BOCA RATON, Fla. – Credit unions got some advice from two disparate sources here yesterday: the general manager of the Oakland A’s and a former member of the Doobie Brothers who is now a defense expert.
During CO-OP Financial Services’ THINK 12 Conference here, Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane, the subject of the book and movie “Moneyball,” urged credit unions to learn from the A’s model and do away with gut assumptions and subjective evaluations, and instead use data to better understand overvalued and undervalued assets.
“People said what you were doing seemed risky. But for us doing it like everyone was even more risky,” said Beane. “We were taking a subjective process and making it objective.”
Jeff Baxter, meanwhile, a founding member of Steely Dan and guitarist with the Doobie Brothers who is now a defense expert with high security clearances, urged CUs to “look at problem solving from a non-linear point of view.”
What credit unions need to be, said Baxter, is more like jazz quartets. “Musicians improvise,” observed Baxter. “It’s actually very simple. What is jazz? It takes a theme of melody and chords, sets out that theme as a problem, and each member of the quartet then goes and interprets that problem. Each person spends time melodically developing that theme, called soloing or improvising.”
