An organization’s core values act as guides of conduct for those within the organization. Tough decisions requiring good judgment come up often in any industry, but we at Astra Bank believe that our responsibility to our communities puts us in an important and special position. Community banks are a reflection of the community they are connected to and that is why Astra Bank’s commitment to our communities runs deep. It is also why our mission statement and core values play such in integral role in our decision making process.

Updating the Values

Kyle A. Campbell, President and CEO of Astra Bank, recently worked with many Astra Bank team members to re-evaluate the current mission statement and core values. It was decided to update them to better fit just how Astra Bank can do good for its customers and communities.

Campbell believed it was a good time to give them an update, explaining:

“Astra Bank originally developed its mission statement and core values just over a decade ago.  Much has changed since that effort, so I felt it was appropriate to ensure that our mission statement and core values really resonated with our team today.  Based on the initial feedback that I have received from Astra Bank team members, it appears that we have accomplished our goal.  This feedback has indicated that while the intent and meaning of Astra Bank’s mission statement and core values are unchanged, the updates to the mission statement and core values make them much clearer and more useful within the day-to-day responsibilities of all of our team members.”

Astra Bank’s mission statement is central to the work done on a daily basis and directs all of our employees towards a single outcome. Fulfilling dreams remains the focus of Astra Bank, but the mission statement has been updated to reflect just how we accomplish that task:

Mission Statement

We provide dependable financial advice and service that helps others fulfill their dreams!

This mission is a worthy endeavor and one that is bolstered by our core values, which have been updated as well:

Core Values

Do The Right Thing
For everyone. Every time.

People First
Always build lasting relationships that are beneficial.

No Hypocrisy
Our words and our actions align perfectly.

Earn Trust
Be open, transparent, and accountable – even when it’s uncomfortable.

Teamwork
We are at our best when we combine all of our individual efforts.

Flexibility
“The way we’ve always done it,” doesn’t automatically make it the right thing to do.

Through conscious effort to work with these values in mind, each Astra Bank employee can work towards fulfilling others’ dreams by providing dependable financial advice and service. The action may differ according to the role of a specific employee, but each of the values can be applied to every decision that needs to be made.

The Process

While Astra Bank’s prior values had the right intent, the goal of updating them was to narrow down the broad-reaching values to make more sense in the everyday work of our team members. For Campbell, this goal was a large factor in deciding the new statement and values:

“The process involved input being solicited from many of Astra Bank’s team members as to how the prior mission statement and core values could be updated in a manner that would make them more effective as a guide and reference for our team.  It was very exciting to go through this process and see how our team felt a strong ownership for the mission statement and core values, in that they didn’t want these items to change, but they simply wanted them to be updated in a manner that would enable them to be more useful on an everyday basis.”

The strength of Astra Bank’s core values is how well they act as defining guides of conduct, and we believe that our new values succeed in that regard.

Serving Our Communities

The ultimate hope of these changes is that they will positively impact Astra Bank’s employees and its customers/communities. According to Campbell, “It is the desire of everyone involved in this process that these updates lead to an improved level of commitment and service to our communities.”

Astra Bank has always been committed to its communities and the people within them. We believe that a flourishing community is built by families and businesses working to fulfill their dreams and our mission statement reflects this sentiment. While the dream of each person within a community may be different, Astra Bank hopes to be the foundation upon which that dream is realized, through our dependable financial advice and service.

Campbell concludes this line of thinking, explaining, “We hope that the excitement that these changes have generated internally results in an even more outstanding experience as people work with Astra Bank to turn their dreams into a fulfilled reality.”