A credit union fork in the road: Revitalize or die
“The road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but the road to apathy isn’t paved at all. To put it another way, the most surefire way to achieve apathy is simply a lack of maintenance. Stop maintaining your house, and you won’t care about it anymore. Stop tending to your relationships, and you won’t care about them anymore.”
That quote is from Jeff Siegler, a specialist in community development and revitalizing dead or dying downtowns. It hit me. This is the choice many credit unions are facing right now: to revitalize or die. And why are they facing this conundrum? A lack of maintenance. There was a pause in investment and a pause in caring and, most certainly, a pause in the relationships with members. That has all led to the answer to the almighty question, “Why aren’t we growing members?”
Jeff goes on to say:
What we think of as the ultimate community improvement conundrum, “How do we get people to care about places not worth caring about?” is really no conundrum at all. To get someone to feel, we have to provide them with something worth feeling for. Apathy isn’t a permanent state, but the temporary absence of concern.
How do we get people to care about your credit union? To paraphrase Jeff, we need to provide them something worth caring about. There is a state of apathy for many credit unions because they haven’t been tended to or cared for. This renders them irrelevant to most apart from those legacy members who have been there for many years and are well past the borrowing stages of life needed to keep a credit union healthy.
Growing loans and members to remain a healthy credit union is not rocket science. There is no “secret sauce” or easy button. The answer, however, does come at a price. The answer is making necessary changes to be relevant to the next generation of members. It means killing off some legacy products and mindsets to make room for something new. It means saying no to something, so you have the resources to say yes to something else.
When we start sealing the cracks, we can keep apathy out. When we properly maintain our credit union and change, pivot, and adjust as needed, we’ll see new members coming to us. When we’re relevant and decisively answering the question, “What is in it for me?” to potential members without the use of “corporate bullshittery” it’s an easy choice between your credit union and one of the hundreds of other options available.
“The road to apathy is full of potholes, but the road to pride is incessantly maintained.”
