When Too Much Is Indeed Too Much: Did We Invite the Devil to the Dance?

Recently, I was chatting with a fellow marketer at an extremely large credit union and asked if she was going to attend one of the upcoming national credit union marketing conferences.

Much to my dismay, she launched into an explanation of why her credit union no longer goes to any credit union conference. How her credit union needed the vitality and innovation of outside industries, something that the credit union industry could no longer provide as it is dated, limited and old-school.

She then explained how this reasoning was trickling directly down from her CEO, a CEO who left the banking industry years ago and was now running a credit union. A CEO who, once recognized within the credit union industry with local and state awards, no longer bothered to attend local chapter meetings, state league meetings or even national credit union conferences. (A very banker-like thing to do, I might add.) And worse yet, this same CEO informed the executive team that there was no need, no value, no time for them to participate in any credit union events, local or national.