Leading with Passion & Compassion: How Credit Unions Can Step up During Uncertain Times

During times of crisis, credit unions must walk together with their members. But how?

Jim Morrell, CEO of Peninsula Community FCU, joins us to talk about how to go to your core by putting your mission statement front and center, how to care for the short- and long-term financial health of our members, and how to reach members who won’t reach out to you for help.

Key takeaways:

1. In a crisis we go to our core. What’s your mission statement? Peninsula’s is to listen, care, educate and serve — always. Now is the time to put that front and center so that we can engage with passion and compassion.
2. Everything centers around people and communicating to them—our team, our members, and our community. Now is the time to reach out and let them know that you are the financial first responders and you want to help.
3. How to reach out to members who won’t reach out to you: we’re here for you, we’d love to listen and connect if you want and here are some valuable tools to help you stay on your feet.
4. Personal finance is a lot more about the personal than the finance part. If we can’t engage with someone individually, we can’t help them financially.
5. Every single employee of Peninsula is a certified financial counselor—wow! This type of expertise can’t be outsourced to a single department to really work.

Read the full transcript:

Cameron:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Credit Union podcast. The Remarkable Credit Union podcast was created to help credit union leaders think outside of the box about community impact, technology, and marketing. We bring on expert guests from inside and outside of the credit union space for conversations about innovation. Our goal is to challenge your preconceptions about business as usual and provide you with actionable takeaways that you can use to grow your membership, improve the financial health of your cooperative, and magnify your positive impact in the community.

Cameron:
Today’s big question, how can credit unions respond to the coronavirus pandemic with courage and compassion to do the best thing for members’ short and longterm financial wellbeing? Today, I’m very excited to welcome Jim Morrell, the president and CEO of Peninsula Community Credit Union. Jim is a proud DE. he has been a past facilitator of the DE program and is an ADE or Africa Development Educator with the African Confederation of Cooperative Savings and Credit Associations. Jim has two wonderful dogs. Rupert and Dali, loves nature, and red wine. Jim has also said that one of his driving motivations in what he does is that he loves meeting people and learning new things. Jim, thanks for joining us today.

Jim Morrell:
Thanks, Cameron. It’s good to be with you.

Cameron:
So Jim, one of the reasons I was really excited to have you on here is that you guys all are in Puget Sound in Washington state, so it puts you right at the early epicenter of this crisis. And I’d love to hear a little bit about how you first responded.

Jim Morrell:
Sure. So all of us, I believe, became aware of coronavirus and what was going on in Wuhan, China in late January, early February. We were observing that as well. And then later in the month of February, wound up learning that we had our first case in Washington state. At that point, around the first of March, I pulled a core group of my leadership team together and said, “What plans do we have?” And we did have plans in place. It was actually after the bird flu pandemic in the early 2000s. We pulled that plan off the shelf along with fairly extensive communication plan and realize two things real quick.

Jim Morrell:
It was a really good place for us to start and provided us a good outline to help each part of our organization think, put their heads around what would happen if a pandemic began to emerge here and we need to actually utilize the plan. And it also gave us a point to think back to how we had worked with members after events specifically like sequestration or some of the mill closures in our areas and how we supported them and how we could respond.

Jim Morrell:
So we are now at the beginning of April, nearing the end of week five of our credit union’s preparations and efforts and dramatically changing to our new normal and helping walk with our members at the same time into what their new normal is, particularly as it relates to their personal finances.

Cameron:
Well, thank you. You raised something which I think is important, I realize with these podcasts that everything changes so fast. I should clarify, the date this is getting recorded is on April 2nd. And so Jim, one of the reasons I was really excited to have you on the podcast is you’ve always had one of the, I think, sharpest and most holistic perspectives on what it means to be a cooperative and what that kind of, I think, delicate dance between doing the best thing from a numbers standpoint for the credit union and looking at the community holistically. So I’d love to hear you talk about what you think the number one thing is that a credit union should be doing to enable longterm financial health and not just lead to more debt in this moment of crisis where people are losing their heads and willing to do anything to reduce the pain.

Jim Morrell:
I think the number one thing that I think about each morning, Cameron, is that everything about this situation and COVID-19 centers around people. It’s both the people that we serve as members that are members of Peninsula Credit Union, it’s the people that serve those members, our staff and our team that are in this with us, and our communities that are comprised of people and communicating to those people, keeping them apprised of what’s going on, helping provide them information about what we’re doing and our plans, whether it’s to any one of those three audiences is critical not only now but in terms of building trust with us and the relationship either as an employer or as a credit union and a cooperative that we have your best interest in mind.

Jim Morrell:
We want you to be in the world right now, not only physically healthy but we want to do everything possible to listen to what is going on in your world and help you be financially healthy as well. And we, like many others, have developed a number of different products and have modified an amazing amount of services in a very short period of time to try and help support those objectives for our members. We have been doing many things to try and modify and support our staff and we are reaching out to our community to let them know that we’re here as their financial partner, as their financial first responder in this situation that all of us are dealing with.

Cameron:
One of the things when I think about this current situation and your worldview, it makes me think of a … There was a group of B Corp CEOs that I was in several years ago and it was a facilitated session. I’ve been in a lot of these business groups over the years and they kind of have a standard format. So they opened up and they said, “What are some of the things you guys want to talk about?” And so there was a little bit of silence and the then CEO of Seventh Generation, pretty large cleaning supplies company, he says, “I think we need talk about love. Love is a word that doesn’t get used often enough in the business world.” And I think it is something that’s taboo or it’s maybe not taboo, but it’s just short of that.

Cameron:
And I always think of your leadership style being one that’s very emotionally intelligent and very warm, very not the kind of usual thing you see in the business world. So I’d love to know along the lines of love, how are you keeping compassion alive at Peninsula right now, I guess with all three of those audiences that you said, your your team and your members and your community?

Jim Morrell:
Whenever any of us are facing a crisis, a natural tendency we have is to go back to our core. What makes us tick? For some people that’s something spiritual. For organizations that, in our case, I immediately started thinking over and over again about our mission statement. And in that mission statement there’s four words, actually five words, that we listen, we care, we educate and we serve always. We did that before COVID-19 became a thing and we’re doing it now as we’re all dealing with that. So the passion that we have and compassion that we hopefully do our best to share is around those four parts of our mission statement.

Jim Morrell:
We listen, we listen to our members, we listen to our team members, we listen to our community. You have to express care for people in order for them to trust you. We help educate them on the different ways that we can help support their financial life, which in some cases has been turned upside down or in turmoil or they’re experiencing things that they never have before. And then we serve them. And it’s in that order. If we tried to do it in reverse, I don’t think that we would be listening very well if the first thing that we did was propose a product or a service that we think would help somebody out because we would only quickly learn that there was a mismatch. We were anticipating what we could do for them, which really didn’t meet their needs. So we really have to start with listening and caring and that compassion is alive every day with an amazing team of folks that I get to work with.

Cameron:
Jim, another thing that I’ve been paying a lot attention to is some of the writing on the white collar pandemic versus the blue collar pandemic and the reality that all of these just dramatic society-wide changes are hitting folks on different levels and that there are some people who are able to treat this like a bit of a mini staycation. They have robust savings built up. Perhaps they have the opportunity to go to a second home. They can easily work from home so their income feels stable, who knows, maybe they work for Zoom or something like that. And then you’ve got this blue collar pandemic where people are terrified of losing their health insurance, but if they still have a job, they’re also scared about going to work, they’re scared about getting infected, maybe infecting their loved ones when they come home. And so I think that the power of empathy and the power of visualizing other people’s lives and circumstances is even more important now than ever because we are all socially distancing and largely just staying in our houses. You have this incredible way of bringing to life, not a bunch of personas, but one core persona that Peninsula exists to serve. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Jim Morrell:
I can. As you pointed out, we serve people of all different financial underpinnings and stripes and levels of financial health. Over the last four plus years, we’ve really had a focus on a target audience that we refer to as Alice Pearl and Alice is an acronym that we’ve taken from the United Way, which stands for asset limited income constrained and employed, people that are really living at or around a household survival budget. Many of those people are the people that are perhaps the most impacted, although everyone is impacted. Even the people that have the strong financial foundations, which may have seen their retirement nest eggs really crippled with the downturn of the stock market.

Jim Morrell:
The Alice Pearl folks are people that we’ve focused on practicing that empathy of what are they thinking and doing and feeling. Right now, we’ve trained all of our frontline staff with those empathy skills. The vast majority of all of our frontline employees, actually all of our employees for the credit union, are certified financial counselors. So they have tools and resources to be able to walk people through building financial health from wherever it is that they share and we find them and building a strategy that’s going to work and is personalized for their own growth.

Jim Morrell:
So it’s really, I think, important for all of us at this time to realize that personal finance is a lot more personal than it is finance. And if we’re going to serve people well and provide them the compassion that you referenced, we really have to think about them personally first and then we’ll be able to build their financial health to be as strong or stronger than it was before. Not necessarily today or next week or next month. But as we all move through this over the longterm, getting them to a place that is financially stable again.

Cameron:
The certified financial counselor work that you guys have done is incredible. I mean, it must be quite an investment both of time and money. And it seems like in a moment right now where many branches are being shut down or cut back, that still being able to interject a human element versus a lot of the digital channels can be rather algorithmic or calculating in how they deal with people. What could you tell our audience about … It seems like a huge opportunity for other credit unions to take their staff, which is probably underutilized and to train them, as you said, around how to be able to handle more of the personal element and personal finance and really build custom solutions. Is that something that could be pursued right now?

Jim Morrell:
I think that the awareness could be raised right now. Instilling the understanding to the depth and breadth in an organization takes a little bit of time. And what I mean by that is I caution organizations about departmentalizing empathy or departmentalizing the ability to do community development work. When you’re in community development work, as we are at Peninsula as a CDFI, it is something that everyone across the entire organization, whether they’re in IT or on the frontline of the branch, in the call center, in our lending area, or accounting needs to understand that this is what we’re about and this is what we value. And that is what helps people and people will return that trust in us if we keep that focus on who they are. This is because personal finance is a lot more than personal. It’s about listening to people.

Cameron:
Yeah. You mentioned something really interesting before we started the recording, which was that empathy and compassion and all those things are really important, but they only work if members are willing to reach out. And right now when some members will reach out, but a lot of folks are in a state of fear probably about everything in their life, but also the reality that their financial institution has the ability to make choices which dramatically affect their world. So what are your thoughts around how to get those members to reach out, I guess, and work with you all as a partner?

Jim Morrell:
So I believe that all of us respond a little bit differently and many of us have and manage our anxiety differently as well. Letting people know that we’re here and that we’re here to listen is one step that can be taken. Sharing with them a little bit of information in the various options that we have to provide them is another approach that may give some people that are very cautious because of previous experiences or just uncomfortable asking questions about things that they don’t know exactly what to ask about. And so the combination of saying, “Hey, we’re here, we’re willing to listen and here’s a few ways that we think we might be able to fulfill your needs.” Hopefully gives people the comfort to be able to come to us.

Jim Morrell:
I’d like to share though a list of things that one of my counterparts, Scott Prior, who’s a CEO at Connection Credit Union in Silverdale, Washington shared at an event that we co-hosted after one of the sequestration events in Kitsap County, Washington. And he shared these things about the importance of why people might think of credit unions as their community partner. We work in your best interest. We know you. We live here too. We’ve seen it all. And that one’s a maybe a little bit of a stretch right now because none of us have seen anything like coronavirus.

Cameron:
Yep.

Jim Morrell:
We want to help. We have a support network that is ready to help. We have many options that are available. We’re sensitive to the way that you want and need help. And at the end of it all, as a financial cooperative, you as our members are the owners. It’s in our best interest to listen to what you have to say and what you need, not the other way around. So I appreciated those thoughts that Scott had shared during that event several years back, but I think they apply today as well. We have your interests in mind. We are here in the community, living alongside with you during what undoubtedly is one of the most challenging times any of us will ever see and we want to help support you.

Cameron:
You touched on so many powerful things in that statement and it ties into something that I’ve been thinking a lot about. We actually have our team meeting every day in a separate COVID-19 huddle, because we’re just seeing things change so fast and we’re seeing best practices emerging and evolving all the time.

Cameron:
There was a fascinating study that just came out from Edelman, which does an annual trust barometer survey and it’s a really interesting pulse on what global consumers are thinking. So here’s what it said, “Some 90% of global consumers believe brands should protect their employees and suppliers and tackle social struggles during the coronavirus pandemic per a special 2020 Edelman trust barometer report. Additionally, 69% of US participants say a brand would lose their trust forever if they witness it valuing profits over people during the pandemic. And at 61% say a brand’s response during the crisis will have a major effect on whether or not they’ll purchase from it in the future.” So Jim, what are your thoughts about that new study?

Jim Morrell:
I think there’s a lot of value in what they shared with that. We, because of the fast, incredibly fast pace at which things have progressed over the last month, immediately thought about what can we do for our members? What fees can we wave? How can we modify loans? How can we make changes to various products and services that benefit them? We did that without thinking what will that mean to our bottom line at the end of the year and we did that prior to the guidance that came out from the NCUA. But I’m very appreciative of the fact that the NCUA and the other regulatory agencies came out with support and saying you need to do what is going to be in the financial best interest of your member. And over the long run, what I trust and hope is that we will continue to have that support and dialogue from the NCUA at the end of 2020 and 2021.

Jim Morrell:
Now is the best example that I have ever seen as to why credit unions have reserves, why we have capital and if we need to utilize some of that capital in order to support our members financially, then it’s going to make the financial cooperative stable and we’ll be able to return that capital to the current capital position down the road. But first and foremost, our brand stands for listening, caring, educating and serving people and that is what we will do.

Cameron:
I think there was a great article passed around about how now it can be all of our finest moment. We shared it a lot internally at my company and I’ve seen it a lot in some of the social purpose business networks I’m in and I think very much resonates with what you just said, Jim. So I would like to know what are the innovation opportunities that you see right now to get better as a business. Winston Churchill had a … I hope this doesn’t sound callous, but he had a famous quote which was never let a good crisis go to waste. And I think his point was that when we have a crisis, people are open minded to a degree that you don’t normally get when business is good and things are just kind of steady state. So how do you think about innovation opportunities in this current climate?

Jim Morrell:
The most amazing thing I think that I’ve seen in my career is how our team of 70 people organization-wide has pulled together and created efficiencies, has innovated and created new ways of doing common routine everyday tasks and put those into place up and running within the matter of, in some cases, hours, not days, months, weeks or years. And so we have moved literally I think just about all but three and there’s probably a few more things that typically were done in our branch into a remote service delivery model. Sometimes that’s through a drive-up tube now.

Jim Morrell:
Many of it is via electronic means and the only things that are holding us back from the remaining things for the appointments that we take in our branch are things that are physical, such as safe deposit boxes or things where we just did not have yet, as an example an electronic membership application, but we will be able to satisfy that need of opening accounts here within the next two to three business days and then things that are regulatorily in place such as notarizing documents or signing licensing documents for car titles and such, which in our state is still a wet signature.

Jim Morrell:
So those external, things we can’t change. But one of the things we realized through this is that we can control what’s inside the organization. We can’t control how quickly the world is circulating around us and all the changes taking place, and many of these changes will benefit us in the long run too. Frankly, I’ve heard our staff talk about the things that they’ve learned to do now that 40% of our team is working from home, which all has happened and been brought up within the last two weeks, mind you, that they’ll continue to want to do some of those efficiencies after we return to whatever the new normal is after this settles down. So innovation and taking and finding the good out of a crisis situation like this is imperative I think for the ongoing and longterm health of our business.

Cameron:
Jim, one thing I neglected to mention is that you have the special honor of being the only two-time guest ever on the Remarkable Credit Union podcast, so hopefully something you can add to your LinkedIn page and your resume. But I would love to know in a little bit more detail what resources you think are really worth looking at. You guys did, and actually I guess you guys were not a client when you were first on the podcast many years ago, but you guys have a wonderful page of resources for the community that we thought was so good. We shared it in our newsletter. What else do you see from a resource standpoint? There’s so many organizations out there producing content, but it seems like now above all else, the goal is to keep clarity of purpose, clarity of vision, and somehow stay up with this constantly changing environment but not get buried in those. Are there any resources that you’re particularly looking to, to stay on mission?

Jim Morrell:
There are a tremendous number of examples here in the Northwest where the cooperation amongst cooperatives, one of the operating principles that credit unions and cooperatives are based on are exhibited in and showing themselves. We have, as supported by the Northwest Credit Union Association, three forums each week, Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 10:00 AM that where anybody from credit unions in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho can hop on a call. There’s speakers, sometimes they’re talking about specific things, whether it’s changes in the HR arena due to the Families First Act or SBA lending or credit unions highlighting what they’re doing.

Jim Morrell:
We also, the association based on recommendation of some of my friends in Oregon, have created different huddle groups. So we’re in a huddle from Tacoma, Olympia and Northwest from the Olympic Peninsula and any credit union that has operations. The CEOs get together every Wednesday at 5:00 PM. We have the daily huddles in our organization, both by department as well as our leadership team. I think on the 2nd of April, I believe this is my seventh or eighth conversation now, either as part of a large group or one-on-one to try and stay up. Plus there’s the reading of a lot of information coming out from our regulator and from the payments arenas, which I monitors as my role on the West Pay and the NACHA boards.

Jim Morrell:
So it’s a tremendous inundation. My personal approach is I take a lot of notes and some of those notes I pass along as quickly as I can to my team because things are changing so rapidly and some of them are action steps that we may need to take later today, tomorrow, next week or a couple months from now. So I think it’s important to take in the information that you’re referring to. There’s not a single source because there’s so much changing right now in a variety of worlds. And in the role that I play in trying to support our organization as best as I humanly capable, it ranges from HR to finance to lending to IT on a every minute, every hour basis.

Cameron:
Yeah. It is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. So to close, one of the things that we didn’t get to too much in this podcast is you possess a wonderful sense of humor and now is not a moment for too much levity because of the seriousness of the situation. But I’d love to get a moment to get to know you a little bit better. So I’m going to put you on the spot with some questions you have no preparation for. We’ll start with what is your favorite meal?

Jim Morrell:
Well, yesterday happened to be my birthday, Cameron, and I’m not sure if it’s a meal, but carrot cake is one of my favorite cakes. So last night if I could have had an entire meal around a carrot cake, that’s probably what I would’ve done. I very much look forward to just in general dinner right now because that is a way that it’s a forced break in my day, which I get to spend with my family and sort of put everything on my desk on hold that I may return to later, or I may just go to bed to get up early the next day and restart the process. I do wash before I repeat every day. So I try and keep things as normal as possible, taking a shower and shaving and putting on the some semblance of work clothes because I think mentally it helps me focus on what it is that I need to be doing and working as hard as I possibly can for.

Cameron:
Yeah. Well, let me just say absolutely, on your birthday carrot cake can be a meal, and happy birthday. I did not know that. I feel sorry. I did not know that. All right. I’m just going to do a couple more rapid fire questions. What is your favorite word?

Jim Morrell:
My favorite word? I’ve never been asked that before. The first one that popped into my head was inspiration.

Cameron:
Well, we’re here to ask the hard questions. Yeah. Go ahead.

Jim Morrell:
No. I think as difficult and challenging and as this time is on a number of different levels, there is so much inspiration if you look for it and sometimes that’s just saying thank you to somebody else and seeing them smile. That can be inspiring to me. I got a picture today from Seattle Children’s Hospital, credit unions support Credit Unions for Kids and the hospital sometimes get red wagons or electronic cars. There was a big huge stuffed animal that was going to be delivering some Oberto meat sticks to some of the patients and families in the hospital and it was inspiring to me to know that the efforts that credit unions have put into that effort, CU for Kids, is creating some little moment of normal today at Seattle Children’s as that big stuffed bear … Probably not the stuffed bear, but somebody moves that cart, that electronic vehicle down the hallways, distributing those surprises for kids.

Cameron:
Great story.

Jim Morrell:
So that was the latest inspiration for me.

Cameron:
All right, last rapid fire question. What is the song you’re most embarrassed to admit that you like?

Jim Morrell:
Oh gosh. Honestly, Cameron, I am much more of a musical type of a guy than any individual artists or performance, and so singing the tunes to Sister Act is probably one of those things that most people don’t know about me and I’d be embarrassed about, but I guess I just have.

Cameron:
You just have. And would you be willing to sing a little bit of that for us right now?

Jim Morrell:
I believe that it’d be a little bit crackly over the podcast, but maybe at a different time.

Cameron:
It’s the audio quality. I understand. An artist demands the best instruments. All right, well we’ll save that for the third podcast in three more years. Great. Well, Jim, I’ll do a quick final take. Is there anything that you want to reiterate or anything that you didn’t get to that you’d like to leave our audience with?

Jim Morrell:
Cameron, I talked earlier about people and whether that be our members, our staff and our teams that are supporting our communities. I think it’s really important during this time for people to remember about themselves and to do something that is normal or routine, whatever that might be. It might be maintaining your workout program, it might be having dinner with your family or making sure that it happens more frequently. For myself, one of the things that I’ve practice is that on a daily basis I’m reaching out to somebody that I know to talk to personally over the phone. So I actually place the old fashioned phone call, not a text or an email, and that human connection I think is really important that for all of us people, regardless of what kind of people we are at the moment. We need to look out for ourselves in order to be able to support everybody else as well.

Cameron:
Beautiful. I can’t think of any better words to end on. Jim, thanks so much for joining us.

Jim Morrell:
Appreciate the time, Cameron. I appreciate what you do and sharing the good word of what we do as financial cooperatives and as credit unions.

Cameron:
All right folks, thanks for joining us for another great episode. I want to share some of my key takeaways. The first one that really stood out to me was Jim’s comment about the key question right now is how do we walk together with our members right now when we’re in unprecedented times over communicating and staying more connected is more important than ever. I loved how Jim said that in crisis we go to our core. And it got me thinking about what’s your mission statement? I know at PixelSpoke we’ve been repeating our company core purpose every week in our all-hands meeting. And Peninsula’s is to listen, care, educate, serve always and how powerful it is to put that front and center so that we can engage with passion and compassion in every interaction.

Cameron:
Stephen Covey has a famous phrase that the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing and it’s meant to capture the importance of focus and generally really nailed that with saying everything right now centers around people and communicating to them, specifically our team, our members and our community. And then now is the time to reach out and let all of them know that you are the financial first responders. We want to help.

Cameron:
I thought Jim’s comment was really interesting that some people are just not going to feel comfortable reaching out no matter what you do and so how to manage that tension of some members are going to reach out and want help, but what do you do about those who won’t? And he talked about consistent messaging. It says we’re here for you, we’d love to listen and connect if you want and here’s some valuable tools to help you stay on your feet. I also liked Jim’s comment that personal finance, especially right now is a lot more about the personal side than the finance part. Even though the finances are so front and center for everyone, that if we can’t engage with people individually, we’re going to have a hard time helping them financially. And I love how Jim is one of the strongest voices that I’m hearing saying, “Hey, let’s make sure we’re really thoughtful and committed to doing the right thing for both the short and longterm financial health of our members.”

Cameron:
And then lastly, I’m always just so impressed that every single employee of Peninsula is a certified financial counselor and just how powerful this expertise is right now and how it allows them to keep all of their branch staff fully engaged, even if they have limited branch hours or closures. And really, I guess I got fired up about more people doing that and I also appreciated Jim’s words of caution that this is not something that can be outsourced to a single department and really have it work.

Cameron:
All right, thanks for joining us today, as always, for another great episode. Until the next time, I wish you the best of luck in making your credit union remarkable and making a positive difference in this time of need.