Credit Union To and Fro: How Focused Is Your Credit Union

A story is told of two men who formed a partnership. They built a small shed beside a busy road. They obtained a truck and drove it to a farmer’s field, where they purchased a truckload of melons for a dollar a melon. They drove the loaded truck to their shed by the road, where they sold their melons for a dollar a melon. They drove back to the farmer’s field and bought another truckload of melons for a dollar a melon. Transporting them to the roadside, they again sold them for a dollar a melon. As they drove back toward the farmer’s field to get another load, one partner said to the other, “We’re not making much money on this business, are we?” “No, we’re not,” his partner replied. “Do you think we need a bigger truck?”

In today’s credit union there are thousands of things to focus on. Thanks in part to modern technology the contents of various reporting services and other database resources are all at the fingertips of many of us. Too often it is easy to find ourselves spending countless hours mindlessly following data streams down various rabbit holes or scanning other avalanches of information. One would be tempted to ask, “To what purpose?” Those who engage in such activities are like the two partners in the story, so busy loading and unloading melons onto a truck and then hurrying back and forth to the roadside store. They spend each day hauling more and more but failing to grasp the essential truth that we cannot make a profit from our efforts until we understand the true value of what is already within our grasp.

As many of us are in the middle of our lending season we followed all those reports down the rabbit holes to conclude lending growth is more of a challenge and so we are all looking for the magic bullet that will give us the loan growth we budgeted last fall. The temptation is to go to the product manual and come up with a new gimmick or product feature that will create a new wave of member lending. However, a less glamorous solution is to look at our leadership teams and then consider the amount of focus they have. Are our teams acting like the two men in the story trying to decide to buy a bigger truck or maybe keep the same ole truck but just “paint it'?

Yet, if you were to pull your leadership team members together and have them list the top challenges and tasks for the week would you find them focused on the items that are your most pressing goals?

This topic of focus has been on my mind since I read the story of Army Ranger Joseph Kapacziewki who was injured when an enemy grenade was dropped into his armored vehicle in Iraq. His body was severely injured. His lower right leg was shattered and his right arm left useless with extensive nerve damage. It seemed that no part of his body was spared by the blast from an enemy’s grenade.

In 2005 when doctors worked to help mend his shattered limbs the easy prognosis was that this was a Ranger who would not run into battle again. That prognosis was not one that Joseph shared. It certainly was not the prognosis he choose to focus on.

His story is a testament to the ability to focus on a singular goal. When he learned that his body had a natural intolerance to morphine he endured countless hours of pain as he mended from each surgery. I marvel that his first thoughts on getting his finger to twitch was to have his wife wheel him down to the hospital's practice firing range with a laser-equipped M-4 rifle. For hours every day, he would lie behind sandbags and fire the weapon, retraining his hands and fingers that had lost feeling how to once again handle a weapon.

There are no comparisons between what this man endured and with what we endure in our day to day lives. However, there are lessons to be learned on the power of focus. We can learn to see past the potholes in the road and focus instead on the blue patch of sky ahead of us.

I have seen leaders like this who refuse to accept the status of just being good. They drive for results and have the expectation that those around will also drive for results. They have the ability to see past the mindless activities of day to day operations and ask clarifying questions that help others zero in on the core mission of what the group is trying to accomplish.

My challenge to you is to ask your leadership team, “What are we trying to accomplish?” The next question is what can you do to remove the clutter that is on the table so that the only thing your team is looking at is the very thing you are trying to do?

As credit unions we are at times so preoccupied by what the bigger credit union or the Big Bank is doing we forget to take a hard look at what we ourselves are doing. We work in a time when it is easy to focus on why it is too hard to succeed due to a tough economy. We read blog articles that make excuses so that we can settle on just being “old fashioned” credit unions. The price of not knowing what to focus on is measured in credit union members having to settle for less...to expect less from you each and every day.

Are you like the two men in the story who spend each day hauling more and more but fail to grasp the essential truth that they cannot make a profit from their efforts until they focus on the true value of what is already within their grasp.

To read more about the real hero of the story please visit

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