Strategy during a crisis
Focusing on products and service won’t build lasting, sustainable success; mission-based strategy helps separate real opportunity from feel-good initiatives.
“Crisis produces opportunity!” It might be a cliché, but it’s true. And the credit unions best positioned to benefit from that opportunity are those driven by strategy.
In times like these, credit unions tend to focus on responding to immediate challenges, often sacrificing future potential to do so. That’s a false choice. Putting all your focus and resources toward emergency triage and first aid is missing the forest for the trees. It’s responding to the crisis but ignoring the resulting opportunity.
Doing the right thing today doesn’t guarantee better outcomes tomorrow. You need a solid plan to turn today’s goodwill into deeper, more sustainable relationships in the future. That’s why investing in strategy is now more important than ever. A long-term, actionable vision, deeply grounded in culture and mission, is what separates organizations that come out of crises with momentum from those that feel lucky to survive.
But true strategy is hard work, even at the best of times. It requires commitment, energy, and other scarce resources. When the environment is chaotic, those things are dearer and the inevitable opportunity cost is more obvious. And, yet, it’s amid this confusion that strategy is most valuable.
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