Garrison Keillor the creater of the Prairie Home Companion public radio show is still delivering his routine in one night stands around the country. He augments these live performances with occasional blogs and republishing The Writer’s Almanac prior daily broadcasts.
His observations about human behavior have meanng far beyond the Lake Wobgegon community. Recently he discussed how humor relies on personal delivery.
“Comedy is intimate. You poke them right, they laugh, it isn’t a conceptual problem. AI can create what sounds like jokes but they’re not funny. AI is going to take over banking and politics long before it takes over comedy.”
Following are two of his examoles of peole exchanging stories together::
“A cold day in Minnesota and the sign at the nudist camp was: We’re open but we’re clothed. And that led to one about the man who entered ten puns in a pun contest hoping one would win but no pun in ten did.” or,
“God calls him up and says, “The world is going to end in seven days.” And he tells Melania, “The bad news is that there is a God but the good news is that I won’t be impeached.”
Humor, AI and the Cooperative Advantage
The most vital cooperative advantage is the organization’s relationships with their members. It is the human connection not the number or amount of transactions that sustains an enterpreise.
Members know they can call and trust they will have a hearing while being being treaed as “kin folk” not just another customer.
Continuing to implement this difference, which evolved naturally in credit union’s founding years, is just as impotant to credit union union success now.
AI “manned” institutions may dominate financial transaction in the future, but AI cannot duplicated the cooperative adantage when fully embraced by a credit union’s leadership team.
But being a cooperative is not easy. As Keillor says everybody knows a joke or two, but only a small number in a group are real story tellers. For those who remember, consider how Bucky Sebastian brings life to any conversation. Ask him to tell how Ed Callahan went to the Burger King for lunch and asked for the quarter ounder special done his way!’
Tomorrow I will describe how a credit union is putting cooperative at the core of its business model. Like humor, it puts humans as the central story.