Q. How do you get employees to buy in to your vision?
The corporate vision we have — there are some very
sound principles behind that.
There are things like how we
want to stay independent. To
do that, we have to make
money for the shareholders.
So we have to sell our products and services, and we have
to make money.
Our vision is to have a solution-based sales process. Part
of our vision is to have operational excellence. We all make
mistakes; the key is how you
deal with mistakes from an
operational standpoint and how do you communicate that
back to the customer. We want
to have open communication
across the company, up and
down the organizational structure but also across various
business lines.
Within that framework, we
have to figure out what works
best in Ohio. How do we
achieve that corporate vision
in Ohio?
Q. What steps did you take
to achieve that vision?
One of the opportunities
we had was that Citizens’
presence in the Ohio market
came about through the
acquisition of Republic
Bank. Republic’s focus in
this market was radically different than Citizen’s focus.
What’s interesting is that
the folks who are still here
who were part of the
Republic organization are
people who really see that
we have to be more than
what we were. They are
energized by the opportunity
to learn, grow and expand,
and be part of a winning
team.
We’ve added 23 people in
the last 13 months. My guess
is the employment levels
were pretty flat between the
time the merger was
announced and the integration. There were a lot of
meetings to go over some of
the more personal things but
also to focus on and educate
our team on the broader
suite of products that are
available on the retail side.
To be honest, that doesn’t
happen overnight. It’s something that requires constant
education.
HOW TO REACH: Citizens Bank, (440) 845-7945 or www.citizensbanking.com
