Rock & Roll for Credit Unions 6: Bob Dylan – Times They Are A-Changin

Robert Allen Zimmerman turned 72 last week. So I felt it appropriate to focus this month’s Rock & Roll for Credit Unions article on the artist better known as Bob Dylan. As I settled in and brought up a few Dylan songs on my iTunes, one stuck out as being written specifically for where our industry is right now.

The Times They are a-Changin. The tune starts out with these lyrics:

…admit that the waters around you have grown, and accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you is worth savin’, then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changin’.

If those lyrics don’t punch you in the gut you’re not living with the rest of us credit union folk here on planet earth. Thumb through Credit Union Journal or click through CU Insight.  All you have to do is glance at a few stories and pieces of research to realize that the waters around your credit union are growing. Some credit unions look to the future and start swimmin’.  Others are bound and determined to keep their head above water, only to do exactly what Dylan described in the song: sink like a stone.

Do the words leave you alarmed and seeking answers to the problems he describes? Then take a peek into Dylan’s personal life in from the early 60’s for a small beacon of hope.

Flashback to May 1965. Dylan was wrapping up a European tour in London. He’d been on the road non-stop touring Europe for four months. Night after night Dylan played for throngs of people. During the day he was paraded in front of the media, sometimes becoming irate having to answer the same nonsensical questions.

“I’ve got nothing to say about these things I write,” he barked at one reporter. “There’s no great message. Stop asking me to explain,” he exclaimed to another. In short, Dylan was burnt out. He was losing his interest in music and even threatened to quit the music business altogether and move to a tiny cabin in Woodstock, New York. He later fulfilled that promise and made the move.

It was only after a brief bout with food poisoning in Portugal that kept Dylan bed-ridden for a full week that he began to have a renewed love for creating music. “I realized I was very drained,” Dylan later confessed in an interview. “I was playing a lot of songs I didn’t want to play. It’s very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don’t dig you.”

“Every creative journey begins with a problem” wrote Jonah Lehrer in his book Imagine: How Creativity Works. Lehrer goes on to say “Before we can find the answer – before we probably even know the question – we must be immersed in disappointment, convinced that a solution is beyond our reach. It’s often only at this point, after we’ve stopped searching for the answer, that the answer arrives.”

Perhaps you’re burned out. I speak with credit union executives every day who are ready to throw in the towel. Dealing with surly examiners and mounting compliance burdens it takes its toll. Many executives who were once as passionate about their credit union as Dylan was about music are now experiencing that feeling that Dylan had at the Savoy hotel in London in 1965.

While the water around us continues to grow, remember that your problems are the beginning of a creative journey. Yes, the times they are a changing’, but let the journey begin today. In closing, here’s a final piece of advice from Dylan:

Your old road is rapidly agin’. Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand, for the times they are a-changin’.

Bo McDonald

Bo McDonald

Bo McDonald is president of Your Marketing Co. A marketing firm that started serving credit unions nearly a decade ago, offering a wide range of services including web design, branding, ... Web: yourmarketing.co Details