Category: Observations

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Bon Mots V: Human Motivations

Whole bank purchases:

“We’ve heard from clients that the offers from credit unions are better in many cases,” Silvia says. “One of the most important things to think about is what is the best thing for the shareholders, which is generally getting the highest price.”

Not only do credit unions often offer the highest price, he says, they will likely pay in cash.” Garret Reich The Financial Brand

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Buying things is an installed habit, especially for Americans. I have friends who use shopping as a kind of therapy, and their homes are filled with trash.

And, as a result, we have a lot of stuff, stuff we really don’t need.

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Ockham’s razor (rule): Given multiple choices, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. It’s also known as the principle of parsimony and is an academic’s way of saying, “When you hear hoof beats, don’t think zebras.”

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People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes.” George Orwell

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We are all quite capable of doing “horrid things,” especially in horrid situations. But before we do a horrid thing we must be quite certain that we actually are in a horrid situation.

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I’m convinced all of us, in one way or another—have an intense resistance to change. We like predictability and control. That’s one of the reasons addicts find it easier to have a relationship with a process or a substance rather than with people. Unlike objects, people are unpredictable.

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“The human person grows more, matures more and is sanctified more to the extent that he or she enters into relationships, going out from themselves to live in communion with God, with others and with all creatures.”  Pope Frances

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“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” Joan Didion

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This Weekend’s Reading:  The story of why the Howard Johnson (28 flavors), America’s most popular roadside restaurant company, disappeared.

 

 

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O Black and Unknown Bards

The author of this poem is perhaps best remembered as the composer of  Lift Every Voice and Sing, often referred to as the black national anthem.

This 8 minute version by the students at Pearl-Cohn entertainment magnet high school in Memphis is a very contemporary arrangement with rap.

Weldon’s poetic spirit is combined with his love of music in the stanzas  below calling out spirituals.

For me spirituals have a wholly different feeling than most other music.  When sung, they are communal,  emotional and revelatory.  They tell of hope or longing.  And they invite everyone into the experience.

This poem celebrating these songs from the soul was published in 1922.

O Black and Unknown Bards

by James Weldon Johnson – 1871-1938

O black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrel’s lyre?
Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?
Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,
Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise
Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?

Heart of what slave poured out such melody
As “Steal away to Jesus”? On its strains
His spirit must have nightly floated free,
Though still about his hands he felt his chains.
Who heard great “Jordan roll”? Whose starward eye
Saw chariot “swing low”? And who was he
That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh,
“Nobody knows de trouble I see”?

What merely living clod, what captive thing,
Could up toward God through all its darkness grope,
And find within its deadened heart to sing
These songs of sorrow, love and faith, and hope?
How did it catch that subtle undertone,
That note in music heard not with the ears?
How sound the elusive reed so seldom blown,
Which stirs the soul or melts the heart to tears.

Not that great German master in his dream
Of harmonies that thundered amongst the stars
At the creation, ever heard a theme
Nobler than “Go down, Moses.” Mark its bars
How like a mighty trumpet-call they stir
The blood. Such are the notes that men have sung
Going to valorous deeds; such tones there were
That helped make history when Time was young.

There is a wide, wide wonder in it all,
That from degraded rest and servile toil
The fiery spirit of the seer should call
These simple children of the sun and soil.
O black slave singers, gone, forgot, unfamed,
You—you alone, of all the long, long line
Of those who’ve sung untaught, unknown, unnamed,
Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine.

You sang not deeds of heroes or of kings;
No chant of bloody war, no exulting pean
Of arms-won triumphs; but your humble strings
You touched in chord with music empyrean.
You sang far better than you knew; the songs
That for your listeners’ hungry hearts sufficed
Still live,—but more than this to you belongs:
You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ.

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A Prayer on Sunday Morning

Praying is a mysterious human activity. It can be experienced in many ways.

Sometimes more happens than listening to words whether said aloud or thought silently.  There can occur moments of new awareness.

My internal concerns are intwined with a greater reality.  In that larger space beyond our ego’s view, we find meaning.  Perhaps purpose.  Maybe a feeling referred to as Thou.

Last Sunday listening to a broadcast service and the morning prayer, I was moved.

The minister lifted the daily events we all share into greater hope.

Reading words apart from their live context may not be as poignant.  I believe these below are worth a moment of your attention.

                      Prayers of the People

God in our future, we come before you each week reminded that we are not as we wish to be, reminded that we do not yet live in the world you desire. We pray each week, “Thy kingdom come.”

Free us from our illusions that we are separate from other people, from the earth, and from you. Teach us a new way. Let us hear the old lessons one more time. Call us into your work, together.

God in our past, we bring with us today all the hurts we carry and all the hurts we caused. Help us, in our own time, to put them down. Show us what we need to heal. Give us the courage to mend what we have broken.

Remind us that we have more to give the world than the worst things we have ever done. Let us be humble enough to think ourselves worthy of your presence. Deliver us from our false notion that anything we could do could make us any less deserving of grace, of care, of forgiveness, of redemption.

God in the news cycle, God in the aftermath, be with all those in crisis this morning. Keep watch over hospital rooms and under bridges. Bear divine witness on borders and in prison cells. Carry your people into another day when their burdens are not so heavy and their hope does not seem so far.

God in history repeating itself, God in unprecedented times, strengthen all those who try to help; who work in sixteen hour shifts to turn the power back on, who hold the hands of those who suffer, who cry out for accountability and against injustice. Let all of us who are inspired by and indebted to their courage also find it within ourselves to do what is right, to help where we can.

God in our midst, you see your church and you know who is missing. You search our hearts and you know whom we are missing. This morning, we lift up the blessed memories of those this community has lost. We lift up Sally Hansen. We lift up Howard Kay. We lift up Vincent Lee. We lift up Jim Roche. We lift the names of all who dwell in our hearts. Strengthen their memories in each of us. Let all who were touched by their lives carry their legacies always. Grant all of us – those who are grieving and those who are gone – peace.

Thank you, God.

Amen.

 Harvard Memorial Church – Sunday, February 6, 2022 by Cheyenne Boon, MDiv II

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Bon Mots III for Friday

“Our motivation for eliminating and reducing fees associated with overdraft is simple – it’s the right thing to do. These fee changes are consistent with our core value as a credit union of people helping people. Those who rely on courtesy pay are often the ones least able to afford it.  United Credit Union President/CEO Terry O’Rourke

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“Creativity is just connecting things.” Steve Jobs

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“Don’t laugh, folks: Jesus was a poor man.” —Phrase on a canvas covering on the mule train of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign

“Jesus was trained in carpentry—a form of manual labor akin to low-wage work today—and he relied on the hospitality of friends, many of whom were also poor, to share meals and lodging with him. Jesus, the disciples, and those to whom they ministered were poor, subjected, and oppressed. They were the expendables.” Jessica C. Williams, the Poor People’s Campaign

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“As I think about my entire life, what would I like people to think of Jim Jukes? ‘I see things, I say things and I do things’. I can’t accomplish anything except through other people.”  (from Jukes’ brief 2018 autobiography  as a credit union leader courtesy of Brad Murphy)

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As you read different posts, success cannot be marked by finding more words. Reading is not about more ideas, it’s about changing how you go about you do your job.

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We Did It All by Ourselves

In reviewing NCUA’s board agenda today, I was reminded of two different explanations about how one succeeds in our country.

Two paradigms influence most thoughts about a person’s role in American society and its economy.

One is the image of heroic individualism, the self-made person.

The second suggests  that life is lived and uplifted in community.

Credit unions embody both impulses.   Individuals combine to help each other succeed with their specific hopes and dreams.

“Captain of My Soul”

The poem “Invictus,” by William Ernest Henley ends with these words:  “I am the master of my fate,/I am the captain of my soul.”

Todd Harper’s first speech in February 2021 following his appointment  as NCUA Chair began with these words: “when I first became Chairman, I issued my Commander’s Call to the agency.”

One academic’s comment on Henley’s poem:

The advantage of being a great captain of one’s soul is that no one else need be consulted; those in our culture who are masters of their fates do not, in other words, do a great deal of “discerning.”

Author Kate Bowler writes about this same human impulse with irony:

I am self-made. Didn’t anyone tell you? I brought myself into the world when I decided to be born on a bright Monday morning. Then I figured out how cells replicate to grow my own arms and legs and head to a reasonable height and size. Then I filled my own mind from kindergarten to graduation with information I gleaned from the great works of literature. . . . 

I’m joking, but sometimes it feels like the pressure we are under. An entire self-help and wellness industry made sure that we got the memo: we are supposed to articulate our lives as a solitary story of realization and progress. Work. Learn. Fix. Change. Every exciting action sounds like it is designed for an individual who needs to learn how to conquer a world of their own making.

In contrast, her understanding of  achievement is:

It’s hard to remember a deeper, comforting truth: we are built on a foundation not our own. We were born because two other people created a combination of biological matter. We went to schools where dozens and dozens of people crafted ideas and activities to construct categories in our minds. We learned skills honed by generations of craftspeople.

Discerning Responses to Today’s Agenda

Effective credit union leaders, at their best, recognize this ego-centered temptation when becoming  ”commanders.” They understand that achievements are because of the foundation of other’s efforts-past and present.

Pay attention as you hear or later read about Board members’ comments on today’s topics.  A good example may be the discussion of the CLF’s future.   Listen for those who see themselves as Captains and those “who are  building on a foundation not their own.”

 

 

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Words of Wisdom

Smart Children: If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children.

Parents: If you nurture your children, you can spoil your grandchildren. But if you spoil your children, you’ll have to nurture your grandchildren.

National Parks: “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”

 

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A New Relationship in Year 3 of the Quarantine

The best times of our lives are not about what we did, but who we were with.

Twenty three million American households acquired a pet during the COVID-19 crisis

                                   Alix and Murphy

Will you hold my hand
will you guide me home
will you show me the way
when my light has gone?

When I can’t see where to go
when I don’t know what to do
when I’m lost and alone
will you stay with me?

When you can’t see where to go
when you don’t know what to do
when you’re lost and alone
I will stay with you.

MURPHY

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Honoring Leadership

One theme in  Jim Blaine’s credit union writings  was to honor leaders within and without the cooperative movement.
He chose Martin Luther King’s words  in the three posts below.   Each offers insight of how to make a difference. Click the link to see Jim’s  full blog with pictures.

What It Takes to Change the World

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
– Martin Luther King, jr.
(from a jail cell in Birmingham – 1963)

The Persistent Question

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?”

True Meaning of a Creed: Walking to the Front of the Line

“I have a dream that one day this Nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its Creed:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women] are created equal.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lincoln Memorial
Washington, D.C.

August 28, 1963

March on Washington:
* “It’s difficult for someone these days to understand what is was like, to suddenly have a ray of light in the dark.”
*  “The crowd was enormous.  Kind of like the feeling you get when a thunderstorm is coming…”

* “We are here because a woman by the name of Rosa Parks stood up in the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, walked down to the front, and…”

“Walk down to the front” in life and you just might be surprised who goes with you… (Blaine)
The following is King’s statement about our interdependence, which directly speaks to  cooperative design.

A Network of Mutuality

“All I’m saying is simply this: that all mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of identity. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what I ought to be until I am what I ought to be – this is the interrelated structure of reality.”
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Bon Mots for Friday

We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.  John Dewey

I often tell people that many of the things we do don’t always make sense to business students– but I believe that’s part of our secret sauce. While data is important, people are more important, and our formula has always been based on taking care of people.   Doug Fecher, Retired CEO, Wright-Patt Credit union 

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. Laurence J. Peter, Canadian writer

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. Joan Didion

Didion also asks, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, what happens when you can’t trust the narrator? How do you know whose story to believe? What happens when all stories are both believable by some and unbelievable by others? What happens to that community storytelling creates when the members no longer agree about their story?   Dr. Andrew Roth

There’s a difference between a procedure update and a process improvement. A procedure update might edit step nine in a 10-step sequence. A process improvement reconsiders why there are 10 steps at all. Jimmy Lovelace, Senior Vice President, Community First Credit Union of Florida

A writer annoys his readers by writing too much.

For weekend reading:  It’s Time to Remind Members They are Owners, by Henry Wirz, Retired CEO, Safe Credit Union

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Situational Awareness, Leadership and Looking Ahead

As leaders celebrate the known wins in the books for 2021, there is also the need to anticipate what lies ahead in the New Year.  Will it be better or worse?  More of the same, or changes planned?

One approach to this forward-looking exercise is situational awareness, sometimes abbreviated SA.

The concept was developed primarily by the military.  It is a skill to improve one’s ability to identify potential threats, be more ‘present’ and aware of your surroundings in combat.

The term has also been used to analyze danger in various worker environments where the potential for accidental injury is great.   Some even apply the concept to personal safety where one might be at risk such as traveling in an unfamiliar neighborhood at night.

Situational Awareness in Sports

A frequent reference to this ability to react in a situation is sports competition.

Success does not always go to the strongest or fastest athlete, but to those that have a superior “feel for the game.”

My son-in-law played offense tackle for Stanford when the team was coached by Bill Walsh, a former NFL coach,  considered a master offensive tactician.

Walsh would always script his team’s first offensive drive with 6-8 set plays so that he could see how the defense reacted.  Based on what he learned would determine how he then approached the overall game plan previously drawn up.

In basketball one of the elite players at every level was Bill Bradley who played at Princeton, for the New York Knicks as well as being the only collegiate player selected for the 1964 US Olympic team in Tokyo.

A description of his extraordinary sense for the ever-changing dynamics of the game is described in A Sense of Where You  Are, the story of his senior year at Princeton and his preternatural feel for the game.

In choosing the title, the author quotes Bradley:

“When you have played basketball for a while, you don’t need to look at the basket when you are in close like this,” he said, throwing it over his shoulder again and right through the hoop. “You develop a sense of where you are.”

At one point the author takes Bradley to a Princeton ophthalmologist to see if his skill is due to an expanded range of peripheral vision versus a normal person’s.  The tests show he has both greater horizontal and vertical  range.   But that does not explain the instinctive way he applied his talent.  That analysis takes the rest of the book!

For many their first experience of situational analysis is when a teacher claims to have “eyes in the back of her head” so you had better be careful what you do.

Situational Analysis Applied in Business

The Wharton Business school offers an online course which applies the theory and practice of situational analysis to business and political leadership.  The initial lecture and course description is here.

The course extends the concept  beyond its military and industrial origins to understand what happens in organizations. How do critical elements in the environment  change over time?

Many  neglect this analysis because they’re so focused on a particular plan or task that they take for granted essential factors in projecting the near future.

It’s a mindset of not paying attention to one’s surroundings.   Or as the British writer George Orwell observed: “People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes.

Increasing Awareness

Situational awareness identifies the elements in the environment that are important, changing and create greater uncertainty about the near future.  No matter one’s experience in a  role,  understanding the total environment in which the organization functions is critical for effective leadership.

This analysis is front and center in New Year predictions. Or necessary anytime a future course is being planned.

The Wharton program suggests using a four-quadrant model to identify situations that are important and unimportant, and familiar to unfamiliar.

The critical events are those that are important and unfamiliar, the upper right quadrant below.  The goal is to be more aware of these challenges and take care to understand variable risks, uncertainty, what is moving around, and how to respond.

What to Place in the Critical Quadrant?

My list of evolving situations that the credit union system may need to consider differently from their 2021 experiences includes:

  • Increase in inflation and the inevitable rise in market rates.
  • The growing divide between well-to-do members and those living only on each paycheck’s income.
  • The system’s absence of new entrants/entrepreneurs: the ratio of charter cancellations to new charters, is at 50 or 100:1 depending on the year selected.
  • Effective investment of surplus capital-buying banks or mergers versus organic growth to benefit the members.
  • Finding and developing the best employees when 40% of the work force wants to change jobs.
  • Overcoming the  gap between regulatory actions and credit union priorities  to design a mutual  approach to cooperatives’ future.

How any team completes this exercise depends on their role in an organization.  For those at the top, this analysis is most critical.

Bureaucracies by design are bound by organizational processes.  When complacency and habit replace vigilance, that is how an organization gets into trouble.   Situational awareness is critical to counterbalance this self-approving tendency.

Tomorrow I will provide an example of one credit union’s pivot in response to some of the factors above.    I will also share a classic example of robotic performance damaging a critical cooperative institution.