CUES Advanced Management Program
From Cornell University

Organizations that instill a clear vision and an effective business strategy at all levels are far more likely to succeed in our increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. But before you can effectively define and impart your vision and business strategy to your organization, you must analyze and have a comprehensive understanding of the various facets of your operating environment. In this course, you will explore effective ways to achieve these goals with General George W. Casey, Jr. You will objectively assess the three critical dimensions of your operating environment (internal, external, and competitive) using the VUCA index so you can identify potential vulnerabilities and opportunities for your organization. You will then identify the characteristics of an effective vision statement and outline a clear vision for your organization. Finally, you will outline a plan to instill your vision and business strategy in your organization.

Key Takeaways

• Leverage a framework for understanding your operating environment to develop a vision and strategy to propel your credit union forward

• Avoid making judgments on incomplete information

• Construct an effective vision statement

• Develop a strategy to accomplish the organizational vision

• Develop a clear and succinct communications plan to implement your strategy

Led by General George W. Casey, JCB

Every organization’s finance function keeps detailed records of the daily transactions involved in running the organization. Periodically, they create reports that allow management, stakeholders and regulating authorities to have insight into the financial health of the organization. As a manager, you need to understand both the metrics that are reported in income statement, balance sheets, and cash flow statements, and how they relate to each other. You also need to understand how comparing numbers across your company, the industry, and from year to year, can help you assess the overall financial performance of the firm.

The in-depth review of sample case studies in this course will provide you with the tools you need to examine your own organization’s reports. As you make budgeting and investment decisions, your knowledge of how vital financial markers indicate relative health in the organization will help drive initiatives to meet your company’s financial goals.

Key Takeaways

• Understand the structure of the three principal financial statements: the income statement, the balance sheet, and the cash flow statement, and interpret the information found in these statements

• Identify online sources of financial information that can be used to conduct research on other publicly traded firms and industries

Led by Steve Carvell, SHA

Date & Time TBD

During this live session, the participants will connect with the faculty to go deeper into the key metrics and mindsets that a CFO links toward in the organization. For this session, the faculty will discuss some of the financial linkages that senior leaders need to be aware of to build understanding of the financial levers and strategies within their organization. We will also include credit union specific examples of the type of financial metrics that could be utilized to build dashboards and financial awareness of the organization’s performance. 

Led by Drew Pascarella, JCB

September 18–October 1, 2024 

Processes are the building blocks that define everyday operations in all organizations. Organizations run on processes, so the work of analyzing a department, a team, or even the entire organization starts with an analysis of the underlying processes.

In this course, you will analyze processes where the input and processing rates are fixed and have no variability. You will investigate the basic tools of process analysis, starting with the process flow diagram and ending with the performance measures of the process. You will create a flow diagram of a system or process in your own organization. Finally, you will identify and quantify the effects of the bottlenecks in that system or process and propose strategies to manage them.

Key Takeaways

• Create a process flow diagram that represents a process in your organization
• Identify the bottleneck in a process or system and quantify its effects
• Propose solutions to manage identified bottlenecks

Led by Natalia Santamaría, Visiting Senior Lecturer, Cornell College of Human Ecology

Date & Time TBD

For this live session, professor Vishal Gaur will give an overview of how operations connects to the strategic alignment of the organization. He will share tools and techniques to grow the COO mindset of a leader in thinking about the operational and supply chain side of the organization’s strategy. He will then conduct a breakout session to give credit union leaders the opportunity to share some of the key operational ideas and metrics that can impact the strategic goals of a credit union regarding day-to-day operations and expansion. 

Led by Visal Gaur

Date & Time TBD

This session provides a clear overview of the digital marketing world. Discover how players such as ad networks, demand-side platforms and data management platforms interact with advertisers, agencies and publishers. Then learn how to use time-proven frameworks to assess your customers' needs and identify your primary marketing objectives. Once you've put that all together, you'll learn how to evaluate the performance of digital marketing campaigns.

Led by Chekitan Dev, SHA

November 13–26, 2024

As new digital technologies become embedded in business operations, there are more questions than answers for many leaders. How can you harness the power of digital technologies to help your credit union thrive without falling into pitfalls along the way?

In this course, you will gain a foundation in a number of technological advances. You will start by discussing ways that technologies can improve your personal and professional life, including ways to produce work more smoothly, quickly, and effectively. You will also explore ways that technologies fail to deliver on promised results and access methods to prepare your team to benefit from digital technologies. By the end of this course, you will understand ways to harness the opportunities and avoid the pitfalls of digital technologies.

Key Takeaways

• Understand advances in digital technology
• Assess examples of digital technologies that have had positive impacts and relate them to an opportunity mode
•  Assess examples of digital technologies that have had negative impacts and relate them to a failure mode
• Determine the readiness of you and your team members to benefit from digital technology

Led by Karan Girota, Cornell Tech

Date & Time TBD

The CIO at the credit union no longer is solely responsible for maintaining technology and making the organization’s systems faster. Today the CIO plays a critical role in shifting the credit union toward a more flexible, modular system that allows it to roll out and change services at a previously unthinkable pace. They help create flexible, member-centric features off of nimble, cloud-based platforms that can be enhanced quickly and continuously. The CIO enables even modest-sized organizations keep up with the rapid pace of change in Fintechs. 

In this session, you will learn best practices for gathering and using member data to shape services, improve member experience, and enhance engagement.

Led by Karan Girota, Cornell Tech

Date & Time TBD

In this session you will examine the critical relationship between the CRO and legal counsel and how best to establish an effective relationship with both in-house and external counsel and how to work with legal professionals to navigate legal obstacles and accomplish business goals

Led by Mark Underberg

February 12–25, 2025

Leaders are responsible for encouraging the highest possible performance from their employees.  Most leaders recognize that motivation is a key driver of high performance. Few leaders are skilled at choosing the right combination of approaches and tools to motivate all of their people. Not all individuals are motivated by the same things, and some might be demotivated by the same conditions or incentives that motivate others. This session prepares you to analyze performance problems and assess whether they actually can be attributed to a lack of motivation or to one of several other root causes.

You will learn how to increase the factors that do motivate people and improve workplace performance. You will also use the three primary drivers of human motivation to foster better performance on the job.

Key Takeaways

• Identify your personal primary driver for motivation
• Conduct a root-cause analysis for an individual with performance gaps  
• Evaluate factors that undermine employee motivation and engagement in your organization
• Use the three critical primary motivation drivers to tailor your approach to motivation
• Enhance the conditions for an individual that make optimal use of that person’s key motivation driver

Led by Elizabeth McLean

Date & Time TBD

During this session, the focus will be on the human capital development area of the organization’s strategy. One of the key elements of successful leaders is their ability to recruit, retain and develop their talent. The session will focus on the tools and techniques that leaders need to deploy to develop their talent and to position the organization’s teams to be high performing. The faculty will share techniques to increase engagement and innovation within the organization linked to team leadership. 

Led by Risa M. Mish, Johnson School of Management

Date & Time TBD

For this final session and wrap, the faculty will introduce tools and techniques on how to pull all the skills and techniques the participants have learned during the program to drive change. The faculty will discuss how to experiment individually and organizationally to drive change and how to potentially overcome some of the initial barriers to change that may present themselves when you are trying new things. We will wrap up this session with a virtual graduation ceremony from the program. 

Led by Allan Filipowicz