out all the innovation that we're going to do for the next year as if we could have this perfect plan. It was baked in, and we'd never have to adjust it, but of course now it feels like it's just constantly adjusting because we can, and that's good, sometimes challenging, right? Paradox of choice, I suppose, sometimes.
Brittany Adams
For sure.
Kirk Coleman
But, Alison, talk a little bit about what that journey has looked like for United Community and how you're thinking about that digital innovation.
Alison Townsend
Yeah, I think when you look at some of the survey results that we have, there's really two key categories that customers call out: digital and problem resolution. So a lot of what we're focused on is solving for those two things. And for the most part, the way customers want that resolved is through the digital experience. So really being very focused about how we receive that feedback and how we put it to use is really important to us to make sure that we are continuing to innovate.
And I'll say that we have a pretty structured process around where we spend money. So when those projects come about, we have a huge investment from our senior leadership team to really acknowledge what we're going to spend money on, and how it's going to impact the customer. And if it's not something that is worth spending our time on, we're going to cut it. And I think that's the biggest thing, is that you have some projects that can last years because you just won't pull the plug.
And so I think if you are very strategic in your approach to how you manage those projects and bringing on new types of digital experience, you have to be willing to back out sometimes. And I think that's the biggest thing that is really important when we talk about innovation because if you can't move a needle, you need to pull the plug.
Kirk Coleman
You mentioned something that really resonates with me. Banks are like collectors of all innovation they've ever done. It's like if you can't ever get rid of the things that didn't work—two customers that are using that one thing that are super important. And so I like that idea of thinking back through all of the things that you thought were true 30 years ago, and how do you rethink that.
Nate, at Webster, how are you all managing that?
Nate Dube
Yeah, I think it's a good point that the innovation doesn't have to be these leaps and bounds things. It's the small things you can do to make customers' lives better, or more seamless, or easier to transact that really get added up and move the needle for a whole digital experience.
I think at Webster, we center back to it's all about the customer. We understand that today the requirements of a customer are changing so rapidly with new technologies, with the incumbents trying to catch up, and with these new players coming in out of seemingly nowhere with whatever AI buzzword they want to throw at us, and we have to figure out what the customer really wants, what they're going to use, and then, ultimately, what we can deliver on. If we can't deliver on the strategy or the solution in an effective manner, it doesn't matter if it's a shiny tool, the customer will still have a bad experience.
At the end of the day, we're all serving customers. We all sell similar products, if not the same product. And the experience that we can provide for those people, both internally for our colleagues to give a good customer experience, but also for them to self-service, is the way that we sort of judge which project we should go after next, which one of those two buckets does the project serve.
Kirk Coleman
You all find that you have to spend even more energy internally talking about your digital initiatives, right? Because we could be very externally focused sometimes when we talk about digital, like, how does this affect our individuals and businesses that we serve? But obviously you’ve got to be evangelists for that same message internally. How are you tackling that challenge? What are you doing to address this?
Each one of you are smiling big smiles. They didn't know this question was coming. This was just riffing. But, Brittany, why don't you start us out?
Brittany Adams
I’ve got to tell you, from the moment I arrived in the bank, coming from an ecommerce and technology background, I have done more internal educating and evangelizing than I ever imagined I would, but that's also what's helped me grow into being one of our product leaders and senior product managers at the bank. You have to conserve your energy because it takes a lot to bring products to life, but what I am constantly teaching people within the organization or evangelizing is this is how the digital product team, this is the process for which we bring products to life, which involves data analysis, user research, have all of your support stakeholders and risk and fraud stakeholders. Are they on board? Are they bringing them? Are you bringing them with you?
And I still, certainly through no fault of anyone's, we get hot potatoes of whole capabilities we want to put in the digital experience, and it's really teaching this is how we go about doing it. So those conversations never stop.
Kirk Coleman
Never stop. Nate, how about at Webster?
Nate Dube
Yeah, I wish I could say it was more like tacking a sailboat than steering an oil tanker, but I think the reality is you have to constantly have those conversations as often as possible with your senior leadership, and then bring to them not the one-off client anecdote. I think sometimes we get caught with, to your point, the two clients left on that platform, we’ve got to move to this new cool solution, and I don't think that resonates well, but if you can show that you're truly solving a large client experience issue, especially on the large projects when we're talking transformational change, just be willing to have as many conversations and bring as many partners along early as you can to help sort of sing from one hymnal, if you will, to that senior leadership. They're not in the weeds every day, they don't understand what the pain points are, but the rest of your partners around the bank who are trying to manage the day-to-day experience for a customer will understand, and if you can bring a consistent message, I think that's ultimately how the big projects get done.
Kirk Coleman
Back to you, Alison. You spending a lot of time on this?
Alison Townsend
Well, I think for me, when I joined United Community three years ago this Halloween, which I think is probably ... They probably all laugh about that now because I think I'm super scary sometimes as it relates to driving things forward. But I think for me, one of the biggest things that I immediately had this kind of sigh of relief was that we have a project governance team that doesn't sit in any of our crazy, and so they're really there to help us be successful. As the product owner, I'm responsible for moving the ball down the field, but they're really there to make sure that all the stakeholders have come in to that project and really signed off, and do all the work that they need to do to help us move forward.
Just as an example, if you think about the things that we did just last year, we rolled out a new commercial card relationship with a new vendor. We moved our lockbox to a new vendor. We established a relationship with an integrated payables vendor. And so I think when you think about how significant even those things were, it is because of that team that allows us to be that successful and to be able to take on those size projects, and still do the day-to-day. So I think that's a bit unique for us, maybe not, but I will tell you it has made my life so much easier because then I have someone standing beside me helping me champion the message across the bank.
Kirk Coleman
Yeah, this is super valuable. I'm sure each of you, every week someone went to a conference and heard about something really cool, or I talked to a customer, and can we build this one-off solution and things like that. It's an exciting time to be in banking. I think there's a lot of innovation going on. I think we have a really interesting opportunity, especially with what AI is bringing to the table and how to think about that.
If you think about all the different places that ideas come from inside your banks, how do you sort through that? You've alluded to some of that, but the funnel's big in terms of the intake for those ideas. So how do you sort through those? I like the structure you were talking about in terms of we have to, all right, this is the process that we use, and it's not meant to slow it down, but for us to make good decisions. But maybe go a little bit further up in the funnel in terms of the ideation that happens inside the bank, or where all the ideas come from.
Brittany Adams
Yeah. I would say, my goodness, it could be email, it could be Teams, it could be text. Ideas are coming in from all over. And I think as the stewards of Valley's digital experience, which is a digital account opening and digital small business and consumer banking in our realm, we do have tools where when ideas are coming in, we can put them in this digital application, store them, come back to them later so that a product manager can lead some of the analysis or strategic discovery around the initiative, or help ... There's work to educate stakeholders that we'd love for you to come with more data, as opposed to less, when the idea comes to us.
So I would say we get all kinds of ideas from customer-facing clients that come through emails and Teams, and then usually I'm trying to gut-check if that's reaching the executive level in any way. And so it's really constantly going up and down that chain with our own software and tools to store the ideas so you don't forget them, and you can go back to them, but somebody's going to have a big idea in the front lines, and here are the strategic goals of the business.
I think with a small business work stream, like I mentioned, without user research, the customer pain would've been interpreted as this segment. Maybe it shouldn't be as big as a priority for leadership. So the research can help you connect, or really see, no, this is actually way out of left field, it's not a strategic initiative. We're going to put this to rest.
Kirk Coleman
Also, maybe translate that also, you think about ... Again, I know what's really important to your bank is kind of maintaining that community connection, and when you want that close connection, you also feel like you want to be able to serve anybody that's in that community, and all the different kind of needs that they have. But that generates a lot of ideas, sometimes a lot of noise inside an organization. I saw you smirk a little bit on that earlier. So talk a little bit about maybe how you think about guiding the organization through all those ideas and some of the complexities that comes with it.
Alison Townsend
Well, the reason I smile is that we take those ideas through U-Suggest, right? So any employee has the ability to submit a U-Suggest, and then based on whatever that topic may be, it's going to get routed to the appropriate director or business owner. And so we really have an opportunity to get feedback from everyone, and that's very much encouraged.
I think for us that are business owners, myself in treasury management, our digital banking director, and some of the other more specialty, whether it's maybe more related to small business, retail, contact center-type things, those are going to a different director or two. And so I think we all kind of come to the same point where those things are being reviewed at the executive level, those are being discussed. And so how we respond, even with a U-Suggest, something as simple as that, when we go to respond to that employee, we have to copy our CEO on our response.
And so there's that level of engagement to make sure that we're hearing our employees and what their customers' needs are, but then at the same time, as I mentioned, from a project governance standpoint, we really are going through the process to make sure that we are investing our time and energy on the right things. And that process really guides us through. And some of that may come from a very simple U-Suggest request.
Kirk Coleman
Yeah, I'm going to put a little different spin on it for you. Maybe talk about how do you decide what's going to be material when you think about ROI and some of the ideas, and sometimes they don't have an obvious ROI, maybe you have to take a little bit of leap of faith, or there's other good reasons for doing innovation? How do you sort through that?
Nate Dube
I had my answer for the other ones, so I got to just lost it. Yeah, no, it's hard. I think that's where it's challenging to sort of find that signal in the noise. We do a similar process where we sort of go through the intake with the business launch or the requester, and we try to make sure it's tied to the strategy. But some of the questions that we do ask are what is the impact to our bottom line? How are we going to benefit from this from a financial perspective even though there may be many benefits that we get from a risk perspective, an operational efficiency perspective, or the like? I think it gets challenging when you are looking at technologies that are customer-facing because the easy jump is, well, we'll just get more customers, as if there's a customer store out there you just go to the purchase customers from, which is not the case.
I think we try our best to use our data, like Alison was saying, to say this is what we think the addressable opportunity is, and back into, as best we can, a financial projection, but sometimes we know we have to innovate to keep up. We can't stay just stagnant forever and let our competitors pass us by. So there's always that nod to what is the industry doing? Where do we fit in that landscape? And make sure that our capabilities don't lag behind, that they may override some of that true dollars and cents ROI investment pieces.
Kirk Coleman
All right, so we're getting closer to our finish here. Maybe now just a lightning round. It doesn't have to be one sentence, but we'll make it tight. When I say, "At your bank, strong culture and leadership mean ..." how do you answer that question?
Brittany Adams
I'll go. It's communicating often up and down the line, and celebrating small wins. I think the Valley culture is special because, like I said, everybody from the frontline banker to the CEO is interested in driving the business forward for the customer, but you’ve got to be communicating often and celebrating the small wins alongside your partners.
Nate Dube
Yeah, I would say it means everything. The way that we show up internally for our colleagues and our partners translates to how we show up for our clients and colleagues outside the organization. And so if we want to have good customer experience, it starts inside.
Alison Townsend
So our core values are team, trust, truth, and caring. So if you think just about team, we're not a family, we're a team. We're going to work together and be trusting of one another, and really make sure that we're doing the right thing for the customer and each other. And I think, really, then with truth, sometimes you have to tell a customer no, right? And so I think that is very important for us to be open and honest and at the end of the day, we just want to care about each other and our customers.
Kirk Coleman
Maybe one last lightning round on the personal side, which is, if you could kind of go back and tell your 25-year-old self maybe one piece of advice in terms of career building, you sort of think about where you are now, and what's ahead of us in the industry, what advice would you give your 25-year self?
Alison, you want to start us off?
Alison Townsend
Yeah. So I think about this a lot because I'm that person in motion, the one that wants to create change, and that's hard in banking sometimes because that's not how we move. And so I think as a 25-year-old kid, at that point I was already a sales officer. And so I think, for me, there's a couple of things. One, don't be reactive. Don't make decisions based on emotion. Be willing to accept feedback. You may not be able to accept it in the moment, but I can tell you feedback that I received 25 years ago is still with me. And really be willing to listen and hear, maybe not in the moment, but even years later, be able to look back and look in the mirror and say, "What could I have done differently?" Because I definitely still reach out to old bosses and be like, "Hey, remember that time?" and have that conversation with them about, "You know what, you were right."
A salesperson, I was a crazy salesperson wanting to get everything done and help my customers, but now as a leader, it's a very different experience, and I have to also manage risk, and the operations of my team. And so I think that you think back and think, man, they were being difficult, when really they were just trying to help you be successful, and help protect our organization. So I think just receiving that feedback is probably the most important thing that I would tell my younger self.
Kirk Coleman
That's so good. So good. Nate, how about you?
Nate Dube
I would probably say patience. I think patience often gets translated into sort of stagnation or no action, and it's not that. It's about trusting sort of the process as you go through these different either career decisions, life decisions, or you're trying to push the next product decision down the pipe. Things always will take a lot longer than you think they should. And it's unfortunate, but it's the truth. Patience, again, doesn't mean stop pushing. It just means be patient.
Brittany Adams
I love that. Love both of those. I have to say, what I would tell my 25-year-old self is really leverage partnerships and ask for the expertise of others. I was a great test taker in high school. I was so good at that, and when you're thrown into the realm of product management where there's no perfect right answer, it's your understanding, and strategy, and thinking through and analyzing. There was a good period early in my career where I felt frozen, and I look back now and it's like you have the right, I think at any point in your career, to know what you know, but to leverage other experts for their expertise. I will never be the treasury, ACH, or wire expert. Just own that. Own that that's your right to do something with people and their knowledge, and that also naturally breaks down silos. So that's what I tell myself.
Kirk Coleman
Yeah, thanks for sharing that, y'all. What we all know is that careers are not just one small, or one smooth line to the upper right. It's jagged, jagged, unpredictable sometimes.
So, Alison, Nate, Brittany, thanks so much for spending time with us today. I think our audience and all the viewers are going to find this really interesting and helpful. And thanks for sharing, again, some of yourselves, not just stories about your institutions. It is no mystery to me why each of you as individuals and each of your banks are top-performing.
Cheryl Brown
And that’s it for another episode of The Purposeful Banker. A reminder to share your feedback on our podcast content at q2.com/podsurvey, and there’s a link in the show notes. You can subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, including YouTube, Apple and Spotify, and you can see our archive of podcasts at hub.q2.com/podcasts. Until next time, this is Cheryl Brown, and you've been listening to The Purposeful Banker.