Tell Me Why I'm Wrong

Why social media and the hunt for Likes and approval is likely to derail future leaders

If you were to ask past leaders in our industry—or any industry for that matter—most are likely to agree that hunting for approvals in an echo chamber is a trap. So how do you coach a new generation of leaders that are growing up in a world where social media reigns?

Future leaders do not need to be “liked” or garner approval as their strongest talents—they need to hone their skills as learners, influencers, and debaters of value. I am not sure that social media does any of that for most of its participants. Can you really learn anything from tracking manipulated, advertised opinions and Likes via social media today? How do we push our leaders to ensure that they are building the talents and drive to build learning organizations and voices that can inspire all of us to benefit?

Being a lifetime student does not come from being agreed with, it comes from the challenges of opposing viewpoints and then creatively learning to reconcile that dissent. When you are fearful of rejection, you will insulate yourself and your beliefs and ideas to the point that learning stops and talents wither. But this is not a new problem; we see it in organizations that do not share their business plans with members, who no longer believe the market cares about their hopes for cooperative ownership, and who have shifted to the idea that consumer acceptance and Likes about the nuances of today’s financial service tactics are more important than what separates us from look-alike-competitors who sell the same nuances.

While the term “echo chamber” may be approaching overuse, it is one that the credit union industry should recognize as not a new problem. As the agents of our credit union member-owners, we have created our professional and third-party commentator echo chambers since the first day we pushed our volunteers out of the operations. The CUNA system, the regulatory system, and other vendor organizations have isolated our conversations and taught us to accept the status quo limits of our influence and debate. We hunted for acceptance and the positive feedback of like-thinkers-like-relationships for decades until we accepted the doctrine of our credit union industry to be worth its weight on our entrepreneurial hopes or innovative thrust towards member-owner potential.

So, we do need to guard ourselves from accepting and pushing our future leaders into an even bigger acceptance of the social media echo chambers that are too consumer-focused and manipulated by network managers way beyond our control or influence. We need to encourage future leaders to think critically, hunt out dissent, and look for the teachings that come from debate and alternate ideas. We need them to hone their skills at negotiating with ideas counter to their own and influence the future from what they learn.

We need to highlight where we fell victim to wanting the Likes of the NCUA, the molds of our trades, and the limited scope of our agreements with each other, and challenge them to debate and learn from the energy of disagreement on the way to new ideas implemented. Tell Me Why I’m Wrong.

Work hard to listen to the crowd, but CEOs are still the key ingredient

For over a decade, I’ve invited credit union CEOs from across the country to come to Grand Rapids and attend a CEOs-only event involving learning and discussion—and they’ve been greatly successful. A day and a half of teaching, and a full day of round table discussion (during which I did my best not to dominate the conversation!). We’ve had great conversations on the hot topics of the day, from compliance to service income, learning from peers, building businesses, and putting data into action. We talked a lot about the things we wanted to do or should be doing. Outspoken CEOs and I implored credit unions to listen, and to act. Some have, but many haven’t.

A couple years ago I introduced a different kind of event—boot camps for solution builders and data-minded individuals. These have also been eye opening for me, and we found CU designers across the network who were eager to come in and not just talk about what we should be doing as a CUSO, network, or industry, but to have their hands in the bread making. We’ve built tools and features together that our credit unions are now using today or will be using in the future. In many cases, however, the individuals in attendance, although eager to help build and implement solutions, didn’t always have the power at their own credit unions to make change happen.

So when it came time to start thinking about our annual CEO event, I recognized that credit union CEOs have the responsibility of being the intersecting point between what the CUSO should do and what CUs will do with it. Unless CEOs do their job for both sides of this question, we’ll never effectively match solutions with the efforts of CUs in our network. If credit union owners are the heroes credit unions need to survive long term, CEOs represent the owners of our credit union industry, and we need them to take ownership of its success. Not all CEOs need to be active. And the same CEOs don’t need to be active every time. But we need a healthy community so that there is a material group of CEOs active at the right times.

With that in mind, we made the decision to change what was a popular teaching and roundtable event into a more intensive boot camp experience where CEOs won’t just talk about what they want, but will take part in the strategic development of that future. In our case that means helping design new products and services for the future of our credit unions, but the same should apply across the entire credit union industry. Credit union CEOs need to be the heroes we count on to attain the future we want for our industry. Tell me why I’m wrong.

Momentum is picking up around the idea of being more aggressive in developing an ownership community as a key credit union strategy and tactic. The more CU professionals see that it takes active owners (pioneers) to start and sustain credit unions, and passive owners (the indifferent) to end them, the more they are seeing active owners as the heroes in their credit union’s story. Add to that the growth of data and demographic tactics in CUs and who knows… maybe categorizing and cultivating members who think and act like owners might even be a long-term trend in CU operations going forward.

Only fly in the ointment? It takes work, and as we know in credit union land these days very few people trust the tact that work and sustained efforts are worth it without a clear ROI. It’s an accounting thing, or maybe an underwriting thing, but it just seems like credit unions want the black and white ledger calculation telling them it’s ok to expend the effort or risk their members’ money on such things.

And here is where it all falls apart. We will spend all kinds of “at-risk member’s money” to attract a potential consumer to our products. We love the high of a purchase, or a “yes” to our service and revenue generating products. We love the black and white accounting of something offered, something taken; there is a buzz in the value exchange. Consumers’ money, attention, affirmation, etc. for our corporate offerings. So why don’t we have something to sell consumers to be owners? Something that gave us all a buzz – something that said the consumer gets it! So we would get it.

We need to craft a different future, even if it is only for the credit union professional’s benefit. Members understand that ownership generally comes with a “transaction”, but the $5 par deposit as an ownership transaction just is not cutting it anymore. It’s forgotten as soon as it’s done; just the cost of opening an account. What then? How do we make ownership real in the minds of members, and beyond a simple one-time exchange? Stock?

Either way, an active ownership community within our overall member community is an asset! That asset has been undermanaged for years if not decades as credit unions have fought to develop their consumer communities. It may take a revolution related to data analytics to shine a light on the demographic and the value of these members, but as more and more CUs face moments when only an “owner” can make the difference, I hope it is not too late to do the work to turn the tide for many of the credit unions who are learning the difference between agents, consumers, and owners! Tell me why I’m wrong!