Lots of talk about strategy is happening now. For 2026 and beyond.
This public dialogue asks a different question from those posed in traditional planning retreats.
How would you answer? It could make a difference in your firm’s priorities.
Question from a CEO: Have we become so changed that our shared purpose and collective action is no longer a movement, but instead an industry like so many other market driven and profit making organizations? Even our credit union leaders and advocates refer to us as an industry in the daily rags that I read each morning. What are we now? Are we no longer a movement, whose mission is socially driven?
Response: Ancin Cooley, Principal, Synergy Credit Union Consulting,Inc
To answer your heartfelt question directly:
We are no longer a movement.
What we now have is something far more compromised. What remains today is a quasi-cooperative system—held together by legacy language (”We stand for hashtag#mainstreet values”), but driven mainly by pure capitalists in cooperative costumes.
If you pay close attention, you’ll notice something strange: No one publicly defends these credit union mergers.
Not on video. Not on LinkedIn. Not at conferences.
Why? Because there’s an inherent contradiction between what’s happening and what a cooperative is.
But here’s the truth: this trajectory could shift swiftly if just 20 to 30 credit union CEOs joined their league boards and made their positions known.
Yes, it might cost some relationships. But if someone can’t respect your position, you were never friends in the first place. Your friendship was predicated on compliance. So what if you don’t get invited to DC to take your fourth picture with your local congressman?
If you’re doing right by your members, community, and credit union, those congresspeople will come to your office, not the other way around.
Impact draws attention. Service builds power.
We lost a lot the first day we elected leaders who led with the commitment to “herd the cats”.
We eliminated the incentives for independence, the value of community affinity that had limits for being scaled up, and for investing for ownership of the means for production. Our industry simply wants to be herded. It offers survival brokered by those who earn commissions on simply aggregating credit union communities who believe there members are no different than every other member in the marketplace. Industry is the label of scorekeepers, regulators, and political influencers.
Yes the label is convienent at times – salary negotiations, for attracting vendors, for inspiring government attention – but devastating for the sake of wearing the label simply for pride and attention. The pride that cometh before the fall.
We need to return to the balance in our collective egos that is anchored by our pride in loyalty to our niche – independent niches, It’s tough – ask any farm family about the work to keep future farmers on the farm!