What if you were sitting on a gold mine of untapped potential for organic growth and increased profits?

What if you could get far more—and more predictable—profit and growth impact from your strategic planning process? After reviewing over 500 strategic plans, I find that most banks lack effective strategies, lack intentional congruence, and essentially have a list of goals but no effective way to achieve them.

If you’re the kind of leader who hires a brilliant facilitator and comes out with a well-written plan that sounds good but never really shakes the ground from under your feet for a transformative profit surge, you’re gonna love this.

Or maybe you are happy with your plan and doing well, but you wonder if you could enjoy even better results. Or perhaps you are the kind of leader who is frustrated that you spend a potload of money on the off-site facilitator, and it never gives you the breakthrough strategies that can power up your trajectory for decades. If any of these sound like you, keep listening. Here are the typical challenges that keep you from an even better year.

Most banks have a strategic planning book with a plethora of goals. The missing components are at least 25 different actual strategies that will bring earthmoving changes that get you paid more for doing business with the most desirable prospects in your market. That’s the point. In looking at hundreds of plans over the years, I can honestly say that I’ve not seen more than five total strategies combined on banks who were happy with their strategic planning process.

Yikes. That’s right. On hundreds of plans, only a total of five strategies. Imagine if they had a plan that actually made a difference.

Also, most plans lack intentional congruence. The BHAG, or the Big Hairy Audacious Goal, is not congruent with the psychographics and firmographics of the top two to three target markets. And the key initiatives are a disjointed list of to-dos. There is no alignment.

Additionally, the plan doesn’t account for an extremely relevant fact. If you are a normal bank, only 13% of your customers are profitable. Let that sink in. The problem is your plan doesn’t have solid and proven strategies to get more profitable customers like the 13%, nor does it get all their business at premium pricing. So even if the plan is executed well, it still puts the franchise value at risk.

Every bank faces these problems.

Thousands of strategic plans are lackluster and ineffective, without exception.

Let’s talk about strategic plans that actually work to bring you the most profitable prospects and convert them into your best customers. That’s the point.

There are four simple steps you need to take to get positive results.

Step one: Unlike so many strategic planning processes, you must start with an understanding of the psychographic and firmographic similarities of your top 100 most profitable customers. Then, to make sure your plan is about profit and not busywork, ensure that you base the entire thing on no more than three integrated psychographic and firmographic intersections of that group.

Step two: Forget everything you learned about strategic planning from school. That old model—mission statement, SWOTs, and goals—is ridiculously antiquated. We live in a world of disruption where non-bank competitors are vultures ready to eat the lunch of banks who still think a yearly strategic planning process is enough to drive growth and profitability. Heaven forbid if you are a bank that’s still doing the “we do the strategic planning process every two years” approach.

Have you ever seen a top 10% performing bank do that? Exactly.

Step three: Move to a one-page strategic planning process. Don’t think because it’s brief that it’s easy or quick.

If you do it right, it will be 10 times harder, but then you’ll work 100 times smarter all year. You’re packing a lot of punch in that one page with an extreme focus on the few things that matter.

Make sure there is intentional congruence so that all the elements of the plan are working together for an immediate profit boost. The buildout from the one page is where the magic happens, but you have to get the one page right first.

Step four: Get everything and everyone in a visible accountability system so that every team member in your organization knows what they need to do every week to align with profit.

To emphasize, here are the four steps again: One, align the plan to the most profitable customers and prospects. Two, forget the old models. Three, create intentional congruence in the one-page plan.

And lastly, four, create visible alignment of every person to profit.

Put a strategic plan into place using those elements, and you can relax and know that your plan will be implemented. You will get people away from being busy to being profit-oriented, which dramatically contributes to your bank’s bottom line, doesn’t it?

The post Your Bank’s Strategic Plan Is Missing the Strategy [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

I’m Roxanne Emmerich. I work with elite banks—the 5% who refuse mediocrity—to grow low-cost deposits, explode margin, and build cultures that crush complacency.

Today, we expose a lie so embedded in banking, it passes as truth:
Strategic planning works.

Wrong.

What most banks call “strategic planning” is a bloated to-do list—paper-shuffled theater with zero accountability, zero alignment, and zero impact. It feels productive. It looks impressive. It does nothing.

I asked my grad school professor—face to face—“Have you ever seen traditional strategic planning work?” He paused. Then admitted:
“Nope. Not really.”

Exactly.

That’s why we built a different system. One designed specifically for banks ready to obliterate average.

This system aligns teams. It electrifies culture. And every move maps directly to profit.

The top 5% of banks use it. Religiously.

If you’re done play-acting with plans that gather dust, let’s fix it.
Book a strategy call now—and I’ll walk you through the exact framework high performers use to engineer results on demand.

The post The Strategic Planning Lie That’s Keeping You Average [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

Let me start with the harsh truth. Most banks don’t have a strategy. They have a list. They call it a strategic plan, but it’s really a hodgepodge of projects and tasks cobbled together at the end of Q4 in a room full of people nodding and checking phones. If that hits too close to home, don’t worry. You’re not alone. But you are vulnerable.

Here’s what separates the top five percent from the rest. They build operating systems, not checklists. Let me give you an example. One of our clients, a five-hundred-million-dollar community bank, came to us with a sixty-four-item strategic plan.

They were proud of it—until we started asking questions. Which of these actually moves margin? Where are the lead measures? How do these lead measures tie into your key initiatives?

Which are the KPIs most important? How do those tie to your target markets? What is the BHAG, and how is everything tying into the BHAG? There was no connection between the parts.

It was a hodgepodge of a tossed salad on a sheet of paper. And when I asked them questions about how they were gonna make that work—crickets.

What they had was first-order thinking.

“If we do more, we’ll grow more.” That’s not how high performance works. As the book Intelligent Thinking explains, first-order thinkers solve the immediate problem without thinking through the long-term or hidden implications.

Second-order thinkers ask, “What happens next?” and “How does this tie into everything else?” That’s the difference between adding digital signage and engineering a culture that improves deposit acquisition by forty percent.

Within six months of switching to our Breakthrough Planning System, that same bank improved their efficiency ratio by twelve points, increased their premium pricing without attrition, and tied every initiative to one of five core performance drivers. They installed weekly rhythms to measure and adjust on the fly. And this isn’t theoretical. It’s happening right now at banks across the country. The game-changers in banking are the ones who figured out that strategy is a living system—not a document gathering dust on a shelf.

Are you done mistaking activity for alignment? Are you tired of first-order thinking in your strategic plan that has no hope of actually creating the results—because you’ve tried it so many times before and it never has? Book a call, and let’s walk you through the planning system used by banks that are tripling cross-sales, growing NIM, and winning Banky Awards. Because more projects is not a strategy.

It’s a symptom of a problem.

The post The Strategic Planning Lie That’s Keeping Banks Mediocre [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

Every time I meet a new bank CEO, they say something very similar to what the three thousand-plus conversations I’ve had with bank CEOs sounded like. And what they say to me is this: “Roxanne, it’s different here.”

Here, we have to match rates. Here, we have competition for pricing. That’s just how it is here.

Now, I gotta tell you, I met two gentlemen years ago when they picked me up in their SUV. They were the CEO and the president of the bank, and we were about to do their kickoff.

The one said to me, “Roxanne, everybody complains that their deposit costs are high, but I can prove to you that we have the highest deposit cost in the nation.”

At which point, I stuck my fingers in my ears like a grown-up and I said, “I’m not listening. I’m not listening. I’m not listening.”

And I had a smile on my face. I was nice about it. They said, “Why are you doing that?”

And I said, “Because if your story becomes my story, I can’t help you.”

Markets do not dictate interest rates.

Let me say it again. The market doesn’t dictate the interest rates that you charge.

You dictate those through your differentiation and your ability to sell that differentiation.

If that were not the case, then every restaurant that has something other than the Golden Arches in front of it would be charging the same price as a McDonald’s hamburger.

It just isn’t that way, and yet in banking, we believe we’re the one great commodity that no one can break through.

Here’s the really sad part. Every time I hear a CFO or a chief lending officer say that to me, I should have always shorted the stock because I know that bank will lose its independence.

They’re right.

It is a commodity until you make it not a commodity.

So yes, in fact, they’re right. And there’s a whole other mountain of evidence, and you better get on that other mountain. You better get there fast because when you look at how we’ve moved from twenty thousand banks down to four thousand banks, we know where this is going.

The only banks that will be left will be the boutique banks that can command extreme premium pricing because they are worth it.

That’s the only game in town, and it’s a game you better master—and fast.

The post Why Premium Pricing Is a Leadership Decision—Not a Market Condition [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

Hi. I’m Roxanne Emmerich, Chair of the Institute for Extraordinary Banking and CEO of the Emmerich Group. In this episode, we’re talking about one of the biggest lies in banking strategy and how the game-changing banks are using second-order thinking to drive results their competitors can’t touch.

Let me start with the harsh truth. Most banks don’t have a strategy. They have a list. They call it a strategic plan, but it’s really a hodgepodge of projects and tasks cobbled together at the end of Q4 in a room full of people nodding and checking phones. If that hits too close to home, don’t worry. You’re not alone. But you are vulnerable.

Here’s what separates the top five percent from the rest. They build operating systems, not checklists. Let me give you an example. One of our clients, a five-hundred-million-dollar community bank, came to us with a sixty-four-item strategic plan.

They were proud of it—until we started asking questions. Which of these actually moves margin? Where are the lead measures? How do these lead measures tie into your key initiatives?

Which are the KPIs most important? How do those tie to your target markets? What is the BHAG, and how is everything tying into the BHAG? There was no connection between the parts.

It was a hodgepodge of a tossed salad on a sheet of paper. And when I asked them questions about how they were gonna make that work—crickets.

What they had was first-order thinking.

“If we do more, we’ll grow more.” That’s not how high performance works. As the book Intelligent Thinking explains, first-order thinkers solve the immediate problem without thinking through the long-term or hidden implications.

Second-order thinkers ask, “What happens next?” and “How does this tie into everything else?” That’s the difference between adding digital signage and engineering a culture that improves deposit acquisition by forty percent.

Within six months of switching to our Breakthrough Planning System, that same bank improved their efficiency ratio by twelve points, increased their premium pricing without attrition, and tied every initiative to one of five core performance drivers. They installed weekly rhythms to measure and adjust on the fly. And this isn’t theoretical. It’s happening right now at banks across the country. The game-changers in banking are the ones who figured out that strategy is a living system—not a document gathering dust on a shelf.

Are you done mistaking activity for alignment? Are you tired of first-order thinking in your strategic plan that has no hope of actually creating the results—because you’ve tried it so many times before and it never has? Book a call, and let’s walk you through the planning system used by banks that are tripling cross-sales, growing NIM, and winning Banky Awards. Because more projects is not a strategy.

It’s a symptom of a problem.

The post The Strategic Planning Lie That’s Keeping Banks Mediocre appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

I’m Roxanne Emmerich. I work with elite banks—the 5% who refuse mediocrity—to grow low-cost deposits, explode margin, and build cultures that crush complacency.

Today, we expose a lie so embedded in banking, it passes as truth:
Strategic planning works.

Wrong.

What most banks call “strategic planning” is a bloated to-do list—paper-shuffled theater with zero accountability, zero alignment, and zero impact. It feels productive. It looks impressive. It does nothing.

I asked my grad school professor—face to face—“Have you ever seen traditional strategic planning work?” He paused. Then admitted:
“Nope. Not really.”

Exactly.

That’s why we built a different system. One designed specifically for banks ready to obliterate average.

This system aligns teams. It electrifies culture. And every move maps directly to profit.

The top 5% of banks use it. Religiously.

If you’re done play-acting with plans that gather dust, let’s fix it.
Book a strategy call now—and I’ll walk you through the exact framework high performers use to engineer results on demand.

The post The Strategic Planning Lie That’s Keeping You Average appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

When a study published in Businessweek revealed they had asked 6,000 employees, “Do you perform in the top 10 percent?” more than 90 percent said they performed in the top 10 percent! Whoa.

So yes, you likely have a problem. And no, your people don’t really understand how they tie to profit—but they certainly think that they do. That’s a problem to be solved…quickly.

For so many banks, the efficiency ratio is an important metric. They usually try to lower their efficiency ratio with the wrong approaches. “Oh, let’s see if your pencil is short enough before you can have another pencil.” “Let’s cut the budget.” “Let’s cut payroll.”

The very things that are the investments in their profitable future are usually the things that get cut first.

What if instead, we improved the efficiency ratio by getting more revenue out of every team member? What if we get people to be far more effective and productive at what they’re doing?

What if we helped them accurately understand how they could create more profit from their jobs?

Buckle down. It’s tricky to get people to change their minds about what parts of their jobs and how those jobs are done drives profit when they’ve had a lifetime of experiences where they believe that they’re aligned to profit.

And yet, as a leadership team, nothing will be more important during challenging times than improving the profit per payroll dollar to create a performance culture at your bank.

Let’s face facts. It’s deadly for your bank’s culture to cut people just when you need the remaining team members to be engaged, alive, and passionate—doing better work than they’ve ever done before.

Now’s a good time to figure out how your people tie to profit.

Here are three questions you must bring to light:

Question 1: How do you build the visibility systems you need?

Question 2: How do you get them to embrace stage-appropriate accountability?

Question 3: How do you make sure you have the right KPIs and critical drivers?

Most bank accountability programs set metrics the executives hope will change things. One bank CEO after another has already abandoned that “metrics” board” and their consultants as a failed experiment—often their results plummeted after their new “accountability culture” rolled out.

Why? Shouldn’t it work to have a great dashboard? Seems obvious.

The problem is you can’t measure anything until the team members are winning. And your team members won’t win until you make sure they have an ongoing blended learning program of the right education designed to catapult their performance metrics. This type drives metrics quickly and sustainably. The learning needs to tie to a confidence-raising process that gets people to apply their new understandings.

That is the new game of banking. Suppose you look at the highest performing banks in America. In that case, they have one thing in common: their people know how they tie to profit, and they are inevitably extreme learning organizations.

The framework is that first they learn the right things…then they connect each person with their newfound knowledge to profit. That is the formula for success in the new game of high-performance banking.

Let me show you how to do it in just the right way.

– Roxanne Emmerich

Please watch the video above and share it with your exec team and board.

The post How to tie everyone to PROFIT [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

Some people believe that in politics, there is one side or the other, and they’re unwilling to look at the alternative. Still others believe that the moon is made of cheese.

You may have a belief system that’s true. You may have a belief system that’s not true. And the question that we have to look at as an executive is, “what has to be true for us to challenge what we believe to be true?”

You see, there are many beliefs within our industry right now, such as, in order to have a higher net interest margin you must have more risk.

Who made up that stupid rule?

Why would we be unlike any other industry whereby they can achieve a higher premium pricing by taking themselves out of the commodity approach that they had been using. Of course, that is possible, but not if we don’t believe it’s true.

Many people believe that loans are hard, that deposits are hard to get, that it’s hard to get premium pricing, that it’s hard to get the executives to follow the strategic plan and get everybody aligned with it, it’s hard to get everybody knowing how they tie to profit.

And when we believe that to be true, it leads us to the question, “what do you have to do to challenge your beliefs and be open to a new set of beliefs?” Because that is what we, as executives, must do in order to stay on top of the pile.

– Roxanne Emmerich

Please watch the video above and share it with your exec team and board.

The post Who Made Up That Rule? [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

Why Accountability Efforts Fail

First, one big mistake organizations make is bringing in brand-new training, then immediately holding everyone accountable—before they’ve had any time to develop mastery. The result? Good people start thinking, I’m never going to get this, and they run for the door. You lose your best talent before they even have a chance to grow.

But that’s not even the biggest issue. The real problem? This silent agreement: I won’t call you out if you don’t call me out.

Friends Don’t Let Friends Fail

We all know the saying: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. Well, here’s another truth—Friends don’t let friends underperform at work.

Why? Because when deadlines are missed or results don’t happen, there are consequences. Someone doesn’t get a raise. Someone gets fired. And when we stay silent, we’re actually hurting the very people we care about.

And yet, in so many organizations, there’s this lingering ghost—the unspoken rule of This is just how we do things here. Being “nice” becomes an excuse for avoiding hard conversations. But real accountability doesn’t have to be harsh—it just has to be consistent.

Holding People Accountable—The Right Way

It can be as simple as this:

“Hey, Joe. This is the third week this has been on your list. I need this done by Wednesday at 11 AM. What do you need to make that happen? What roadblocks need to be moved?”

It’s a direct, no-nonsense way of saying, I care about you, and I’m not going to let you keep making empty promises without following through. Accountability isn’t about being mean—it’s about helping people show up as their best selves.

The Hidden Hiring Mistake That Kills Accountability

One of the biggest accountability killers? A deep need for approval.

If you’re hiring people who will do anything to avoid confrontation, you’re creating a culture where problems go unspoken—and that silence becomes the real issue.

For those of you using emotional intelligence assessments, watch for high intuition and empathy scores. If you’re building an executive team, aim for an average of six to seven on those traits. That’s the sweet spot—people who care about relationships but are still willing to have tough conversations.

Accountability with Kindness and Love

At the end of the day, accountability isn’t about being harsh—it’s about helping people succeed. And when it’s done with kindness and consistency, it changes everything.

Roxanne Emmerich 

Please watch the video above and share it with your exec team and board. 

The post Accountabilibuddies: The Power of Mutual Accountability [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

On pages 58 and 59, the author introduces a powerful concept: first-order thinking versus second-order thinking. As an executive, understanding this distinction is critical—not just for yourself but for helping your team evolve their thinking as well.

Here’s how he defines it:

First-order thinkers look for simple, easy, and defendable solutions. But the reality is, the world we operate in isn’t simple. It’s a complex web of variables, interactions, and shifting factors happening all at once.

A classic example? We need sales. Let’s get sales training. Or We need to improve deposits. Let’s hire a new head of retail. That’s first-order thinking. Does that work? Maybe 1% of the time—if you’re lucky.

Second-order thinkers don’t stop at the obvious. They push beyond the surface and examine deeper layers, considering second, third, and even further levels of consequences. They ask questions like:

• What factors are truly at play in this problem?
• How do these factors interact?
• What are the different possible consequences of each action?
• How can we leverage these insights to accelerate solutions?

Charlie Munger sums it up best: Second-order thinking is not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid. Gotta love Charlie Munger, right? One of the sharpest business minds of our time.

So why does this matter so much for bank executives right now? Because in the world of AI, if second-order thinking isn’t guiding the strategy, you’ll end up with a lot of wasted activity moving in the wrong direction. First-order thinking might feel like progress, but when it backfires—and it will—you’ll be left scrambling.

The industry is at a crossroads, and time is running out to shift the level of thinking. This isn’t about rolling out another training program—because training just teaches people what to do. It’s like training monkeys to follow steps.

Education, on the other hand, teaches people how to think. How to dive deep, challenge assumptions, and move beyond pedestrian solutions to real, strategic problem-solving that doesn’t just fix issues—it unlocks opportunities.

So, stick with me as we dig into how to get your team ready for the new world of AI—especially when they’re resisting, pushing back, and clinging to the past. Because let’s be honest: their old jobs aren’t going to exist the way they used to. It’s time to move forward.

Welcome to the world of second-order thinking.

Roxanne Emmerich 

Please watch the video above and share it with your exec team and board. 

The post Second Order Thinking—No More ‘Pedestrian Thinking’ [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.