It’s 1992. The internet is barely in the public eye, cell phones are still for the rich and famous, the youngest president since Kennedy is taking office, and the recession is about to give way to a booming era of commerce. Looking back 15 years, how much has your business changed?
What shifts have you seen in your marketplace, technological leaps, your member expectations, your employees’ need for information? I think most of us would agree the last fifteen years have brought about a huge amount of change in how we do business. Many credit unions made the correct decisions and projections to still be able to be in business and some didn’t. Some credit unions are barely hanging on to their position they held against the competition fifteen years ago and some credit unionsw have risen to the top of their fields, commanding respect and getting increased market share and profits. How did those credit unions do it?
Three basic factors determined their success and those same factors will impact the success of credit unions over the next 15 years, which will happen in the next 5 years..
1. Accurate projections
The ability to project future trends of the marketplace, members and employees is to have an upper hand on most competition. Typically, when working with credit unions on their strategic plans I ask executives to project fifteen years out what the industry will look like. What changes are required to be successful. And, those projections usually come true…in five years.
The key to effective market projections is to be tuned in. Some CEO’s focus their energies on the day to day, getting caught up in the problem-solving of the organization and lose the bigger view, thus projections are short-sighted and inaccurate because they are not focusing in the correct area of their role as lead executive.
What cutting-edge knowledge are you listening to, accessing, and learning through seminars that keep you in tuned with future trends? Executives need to be retooling their knowledge every bit as much as the front line supervisor does to work with the new generations of workers. Proper projections give you advanced notice (although not nearly as much as you think) to prepare and make the proper developments for the new trends once they arrive.
Making accurate projections, even if they happen in one third the time you think they will, give you the opportunity to be proactive and make advances on your competition.
2. Taking the risk
Once a CEO has confidence in his or her team’s ability to make good projections, action has to be taken in order to make those accurate projections to pay off. This is the gut check. I’ve heard many executives talk about their abilities to make things happen, yet when it comes to putting up the money to make it happen, their confidence heads south and they are filled with excuses for not taking action. Executives need to decide if they are playing to win or playing not to lose.
Assume your projections of an industry shift in fifteen years will dramatically affect your business. Knowing that it most likely will take only five years for this shift to happen, are you ready to take the risk today to be proactive and prepare for that shift? Is your board of directors supportive of this action? If not, do you care if you job is on the line if you are wrong?
The “corner office” is no place for the weak at heart. Confidence is required to take risks. Risks are required to be proactive. Being proactive is required to be at the top of your industry. Take the risk based on confidence your projections are accurate and reap the rewards while the excuse makers continue to play safe and fight fires of their own making just to survive.
3. The luck that comes with preparation
Every successful business has been blessed with a lightening strike of luck at some point along the way. There is no doubting the lucky seem to keep getting luckier. Without going in to the whole law of attraction tangent (which I do believe in by the way) the reason luck comes to those who are lucky is because they expect it and they are ready for it. Preparation for the big windfall is critical in making the windfall a success. Some companies can actually grow too fast when hit with the lucky break to the point of bankruptcy because they weren’t ready for their good fortune. Some companies don’t get the luck because they never saw it coming and never say it pass them by.
The TV show Friends made superstars out of its six main cast members. Were they simply lucky? What about the actors who turned down the opportunity when those roles were offered to them? Simply unlucky or were they unwilling to take a risk for a new type of programming? Those that accepted the roles were prepared to grab at the opportunity. They projected it would be good, were willing to take the risk and were prepared when the opportunity was presented.
Success as an individual or as a credit union requires these three elements to work in harmony to achieve the best you can become. They used to say it takes fifteen years to become an overnight success, at the pace of today’s world; it’s only five years away – if you are ready to make it happen.
-- Russell
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