My fifth grade teacher had a motto about not trusting someone who says, “trust me.” Mr. Rhodes was one of those gray, gruff, grizzled teachers you adore as a kid, the kind of teacher who grows larger in esteem as he grows smaller in the rearview mirror. He was a sharp guy, and his valuable lesson about thinking for myself has served me well.
Category Archives: Culture
Go Hawks!
The Weber team gets ready for game day. What team is Weber rooting for? The Seahawks, of course! With all due respect to our friends from Colorado, the Broncos are going to get crushed on Superbowl Sunday. UPDATE:That was awesome! Thanks Hawks for the fantastic season.
What can Little House on the Prairie teach you about growing your membership?
I’m currently reading theLittle House on the Prairie series with my six year old. For those not familiar, this is a story of a little girl and her pioneer family, set in the late 1800s. What’s fascinating to me is what my daughter is absorbing from the story and how it’s changing her behavior. What can this teach credit unions?
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Where is the future taking us?
I’ve spent a great deal of time travelling across the country in credit union land past few months. I have talked with credit unions from the Caribbean to Canada, across the Midwest and all points between who do a fabulous job of doing what credit unions do best – building relationships with people.
As I’ve listened, taken notes and absorbed what I’ve seen and heard, I continue to reflect back to when I was much younger guy (some of you may even remember that) in the industry and what has, and hasn’t changed. From a marketing standpoint – wow. The exuberance and challenges held by a handful of us back in the 80′s and 90′s – that we were going to make a difference and break our credit unions out of the box in the process – has now been echoed by an infinite number of brash, young, smart marketers across the country who ARE making that difference. And what a great thing it is to see.
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Are we helping people solve their problems?
“Nobody cares about your products… people care about their problems. People do not want a relationship with your credit union, they want the benefits a relationship can offer them.”
Not my words, and I wish I could remember whose they were, but I believe they accurately sum up the divide between what credit union members want – and what our existing members and consumers in general need & expect. As long as we insist on telling them things they don’t care about, you can bet that any measure of success will be difficult to achieve. My opinion…we need to tell them more stories. And by that, I mean true member stories about how we’ve helped someone with their life, or the life of their family. Wow…what a concept. Telling someone a story about people helping people – not about products helping people.
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Culture isn’t invented. It’s born.
We’re amused by all of the activity going on surrounding JC Penney (JCP) and its move to an everyday low price offering strategy (EDLP). Their relatively new CEO, Ron Johnson (hired a year ago away from Apple Retail) has been at the helm of some sweeping changes, all designed to get mom back in the store on a regular basis. Media consensus is that the JCP board thought that if Johnson could perform his magic at Apple, then he could do the same for the ailing department store dinosaur.
Not so fast, Dino.
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