Seeking To Be "Industry Standard": A "Blockbuster Strategy" For SECU ? And All Credit Unions?

  ... a look-alike bank?

A Kodak Moment for a Blockbuster Strategy? "Credit Unions on the High Road to...?"

What! Why so? You might start by considering the advice of one of the most highly regarded theorists on business strategy in the world, Michael Porter [Harvard and all that you know!] Here are some key bullet points from his famous essay "What is Strategy" in the Harvard Business Review:

✅ What is Strategy?

• "Competitive strategy is about being different. It means choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value."
• "A company can outperform rivals only if it can establish a difference that it can preserve. It must deliver greater value to customers or create comparable value at a lower cost, or do both."
• "Choosing to compete in one way and not another makes organizational priorities clear. Companies that try to be all things to all customers risk confusion in the trenches as employees attempt to make day-to-day operating decisions without a clear framework."
• "The strategic agenda demands discipline and continuity; its enemies are distraction and compromise."

If you change the word "company" to "credit union" and the word "customer" to "member", you will see that creating a unicorn at SECU - and at all credit unions - is not only necessary, but is in fact a requirement to survive.

Seeking to be "industry standard" at SECU is a sure formula for failure - as it would be for any business. Yet the SECU Executive Leadership Team (The "ELT") doesn't appear to understand how to create a unique business strategy, nor the importance and necessity of doing so. Marching from distinguished to indistinguishable, that's called "industry standard".

  Read the SECU Strategic Plan [here]

That old saying "There is a Difference" at SECU was clear to the member-owners in the past - and key to the financial success of SECU. The ELT and Board don't appear to understand that ...

... if "There Is No Difference!" there is no strategy... and perhaps no purpose..