No "vision" or "mission" gobbledy-gook.

Where’s your Master Plan?

Elon Musk, best known as the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has a very interesting document on his company’s blog — the second half of his “Master Plan”. He’s achieved or is close to achieving the goals he laid out in the first half of his Master Plan, and he’s now working on the rest.…

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Change happens. Sometimes (relatively) quickly.

Four facts that may rock your world

Plenty of CEOs and Boards act as if nothing has changed in the 70+ years since their credit union was founded, and that it will probably continue along as it has for another 70+ years. (Insert mental pic here of CEO with feet up on desk, eyes half closed.) I’d tell them they might not want to get too comfortable,…

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Don't neglect the human basics of security just because it's not a transaction system.

DDoS and web site security: what CU marketers need to know

We’ve had some questions from clients about DDoS attacks on credit union web sites, what they mean to their website’s security. Here’s what CU marketers need to know: What does DDoS mean? In a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, a malicious hacker or group of hackers attempts to overwhelm a web server with a huge…

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what were they drinking?

How deluded management almost diluted a brand

Anyone that has gone on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail (yes, it does exist), has probably visited more than one of the participating distilleries. My wife and her sister have used the trail as an excuse for a weekend getaway more than once, and one of their favorite stops was at Maker’s Mark. Why? Because Maker’s…

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It doesn't matter what you say your brand is.

Your brand is a collection of stories told by others about you

There are two basic branding lessons that every credit union needs to learn: It doesn’t matter what you say your brand is. It matters what everyone else says it is. You can talk about how wonderful, caring and helpful you are to your members, but no one will believe it until they hear about it…

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it's worth taking a moment to think about the technology that keeps your corner of the internet alive.

Master of your domain names

Millions of web sites vanished one day when GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar and web host, went down for several hours. At first, an anonymous black hat hacker (or group of hackers) tried to take responsibility, but on Tuesday the company issued a statement that the outage was caused by “a series of…

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You can learn a lot in two weeks.

Things I learned on my vacation

My son spent the last semester at the University in Barcelona, so my wife decided we needed to visit Spain while we had a bilingual translator. I have to say I learned quite a bit in the two weeks we spent there. Creating something amazing can take awhile. Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia cathedral designed by Gaudi…

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make sure your CU is the most visible bunch of nuts in town.

People are squirrels and CUs are nuts

Back in 1957, an informal study tried to find out whether squirrels preferred “wild” food or human food.  The researchers went to Central Park and put out several morsels at once (natural fare like hazelnuts and acorns, along with human food like peanuts, popcorn, and Cracker Jack) and recorded which ones were taken first. The…

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It's time for credit unions to stand for something better.

I’m tired of “anything goes” – aren’t you?

Derek Jeter was found guilty of overacting when he was supposedly hit by a pitch — which instant replay showed hitting the handle end of the bat instead of his wrist. Later, Jeter claimed he was just doing his job, which was to get on base any way he can. Fans howled and sports commentators…

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Think the unthinkable and ponder the outrageous.

Five modest proposals

The only thing that’s stayed the same for credit unions is that things are changing fast. Sources of fee income are shrinking, expenses are rising, and margins are squeezed tighter than ever. Things are getting Weird with a capital “W”. It’s time to Think the unthinkable and ponder the outrageous. “When the going gets weird, the…

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