HOW JEFF JUDY & ASSOCIATES CAN HELP

If you know you need to address your culture, here's a quick summary of services that can help.

If you already know you need help, but perhaps are not sure of where to begin, here's a quick summary of the information in this section and of the consulting services I offer:

• Culture Education: all of the pages in this section are devoted to building awareness of the very real impact your culture has on your business success. For a quick overview of suggested readings (including my white paper on culture), visit the White Paper/Readings page.
• Culture Assessment: assessment services are often the first step my clients take to start improving their cultures. Assess Your Culture describes my approach and assessment services, and offers downloadable documents you can use to decide whether to assess your culture, and to request a quote for services..
• Communication Skills: you have already tried to make sure that everyone in the organization has the same vision, values, standards, and preferred practices -- that "how we do things around here" means the same thing in every location, every department, every level on the org chart. If that has not worked for you, you may benefit from an outside perspective on your communication patterns, and some coaching on ways to improve communication effectiveness. See Making Communication Work for the standard communication coaching packages we offer, packages that offer savings when combined with my assessment services.
• Core Banking Practices Training: reinforcing preferred practices can play a significant role in bringing common approaches to everyone in the organization, particularly when it comes to the all-important credit function. For instance, if your institution has recently experienced mergers or acquisitions, different units are likely to have different histories and different theories of how things should be done. Review my Training Services to see some of the topics I cover, especially commercial lending basics that may need reinforcement to produce a unified, "tight" culture.
• Credit Policy and Process: as the business plan for your credit business, your credit policy is one of the anchors of your culture. In the current environment, credit policies are getting more scrutiny than ever. Learn more about the proper role of credit policy, and about my white paper, "Is Your Credit Policy Working for You?" on the Credit Policy & Process page.
• Risk Management Practices: culture plays an important role not only in gathering and analyzing portfolio data that drive financial decisions, it is a crucial element in enabling a nimble response to the results of those analyses. See Risk Management & Culture for a more about that relationship.

If you need more information, or have specific or unique needs that are not fully addressed by what you have read here -- or if you are simply ready to get started -- please contact me to begin "tightening" your culture to gain the competitive advantage you seek.

Remember, culture really does matter ... and it is not going to change, at least not for the better, by itself.