Ink on the Interview
Q: .How is the conference going for you? Any highlights to share?
A: The conference is great. A lot of good insights on digital transformation. I used to be an employee at Eltropy. I used to be on the executive team working on talent development. And now I’m doing my own thing on strategic planning. It’s really great to come up and visit some of my colleagues. And just really a great conference.
Q: Are you still kind of semi-working with Eltropy? How is that relationship?
A: I have always been a big fan of Eltropy. And since I left the employee team, I’m still a big fan of Eltropy. It’s hard not to be. But leveraging their digital transformation technology in the credit union space is huge and being able to really do what I do, which is strategic planning, looking at the future, helping a credit union get from point A to point B from a digital transformation and really helping their members not only survive, but really thrive.
Q: Tell me a little bit, where do we go find One Accord? Tell me some of the other services that you guys offer.
A: So One Accord has been around for 25 years. So we are based in the Crooklyn, Washington area near Seattle. Beautiful part of the country. All across the globe. So we are primarily in the Pacific Northwest, but we have clients all over the country. We go into a credit union and provide strategic planning and also a heavy lift on succession planning. If you look at the top three pain points that credit unions are struggling with, it’s succession. How can we not only develop talent, but how do we keep the talent that we have and grow them. The third really is really helping a credit union focus on growth. This conference, as you know, has been focused on growth. How do we retain members? But more importantly, how do we retain them? How do we empower the new members coming into the ethosphere and how can it ultimately leverage those.
Q: So what are some of the trends that you’re seeing out there as far as maybe growth or the war for talent or any of the other items that you mentioned? What’s the top trend out there that Creighton should need to be aware of and to address?
A: Well I think the top is to not only prepare for the future but leverage the future, if that makes sense. It means leveraging technology, not only AI. AI is a big component of it, but look outside the eye of how we can leverage technology to manage data, how to leverage that data for our members and for the future in terms of leadership teams, and how do we prepare our leaders for tomorrow, and what comes in the succession pattern. How can we start today to prepare for these core competencies that are so essential for tomorrow.
Q: Can you share a couple of these?
A: So one of them is innovation. We should look for, as far as a leader – Continue to innovate. Being able to think outside the box and be agile. Being able to leverage technology, but be like Steve Jobs used to say, not only to help the members succeed, but anticipate their needs before they come to you. And being innovative, you’ve got to continue to do that. And the second thing is always continual learning. Don’t be sustained by the knowledge level you have. And Michael Dell, if I can quote him, you should never be the smartest person in the room. If you are, you’re going to fight a good fight. So you need to be really leveraging your experience and always be a continual learner. So those are the two.
Q: How is the data, AI, and all this stuff helping organizations, credit unions in this case, be way more proactive in meeting their members’ needs?
A: 100%. And being protective is the key. Being able to project what the members are doing, acting, what behaviors you’re going to be able to articulate and incorporate those behaviors into the mindset of the leaders of tomorrow and the leaders of the credit union so they can be ready for that.
Q: What do you want to take away from this conference? What are you looking forward to take away?
A: Well, I want to take away a couple things. One is, how can I leverage Eltropy in advancing the credit union movement. What I mean by that is having credit unions understanding what the value of what Eltropy can bring, but using those tools to their advantage. And using those tools so their members can see the impact. Not just the talent and the people inside the credit union, but the members. At the end of the day, that’s what the movement is all about. Helping the underserved. Helping those people that don’t have access to financial services as much as they should be, based upon moving the new way.
I think the second thing is collaboration is building networks and building relationships. Banking and credit unions are all about building relationships and supporting the communities that they serve. And building that network around the communities so they have an impact in the communities. And we saw several examples of that just on stage just a half hour ago. I can’t think of more organizations that have a mission-driven component of what they do and how they drive their revenue. And that’s one of the great things that I really enjoy about Eltropy and Emerge conference based on our audience, they put credit union really on the front burner. They really put them front and center on stage so they can share their stories, which gets the audience, all the people, the attendees, gets their wheels turning, like, oh, how can we adopt something like that? So really, really enjoy that about what Eltropy does here at Emerge.
