Our CEO came for a visit today. He asked each member of our seven-person team this:

“What projects are you working on? What roadblocks stand in your way?“

A year ago, Cam said:

Being ahead of your own time is not a badge of honor unless the idea saw the light of day. Let this serve as a call to action to all the ThinkTankers, BarCampers, Bloggers, and organizations who have been spending too much time talking about ideas.

Roadblocks. At the lower levels of any organization, too often the roadblocks are constructed from above. “We don’t do business that way, so that idea won’t work.”

Or maybe they’re seemingly too tough to move. “The core system won’t do that.”

Remarkable organizations have visionary leaders who remove roadblocks.

Is there an echo in here or is it just me? Brent was kind enough to ask me (err, desperate to ask me?) to write a short post on what was on my mind right this minute in credit union land. Well, three things that are related and at the risk of sounding like the CU Skeptic, here they are:

One

“Being comfortable in our business is very, very dangerous” – Daniel Lamarre, President of Cirque du Soleil

Credit unions crave comfort and shall I say are built for comfortableness. Yes, I love credit unions and how they are structured so you can hold your angry comments. However, let’s dissect the structure real quick – a volunteer board of directors who at most credit unions love their role and have no incentive to rock the boat – a CEO that just might be approaching retirement (the statistics show that this is common in credit unions) who have no incentive to be innovative (come on, the regulators will grill us if we launch something new – so many questions) and a management team that is wearing so many hats that they can’t find the time to look at the long view. I base my assessment on my travels in speaking with other credit unions from all over this country.

On a personal level, I don’t experience this at my credit union – we have a progressive board of directors that keeps us challenged and stretching for the next milestone, and a CEO that expects innovation – not just curious, but expects it – big difference. I know there are many progressive credit unions out there doing amazing stuff.

My point with this first item is that there are numerous credit unions that I want to see stay around and they need to wake up to stay around. I have a belief that unless you have an idea how to solve a problem then don’t bring it up. So, my only solution to this is to drive paranoia and innovation from within – it needs to be driven from within ourselves. The current tough times in the economy present us with an opportunity to feel this sense of urgency and do something about it.

Two

Okay, so a credit union starts to feel paranoid and uncomfortable and they react instead of being proactive. Yes, react as in copy something verbatim in the spirit of “me-too ”. Folks, we can’t offer “free’er” checking. In my opinion, there is too much cookie cutter product offerings that are copied and launched with very little thought on what your members want or how they will see the new offering as relevant. Too many times a credit union simply just buys a new product from a vendor and launches it – differentiation is almost non-existent from the beginning and if it does exist it quickly disappears.

Going back to point #1 – we need to challenge ourselves to find niches (not just one but many) that we can serve in our markets with unique products and solutions. In today’s business world, things are moving at a record pace. It used to be that a company would find a new market and eventually would reach a success tipping point and then niches would be filled around this new market. Well, the business world no longer sits on the sidelines for the tipping point before niches are defined. Peer-to-peer lending is a real world example of this. Solution: look outside the financial services industry for inspiration, look and listen for local market opportunities where you can make a difference, and experiment in trying to fill these niche opportunities.

Three

Blogosphere friends – don’t take this the wrong way, but we need more voices in the conversation. It does feel like an echo chamber sometimes. We need more paranoid, uncomfortable, proactive experimenters coming to the forefront to tell us their stories (both the successes and the failures) so we can learn from them. Plus we need challenges to our own thoughts and actions.

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With all of that being said, I do want to let you know that I have been in my credit union career for 20 years now and I have never been as excited about the future as I am now. I just see so many opportunities – the hard part is prioritizing them and figuring out how to best seize them. I say we go make it happen and learn from each other – are you in?

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Doug is a co-founder and President of FORUM Solutions, and SVP of FORUM Credit Union in Fishers, IN. He is a credit union lifer who is paranoid and uncomfortable with the status quo.

The Filene Research Institute is putting on three free innovation webinars next month. From their blog (links added):

The 30-minute Webinars show how you can be an innovator at your credit union. Kent Sugg, Tinker FCU, Oklahoma City, and Maureen Maddox, Filene Research Institute, will present three Filene i³ innovations: MatriMoney®, Savings Revolution, and Prize-Based Savings. Find out how credit unions have rolled these out and how your credit union can benefit from implementation.

The webinar dates are:

• Friday, June 6 at 10:30 a.m. CST
• Monday, June 9 at 2:30 p.m. CST
• Wednesday, June 11 at 10:30 a.m. CST

I’ve said this before, but Filene’s collection of i³ projects are a goldmine of inspiration and innovation. And even better – they’re all open source ideas. Completely free to peruse, use, and abuse.

Update 6/3 You can register by sending an e-mail with your name, credit union and session you’d like to attend to Kent Sugg at kentsugg@filene.org.

Webinar space is limited, so grab a spot while you can.