FOND DU LAC, Wis.–Diversity, internal entrepreneurship, and meeting the needs of Millennial workers have all become popular concepts as this century’s second decade continues. But what do those concepts mean?
Below, Chad Raube, CEO of Info-Pro Lender Services, responds to questions related to those issues and others as posed by CUToday.info:
CUToday.info: Most companies and leaders took some hard-earned lessons away from the recession. What lessons did you learn, and how do they influence your decision-making today, if that is the case?
Raube: The recession validated many of our operating principles, which helped us successfully navigate this challenging period and today anchors our current expansion and growth. One of our key principles is the importance of sustainable and profitable growth.
Info-Pro has always prioritized profitable growth, not simply driving top line revenue, by ensuring the services we offer are fair yet profitable and critically represent a win-win proposition for our customers. Following this principle means we are able to ensure that our ability to deliver outstanding service to our customers during good times and bad times, providing them with peace of mind. It also ensures we make promises and commitments to customers that we can keep and honor.
As a privately-owned company with a long-term vision, and not looking to be sold for a quick profit or to meet quarterly Wall Street earning expectations, our shareholders provide management with the flexibility to grow profitability and at a pace that guarantees the winning customer experience that has been the foundation for our past success is not compromised for short term gain. As such, we are able to continually delight our customers and that had great benefits for us during the recession as our customers remained loyal to us, and today as our business robustly expands across North America, we are able to reward the loyalty of our customers by continually providing them with the market leading service.
CUToday.info: Diversity has been receiving increasing attention. What are your views on the issue, and have you taken any steps to increase diversity within the organization?
Raube: Diversity in the workplace is an important consideration to our future business success because the world as we’ve known it has changed and will continue to do so, impacting our own business and that of the customers we serve. Whether it be physical, cultural or socio-economic diversity, when people feel respected they are better able to realize their full potential and make meaningful contributions to the workplace. At Info-Pro, we embrace diversity and the benefits that it can support, such as creating diverse teams with broader perspectives, which facilitates innovation that can create increased value for our customers.
CUToday.info: The concept of ‘internal entrepreneurship’ within companies has become fashionable. What does it mean to you, if anything, and is it something you have sought to put into practice, and how?
Raube: Entrepreneurship has always been at the heart of what Info-Pro is about, going back to its inception 20 years ago by entrepreneur Louie Andrew. Classically, entrepreneurship is often thought of as starting a new business. From my perspective, having previously been an entrepreneur and invested in entrepreneurs as a venture capitalist, internal entrepreneurship can be about starting a new business unit or product, but more broadly it is about “innovation.” By innovation, I mean how a person within our organization can take direct responsibility for turning an idea into a product, process or capability that creates value either through increasing revenue or improving operational efficiency. Fostering such internal entrepreneurship is therefore critical to our current and future success and it unlocks individual creativity for the benefit of the wider organization. We have supported entrepreneurship at Info-Pro in a variety of ways, most notably training the organization around the use of AGILE and LEAN start-up processes and principles, which help to frame and marshal the entrepreneurial energy of the talented colleagues in our organization.
CUToday.info: Have you made any adjustments to your employment practices/work culture to be more enticing to younger workers, or to retain the staff you already have? If so, what have you done?
Raube: Info-Pro embraces the emerging workforce, and greatly values the contributions of millennials who comprise over 30% our team and bring some wonderful skills and attributes to our company. As such we have introduced some strategies that resonate with all of our employees, but are also particularly well received by millennials.
For example, inspired by our founder Louie Andrew, we have created a very family friendly culture that offers flexibility to all of our team and this resonates with younger workers. We also invest significantly in employee development and continuing education which is important to the emerging workforce. Finally, we recognize that millennials feel accountable for many issues in both the workplace and the wider world. However, it is primarily in and via the workplace that they feel most able to make an impact. Opportunities to be involved with “good causes” at the local level, many of which are enabled by employers, provide millennials with a greater feeling of influence, so at Info-Pro we have established many opportunities to “give back” to the community and even provide flex-hours employees can use for community services.
These strategies are a snapshot of the how at Info-Pro we try to approach millennials in a way that engages them on an emotional and behavioral level so that they feel truly connected to our organization.
CUToday.info: As a leader, your goal(s) in 2017 is/are what, and do you ever turn to a coach(s)?
Raube: As a person in a leadership position, my goal is to serve others, and it is a privilege and honor to do so. The main constituencies I focus on serving are our customers, our employees, who I prefer to think of as colleagues, and our shareholders.
Serving our customers is the foundation of Info-Pro’s success, and we measure how good we are at doing this by measuring the Net Promoter Score of our customers. In 2016, Info-Pro’s NPS score was 80, placing it amongst the market leaders across all industries, yet we have strategies in place to further improve upon this world class score in 2017 as we recognize the service we provide to our lenders is an extension of the customer experience they themselves deliver. I am blessed to work with a dedicated and talented team at Info-Pro and in 2017 my goal is to continually create an environment in which they are fully engaged, providing them with the resources, tools and support that helps them to unlock and fully realize their passion for delighting our customers.
Finally, a goal and measure of any successful business, is shareholder value creation, and my priority is to consistently and sustainably grow our profits as we continue to establish ourselves as a national challenger brand, not defined as being the largest player in our industry, but rather as the strategic partner to lenders that sets the benchmark for excellence in the services we deliver.
Based on our rapid customer growth, customer loyalty, and how we fair when we go head to head with competitors, we are doing terrific job at this and in 2017 we aspire to deliver our best year ever in terms of customer and profitability growth. We have very ambitious goals at Info-Pro and coaching can help our team to realize those goals.
Throughout my career, I have found value in coaching and I encourage and make coaching resources available to my team as on-going professional development is important in supporting an engaged and high performing team.