By Frank J. Diekmann
Admit it; we’re all guilty, including you. We’re all too quick to dismiss those who are older than us, those with long careers, as anachronisms who need to get on with the retirement party already. It’s a new day, a new tech century, and if there is any knowledge to be had it’s not from some has-been with two feet in the past; everything we need to learn can be found on Twitter and Snap, right?
If you’re able to read something longer than 140 characters, read on and you’ll discover just how wrong all of us can be in a tunnel-vision world where the view is limited to the small-screen panorama of a hand-held device. It seems it’s marvelous just what you can see and hear and learn from if you look up once in a while.
For all the good news and the good works within credit unions, if there is a sad trend to be found (and the same can be said for much of our world) it is the slow disappearance of the unique and the different beneath the lava flow of the generic, monotonous uniformity.
Hey, Millennials, This One's For You
A new CU branch in Portland, Ore. can often feel very much like a new CU branch in Portland, Maine, but about midway in between you’ll find New Rockford, N.D., where credit unions are losing another unique personality and piece of history with the retirement of Marvel Ebenhahn after a 65-year career at Community Credit Union. Her story is indeed “Marvel”-lous, as CUToday.info detailed here.
Every time a page of credit union her-story is turned, as it has in this case, CUToday.info attempts to capture it. We do that for many reasons, among them that while it’s wonderful to be a Millennial, it’s even better if you know how credit unions reached this Millennium.
For so much of their lives credit unions were much more informal and simple operations. But don’t confuse simple with easy. Ebenhahn’s extraordinary history, for example, includes the days when the “credit union” was a filing cabinet, when it often experienced the difficult times of trying to hold family farms together, and of keeping the whole operation going during tough times in a tough place.
Credit unions like to tout their “grassroots,” but Ebenhahn’s story includes a time when the business often involved working with those down on their hands and knees literally in touch with roots. She recalls when credit union members who wanted a loan might need to go to the North Dakota field of the farmer who was also the credit union’s treasurer to talk about getting the funds.
And if you think this is all some rosy nostalgia for the days of apple pie and fresh cow milk when no hard decisions ever needed to be made, Ebenhahn made clear the credit union’s interests always had to be protected.
“You can’t just charge off a loan because you like a guy,” she observed.
What You Should Remember
But my favorite observation by Ebenhahn is this, and it should be yours, too: “We should be telling more people that we are different than another financial institution. There are a lot of people coming in here every day that know it’s a credit union, but they don’t know why we are different. If we can’t be different why are we here? I think that’s the story we’ve got to tell our young people in credit unions now. Keep telling the story…”
I get a press release a week from a credit union announcing it has created a new VP of risk management position, the great irony being the risk the position itself represents. That’s because the biggest mistake credit unions make is believing financial co-ops are in the numbers business. Everything is about the data and the analytics and if it can’t be found on a spreadsheet or a call report, well, does it even exist?
Telling the story—what the marketing professionals would call “differentiation” and “culture” is a lesson gained after 65 years of experience that is anything but out-of-date; indeed, it couldn’t be more relevant in 2017 when you trip over four people and a bellhop talking about “branding” at every credit union conference. Regardless of how long you’ve been in credit unions, learn from Ms. Ebenhan. Especially if you’d like credit unions to be around 65 years from now. Or even 6.5.
So why are you here?
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator in Chief at CUToday.info. He can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info or followed @FrankCUToday.