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How Top 5% Community Banks Build, and Sustain, Elite Performance[VIDEO]

by | Differentiation, Effective Leadership, High Performance, Profitability and Growth

Elite performance is rarely a talent problem. More often, it is a practice problem.

Years ago, a 10-year-old piano prodigy delivered a performance that seemed almost impossible. The real revelation came afterward: while joking with friends and eating chocolate, his fingers kept practicing notes on an iPad. He was always in the game.

That same discipline separates average banks from institutions that reach—and stay in—the top 5%.

In this week’s video, you’ll discover:

  • Why exceptional performance is built through repeated, intentional behaviors, not occasional bursts of effort.
  • How top-performing banks sharpen the craft of delivering extreme customer value while earning premium pricing.
  • Why studying proven elite performers can shorten the path from “good” to top-5% performance.

The strongest banks were not always elite. They built systems, practiced the right behaviors, and kept refining them through favorable markets, difficult markets, and disruption. That discipline becomes a strategic advantage competitors cannot easily copy.

If your bank is serious about moving into the top tier, and staying there, watch this week’s video and consider what your team is practicing every single day.

Watch the video now. 

Several years ago, I was invited to a friend’s house to help raise some money for a ten-year-old boy who was identified as someone who would probably be the best pianist in the world.

Because of his current abilities that were so far beyond what anybody—and this guy who was helping him had had many students through Juilliard—it was determined that this kid had some superpowers. But they said he will not be able to develop those superpowers unless he gets special training early in his life. And that’s what the fundraiser was for.

What I found most shocking was the young man did a concert, and I practically fell out of my chair watching this, thinking, I can’t even believe that a human could play like this, much less a ten-year-old. What could possibly have inspired this young man to be able to play the piano like this?

And then I learned a lesson. As he stepped away from the piano, he became a ten-year-old. He’s running around, he’s eating chocolate, he’s having a good time, he’s telling knock-knock jokes, and the whole time he’s playing with other friends, he has his iPad in his hand and he’s playing notes on his iPad.

He is practicing while he’s having conversations. He is practicing while he’s doing other things. His fingers never stopped going into that mode. He was always in the game.

I wonder if there’s something to be said for practice done to create exceptional behaviors, which creates exceptional performance. I gotta believe there’s something to that.

Sadly, in our industry, there aren’t enough people talking about this, there aren’t enough conversations, and there certainly aren’t nearly enough masters for them to study with to really get to be good at the craft of, “How do we bring extreme value to our customers in a way that we get to receive extreme pricing as well?”

Well, there are great opportunities when we figure this out. And I gotta believe that the banks that survive in the future are those who do figure it out. And so, it can be done. The question is, where do you get to go study with the elite best banks in the country and find out what they’re doing?

I bet you’re going to enjoy the panels at this year’s Best Banks in America Super Conference because, here’s the thing: they weren’t always some of the best banks in America in terms of performance. They just learned some things, and they kept their fingers on the keyboard, and they figured these things out.

And through the right practice of doing the right things that they did not understand before they started coming to the conference, they now are amongst the elite. And if they can do it, you can do it.

But most important, to get to the elite is one thing; to stay there is another. You’ll be hearing from people who have been elite performers for over a decade. Yeah, game on. That means during good times and bad times and disruptive times, they created a system that allowed for them to stay in the very top of performance.

And if they can do it, so can you. I hope you join the rest of them and get to learn from some of the other masters in the industry from the only conference that’s put on every year just for those who want to get to and stay in the top five percent of performers. Hope I see you there.

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