By Frank J. Diekmann

I don’t want to reveal any of my sources, so I will just say this: I have it on the highest of authorities from multiple Watergate-level deep throats inside America’s Credit Unions that I am not being considered for the president/CEO job being vacated by a retiring Jim Nussle.

But I have a few thoughts on who should be.

Obviously, my candidacy had been the big question on everyone’s minds, a claim I am able to make here because I don’t have an editor/boss who would otherwise question the veracity of my reporting or direct me to change the lede.

With that now admitted and out of the way, there is a compelling and important trait America’s Credit Unions’ search committee must look for in its next CEO, a trait the trade group really hasn’t had to consider as seriously in the past: its next leader must be someone who really believes in credit unionism. In. Their. Bones.

That isn’t to suggest Mr. Nussle doesn’t. He’s been an eloquent spokesperson for financial co-ops. Rather, it’s just an observation that every time the top job has opened at CUNA/America’s Credit Unions, it has come with a particular challenge unique to its time.  Dan Mica, for example, famously told the story (whether completely true or not) that when he was hired in 1996 he was informed that not only were credit unions facing an existential court fight, on his first day someone else casually observed, “By the way, we can’t make payroll.” 

More Than a Whisper

Now, nearly 30 years later, following a downsizing and a merger with NAFCU, employees at America’s Credit Unions aren’t bouncing their paychecks. But someone is also likely to pull aside the new chief executive and whisper, “By the way, hey, you know that old Walt Kelly observation ‘We have met the enemy and he is us?’ Um, well…”

I mention all this here because having heard from so many of you, I know I’m not alone and you can feel it, too. You can sense it. It isn’t any one thing as much as it is so many things. Some little, some substantive, all taking up space in your brain in that same nagging way as when you walk in a room and can’t remember what you are looking for. 

And yet the irony is, you know exactly what you’re looking for and hope to find. It’s that conviction about what credit unions are, some of it corny and schmaltzy, some of it market differentiating and life changing, but all of it matters. It’s a conviction you want to see and feel and hear in whomever is ultimately hired–a DNA-level faith in the First Church of CUs.

The Predicament

I’ve known more than a half-dozen CUNA/NAFCU/America’s Credit Unions CEOs now, and none of them has ever faced the predicament the new leader will be inheriting—a credit union community that is divided in many ways (reflecting the country at large). A CU community in which many are seriously worried about their future because they fear a past being abandoned.

Internal divisions are never easy to confront as any CU CEO who’s ever had to deal with a fractured culture knows. It’s so much easier to look outside, to point to external threats, real or imagined. Exhibit 1 is the trade groups that represent the banking industry, which has its own internal divides. Does the ABA or the ICBA put the spotlight on those trillion-dollar-plus megabanks that are the 13-digit-hazards to local banks? Trillion dollars, schmillion dollars, the bank trade groups dismiss. Let us point your attention to those dastardly credit unions.

Unfortunately, the bank critics lately have only had to stand aside and let credit unions shine that spotlight on themselves, and not for good reasons. 

An Unsettling Trend

It’s not good, it’s unsettling. At the front of the line are mergers. Sure, there are mergers that make sense, but the uneasy part begins with the mergers of perfectly healthy CUs, both profitable, with no good reasons cited for the combinations. There are the huge mergers across state lines—often, multiple state lines. There are the CEOs, management teams and even some boards cutting big checks for themselves out of the members’ equity, and no one doing a damn thing about it. 

And it all comes with the promises of “improved products and services” and “synergies” and “aligned values.” What the hell does any of that mean?

And that’s just one self-inflicted wound for which credit unions have found no salve. 

Supposed to Mean Something

Credit unions were chartered to mean something—and they can and do—and manifesting that is going to need to be Job One for ACU’s CEO.

Often, during speaking engagements and panel discussions, I am asked, “What about the future of the credit union movement?” And my response has in recent years always been, “Which credit union movement?” There are the 450 or so billion-dollar-plus shops. There are the thousands of credit unions below $250 million in assets. And there are those in the middle striving to somehow hang on to the advantage of the warm personal touch they had when smaller while clawing their ways to the cold efficiencies that come with being a big boy. 

But here’s the real rub in that messy marketplace—no one asset size group has any ownership claim on what it means to be a “true,” CU-philosophy-driven operation. There are big credit unions (some of which are shedding the “Credit Union” from their names) that operate like banks, and there are big credit unions that proudly put the “Credit Union” at the heart of their being. There are small credit unions that are small on the people helping people piece, and small credit unions that are HUGE when it comes to being their best cooperative selves. 

It Won’t be Easy

The new CEO is going to have to navigate that complex landscape and more. It’s not an easy job. Never forget the highest award in U.S. credit unions is named for Herb Wegner, and he was fired as CUNA’s CEO. But that, as they say, is why the job pays the big bucks. 

In 2010, Bill Cheney brought a CU perspective to the job, coming out of credit unions and leagues to lead what was then CUNA, before returning to credit unions. In 2014, Jim Nussle, who came from Congress and the Office of Management & Budget, brought a capitol hallways-level of knowledge to the post that has been invaluable, especially in the recent fight to keep the CU tax exemption off the congressional chopping block.

Should America’s Credit Unions be looking for both skillsets, perhaps the group should just skip the search and offer the job to Pete Aguilar, the former director of government relations at Arrowhead Credit Union in California who now represents the district in the House.

More Important than the CV

The job opening will no doubt be a resume magnet—it pays well into seven figures after all—and those resumes will be brimming with accolades and accomplishments. Bold-face names from Capitol Hill and credit unions, industries and associations, will be throwing in their hats along with every other loose piece of clothing.

But the CV shouldn’t matter as much in this job search as should the CU.

It’s called America’s Credit Unions, and like America and democracy itself, it’s messy and complicated and often frustrating. It’s supposed to be. And just like America, too, the biggest threats lie inside CUs’ walls. Remember what that guy, Abe, I believe the name was, had to say about a house divided.

Repairing any house begins with the foundation, and that’s where the new CEO will need to start—and then never stop.

Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator-in-Chief at The CU Daily and can be reached at [email protected].