BankThink

The recent firing of CBS Radio "shock jock" Don Imus strikes to the heart of how bad behavior adversely affects business. As Tom Brokaw noted in the New York Times: "There has been an absence of civility in public discourse for some time now. The use of language across the racial spectrum, and across the political spectrum, and across the cultural spectrum, has been, in any way you want to describe it, debased to a certain degree." Can this "discourse," to which Mr. Brokaw refers, ever be good for business?

If it weren't for the great admiration of marketers, CEOs would probably ease their stress level and amount of medication just to simply say, "Do as I ask, and don't think."

It didn't take me hundreds of management meetings to learn that I'd rather stick a fork in my eye than have another conversation about who isn't cleaning up after themselves in the lunchroom. It is one thing that I know my CEO and I have in common. However, aside from our loathing of the lack of office etiquette and our love of the credit union, we speak very different languages. It has taken years to discover how differently we work and view the world.

I was just reading your article about the long term forecast for CUs (CU Journal, May 21). I think there is a future, but it will only be for the large credit unions. I am a manager of a small credit union in Upstate New York. We have served the people of a V.A. Medical Center for 55 years.

Your mother may have raised you to send thank you notes, and for that you should send her a thank you (those online e-thank yous not only don't count, they're almost anti-thank yous). But even the most responsible and productive thank-you note-writers among you likely never send a card to NCUA, and not just because Hallmark has yet to create its Federal Regulatory Agency collection. Still, you should.

During a recent conversation with a colleague the question came up, "When was the last time your financial institution called to thank you for your business and suggest that they would love the opportunity to do it again?" My associate mentioned he has had checking and savings accounts and loans at numerous financial institutions during the last several years and could not recall any of them reaching out with a phone call.

There's been a lot of news in the credit union industry lately about name changes. Some credit unions have changed their name, then changed it back. There are names tied to places. Names tied to the history of the credit union. And the latest fad-names that mean nothing at all. With all these GOings-on in the industry it makes you wonder-what happens if you stop getting clever, or mysterious, or overly creative and just GO for it!

In its latest barrage, the Wisconsin Bankers Association (WBA) is asking taxpayers to take a hard look at the "burden" credit unions' tax-exempt status puts on our state.

Practice may make perfect, but it's not perfection we're looking for. Instead, the Credit Union Journal is now calling for entries into our Third Annual Best Practices Awards program, which has developed into one of the most widely recognized forums for the sharing of practices worthy of emulation within the credit union community. It's all about ideas. From the Credit Union Journal's inception, readers have consistently indicated they are in search of new ideas and new ways of doing things at their credit unions-especially if it can be implemented at a very low cost. Peers have always been the best teachers, and the Journal's Best Practices issue has become something of a University of Cool Stuff.

We recently held an extended roundtable session and invited a dozen credit union executives to discuss the state of the industry. We sent out a pre-reading package, and then met for two days of in-depth debate and discussion.