One Spouse’s View of Retirement
The Entrepreneurs: Attracting the Next Cohort of Credit Union Leaders
Every business from Coca-Cola to Ford Motors faces the same marketplace reality. How does successfully serving one generation of customers transition to the next? Will consumers have the same tastes? Have the same transportation needs? Respond to similar messages?
At the George Washington University’s New Venture Competition, the guest speaker portrayed a different challenge in attracting today’s students.
Tim Hwang graduated from Princeton in 2013 and is today the CEO of Fiscal Notes a technology application for select areas of legal case research.
He described his age as the entrepreneurial generation. Students across the country are demonstrating widespread interest in building startups to change the status quo.
Today major universities see this student interest. From Ivy league schools to smaller liberal arts, university administrations are sponsoring new ventures and rewarding winning startups with cash prizes and offers of future help.
A sample of winners from GW’s recent contest are illuminating, even inspiring. From the winners list students are creating technology, engineering, social, and network business startups serving almost every area of society.
I was aware of this growing university commitment because one year earlier a group of freshmen who wanted to start a credit union for GW students, became one of the nine finalists out of hundreds of startup proposals in the new competition final.
These students have significant faculty and formal university endorsement. They have researched and met with numerous credit union vendors willing to help, often at little or no initial expense.
The most difficult part is the regulatory approval. They plan to spend the next three years of their college careers to this startup, and then leave it as a legacy for future students.
In addition to specific capital requirements, NCUA’s drawn out, detailed approval schedule would discourage even the most gung-ho organizers.
In the last decade there have been fewer than ten new charters. If this is the pace of new entries, will the cooperative model miss recruiting this generation of members?
As a member does your credit union actively serve startups? How does it encourage entrepreneurs of all ages seeking to create new solutions for their communities?
The questions are important. For the mindset to seek out and encourage member innovators, may be an important indicator of management’s ability to renew the credit union’s organizational design.
Fate and Destiny: Do Credit Unions Share a Sense of Destiny?
Critical outlooks for the future of the credit union system are pervasive. From forecasts of dramatically smaller numbers, an “outdated” charter, or numerous existential threats such as cybersecurity risks or disruptive fintech innovations, negative outlooks are easy to find.
In contrast, a speaker at a recent conference asserted: “America today needs credit unions more than ever.” This comment referred to the person’s belief in credit unions’ destiny, that is what cooperatives can do for members and communities at this point in history.
The observation was based on the growing data about significant unmet member financial needs. More importantly, the judgment was grounded in a belief in the destiny of cooperative financial ownership.
I saw this same belief in a changed future in George Washington University’s eleventh New Venture Competition finals last week.
Nine startups were chosen from over 216 student teams competing for cash prizes of over $200,000 plus in kind legal, office space and mentoring resources of another $600,000. More than 500 students from all eleven faculty had competed for this final.
One winner was chosen from each of three business categories: technology, social and new venture tracks. The winners were:
- Last Call–an online marketplace to enable businesses to discount surplus food and provide more affordable meals—thus reducing food waste.
- Dulceology–an online bakery that uses social media to create its markets as well as pop-up shops to serve special events such as conventions.
- Plast-ways–an engineering consortium of plastic eating microbes designed to extend the life of landfill waste disposal technology.
These three startups each received $35,000-$45000, plus the opportunity to receive experienced start up support or even venture capital. Their common hope was a passion to solve a problem or to change the way a traditional market was being served.
These entrepreneurs were driven by destiny-the desire to change the status quo to something better.
As a member, I ask do credit unions still share this idea of destiny?
Fate and Destiny: The Member-Credit Union Relationship
Fate is the circumstances in which we often find ourselves. Sometimes externally imposed and other times self-imposed. Fate thinking is often packaged in negative forecasts when commenting on present trends.
Destiny is the capacity to go beyond legacy circumstances or present constraints. It is a form of faith, a way of seeing and seeking a different future.
Is there a difference between fate and destiny for characterizing an individual’s or an institution’s role in society?
Religion offers a singular example of the difference. Jesus’s fate was to die on Good Friday. His destiny was Easter morning. Something happened that first morning that transformed fate into one of the most powerful forces driving society since that event.
If we confuse these two ways of thinking about situations, we run the risk of missing life’s most satisfying opportunities.
It’s easy to look at present or past circumstances and see the coming recession, disruptive competition, or lack of adequate resources as fated. It’s another to see what comes as a matter of destiny.
For members the question is whether their credit union offers a relationship based on a person’s fate. Or will it support the member’s desires for a different, better financial future?
What is Life’s Work?
At the recent St. Patrick’s Day concert at the Kennedy Center, the Irish Ambassador was invited to share a ritual he follows. Every day the ambassador tweets out a poem written by an Irish author. He chose to read one by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). By coincidence I saw this Yeats poem in a display case celebrating National Poetry Month:
The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.
As I transition to “just a member” status this philosophic statement raised two questions. Are life and work (The Choice) truly separate? And, how hard is it to make something worthwhile that will last?
Lamentations and Aspirations
Contemplation during Tenebrae
How does one retain hope in the face of seemingly contrary system ambitions, apathy for engagement beyond immediate responsibilities, and the all-consuming worship of credit union institutional success? Where is purpose in a time of national agendas dominated by topics such as cannabis legislation, CECL accounting, cybersecurity and secondary capital? How do member circumstances become a priority that supersedes traditional product messaging?
It seems the unceasing focus on credit unions’ performance constantly overwhelms the uplifting of member hopes.
How can cooperative leaders better balance competitive requirements and corporate vision? The resolution may line in a brief phrase from Leonard Cohen, the poet and composer, who wrote:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
Music in the Moment
Due to an eye treatment, I was unable to see the CNN pictures of the burning Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. I could hear the commentators describe the event. But what moved me the most was the sound of the hymn singing constantly in the background. At times the announcer was silent. Only the sound of the spontaneous songs, once raised within the Cathedral, were heard accompanying the orange flames of the burning central spire.
Music was the crowd’s expression of shared sorrow. Something spoken words, nor even silence, could adequately express. The hymns were reverent, gentle and even prayerful in response to the ongoing destruction being witnessed. Momentarily helpless as almost ten centuries of human labor and history burned, they shared their individual emotions, together.
Music does transcend ordinary experiences. And it commemorates extraordinary ones. This, for many, is Holy Week, marked by a series of religious services. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Tenebrae services, Easter Vigils and finally the triumphal celebration of Easter morning.
Each of these shared observances will be accompanied with sound and song to augment what words alone cannot capture.
Music celebrates a fundamental truth of human experience. It requires both a listener and a musician to be fully realized. None of us is alone, even in moments of extraordinary tragedy or joyful exuberance.
As we observed the destruction of a historical monument, we have also seen the capacity of humans to share their most tender feelings as one. And that is the foundation for a new creation to emerge. Happy Easter.
What’s with the Statue?
The Seated Boxer, an iconic ancient Greek work of art, shows a grizzled veteran of the ring, equal parts resigned and ready to spring into action.
What I like is a sense of respite from competition, the powerful athletic physique and the tiredness that surrounds his humanity. Is he a winner this day? Are there more fights to go? How will his efforts be remembered?
These are questions that all of us encounter, in literal or figurative ways, in our daily efforts.