Pub. 3 2013 Issue 2

14 www.azbankers.org president, and that is going away. There are only so many hours in a day—even considering how much night and weekend work he and other community bankers do—and the inunda- tion of regulation makes it impossible for a CEO to know what a more specialized employee does. “I sometimes feel a little guilty at conferences, when some- one asks me how we handle this or that,” says Siebenmorgen. “I don’t have the foggiest . Once upon a time, I could have told you exactly , but I can’t anymore. We have people who do these tasks. It becomes a matter of knowing whom you can trust.” In fact, Siebenmorgen finds his time at such a premium that he has done things he once would have thought unthinkable, such as skipping a loan committee meeting. Formerly, he routinely sat in. “I’m sort of nosy,” he admits. But time pressures made him reconsider. “I’ve got a lot of pretty good credit people, a seasoned lend- ing force, and I’ve got a senior loan officer,” Siebenmorgen explains. “I find myself looking at the agendas ahead of time more, and sometimes I realize there’s nothing there I want to sit in on. And so, I’ll spend the hour doing something else.” (He notes that he does read the loan files before they arrive at the committee, “at night, at home.”) Meetings have long been the bane of banking, one of the “meetingest” industries. And not every member of this roundtable discussion agreed with Siebenmorgen’s idea about skipping loan committee meetings. “It’s not that the meetings are a waste of time, it’s that many meetings go far too long ,” says MidWestOneBank’s Funk. “Many meetings could start and finish in 30 minutes, but they run 75. That’s management’s problem. We’ve got to jump in and tell people to aim for productive meetings.” Indeed, Siebenmorgen says he’s come to the point where, once his reason for being in a meeting has been accomplished, he leaves. Sometimes, he adds, “I’ll get up thinking that the meeting is going to go another hour or so. But I’ll look around and see everybody else wondering why the meeting still has to go on when I’m leaving. And that tells me it was scheduled for too long to begin with.” A key aid for keeping meetings shorter and on point at Com- munity National Bank, Waterloo, Iowa, is Market President Stacey Bentley’s insistence on a prepared agenda. If there’s no agenda, “we do not have the meeting,” she says, and that has cut down a lot on time drain at the $228.4 million-assets bank. And when the meeting is held, the agenda focuses efforts. Open doors, and shut ones The quintessential community bank president was like a local Harry Truman—the buck stopped at his or her desk, and Q Banker — continued from page 12 Tips for Survival Roundtable bankers shared ideas on getting through the day and, in particular, email: • Dispense with the pleasantries. “One of my biggest time wasters is emails—the unnecessary ones or the ‘Okay, thanks’ kind. Just be done with it. We need some kind of email etiquette or something,” says Stacey Bentley of Community National Bank, Waterloo, Iowa. • Three strikes and you’re out. Paul Siebenmorgen of Archbold, Ohio-based Farmers and Merchants State Bank, has a rule: Send garbage three times and you go on the spam list. • Ignore it; it’ll be there later. Several bankers set specific times of day when they do not check email, and concentrate on other tasks. • Don’t “meet” by email. Laurie Beard of Founders Bank & Trust (Grand Rapids, Mich.) objects to people who carbon copy others into an email conversation when she initiated it. “This not seeing each other and meeting face to face drives me nuts.” • Watch your attitude. “It’s easy to get depressed about all you have to deal with, and feel as if you had the weight of the world on your shoulders. But step back sometimes and remind yourself that it is a privilege to be able to lead a company like a community bank. Many people work hard through their careers and never have such opportunity,” points out Jim Edwards of United Bank, Zebulon, Ga. Corporate Governance and…Google? When fresh data from the web is as close as your di- rector’s iPad or laptop—which the bank may have paid for—loan discussions may take on added dimensions. This is just one of the ways the dynamic of the community-bank boardroom is changing. The bankers participating in this roundtable also discussed this evolution, which you can read in a sample copy of ABA Bank Directors Briefing. Go to www.ababj.com/BDBsample to register and download a sample and order form. Z