Callahan Still Wants To Make A Difference; Forms Consulting Group For Growth-Oriented CUs

SAN FRANCISCO – The venerable Ed Callahan may be out of Patelco CU, but he's certainly not out of the credit union industry. Callahan, who will be honored at CUNA's GAC, is getting into consulting. "I've thought about this for a long time. It's not a last minute thing. I don't want to do speeches, that's not for me," said Callahan, who recently gave a speech for the Education Credit Union Council. A great organization said Callahan, but it helped solidify his belief that speaking wasn't for him, and most speeches wouldn't be to his target market anyway. "Nothing against board members, but that's not who I'm going after," said Callahan. Callahan is forming Member Value Network, which he described as a consortium of strong leaders who can help credit unions enhance member value. It was not known at press time what other credit union leaders Callahan would tap to help him build Member Value Network. Callahan isn't exactly subtle, he admits that himself, but he believes his management formula has been proven over the years. "My background long before I came to Patelco was administration. I kept a parochial school afloat. I was superintendent of 10 grade schools, and I carried my technique over to government," said Patelco, referring to NCUA of course where he served as chairman. So what is this technique he touts? The two-cent version is it's "lean and mean" said Callahan. But of course that is an oversimplification, he said. "All my old friends think I'm cheap but I'm not, it's a technique I've honed." "It starts with lean and mean; then you have to change the culture, get the leadership to follow and then it gets really involved with how training is done and how employees succeed. They need the knowledge to promote themselves," he said. Callahan said of course he always wanted to get all he could out of employees, but he also wanted to give back to them. He did that big time last year. Patelco employees were given a check for 19% of their 2002 salary. Not a bad bonus, says Callahan. "That's the dollop at the top of the cake. This just didn't happen though. We were following all of our philosophies for so long to get to this point," he said. He isn't looking to help credit unions get started. No, Callahan wants to take credit unions that have been around and make them more successful. "Younger CEOs who want to grow their credit union might listen to an older head who's been around, who advocates a certain way of doing things that produces results. I'm the first one to admit though that there's more than one way to run a railroad, but this way has helped us take Patelco from $280 million to more than $3 billion," he said. "We always had far fewer employees than other credit unions, but we virtually had no turnover in the senior ranks," said Callahan. Why doesn't Callahan just ride off into the sunset after a successful career? He says it's not so much as not wanting to be bored in retirement, as he wants to give back to the young guns of the industry, and he thinks they're ready for him. "I've talked to a couple of the young bucks, and they say they'd be happy to talk to me about this stuff," he said. Initially MVN's goals will be to improve employee motivation and reward, helping managers apply innovation to the proper processes at the proper times, and to assist in proliferating nationwide shared branching and shared technology. -pgentile@cutimes.com