Think Big and Dream Bigger: Innovation in the Midst of Crisis

Innovation is often born out of crisis. After all, when everything is running smoothly, there isn’t much need to think differently. But are credit unions only reacting to the crisis at hand, or are they taking the opportunity to step back and “dream bigger?”

Jon Jeffreys, President and CEO of Callahan & Associates, joins us to talk about why it’s more important than ever to try new things, why helping our members isn’t enough, what three questions every credit union should be asking itself, and what learned from Mr. Rogers.

Key takeaways

1. Traditional metrics are probably not as relevant right now. “What should we be measuring?” is one of the most important questions you can be asking yourself to make sure that you are having a strategic impact conversation instead of just a financial ratios conversation. As Wayne Gretzky used to say, skate to where the puck will be instead of where it is right now.
2. The safety and soundness lens of the regulators can lead us to lose sight of the cooperative mission and the opportunity to think big and dream bigger right now.
3. Our members need more than just help. We should be focused on increasing their peace of mind, building support for their financial resilience, and reducing unnecessary stress.
4. There is so much opportunity for innovation. When the alternative is nothing, anything looks pretty good. Our members are open to change right now unlike any other time in history, so let’s try some new things. The last recession gave credit unions a chance to step forward as other financial institutions stepped back.
5. Credit unions have the right social impact model, the right finances…but are we dreaming big enough? Here are the three big questions credit unions should be asking:
   – What do we aspire to be in this moment?
   – How do we measure it?
   – How do we make our members and communities proud to own us?

Read the full transcript:

Cameron:
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Remarkable Credit Union Podcast. We graded our podcast to help credit union leaders think outside of the box about marketing, technology and community impact. Each episode, we bring on expert guests from inside and outside of the industry 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 magnify the positive impact you make in your community, grow your membership, and improve the financial health of your cooperative. Today’s big question, how can credit unions take advantage of the opportunities that are available right now to dream big and create broad social impact and be a part of the larger solutions that society will need as part of this current coronavirus pandemic today?

Cameron:
Today, I’m very excited to welcome Jon Jeffreys. Jon is the CEO and president of Callahan and Associates. He has a really interesting story being the co founder of a group called CU Student Choice many years ago, which we’ll talk about as well. I’m going to ask Jon about his personal passions. He told me that he is celebrating, “bring your kid to work quarter,” with his seven and nine year olds. Presumably, that means they’re going to be running around in the background during this podcast. Jon, thanks for joining us.

Jon Jeffreys:
Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Cameron:
So I’d love to just start, can you just tell us a little bit about who you are at Callahan Associates and what you do? I know that you’re definitely, you have good name recognition, but you do a lot of different things.

Jon Jeffreys:
Yeah, thanks. So we were founded by three executives [inaudible 00:01:32] in 1985. Our company’s evolved over the years, but stayed true to serving credit unions and really helping them grow their impact on their members in their communities. We do that in a number of ways. We’re really well known for data; helping credit unions with what I call comparative analysis. How am I doing relative to other people in the marketplace? How am I doing relative to other credit unions? Then taking that data and finding out the why, and where are the nuggets behind some of the data trends and leveraging the power the credit unions have of opportunity.

Jon Jeffreys:
So where are the anomalies in the data and how do we go share that with broader credit union community through our website, creditunions.com, through case studies, through speaking and consulting we might do. Then the other area we will work on is sort of new ideas or new ventures, sort of more on the leading edge of your sort of thought leadership or what are credit unions really thinking about? We have 45 associates who we’re proud to be employee owned and a hundred percent focused on the credit union marketplace.

Cameron:
So the genesis for this podcast was basically that, Jon, as you know, I reached out to you a few weeks ago and I think I was starting to go a little stir crazy and thinking of interesting people who often I would come across at conferences that obviously are not going to happen in person. I think we’d really quickly around the employee ownership side of things, but I know that you guys are always thinking and doing interesting things. I left the conversation sort of so excited. I was like, “Shoot, it should have just been a podcast.” One of the things you shared that really stuck with me was you guys created an open letter to credit union leaders and directors. So I’d love to hear a little bit about why did you create that and what are kind of the key messages?

Jon Jeffreys:
Yeah. Thanks, Cameron. One of the things that we did, and I think a lot of people did sort of the end of March, was a lot of reflecting; reflecting on what matters and part of that, what doesn’t matter? As we talked to credit union executives, it was really clear two things mattered. One was, “I need to keep my employees safe,” and two, “I need to be sure that we’re serving our members the right way.” Anything else that we thought mattered sort of early March, it’s certainly less important. With that, credit union leaders are probably going to start to have some challenging conversations with their stakeholders. Traditional metrics probably aren’t going to look great. You can just assume that loan delinquencies are going to go up. Expenses will go up as everyone sort of pivoted to be work from home and in a really short time frame. Fee income will probably go down as consumer spending has changed and credit unions are doing the right thing by waiving fees and then we put that together. ROA will probably go down.

Jon Jeffreys:
So the traditional ways of keeping score probably aren’t appropriate for the next 12 to 18 months. Maybe we need to start thinking about, how should we be keeping score of new wins? I think the other part is coming out of 2008-2009, recession in the industry has a lot of capital about almost 11%, capital, that’s really there for a rainy day. Here’s the good news. It’s raining. We have those reserves. We have the ability to take a longer term view and really think about how might we try and be part of the solution and what should we be focusing on? Traditional financial metrics of earnings and member growth, and delinquency and market share may not be appropriate. Maybe we should be looking at things like employee wellbeing, member wellbeing. What’s the health and stability of our community.

Jon Jeffreys:
When we’re behind this, when we have a vaccine, whenever that is, we still live in these communities where we want them to prosper. We want credit unions to be a pillar of their community. Maybe by having a little bit longer term view and thinking about what does success look like and new ways, credit unions might be able to have a little bit different outcomes. I think that the more you look at this, we’re going to get through this. The country is going to go through this. People are going to get through this. It may look different on the other side, but how do we help credit unions think about taking the leadership position of being part of the solution? I think that’s really what we were trying to get at was, how do we think bigger? How do we think about being part of the solution?

Jon Jeffreys:
How do I make sure that credit unions across the country are seen as pillars in their community and really catalysts for helping us get through this? Then we all need something to look forward to, and I think credit unions, in the work we do, the members we serve, employees that are serving them, we have a lot to be proud of, and I hope we can sort of accelerate the impact that credit unions are having across the country. So that’s sort of the catalyst. It was really just trying to start a conversation knowing that leaders are going to likely have different types of conversations with their stakeholders as more data comes out and really shift the conversation more towards a strategic impact purpose conversation than a financial conversation.

Cameron:
I like that. That’s very well put. Another concept that I’ve heard bandied around, and I think you’re the first person who I heard it from, was that we should be focusing on distinguishing ourselves not differentiating ourselves right now. Can you tell us a little more about what you meant by that?

Jon Jeffreys:
Sure. So I actually heard it from a colleague who runs a credit union and I think that the reality, you hear a lot of organizations, “We really want to differentiate ourselves.” Well, I think that is really challenging to differentiate yourself because the product offerings we offer are very similar; credit unions, community banks, national banks, and to differentiate is really quite challenging. Yet, how do we distinguish? How do we stand out? I think that is, at least to me, captures more of the essence of what I hear credit union leaders aspiring for is, how do we stand out? If we offer similar products to community banks or national banks, what makes us different? How are we distinguished from them? It’s a slight nuance, but I thought it was really powerful thinking about what would distinguish us in the eyes of our members. Right. Does that give us some ideas on how might we invest and how might we position and tell our story to distinguish ourselves?

Cameron:
I think as you know, Jon, the measurement side of this is near and dear to my heart and that the audience has, I’m sure several times, heard me talk about the B Corp certification, which PixelSpoke runs on and it’s basically kind of the counterweight to our financial metrics because we have an income statement and a balance sheet and cashflow statement and all the standard financial documents that any other organization has. But then we have this sort of triple bottom line community or workplace environmental set of metrics that are quite detailed and rigorous.

Cameron:
So for a long time, it’s kind of been my dream and my passion that if we could just get every credit union measuring those just as avidly as probably the NCUA makes us all measure those sort of core financial things that you need. But getting from here to there is a long journey. So I’m curious, I feel like you have kind of a theory of change around how this can be a moment where we think differently about what we measure and how we start to broaden it in a way that’s kind of flexible with regards to each credit union.

Jon Jeffreys:
Yeah. So I think that’s right. There’s a natural tension. As we’ve been talking to credit unions over the past four or five weeks, it feels like there’s a… And I think it’s natural between improving the income statement balance sheet of the credit union versus protecting the income and balance sheet of the members. I think that’s an interesting nuance for people to be thinking about is we do need to protect the income statement and balance sheet of the credit union, but we also need to be sensitive to some of our decisions may weigh better or worse against the income statement balance sheets of our members. As we look at sort of purpose and impact of data, it’s sort of been interesting to think about because as you know, it’s really hard. I also don’t think that a one size fits all approach will work.

Jon Jeffreys:
Different credits have different terms, different goals, different aspirations, which makes it really hard to find the alignment on what that is. I think it’s important we start somewhere. What really got us started on this sort of journey in college and it was probably four or five years ago, maybe six years ago now, [inaudible 00:10:10] spoke to a group and sort of asked a really simple question which was, “What is the last time NCUA has come in and through the examination process, asked you how you’re fulfilling the mission of your credit? He took a fairly strong sense. We have a social mandate from Congress to serve people of modest means, and think that modest means is something that people hang their hat on to mean low-income. Well, I think in 2020, modest means doesn’t mean low income. The definition has changed and evolved.

Jon Jeffreys:
But I think the fundamental ethos of that is we’re here to try and improve the financial wellbeing of our members and our community. Because the regulator comes in every 12 to 18 months with a safety and soundness lens, over time, I think many credit unions have sort of lost their way of purpose and mission and how do we distinguish ourselves in the marketplace. I’m sure you see it, as well as many of your listeners. I think there’s a new generation of leaders sort of going back in time. We use the phrase, “back to the future,” in really saying one of the ways we distinguish ourselves is by focusing on what’s the impact we have on the wellbeing of our members and our community? If we focused on that, the financials and income statement, engagement will come.

Jon Jeffreys:
Sort of back to let’s make this organization really about the members. If we can be focused purely on improving the wellbeing of the members and the communities we serve, the other sides will take care of themselves. So I think that’s sort of the journey we’re on is trying to start understanding how would you even keep score on that and trying to build enough of a consensus with credit unions to understand what are the meaningful metrics that are easy to get? Because I think the credit union data systems are very different and their access to data sophistication are very different, yet meaningful. An easy example that may or may not be interesting for some credit unions is there’s the federal reserve study that, and you probably know the exact number because it keeps moving a little bit, 56% of Americans can’t come up with $400 without so-and-so. They don’t have any resiliency, no slack.

Jon Jeffreys:
A simple question is, what percentage of your members have $400. If you can build longitudinal data around that and see who’s actually moving the needle, who’s seen success moving that up, then we can learn from them. What are the programs that work that they were able to change behavior? Was it a reverse to your savings account that I think the NACU pioneered in the late 1990s or early 2000s. Is that worked or is messaging? Are there some behavioral science tools that they’ve been able to implement to get people to nudge them along? What’s worked and how do we learn from that? Now, some credit unions say, “Hey, that’s not a priority for me,” and that’s fine. So what we’re working on is how do we go about a set of 10 or 15 data points like that, that a credit union could sort of pick and choose from? Here are the four or five that matter to us and our members of our community knowing that some of the other ones may be important to other credit unions.

Cameron:
Yeah. I love that. I think you’re spot on. That’s certainly my experience, and I know I’m not alone in this as measuring things takes time and it costs money. So I think as much as I love some of these big impact standards, the global alliance for banking on value is a really, really interesting approach as well. B Corp, I think there’s an ISO certification, but they all take a lot of time and sometimes a lot of money. Just figuring out how to pick out anything to kind of build that more balanced scorecard beyond just the traditional financial metrics is such a powerful opportunity. I’d kind of like to build on that because you wrote, and I swear I’m not buttering you up, I just enjoyed our conversation so much, you talked about…

Cameron:
There’s a really compelling piece that someone on your team wrote called, “Suffering members need more than your help, they need to know you care,” and it was real interesting because it started out with some research that you guys did in partnership with Gallup and then took it into a really interesting direction around emotional intelligence. So I’d love to kind of hear what’d you find in your research first of all, and why is helping not enough right now?

Jon Jeffreys:
Yeah. So for the past 15-16 months, we’ve had a collaboration with Gallup and a number of credit unions really focused on member wellbeing. Gallup has definitions for how they define wellbeing, probably more holistically then maybe some credits look at it. But when the crisis really started to accelerate in mid-March we pivoted in sort of the focus of that project. Gallup went out to the field with some questions around the financial wellbeing and how members are feeling about their credit union. The data that we got back was, I think the word I would use is probably sober. The reason I say that was it appeared like credit union members are likely going to be more impacted than the general public, and that probably makes some sense. Right? I think that many credit unions serve sort of the more middle class. I think those people have a little bit less resilience, a little bit less slack than sort of the upper end of the band.

Jon Jeffreys:
So in fact, one is credit union members are probably going to be a little bit more impacted than average. The second part was a great number of them didn’t feel that the credit union was looking out for their financial needs. I think that second part is really worthy. The sobering moments for those credit unions was, “Wait a second. We think we’re positioned to be ally for our members.” Yes, from the members’ perspective, they don’t actually see it. But that’s 57% of members who are affected a great deal as they would say that they’d been affected a great deal by the coronavirus. About 57% of them feel that the credit unions is not looking out for their wellbeing.

Jon Jeffreys:
So those that are being impacted the most feel that we’re not there for them. I think that where they need help or where we can support them is with some themes. I think these are sort of universal, but I would hope that credit unions could think about how might we implement this into our messaging and how we talk to members. The first is, how do we give people more peace of mind? Whether it be skip a pay or forbearance or waive a fee or just be a helping hand to talk to. So the first is increase the peace of mind. The second is how do you help in build hope. I think as we talked about a little bit earlier, we need something positive. We need something to look forward to, so how can credit unions help build some hope?

Jon Jeffreys:
Then the third part is can we help reduce unnecessary stress? Can we make it easier to do things? We’ve seen credit unions step up in all sorts of ways; helping train people how to use mobile banking or how to use remote deposit capture for the first time. You’ve seen credit unions use their branch staff who aren’t able to go to work and pick up the phone and make personal phone calls to people just to let them know, “Hey, we’re here. Is there anything you need from us? Can we help you in any of these ways?” So I think those are probably the three areas of focus that we’ve seen that can actually help move the needle on that is peace of mind, helping build hope, and reduce unnecessary stress.

Jon Jeffreys:
Those are all around the emotional side. History tell us that the fear in the longterm, implications of the fear maybe have longer legs than the virus itself. It appears that there are treatments that have come out to help manage, maybe we’ll have a vaccine in 12 to 18 months. But the fear that this is going to create in people I think are going to stick with us for a long time. It’s that sort of emotional side that I think credit unions have the opportunity to be a part of, to be part of the solution of.

Cameron:
I just think it’s so astute that you make me think of a bunch of angles there. I think the emotional side, just how important that is. We had a podcast guest recently who talked about how their members have gone from kind of concern and unease to fear and anxiety just over three weeks of the chronic virus situation. I think you’re absolutely right that the longterm changes… I still remember my granddad who was a child of the depression, but had a pretty successful career as a chemist, and when he passed away and we were kind of taking his house apart, we found a box which had like 200 toothpaste caps. I don’t know what he was going to do with them, but he was not going to let them go to waste.

Cameron:
There’s just so much depth to this beyond just perhaps, the immediate product that is needed or the training on a technology device. One of the ideas that we’ve been batting around here at PixelSpoke, it’s not something we would do, but just the equivalent of the nurse hotline where most health insurance providers now you can call them for no fee and spend 10 to 20 minutes and talk to a nurse just explaining your situation and how powerful something like that would be emotionally when most people don’t really have a place that they can go and talk and sort of from an emotional safety standpoint and talk about their finances.

Jon Jeffreys:
I think that’s a really, one of the lingering things I think we’re going to need to work on it as a country is the emotional toll this has on us. There’s the fear of the virus or getting sick. There’s the fear of a job where so far, we’ve had 30 million people lose their jobs. You have the kitchen table becoming the office, the school and the family dinner table all sort of at the same time. I think that the emotional toll adds up families and the stress that always has, I don’t know what the implications of that are going to be, but I think they’re real. I think that’s where the more credit unions can get out there and show people that they care that they’re providing good peace of mind, that they want to be part of the solution, the better.

Jon Jeffreys:
I’m a member of the local community credit here in Arlington, Virginia where I live and their CU’s been sending out weekly emails, just status of what’s going on. Last week, she sent one out about where they’re donating money, and how they’re trying ensure that our community comes out better. It just made me proud to be a member. Hey, this is great. They’re vested in the resilience of our community. This is exactly what credit unions should be doing. I thought that was terrific. Not biased because I’m a member, but I think that-

Cameron:
Right.

Jon Jeffreys:
… the more we can show that we’re vested in longterm success and resilience of the community, the better off we’ll be.

Cameron:
Yeah, I’ve seen some of this concern around, we don’t want to brag too much or toot our own horn, but I also just wonder like to me, it’s just like, “Hey, this is what we’re doing and this is why we’re doing it.” It doesn’t need to be more than that. It doesn’t need to be splashy, but I think it’s explaining both the what and the why for what you’re doing is so important. I want to pivot in a slightly different direction, but you touched on it, Jon, of like I think there was a great presentation I saw from a…

Cameron:
I think she was a Harvard academic a year or so ago about technology and anxiety, so kind of connecting the emotion to the technology side of it, which I think often we don’t do because that’s the nature of technology. Even anyone listening to this podcast, it’s removed. It’s often not two-way and even when it is two-way, we rarely have kind of the cues that we get from an in person interaction. So you had made the comment when we last spoke that sort of awry comment that like, “Well, this current situation is forcing all of us to be digital first.”

Jon Jeffreys:
Yeah.

Cameron:
Your kids’ getting to see you at work every day. So I love that, it also has just had me thinking most technology is designed by people who look like me, kind of generic Anglo looking 40 year olds, probably 30 year olds, 20 year olds. I just turned 40. I’m very proud of that. But it’s sort of built by this very not typical individual or small group. They’re not representative of the people who use the technology. Maybe that’s fine if you’re just trying to make a bunch of money in a BC funded company, but for a credit union, which is all about inclusivity and access, it seems like there’s a big risk that digital first can end up meaning that the underserved come last. So I’m curious what your thoughts are on how we can ensure that that doesn’t happen.

Jon Jeffreys:
Yeah. I think that’s an interesting point. I think that part of it is making it easy. We’ve done work for a number of years with Clay Christiansen, the sort of father of disruption. One of his theories on disruption is incumbent players make it so complicated to do business with them when someone comes in and find something that’s good enough. That notion of good enough, I think credit unions really struggled with because we want to be the best at everything and sometimes that good enough, that’s not who we are. So for a number of years, the fastest growing segment of the cell phone market was the flip phone. There was people like my dad who doesn’t want all the technology. They just want to pick up the phone and make the calls. I think that from a technology standpoint is, especially as we think about digital, how do we understand what good enough is? And there may be segments of the membership where good enough is fine. Well, we don’t need to be a bleeding edge on the technology side. So does that mean-

Cameron:
Well, it’s like the nurse advice concept, right? It’s just a phone call.

Jon Jeffreys:
Yeah.

Cameron:
It’s not video. It’s not real time whatever. It’s not hooked into your core. It’s just literally offering phone access for a 10 minute financial consult.

Jon Jeffreys:
Yeah. So back when you could actually go outside six weeks ago, you saw credit unions have concierge in the branch lobbies showing people how to use RTC or logins on online banking, so remove that barrier. I think one of the things that we’ve seen is when the alternative is nothing, people will opt in. Before, I liked going into the branch. I like doing this as part of my routine, whereas now if the alternative is nothing, yeah, that’s pretty good. Think about meetings. People in the past may have not really liked Zoom. “I don’t want to be on a camera,” or whatever the story might be. Now all of a sudden when the alternative is, do you want some meeting, Zoom meeting or no meeting? When faced with the constraint of nothing, people opt in for that alternative. I think that’s really going to potentially change member behavior in the medium term and in ways that we could certainly speculate on. There’s this constraint of nothing that isn’t acceptable-

Cameron:
Well, I think it’s-

Jon Jeffreys:
… so they’ll opt in.

Cameron:
Yeah. I think to your comment about thinking big, to me that’s one of the seize the day opportunities is worth this singular moment where the alternative is nothing, so members are open to all kinds of stuff. You never would have had a Zoom happy hour with me, but you were stuck at home with your kids screaming in the background and you’re like, “I’m in”.

Jon Jeffreys:
Absolutely. Great example.

Cameron:
Yeah. In all seriousness, we’ve been doing these community round tables on Zoom, primarily clients, but with other folks joining too. I love facilitation. I love connecting people. I love kind of just the wisdom that emerges when you get a diverse group of people together. But we never would’ve thought of that before and I’m not sure people would have showed up for a Zoom round table or at least I’ve run a few of them. It’s just it’s harder than it is in person. But right now, people are totally into it and you see kind of new bonds and connections being formed. All right, we’ve got a lot of content so I want to make sure I land the plane as our fearless pilot today. I would like to hear a little bit about your background founding CU Student Choice, just kind of what you did. Then how is that relevant for today? I thought it was just such an interesting story when you told me about it.

Jon Jeffreys:
Yeah. We’ve been working with a group of credit unions on student loans for a number of years. It really started as a feasibility study. The question we’re trying to answer was, how do you offer members better economic value to build and to be a part of? So we went out to the market, we’ll figure, “Okay, how do you partner?” And then we quickly say, “Okay, if we’re really focused on offering members better economic value, we should build our own student loan business” We did it probably in a little bit of unconventional way. We built a network business model, so we could rely on partners like [inaudible 00:27:15] Direct and PSU. Let’s see who answers to sort of stand up to this full service business in about five months. In hindsight, we were absolutely crazy, but it worked. So we started a student loan business in the summer of 2008 and what do they say? Timing is everything. So the market sort of floating and all of a sudden, credit unions came in and were part of the solution.

Jon Jeffreys:
I think a couple of things to go of for today is as there’s turmoil out there, we remain focus on what are we really trying to do? And it’s trying to provide members better economic data, and that was a really core to what we were trying to do. Then the other thought was credit unions are counter cyclical. It’s people are pulling back. We stepped in. I still remember the phone call that I got from the Dean at the Wharton School of Business in University of Pennsylvania and he said, “Hey, can you have credit unions help us, help our students with their student loan?” Here’s the top five business school in the country turning to credit credits to help solve this challenge. This is just remarkable.

Jon Jeffreys:
I think what that means for credit unions right now is, how do we think big? There’s certainly going to be all sorts of challenges that we face coming out of this. Even sitting here today, we may not know what they will be in six or nine months, but I think we have the opportunity if we have the right mindset to really think big. We have the financial model, we have the right values, we have the right purpose, but do we have the right dreams? Are we dreaming big enough about the impact that we can have? I really believe that credit unions are part of the solution, that we can marsh altogether resources and other stakeholders in our communities that others may not. When we get through this, that if credit unions can live up to the potential, our members and our communities are going to be better off for it.

Cameron:
I love it. This is a storm of the barricades. You’re a very understated revolutionary, though. I like that about you. I’m going to go to a completely different direction, some rapid fire questions and we’re going to learn a little about you. You down to do that, Jon?

Jon Jeffreys:
Let’s do it.

Cameron:
All right. What is your favorite ice cream?

Jon Jeffreys:
Coffee.

Cameron:
Classic. What is your favorite movie?

Jon Jeffreys:
Favorite movie? I am blanking on the name. The one of the Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson where they’re… “A Few Good Men.” [crosstalk 00:29:51] I should know the name of my favorite movie, right?

Cameron:
I was going to say. You don’t watch a lot of movies or maybe… I don’t know. I’ll leave it there. If you had to do a different career, what would you do?

Jon Jeffreys:
I think that every couple of years, my career changes. So I have worked at the same company. We do similar things, but my areas of focus evolve. I think that even if I have the same job, it’ll be a different career in two or three years just because what’s relevant to credit unions today won’t be relevant in three or four years.

Cameron:
All right, fair enough. What is your life slogan?

Jon Jeffreys:
I think, “Dream big.” Dream big, and that’ll probably be it

Cameron:
Last, but most importantly, what is the song you are most embarrassed to admit that you like?

Jon Jeffreys:
The chicken dance, the wedding, clap your hands? Yeah, that one? Yeah, I really like that one.

Cameron:
Yeah. No accounting for taste. So let’s do a final take, Jon. Is there anything that you’d like to reiterate or anything you didn’t get to that you’d like to leave our audience with?

Jon Jeffreys:
I think the last thing I’d say, and when we say it sort of in the letter you mentioned, Cameron, but I would encourage credit union leaders to go back in time and think about when your credit union was founded. There’s probably a table of… In all the stories I’ve heard, there’s almost always a shoe box involved.

Cameron:
There’s always a shoe box.

Jon Jeffreys:
Always a shoe box, right? The key to the credit unit movement is a shoe box. Think about what they were trying to do and what they were trying to solve and then how they measured success and what they were trying to do and what they aspire for in coming together. Then I think it’s critical that credit unions really have a conversation about, what do we aspire for and how are we going to measure it? What does success look like? How do we know if we’re on track living up to those aspirations? I think that now’s the opportunity to dream big, to have an impact, to be part of the solution and really make our members and our communities proud that they own us.

Cameron:
I love that when we did kind of a best case, worst case or opportunities and challenges when the whole pandemic broke out, our technology director when we got the opportunities just said, “We have a chance to create organizational legends right now, like the kinds of stories that people will be telling five, 10, 15 years in the future.” I just thought that was so apt as far as the moment we’re at in history and how we can live up to everything you’re saying, Jon, of both thinking big and dreaming big.

Jon Jeffreys:
So little known fact about me; growing up, Mr. Rogers was a family friend. I grew up in Pittsburgh.

Cameron:
You literally knew Mr. Rogers?

Jon Jeffreys:
Yeah, he’d come over every now and then for dinner.

Cameron:
No big deal, yeah.

Jon Jeffreys:
Yeah, no big deal. [crosstalk 00:32:31] As I got older, I sort of learned more about who he wants. Because growing up, your parents have friends who do things and you don’t really know what they are. They’re just sort of in orbit, if you will. I was struck by when he went before Congress to get funded, and there was a famous hearing with him and the Senator from New Jersey and he gives a speech and the Senator says, “Hey, congratulations. You just got all your funding.” And to your point on creating legends, the way I frame it is at some point, I think it’s probably a reality that credit unions taxation’s going to get a dance in front of Congress.

Cameron:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jon Jeffreys:
The challenge I have is, who’s our Mr. Rogers? Who do we want up there to represent us and the 110 million Americans that depend on credit unions for their financial services to tell that story? Maybe through this, it’ll help define who is our Mr. Rogers? Who would we put our faith in to get up there and really defend the ethos of what we stand for?

Cameron:
Yeah. I love that. I’m actually going to nominate you right now, Jon. I think your name-

Jon Jeffreys:
Our guys. [crosstalk 00:33:45]

Cameron:
Cool. Well, Jon, thanks so much for joining us today and taking the time.

Jon Jeffreys:
Appreciate it. Thanks for having me and stay safe.

Cameron:
All right, folks, another really enjoyable conversation. I love talking to Jon, just a really smart, ethically oriented and opinionated person with just so much experience and expertise to offer. Let’s go to do my key takeaways. My first takeaway was that the question, what should we be measuring? Is one of the most important questions to be asking right now to make sure that we’re having a strategic impact conversation instead of just the financial ratios conversation because traditional metrics are probably not as relevant right now, and by focusing on them, we’ll miss the opportunity to really be remembered and build longterm meaningful change and results and loyalty. That seems like a great example of that famous Wayne Gretzky quote about, “Skate to where the puck will be, not to where it is right now.”

Cameron:
I liked Jon’s reminder that the safety and soundness lens of the regulators can lead us to lose sight of the cooperative mission and just like I said before, the opportunity to think big and dream bigger right now. I love the conversation about emotions and how important that is that actually helping our members is not enough, they need emotional support as well. The three goals for our members being: increased peace of mind, build support for their financial resilience and reduce unnecessary stress. I was also really just struck by Jon’s phrase that, “When the alternative is nothing, anything looks pretty good,” and that just captures up all the opportunity for innovation and that our members are open to change right now unlike any other time in our history. So let’s try some new things, including really simple things like the nurse hotline analogy that I threw out there. Lots of folks are doing training for digital tools, familiarity with ITMs if you have them or drive throughs, whatever it might be, just knowing that we have a willing and receptive audience like never before.

Cameron:
I also thought it was great hearing Jon’s story about CU Student Choice and how the last recession, they saw as other institutions stepped back, that gave credit unions a chance to step forward and take opportunities that never would be there in normal times. Then just loved closing with Jon sort of three big questions: what do we aspire to be in this moment? How do we measure it? And how are we going to make our members and communities proud to own us?

Cameron:
All right. Thanks so much for joining us today for another great episode. Until the next time, I wish you all the best of luck in making your credit union remarkable.