Assets: $1.3 billion

Members: 117,000

Anticipated Goal Win for 2016: Membership growth of at least 3%.

Goal-Setting Advice: Don't wait until Q4 to start making financial goals for next year.

The fourth quarter is a traditional time to begin focusing on goal-setting for the coming year, but not so for Altura Credit Union. It launches its annual goal-setting process in the spring.

"We really start early," EVP and COO Jennifer Binkley said. "But I think what it says is a lot of our projects for the coming year are sometimes things that we're currently doing that maybe we talked about last planning session, but we couldn't get them implemented by the next planning session. A lot of our strategic goals are three to five years because of that."

The activity gets going in April or May, when Altura's board provides high-level growth directives for the coming year, Binkley explained. Director-level managers then assemble and translate that direction into an action plan. The first version of the budget and goals are out by the middle of September and everything is in its final stages in October. The board gives the final blessing in December.

"I think it's made for reliable budgeting. There's always surprises, but overall it's allowed us to meet our targets," she said.

Pentagon Federal Credit Union

Alexandria, Va.

Assets: $20.7 billion

Members: 1.5 million

Anticipated Goal Win for 2016: Exceed $21 billion in assets.

Goal-Setting Advice: Know how to pivot quickly.

Goal-crushing credit unions are credit unions that can change course immediately if they see opportunities or are losing steam in an area, according to President/CEO James Schenck.

"The goal doesn't change. We adjust the tactics to achieve the goal," he said. When 10-year Treasury rates hit a market low, for example, the credit union's mortgage goals were jeopardized, he noted.

"We immediately pivoted during the next quarter to really ramp up our personal lending and credit cards," he said. "We dropped mortgage volume by a few hundred million and we added a few hundred million to another product."

Schenck said PenFed builds its financial goals around five levers: Yield and average earning assets, cost of funds, loan losses, noninterest income and operating expenses. The goal-setting process lasts virtually the whole year, beginning in January with high-level board strategy meetings. By summer, the credit union is doing deep dives on everything from the call center to branch planning to marketing. The board approves a three-year plan in December.

Setting financial goals requires months of cautious deliberation, but achieving them is often a matter of agility and speed.

"We don't have a lot of brick and mortar, and keeping operating expenses low gives us pricing power to maneuver throughout the year in order to manage the forecast in order to drive the volumes," Schenck explained.

Quick marketing pivots are also key to beating financial goals.

"We can pluck up millions of dollars in a market, a regional market or a national market, or we can take money out of market really quickly," Schenck said. "We can move between products … we can pivot in our five major regional markets in ads within 24 hours."

Royal Credit Union

Eau Claire, Wis.

Assets: $1.9 billion

Members: 176,000

Anticipated Goal Win for 2016: Optimize operating expenses.

Goal-Setting Advice: Analytics, analytics, analytics.

Setting financial goals is important, but tracking them meticulously throughout the year is also crucial for high-performing credit unions.

CFO Jon Hehli said his credit union's financial goal-setting process begins in July and once the goals are in place, his team faithfully tracks and reports their progress monthly. He also back-tests previous goals to gauge the accuracy and trustworthiness of Royal Credit Union's goal-setting methods.

"When you look back on your prior forecast and see why you're off, were you off because the rates that you forecasted were wrong? You have to determine, was the volume wrong? Did we say we're going to grow by $50 million and we grew by $100 million? Those are understandable things, but if we're just off, then there is an inherent problem in the system," he explained.

The idea is to avoid resorting to desperate operational tactics to try and meet financial goals at the last minute.

"To me, that's always covering up a problem," he said. "Good management should not get to the point where they're scrambling to meet goals. That should have been identified months and months earlier."

Indiana Members Credit Union

Indianapolis

Assets: $1.7 billion

Members: 120,000

Anticipated Goal Win for 2016: Pump up loan growth.

Goal-Setting Advice: Big, hairy, audacious goals are best.

"We set stretch goals in all areas knowing that they're not going to all be achievable," SVP of Finance Todd Habig explained.

He expects the credit union to achieve six of its 11 or so stretch financial goals this year – and that's a lot, he said, because the beauty of the stretch goal is that it by definition compels effort far beyond what's merely "achievable."

"If we achieve more than half of them, we've probably set our goals too low," he added.

By July or August, Habig has a pretty good idea of which goals the credit union will make. That's when it's time to double down on endurance and persistence.

"We all buy in on the goals, including the board," he said. "The management team knows that we need to be taking action on goals that we're not going to hit, or not come close. We take circumstances into account, and the board does as well. So we continue to push no matter what. If we're not going to hit it, we take action; we continue to grind at it."

Habig said it's also important to celebrate the wins, though – for a little while, at least.

"Celebrating is good, and that's one of my recommendations is celebrate," he said. "But don't celebrate too long, because you got to keep going, you know? If you get caught just feeling good about what you've done in the past, then you're not thinking about the future."