#42: How to Grow Your Team Without Adding Staff

Let's say you can't “add to staff” given resource constraints and you have to remain a mighty team of one doing “all of the things.” Sometimes you might feel like throwing in the towel…but not so fast! I have a few ideas for you. One common option is to engage with your line of business (LOB) management and team members to expand your internal CRA resources. You'll have to engage and inspire your LOB team members to get involved. This takes a while and requires you to build a culture of compliance throughout your institution. As you know, CRA is not a one-man job; instead, it’s done by many in the best case scenario. So, here's what you would do. First, you would ask your small business LOB to play more of a leadership role in ensuring the accuracy of their small business data, as that is a best practice in similarly situated financial institutions. You could also talk with the home mortgage group and have them extract their data, scrub it, and then import it into your CRA proprietary database. You can also inspire your commercial lenders to identify community development loans at origination, so that you spend less time mining for them at the back end.You can meet with marketing and inspire them to identify community development, volunteer activities upfront, so that you’re always ahead of the curve. You can set a goal for your investments and treasury divisions to identify some community development investments as part of their portfolio, and then they can report that activity to you. We know that there's always such pressure on the finite resources within our banks. If you have to be an officer of one, a CRA program of one, I'd inspire you to take baby steps, to start inspiring executive management, to get your lines of businesses together in order to support your CRA program. For every dollar your bank makes, there is a commensurate cost of compliance. So, you have to build your case and slowly you can move the mark and ask for more help. Now you have to be mindful of their resource constraints as well, right? That's why it takes a while to really get the support that you need from your lines of businesses. So build a case, get executive management involved and try to lead your program with more support from the lines of businesses. CRA Today helps bankers master the Community Reinvestment Act, get exam ready, and change lives through the power of community development.Want to learn the CRA basics? Sign up for CRA Essentials Live! A live webinar with Linda Ezuka that shares everything you need to create a solid foundation for your CRA journey. https://hub.cratoday.com/freewebinarReady to take a deeper dive into the CRA? Join your fellow CRA enthusiasts in the CRA Hub as we navigate regulatory change, study core CRA concepts and connect as community development professionals across the nation.https://cratoday.com/hub/Are you understating your lending performance? Learn the 5 Foundational Steps to Building an Outstanding Community Development Loan Portfolio with an on-demand training workshop.https://cratoday.com/blueprint/CRA Today Website: https://cratoday.com/ Linda Ezuka, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-ezuka-cra-today/Copyright © 2021 by CRA Today LLC(No claim to original U.S. government material)All rights reserved. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author and publisher.This podcast is a periodic publication of CRA Today LLC and is intended to notify and inspire recipients of new developments in the Community Reinvestment Act. It should not be construed as legal advice or legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general informational purposes only, and you are urged to consult your own attorney concerning your situation and specific legal questions you have.Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm