Q&A:
An Extraordinary Cultural Journey
As a company commited to consistently delivering extraordinary customer
service, Sterling National Bank develops new Execute Extraordinary program.
Q: Why was Sterling National
Bank’s Execute Extraordinary
program created?
Q: What are the building blocks
of the Execute Extraordinary
initiative?
This is a performance-oriented program
designed to ensure that the organization
continues to meet the needs of all of
our stakeholders. Sterling continues
to experience rapid growth and an
expansion of capabilities. In order to
continue to fuel that growth, to meet or
exceed our clients expectations, and to
always provide the best products and
solutions, it is vital that we continue to
deliver exceptionally high quality in all
that we do. We do this by systematically
defining and measuring quality, setting
a high bar as to what excellence
is, and inspiring top performance.
Fundamentally, Execute Extraordinary
is a commitment to perform
extraordinarily with every client, every
day, and at every opportunity.
If we are going to continue to be a
high-performing bank—one that delivers
an exceptional client experience—it’s of
the utmost importance that we understand
our clients’ needs and wants. Thus, the first
component is Client Focus. At the core of
this is really listening to and learning about
our clients. We are now in the execution
stage of research to understand the voice
of the client. Beyond that, we’re also going
to be working closely with our clients by
participating in shadow programs in order
to get a greater sense of how we can
improve their banking experience.
The second component is our Culture.
At the core of Execute Extraordinary
are the colleagues of Sterling, the values
that guide them, and the competencies
that enable them to deliver quality products and services. We are focused on
continually developing, recognizing, and
rewarding the attributes that drive our
culture. We also focus our efforts on the
attributes we want our clients to associate
with Sterling: products and services that
are simple, intelligent, sophisticated, and
trustworthy.
The third component is Business Process
Optimization, or BPO. Using a world-class
BPO methodology, we follow a systematic
quantitative approach to continuously
improving and managing the many business processes that define our business
operations. We train our colleagues to look
at these processes though a critical lens—
to analyze and improve them—so we can
deliver a consistent high-quality of service.
Q: How do you ask your
employees to Execute
Extraordinary on a
consistent basis?
First of all, we make it clear that this is not
a program with a beginning and an end.
It is an ongoing journey—one that will
define Sterling’s way of thinking, acting,
and working now and into the future.
We have a talented and dedicated
team at Sterling. They’ve embraced
the importance of our brand promise—
Expect Extraordinary—and they’re
committed to delivering on it. So really,
the program is a means to that end. It
provides resources and removes barriers
to empower our colleagues to improve
processes and create efficiencies.
To get them thinking, we challenged
everyone in the organization to ask: What
am I doing? How am I doing it? And, what
value does this bring to the client?
By getting colleagues to evaluate their
daily processes, we improve efficiencies,
reduce risk, eliminate errors, and boost
quality, each of which allows us to deliver a
better overall client experience.
2 | SNB.COM // CONNECT CULTURE WINTER 2016
Q: What are some of the initiatives you have launched to illustrate your culture of excellence?
Our initiatives range in focus and
complexity, but together they are driving
growth for the company and have given
our colleagues a fresh perspective and
have inspired enthusiasm and excitement.
We began with an enterprise-wide
campaign
to introduce
Chief Operating Officer
the Execute
Sterling National Bank
Extraordinary
program.
From this introduction we have kept
momentum going by continually sharing
success stories of employees and
departments that are demonstrating
Execute Extraordinary. Examples range
from delighting clients by going above
and beyond their expectations, to innovative new approaches, to outstanding
process execution.
We’ve also conducted bank-wide
training of all colleagues on the
principles and techniques of Lean Six
Sigma, our chosen BPO methodology.
We recently rolled out the Sterling
Standards of Service, which is a
comprehensive set of professional
expectations in delivering exceptional
service so that all colleagues have the
same clear and measurable standards by
which we operate.
We’ve also recently launched the Idea
Lab, an idea generation platform. What
makes this program interesting is that it not
only captures new innovative ideas, but it
also leverages contemporary practices in
collaboration across the organization to
collectively solve problems and build new
ideas though an online community.
Finally, we updated our recognition
programs to provide colleagues and
managers with tools to recognize individuals demonstrating the principles of
Execute Extraordinary. An example of one
such form of recognition is the Execute
Extraordinary