Fired up for life or just for now?

I am gearing up to write my next article for CUES CU Management Magazine. You can read my other articles here. For this new article, I'd love to include a quote from you if you are a young credit union employee or a young ex-credit union employee. I won't be checking your birth certificate, so I'll let you determine what young is!

Here's the premise of the new article:

Fired up for life or just for now?

With so much attention on the next generation members and employees these days I've been noticing a trend with young credit union employees. There is a whole group of fired up young people who are super passionate about credit unions. Most are communicating on Twitter, have entered the Next Top Credit Union Exec challenge, are members of the Crash Network or have attended the CU Water Cooler Symposium, etc.

There is both a positive energy combined with a palatable sense of frustration. I've noticed that a bunch of the folks I follow on Twitter have moved on from the credit union industry. I find it really curious how people can go from "I am a credit union lifer—let's change the world" to "I've taken a job with ABC Company, I wish you all the best" within a matter of months.

I'd like to explore this topic and reach out to those that have left to get their insights on why they left and mix that in with quotes from those have decided that they are sticking with credit unions for their career and try to see if there are clues there. Is it just opportunity and money or is there something more?

I'm very interested to see if you think it is an issue with the credit union industry itself and how it treats its young leaders. Or is it a more general problem of big, but young, thinkers in lower roles trying to get their ideas heard higher up. Young employees across industries experience this to some degree, but perhaps the credit union industry is particularly guilty.

It would also be interesting to hear from some of you that have stayed in the industry. Maybe your credit union is doing something different, something right?

I typically write about marketing and social media for CUES, and I know I am not an HR expert, but I think there could be some great learning. What do you think? Care to give me a quote? Please leave a comment or send me an email at tmcalpine@currencymarketing.ca.

I will be compilling the article next week, so please chime in by Tuesday, May 10 if you are interested. Include you name, title, credit union and city. Thanks in advance.

UPDATE: If you would prefer to remain anonymous, please email your comment and indicate that you would like no mention of your name or credit union in the article.

Tim

BarCampBankSeattle: What I learned in session 1

Like I said in yesterday's post, I attended day one of BarCampBankSeattle. In retrospect, this gathering makes all of the one-way, sit-in-the-audience listen-to-the-smart-person-on-the-stage sessions that I have attended seem so positively old-school. Did I mention the event only cost $35 and included four meals! It has definitely struck a cord—all the bloggers that attended are feverishly posting their thoughts about what a positive event it was.

Before it all mushes together in my head I will attempt to summarize my learnings from day 1. There is a Wiki being put together at the BarCampBankSeattle website that will capture everyone's take on all of the sessions.

Session 1 was a discussion on loyalty economics and the net promoter score led by Denise Wymore. Based on the theories put forth in the Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld, Denise believes strongly that the traditional annual member satisfaction survey used by most credit unions are worthless and are actually working against the credit union movement. Credit unions are very proud of their 80% to 90% satisfaction rates yet wonder why their member numbers are stagnant. Without real information to impact real change, credit unions don't improve with this information.

She proposes a new monthly survey with two questions: 1) On a scale of 1–10, how likely are you to recommend the credit union to a friend or family member? and 2) Why?

Here's the scale

• Customers rating 9–10 are called promoters
• Customers rating 7–8 are called neutral
• Customer rating 0–6 are called detractors

The difference between the percentage of a company's promoters and detractors is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). For example, if 50% of a company's customers respond with a 9 or 10, and 30% respond 0–6, the company's NPS would be 20%.

To put it in perspective, Harley Davidson has a NPS of 81%, whereas the average credit union is at 50%.

Denise's big question to the group was can software be developed to sift through and analyze and make sense of a massive database of why answers? There are huge enterprise solutions out there, but nothing for the small credit union. Sounds like a great opportunity for a software company to contact Denise and get the ball rolling!

To sum up:

• Marketing is dead (her opinion not mine!)
• Word of mouth is it
• We are in the experience business but we don't talk about it
• What your organization measures is what it values

I was very impressed with Denise. If your credit union is looking for a culture consultant who gets it, check out her website.

I'll continue to make sense of my notes and memory over the next couple of days!

Tim