When Cambrian Credit Union president and CEO Tom Bryk joined the organization in 1999, his first course of action was to help define what made it tick.

"I wanted to know what was core to the organization," Bryk says. "Coming in from the outside, those values soon became very apparent to me, and they became more obvious once I better understood how the credit union had grown and the standards shared by its employees."

His findings were soon translated into Cambrian's five core values, the guiding principles of the organization in serving the financial needs of its 55,000 members.

Ensuring the buy-in of its 240 employees has not only created a cohesive team environment and consistency of service, it has fuelled the growth of the credit union from $404 million to just under $2 billion in on-book assets within a decade. Cambrian now has a network of 11 retail branches in Winnipeg and Selkirk as well as a virtual branch in Achieva Financial, Manitoba's first online financial institution.

"From an organic point of view, we are one of the fastest-growing credit unions in Canada and have been for over a decade. Much of that can be credited to people sharing the same core values," Bryk says. "We don't have trees to cut down or deposits to mine. This is literally a people business; everything we do is done by people, for people."

Q: What is your people philosophy at Cambrian Credit Union?

A: When we bring people into our organization, we want to ensure their values are aligned with our five core values: Integrity and honesty; member focused; competitive; community involvement; and innovative spirit. If those core values resonate with them, we believe they'll be a good fit for us. At the same time, they will be able to feel good about the contribution they can make here as well as the investment they will be making in their own career development.

Q: What does each of those five core values mean to your organization?

A: Honesty and integrity is our cornerstone value, not only because we work with our members, but because our organization relies on teamwork. If you don't have the ability to work with great trust on the inside, there's no way you'll be able to deliver it on the outside. Our second value is member focused, because in everything we do, we ask ourselves how it will affect individual members as well as the membership as a whole. We are owned by our customers, which is a very different dynamic than when you have a disparate group of customers and shareholders. Ours are one and the same, and they expect us to assist them in reaching their financial goals.

Our third value is one that is admittedly unique for a credit union - competitive. However, we want to be the best we can be and we measure our progress by industry metrics so that we know we are moving forward and creating value for our members. The fourth value, innovative spirit, demonstrates just how much we like to challenge ourselves. We may not be the largest financial institution in Canada, but that doesn't mean we can't be innovative. It doesn't mean we can't move faster. That spirit is important in an organization of our size because we don't have an research and development department working on new initiatives all the time; our R&D department is made up of all 240 people who work here.

Last but certainly not least is community involvement. This value has really taken off as part of the Cambrian culture and we try to be generous with our time and resources. Over the past 10 years, we've had a lot of fun paddling, biking, building and wrapping to benefit others, which also feeds our team spirit. For all the effort we put in, it always seems we get much more back.

Q: Can you offer an example of how innovation has helped you to recruit new people?

A: About six years ago, we asked, "What is driving the population growth?" Clearly, the answer was immigration. However, we weren't seeing a lot of new Manitobans applying for positions at our branches and we wanted to know why, understand the impediments to joining our organization and then figure out how to knock down those walls. Realizing it was beyond our resources to tackle this on our own, we partnered with the Province of Manitoba and other credit unions to launch the Immigrant Integration Program, a five-week process designed to train new Manitobans to work in our industry. Money is a culturally sensitive matter and someone who may have had financial services experience in another country does not necessarily have the soft skills to transfer seamlessly into their new community. After dealing with those issues, participants receive an opportunity to gain three months of on-the-job experience. While we may not always be in a position to hire everyone, most participants do get hired by the credit unions at which they work. Those that don't are still better equipped to look for employment on their own.

We're pretty proud of the role that the Immigrant Integration Program has played in helping us to become more representative of the community and in giving people the skills they need not only to work in our organization, but to be successful in our organization.

Q: What people challenges are you facing?

A: We have a formal employee evaluation process in place that is good, but we know it can be better based on survey opinions telling us that it doesn't seem to give everyone all the performance feedback they need. Formal feedback is important for the individual and for an organization in identifying people's strengths on a fair and credible scale, and this is one area I would like to see us continue to improve. But I still believe the best feedback is provided on an informal, regular basis. It lets people know what they're doing right, what they can do better and how they can do it better.

Q: How are you preparing your people to become the future leaders of your organization?

A: While it is healthy to bring in new leaders with outside perspectives, we also try to develop future leaders from within our organization. Our leaders' values must be consistently aligned with our core values and they should demonstrate a personal desire to lead this organization. We also need them to support a positive, balanced work environment and be critical thinkers because we welcome differences of opinion. Like a family, just because you have the same values, doesn't mean that you can't engage in serious, passionate disagreements from time to time - and that's a good thing. We encourage everyone here to continue their education and we also have a formal leadership program in place. It's not only offered to executives; in fact, I would say that nearly 30 per cent of our people have gone through the program. Leadership is not necessarily tied to a title; so even if they aren't formally considered a leader yet, we hope they are starting to think like one.

Q: Who are your leadership mentors and what type of wisdom did they impart on you?

A: It would be difficult to start listing names, but when I was at Price Waterhouse in the 1980s, many of the partners I worked for were outstanding businesspeople and outstanding leaders. Robert Plaxton, who has since passed away, was fun, clear, positive and yet, never shied away from looking at issues. I was also fortunate to learn about leadership and management from partners like Wayne Scarrow and Don Chatterley, who helped me to understand many different styles of leading people. Among the things I've learned over the years, I would say that living the Golden Rule - treat others the way you want to be treated - is the most important. Giving others respect and showing a passion for what you're doing are also key qualities of a good leader.

-- With reporting by Barbara Chabai

John McFerran, PhD, CMC, F. CHRP, is founder and president of People First HR Services Ltd. For more information, visit www.peoplefirsthr.com.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 13, 2010 I1