Filene’s Inner Circle Symposium was a three-day event that brought together some of the most influential and visionary leaders from different vantage points across the credit union industry. It solidified Filene's Inner Circle into a network to inspire, challenge, and connect with the latest trends, insights, and innovations shaping the future for the benefit of credit unions and those they serve.
Top ten take-away ideas:
From Dr. Lamont Black:
- Creative collaboration is the new competition: For credit unions, it is in our DNA but it is also the key to success in today’s landscape. The insights that speed to action fastest are the ones being addressed collaboratively with diverse perspectives that foster creativity, innovation, and social impact. Look around for what’s happening and raise your hand where you want to get involved.
- To predict the future, create it: Is the future AI, Crypto, and Blockchain? There’s one way to find out. There is already a project underway to test if blockchain can make the lending process better for everyone involved.
- Technology is not at odds with mission: It enhances it. Your job is not to have an opinion on the changes the future brings, but to know what they are so you can do business there. Are you leveraging tech now so you can serve then?
From Dr. Amy Hillman:
- Your board as a strategic asset? Yes, this is possible! Instead of seeing boards as an operational necessity there to check the boxes, how can you leverage them as a unique strategic asset to do something no other organization can.
- Make your board a VRIO resource: Valuable, rare, inimitable, and organized. When shaped this way, your board becomes a sustainable competitive advantage.
- Self-awareness across the board: Directors that are aware of what they are bringing to the table and understand what their role needs to be, in the best interest of the organization, are able to tap into the VRIO framework. The best directors know when they need to leave, where there are gaps in representing members or future members, and how to best center the organization’s mission.
From Team Filene:
- Everything everywhere all at once is not as scary as it sounds: While there are competing pressures internally and externally that contribute to this feeling, the insights and actions we choose to address can help us focus on the right things. Thus, this POV can become a proactive tool and an advantage for growth.
- Key to unlocking value: Filene’s Centers of Excellence give you the aperture to see more ideas and the tools to focus so you can embrace the right risks, remove friction, gain alignment and leverage collaboration more effectively.
- Research alone is just talk: The path to impact is paved with faster, more actionable insights into what current members want today and what future members want tomorrow.
Final thought...
- Leadership + Future = YOU! Collectively, Filene’s credit union members serve more than 71 million people and represent $1.17 trillion in credit union assets. You are a powerful force that has great influence over what credit unions become or what becomes of credit unions. Take a moment to give Filene your feedback, testimonial, and top-of-mind thoughts so we can serve you better and give more value to more credit union leaders and innovators like you.
