Candidate Questionnaire for Chief Operations Officer Position - Assignment Example

SVP/Chief Operations Officer Candi Questionnaire Strategic Agility Provide examples of sales and service initiatives that have been successful for you in your current and/or past organizations. How did you determine their success? While at Fifth Third Bank, I was given the opportunity to work on a national project with the Forum group. We developed a consultative sales and service program which involved sales and service training to employees, and coaching methods with skill builder sessions. We formulated objectives and goal tracking documents. We layered in a 10 month multi-state rollout. More specifically, my regional team and I would conduct weekly behavioral observation coaching in an effort to provide feedback for recognition and improved performance. Back then, I implemented a one-page scorecard approach for the tracking of behaviors. In addition, the training capitalized on the principle of putting the customer at the center of ever business transaction. I defined a consistent set of behaviors across all our business activities, which led to effective interactions with customers, regardless of the situation. Success was determined by customer experience scores, financial statement results, and retail metrics such as net new DDA, revenue per household, 90-day and total cross-sell, and One Bank referrals. What type of business development plan have you executed and how did you measure profitability based upon company goals established by the senior team? Please provide a specific example. For more than 10 years of my career as a Senior Vice President, Retail Executive, and Chief Operating Officer (COO), I have made essential contributions in business development planning. Usually, I start business development planning sessions by evaluating the company’s current situation (SWOT analysis), creating effective solutions and plans to implement the solutions. While planning for the future goals of the company, I utilize the information to set the course for sustained growth. I involved everyone in the team to gain a strong team support and enthusiasm. I measured profitability by putting the right metrics in place (tangible results) and evaluating the outcomes that will drive a successful business development plan. Metrics have connected the dots for me when a strategy/tactic is not working. Lastly, I keep the communication going, letting the team know about our progress and where the company is heading. To further elaborate my point, I led a quarterly "all retail" conference call at _______. It was my opportunity to reinforce our core values or our strategic plan. I welcomed every new employee and recognized individuals and teams for success in our five focuses. I ended the call with "RITA awards." RITA is an acronym for our core values; respect and inclusion, integrity, teamwork, and accountability. The RITA submissions were sent in from the teams peer group. It was our opportunity to formally express our sincere gratitude to everyone for living up to the company’s core values. How would you approach senior leadership with ideas and strategies to improve operations? I firmly believe that good communication among co-workers is an essential element in effectively conveying work-related ideas, including how to boost sales operations and the like. But before good communication is established, personal and business relationships with the senior leadership team and employees must be cultivated first. Hence, I am going to invest in earning the trust of my colleagues and subordinates to forge a strong work relationship. In this way, I will gain support and honest dialog about strategies for the improvement of the company’s operations. In fact, while I was working at Fifth Third Bank, I used our weekly senior team meeting as an opportunity to discuss business strategies. In addition, the senior team conducted quarterly operational reviews, which I considered as a good avenue to discuss strategy, innovation, and future business state. Describe a creative solution you developed for a challenging situation or problem. What was the challenge and how did you determine and implement the solution? One of the significant challenges I had to face at Fifth Third was how to grow our wallet share (total cross-sell) and increase our non interest income, specifically through our maturing CD clients. Fortunately, we had many opportunities because we had a high book of CD clients. Through my research, I found that 55% of our maturing CDs were rolling off and leaving the bank. Another 42% were rolling into future CDs and or money markets while the remaining 3% went into brokerage. After analyzing the scenario, I built and delivered a real-time SharePoint document showing a 90-day window of maturing CDs. With this approach, each branch was able to update calls, appointments, and outcomes of transactions. On a daily basis, the regional managers were able to track the number of calls, joint appointments, and conversion rates. The project facilitated communication between the bankers, the invest executive executives, and our clients- something that is essential to encourage maturing CDs to stay with us. The result was a significant rise in the number of contacts and a $1M dollar increase in the company’s brokerage annual revenue. What was the most challenging situation you encountered with implementing a culture or business model change? How did you handle it? Colonial Bank was a profitable commercial bank with an affluent client base. Even more impressive is that its commercial channel was creating new growth records. However, most of the organizations did not understand the reason behind the decision of building out a traditional bank offering. In 2004, I was hired to build a retail division and diversify the income stream of the company by expanding our target customers, strengthen bank-client relationships, and increase our client retention. I believe that there is a natural synergy among banking lines of business. However, Colonial Bank operated successfully without the integration of retail. In one of my first presentations, I tackled the issue of mass affluent client and their financial needs. The mass affluent client is 34% more likely to do their brokerage business with the bank that has their checking account. They are also twice as likely to have a lending product. Colonial Bank was letting other financial institutions service these banking needs. And we lost clients because of our lack of services- our attrition rate was higher than industry average. In order to make everyone understand the “whys” behind the company’s decisions, I created an environment where everybody is an insider. I shared with them the goals of the organization and made them realize their role in attaining each goal. I fostered an atmosphere where everyone is key to the company’s success. By creating a direct line of sight between individual behavior, team goals, department goals, and company goals, I was able to gain trust and support both from my colleagues and subordinates. The outcome was a more robust and multifaceted bank. As a result, the bank showed marked reduction in attrition rates and the company gained noninterest income (diversified our income stream). Describe a time you were misunderstood by your leader and how you handled the situation. At Fifth Third Bank, I spent 3 months developing a "Bank at Work" program. Specifically, it was about the acquisition of DDA accounts. The timing was perfect because my business plan called for a significant increase in new DDAs. Through our operational reviews, I learned that our commercial and business banking groups had 50% market share. I utilized data on our existing commercial and business banking clients and I made enhancements to our relationship product for this particular segment. When the conceptualization and planning was smoothly done, I met with the CEO to finalize approval on the work place banking initiative. He struggled with the significance of the initiative I was proposing. My approval was stalled but I believed in the initiative and I would present further finding in a two week timeline. During our second meeting, I presented benchmarks and statistics from work place banking programs at other financial institutions. I also tapped our CFO to build out an ROI and three year projections. I even created a database of our top 50 commercial clients according to the number of employees and industry type. I was able to show him how we would build out a consistent calling schedule and with multiple touch points. And at the end of the second meeting, I had our CEO’s approval to pursue with the initiative. Over the next two years, we hired 2 sales team members and we were producing 370 new DDAs accounts per month. We averaged a 3.75 cross-sell. These clients had savings accounts, credit cards, loans, among others Leadership Abilities What methods do you utilize in coaching and developing staff? Please provide specific examples of those methods. With my extensive formal training from Forum Group, EI Leadership training, and Breakthrough Coaching, on top of my 20 years worth of experience in the field of banking, I consider myself an expert coach. My approach in coaching is thorough and consistent- work with team members to define and agree on a goal or an outcome. I always emphasize to my team members that objectives should always be SMART- specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. I work with them on skill building through one on one coaching and behavioral observation coaching. Since providing feedback is an important part of the learning process, I also evaluate my coaching strategies at the end of each session. I ask each team member to list two or three things he or she has learned from the coaching session and the suggestions on how to further improve future training sessions. This way, I will be able to assess which aspect of my coaching strategy needs improvement. After the coaching is completed, I work with the team member to develop an action plan to propel his or her personal and professional growth. Finally, I do consistent follow-up on the progress of the team I previously coached. At Colonial Bank, I was coaching a banker that had a low closing rate. We met several times and developed specific goals. I asked him to observe how I deal with clients and at the end of my client meetings he would ask questions and talk about what he liked and how he could apply it to his client situations. After a few client interactions, we flipped roles and I would observe him. Afterwards, we discussed what he liked about the client meeting and what he would do differently. Lastly, we set a course of action for his next interaction with his future clients. Describe a time you were able to successfully lead change initiatives for your employees. How was success measured? At Fifth Third Bank, I spearheaded a successful change initiative program for the first 90 days of a new customer. I called it the "golden time" of a customer. During this time, most customers are notorious for purchasing new product. They also have a higher tendency to leave the bank, as reflected in the company’s 90-day attrition rates. It is during this time that clients want to hear from their bankers; they want to be onboard. This window gives us opportunities to create a brand owned moment with new customers. I created a 90-day new customer workshop; every baker attended. I believe it is essential for the team to know my ideas and insights so I started the training by sharing some facts from a 90-day new customer whitepaper and I shared our 90-day retail metrics with the team. The training had objection training and role playing. I created a one page, four quadrant check sheet. The bankers used this sheet prior to each call, after which they shared it with the branch managers at the end of the day. The initiative was a success. In fact, the 90-day initiative accounted for Fifth Third’s steady increase in the 90-day cross-sell numbers. How do you build consensus among your division? Internal Peers? (Be specific with response/example) I establish an open communication with my internal peers: the CEO, business banking executive, middle market executive, chief credit officer, HR, and CRA executive. At Fifth Third, we interacted daily and formally during our weekly senior team meeting where we discussed the important events for that week. To achieve consensus among my colleagues and subordinates, I listen, know their business and initiatives, and express my ideas in ways that they will understand. Trust is extremely important in personal and work relationships. Hence, I forge trust by leading a good example, upholding high ethical standards at work. I gain the trust of my co-workers, first and foremost by being honest in every transaction that I do, uphold my values and morals, being true to my commitments, and doing what is right. I am the kind of person who is not afraid to make decisions. I also hire individuals that could make sound decisions for the benefit of the company. However, on decisions that have important consequences for the organization, the team members bring the issue to me. My direct reports and calendared meetings allow us to work together on information and resources, while utilizing each other’s difference in expertise and experiences. Your team is not meeting sales production goals. Describe the steps you would take to deal with the issue. Before I started at Fifth Third, my new team was operating without a leader for 8 months. The team’s productivity consequently suffered and they ranked at the bottom of the scorecard. In fact, the team also failed an operation review which they just completed. I knew something needed to be done. So we started to institute key changes that led us to achieve the group’s goals. The team’s performance status improved and the employees were even inspired to work harder. To further illustrate how my leadership contributed to the dynamics and success of my team, I organized several training sessions back in 2010, during the budgeting process of Fifth Third Bank. In that event, it became apparent to me that consumer asset generation is going to be the driver of our balance sheet growth and success with the scorecards metrics. With this in mind, my team and I created a consumer lending "meeting in the box training" along with what we called "Debt review for our customers". The team incorporated a step in the banker process- we asked permission from our customers to allow us to inquire about certain questions to complete a debt review. By virtue of this lending training and consultative sales training, our bankers earned trusted advisor status from their customers. In addition, the bank’s consumer loan applications surged by as much as 25%. These two key metrics were used as basis for the recognition of deserving employees. The branch personnel received maximum incentive payouts and the core team was recognized at the Bancorp level and asked to share our best practice on the Presidents monthly conference call. Give an example of your experience in dealing with poorly performing subordinates. I believe in holding myself and my team accountable in a positive way. For me, accountability is about setting the expectations, clearly communicating, recognizing success, and coaching for improved performance. I had a branch manager who completed our "coach the coach" training. During this training, the trainee is supposed to learn methods and conduct many role plays. When the trainee gets back to his/her branch, there will be several follow-up sets and regular coachings with their team is expected. However, during my regularly scheduled branch visit, I learned that this manager was not conducting the coaching sessions. So I met with the manager and learned that she was not yet comfortable with the process. In order to circumvent this problem, we devised a plan that will make her comfortable with the coaching process. I spent an hour with her for the next 4 Tuesdays; either we talk over the phone or in person. I coached and imparted my expertise and insights to her and gave her the opportunity to demonstrate her abilities. After which, I evaluate and find ways to further strengthen her performance. Afterwards, we built a plan for success, follow-up, and accountability. This is a success story because she went on to be a mentor for a "hub" of branches. How do you define “team” and “teamwork”? What have you done in the past to contribute to a teamwork environment? I have helped create many high performing and well-accomplished teams. From my vantage point, there is nothing more engaging, more inspiring and more satisfying than achieving success through teamwork and sharing it with the team members. In every endeavor that I do, collaboration and working with a group is something I continually seek to recreate. At Colonial Bank, every employee had a distinct and well-defined role but nobody had a firm understanding of the companys mission and objectives. So I thought this is where I should start. As part of a team, everyone needs to know the company’s goal. I aligned the goals with individual skills and aspirations, and reward individual and team contributions. For my team, I created a direct line of sight between individual behavior, team goals, department goals, and company goals. I believe that employees want to contribute to the company’s success and that they want their contribution to be something larger. For instance, customer experience starts with our tellers. My vision is to have every teller know his or her importance- that what he or she does every day makes a difference. I paint the picture of how they are contributing to the overall success of the organization. What methods do you use to communicate and build consensus between, peers and executive management? In order to build consensus among team members, each should be given the opportunity to speak up and express his/her opinion- an environment for open discussion, fully sharing information, and empowering team members. Envisioning the organizational goals is important in communication and consensus building. As one of the pillars of the team, I take the time to listen and learn about my peer groups’ business and objectives. In return, my peer group takes the time to listen, learn from my experiences, and learn about my business objectives. I use the same approach with the executive group. First, I familiarize myself with the objectives of the group and put my team’s objectives and the executive group’s goals into consideration when I make my decisions. How would you describe your leadership style? How would others describe you as a leader? My leadership style is geared towards being people-oriented. I see myself as a motivator. I believe in giving the team a clear vision of where the organization is heading and ensuring that the members have the tools and capability to execute that vision. I believe that if people feel valued as an integral part of the group, they will be more engaged in any of the activities sponsored by the team. Engaged employees deliver excellent production results and service to our customers. What are your top three (3) core values and how would each benefit the credit union? Integrity, respect for others and inclusion, teamwork and collaboration, and accountability are the core values that propelled me to reach the peak of success. For me, integrity goes hand-in-hand with character and honesty. It gives me the logic to think, reason out correctly and do the right thing. The credit union would benefit from a high integrity work force. Every day, I work to create an environment in which everyone feels included, valued, and appreciated. In fact, I have championed integration initiatives at different organizations. For instance at Fifth Third, I, along with my peers (the executive team) formed 4 counsels. Each of the 4 councils had an executive team member as a sponsor. The councils served as an opportunity for employees at all levels to get involved and have a voice in the direction of the company’s goals. Additionally, the council members had formal interaction with the executive quarterly- another great opportunity for enhancing business skills. I served as the executive team member sponsor of the Respect and Inclusion Council where I guided, supported, and encouraged the team to achieve their goals. Specifically, our council included 12 members of the bank who displayed a palpable desire to take on an affiliate-wide leadership role focusing on Respect and Inclusion. In just about 5 months, the team had built its vision, the three core focuses, and measurements for success. One focus was on education. As part of its activity, the team sponsored a "Career Day", where in every line of business manager talked about their success stories. The participants listened to the experiences of the managers and how they got to where they are today. The participants also learned what the different divisions do, and what skills and competencies are needed to become a member of the team. What is your philosophy on interacting with other departments to achieve an organizational goal? Typically, I am in an excellent position to work with other departments because retail touches every aspect of banking transactions. This gives me a good opportunity to establish collaborative ties with other departments. I am known for developing ad hock teams to increase cross functional synergies. Describe your decision making process and provide a specific example of a time when it was difficult to make a decision. I see myself as a decisive decision maker. I am focused and I enjoy and appreciate research and analytics to make decisions. I use my strengths in these fields to help me come up with sound and evidence-based decisions. I am a collaborative leader, so I have the right people at the table during the information gathering stage. At Fifth Third, I once had a difficult time making a decision regarding our banking center operation hours. Before I started with the company they had increased the hours by 15 hours a week. The communication plan was weak and the team never understood the "whys" behind these decisions. During my first year, at every town hall, I would hear about our extended hours. Additionally, other Fifth Third affiliates were revaluing the extended hours decision and rolling back to the original banking center hours. I took this opportunity to analyze our transactions, our platform activity, and our competitions hours. The findings were the hours did not make business sense. However, I struggled with taking something away from our customers/reducing services. The end result was, I made the decision to rollback the banking center hours. Industry Specific How do you proactively see cost reduction opportunities? What demonstrated results have you personally led and achieved in this regard? What considerations were taken into account in achieving those results? What cost reduction opportunities were identified and passed (and why?) For the past 10 years of my career as a Senior Vice President, Retail Executive, and Chief Operating Officer (COO), I have played a key role in budgeting. Through his process, I was able to critically analyze internal and external trends in the industry. For example, in 2010, during the planning process, our T&E line item had trended a 7% increase for the last three years. Yet the financial industry was seeing an annual decrease in T&E. I was able to forecast a 10% reduction in entertainment, travel, mileage and membership fees. I communicated the T&E expense reduction plan and we hit goal. What has been your experience with managing the Call Center operations? I have extensive experience with call centers. I have worked for organizations that have had internal call centers and I have worked with organizations that have outsourced the call center. While at Fifth Third, we had a SVP manager for the call center who happens to be my peer. We worked very closely together. For example, I worked with him to implement an initiative for our call center department to contact our first 90-day clients. I created the implementation process, scripting and tracking aspects of the initiative. The outcome was reduced attrition rates, and increased 90-day cross sell. What has been your experience in the sales/origination aspect of lending? I have extensive experience in sales and origination of loans. Over the last 10 years, I have had responsibility for a consumer lending group along with a small business lending. My team consisted of small and large groups. Moreover, at Fifth Third my lending limit was $1M. I understand sales and process along with underwriting and portfolio management. While at Nevada State Bank, I had the opportunity to complete a 10-month commercial lending program. A specific sales process I mentioned above was about building a consumer lending "meeting in the box training" along with what we called "Debt review for our customers". In this initiative, my team and I incorporated an additional step in the banker process- completion of a debt review by asking certain questions to our clients. Through the lending training and consultative sales training, my bankers earned trusted advisor status and the bank’s consumer loan applications increased by as much as 25%. These two key metrics were used to choose the employees deserving to receive recognition and incentives. As mentioned earlier, the branch personnel received maximum incentive payouts and the core team was recognized at the Bancorp level and given the opportunity to present our initiative on the Presidents call. List and discuss examples of your experience with driving a sales culture to achieve cross-sell initiatives. At Fifth Third Bank, cross-sell was one of my top initiatives. I was responsible for 48 financial centers and their 90-day cross-sell and total cross-sell. At that time, Fifth Third did not have real-time cross-sell metric yet. The metrics were produced monthly and usually lagged behind by approximately 60 days. It is for this reason that I developed a daily cross-sell tracker that allowed the banker to track every sale with a customer and permits the regionals to see results at a customer level, branch level and regional level. Daily, I would review the activities of selected branches. If I note a branch that is struggling with cross-sell, I would monitor that branch daily or weekly through its manager via phone. I utilized an ad hoc "cross-sell leadership council" to have peers work with peers on sharing of best practices and peer to peer coaching. The results were amazing. In fact, I had regions that exceeded our benchmarks and targets. What advantages, if any, do your competitors have? How do you set your institution apart from the competition? Provide specific examples. In my market, we have community banks that are willing to pay higher rates and will not demand fees on lending products. I believe our edge over these community banks is the team’s ability to get to know and establish rapport with clients and their community. For instance, Fifth Third Bank has an e-bus that can travel to the different affiliates upon request. I even arrange its travel so that I can have the e-bus come to my market three times a year. I would staff the e-bus with lenders, bankers, licensed bankers and local community organizations, such as credit councilors. This strategy improved the company’s connection to the community and increased business transactions. I would seek to recreate what we built at my new organization. Actually, we do not need a "bus". What we need is an organized effort to be in a community with the right team members. Describe how you would take the initiative to learn and model the culture of the credit union and leadership team. My management style is in part to consistently find means to communicate and demonstrate the companys core values and visions in ways that my subordinates would understand. I believe that by communicating the vision and mission of my company, everyone will have an idea where the company is heading to. The employees would also realize that their role is essential in attaining the company’s goals. I would spend the time to learn and adopt your core values. . How would you spend your first 90 days in this position? What would be your first area of focus and why? I think executive assimilation requires a planned approach. My 90-day plan would include getting to know the team, learning, listening, and asking questions not only with my direct reports but with the team members who do the day to day selling and servicing. Moreover, I think it is also important to experience things in the field and not just behind a desk. It is my belief that we become a great organization because individuals work together and build on each others ideas. I spend the time to listen, appreciate, and take the time to have lunch with someone. I would reach out energetically to build a strong, positive relationship with my peers and subordinates. I would make the time to grab a cup of coffee or lunch. In my past leadership roles, my division usually carries the largest employee base. Additionally, we influence every aspect of the organization. This gives me opportunities to collaborate with other departments. I seek opportunities to use task forces and other ad hoc structures with a broad range of colleagues to promote team building and sustained growth. Read More