Most credit unions treat strategy like an event, not daily work. Here’s how to build a member-centric strategic planning process that actually gets executed.
Strategic planning fails at most credit unions for one simple reason: it’s treated like a date on the calendar instead of work that happens every day.
Shawn Temple, Strategy Director at On The Mark Strategies, puts it more bluntly:
“Strategic planning is not a date on the calendar, it’s a process.”
He’s right. And if you’re trying to modernize your credit union, respond to AI-driven member expectations, and keep your culture healthy heading into 2026, you can’t afford to treat strategy as an annual offsite with a slide deck and a group photo.
This matters because strategic planning is the only way to align your board, leadership team, staff, and technology around one thing: the member. When that alignment is missing, you see it in stalled projects, confused staff, and members who quietly move their primary relationship elsewhere.
This post breaks down how to turn “strategy day” into strategy work—the ongoing process Shawn talks about—so your credit union can win, survive, and actually thrive in a member-centric, AI-enabled world.
Strategy Is a Process, Not an Event
The credit unions that grow consistently treat strategic planning as an operating system, not an annual meeting.
Here’s the thing about strategy: if it only lives in a binder or a board packet, it’s not a strategy. It’s a souvenir.
What real strategic planning looks like
Real strategic planning for credit unions is:
- Continuous: discussed weekly and monthly, not once a year
- Connected: from the boardroom to branch staff, everyone understands the direction
- Concrete: tied to measurable outcomes, not vague aspirations
- Member-centric: centered on solving specific member problems, not chasing random trends
That means your “strategic planning session” should be the kickoff, not the finish line.
A simple rhythm I’ve seen work well:
- Annual strategy retreat – Set direction, 3–5 priorities, and clear success measures.
- Quarterly strategy reviews – Recommit, re-prioritize, or kill initiatives based on what’s working.
- Monthly leadership check-ins – Track progress on strategic KPIs, not just operational metrics.
- Weekly team huddles – Connect frontline work to strategic goals in plain language.
If your planning calendar ends with the retreat, you don’t have a strategy process. You have an event.
From Vision to Clarity: Aligning the Organization
The fastest way to drain momentum from a strategic plan is misalignment.
Boards talk about “innovation.” Leadership talks about “efficiency.” Staff hears “more work.” Members just want something simple that works on their phone. That gap creates friction, resistance, and politics.
Effective strategic planning creates clarity and alignment in three key ways.
1. A small number of priorities
Most credit unions do too much. A good strategic plan forces choices.
Instead of twelve “strategic initiatives” that no one can remember, focus on three to five major priorities for the year. For example:
- Grow primary financial relationships among Gen X and millennials
- Modernize digital experience with AI-assisted support
- Deepen member financial wellness programs
When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. The plan should make it painfully obvious what gets a “yes” and what gets a “not this year.”
2. Clear outcomes, not vague goals
“Enhance the member experience” sounds nice. It’s also useless.
Turn vision into something tangible:
- “Increase digital self-service adoption from 42% to 60% by year-end”
- “Improve member satisfaction with loan turnaround times from 3.2 to 4.3 (out of 5)”
- “Reduce call center repeat calls by 30% through smarter routing and AI tools”
Concrete numbers give your team something real to chase and celebrate.
3. Line of sight for every employee
A plan only works if people can see themselves in it.
Your job as a leadership team is to answer one ongoing question for staff:
“Here’s where we’re going as a credit union, and here’s how your work moves us closer.”
That means translating strategy into:
- Department-level goals: specific to lending, branches, operations, marketing, IT
- Role expectations: how a teller, contact center rep, or loan officer contributes
- Daily actions: what should feel different this month compared with last
If the board is excited about the strategy but your teller line hasn’t changed one behavior in six months, alignment is broken.
Culture and Core Values: Strategy’s Real Engine
Most strategy decks have a page of core values. Most employees can’t name them.
Shawn’s point about core values and culture is critical: strategy only works when culture carries it. Culture is how decisions actually get made when no one from the executive team is in the room.
Make core values usable, not just printable
Strong core values are:
- Short and memorable – people can recall them without a poster
- Behavior-based – you can tell when someone is living them or not
- Used in decisions – hiring, promotions, and recognition all point back to them
If “member-first” is one of your values, it needs to show up in:
- How you handle exceptions for long-time members
- How flexible your frontline staff can be without five layers of approval
- How you prioritize investments in digital tools vs. internal conveniences
Culture from the boardroom to the break room
Healthy culture is built on consistency.
- Boards show culture by the questions they ask. Are they asking about member impact or only about ratios?
- Executives show culture by how they react under pressure. Do they blame or solve?
- Managers show culture by how they coach. Do they connect feedback back to values?
- Staff show culture in how they talk about members when members aren’t around.
If your stated values and observed behavior don’t match, strategy will stall. People will always follow what they see, not what they read on a wall.
Leadership Development: Strategy Insurance for Today and Tomorrow
A strategic plan without leadership depth is fragile.
Succession risk is real in credit unions right now. Many CEOs and senior executives are nearing retirement. At the same time, member expectations are shifting toward 24/7 digital access, personalized recommendations, and AI-assisted service. That gap will widen if leadership doesn’t adapt.
The smart move is treating leadership development as part of your strategic plan, not an HR side project.
Build leaders at every level
Practical leadership development doesn’t require fancy programs. It needs consistency and intent.
For credit unions, that usually looks like:
- Formal training for new and emerging leaders on coaching, feedback, and decision-making
- Mentorship programs that pair experienced executives with high-potential staff
- Stretch assignments tied directly to strategic initiatives, not just extra tasks
- Board development around modern topics: digital strategy, AI, member analytics
If your strategy includes AI, data, or digital transformation, but your leaders only feel comfortable managing branches and loans, you’ve created a capability gap. Fill it on purpose.
Make leadership development measurable
Treat leadership growth like any other strategic objective:
- Set targets for internal promotions into leadership roles
- Track participation and outcomes in leadership programs
- Survey staff on leadership effectiveness annually and trend it over time
Good leaders create clarity, protect culture, and keep strategy moving when things get messy—which they always do.
Turning Strategy into Member-Centric Execution (with AI in the Mix)
If strategy is working, members feel it.
They don’t say, “Wow, great strategy.” They say things like, “That was easy,” “They really know me,” or “I trust them with the big stuff.”
For modern credit unions, member-centric execution increasingly includes AI—but not as a buzzword. As a tool that supports real people.
Where AI fits into strategic planning for credit unions
AI in credit unions should be used to do three things:
- Remove friction for members
- Support staff, not replace them
- Improve decisions using data, not gut alone
Examples that line up naturally with strategic planning:
- AI-assisted member support: virtual assistants that answer routine questions and hand off smoothly to humans when nuance is needed
- Smart routing in the contact center: directing members to the right person the first time
- Predictive analytics: identifying members most likely to need a product, be at risk of leaving, or benefit from financial counseling
- AI-augmented underwriting support: faster, more consistent decisions with humans still in control of exceptions
The trick is aligning every AI initiative with a strategic objective and a member benefit. “Because the vendor said it’s cool” isn’t a strategy.
Practical steps to keep AI member-centric
When you review your strategic plan for 2026, ask:
- Which member journeys are most painful right now (join, borrow, get help, change information)?
- Where are staff overloaded with repetitive tasks that don’t require judgment?
- What decisions do we make today that would be better if they were data-informed?
Then prioritize a small number of AI or automation projects that:
- Directly reduce member effort
- Make staff more effective and less burned out
- Produce measurable improvements in speed, satisfaction, or accuracy
And communicate clearly to staff: AI is here to amplify our ability to serve members, not to replace the human connection that defines credit unions.
Making Strategy Work: From Conversation to Commitment
Most strategic plans don’t fail because the ideas are bad. They fail because the discipline is weak.
If you want strategy to move from the whiteboard to real results, three behaviors matter more than anything else:
- Talk about strategy constantly.
- Weave it into staff meetings, 1:1s, board reports, and performance reviews.
- Tie resources to priorities.
- Budget, staffing, and time should line up with your stated plan. If they don’t, staff won’t believe it.
- Be willing to say no.
- When good ideas don’t support the current strategy, park them. Focus is a competitive advantage.
If you do those three things—while grounding everything in clear values and ongoing leadership development—you’ll start to see what Shawn describes: strategy that inspires connection from the boardroom to the break room.
And when that happens, members feel the difference. They don’t just have an account with you. They have a relationship.
If your credit union’s “strategic planning” still feels like an annual box to check instead of a living process, this is the right moment to reset. Align your board, strengthen your culture, and build a practical roadmap for AI and member-centric service that your whole team can actually execute.
The plans that get results aren’t the ones with the fanciest slides. They’re the ones your people can explain, believe in, and act on—every single day.