I haven't slept well since September 2008. Around the time the financial crisis began, the Filene Research Institute was holding its annual Big Bright Minds meeting in Portland, Ore. The normal buzz of BlackBerry prostration grew to a fury when the news hit that all types of financial firms were on the edge of a complex, terrifying precipice.

Although credit unions were far from the bustle of Wall Street, we all knew the contagion would eventually hit our niche. Change and pain were coming.

Since that fateful month, Filene has taken the medicine prescribed by the many academics we work with and which we share with credit unions on what to do when a business model is under attack. Specifically, we recognized the global financial services market, including credit unions, were about to experience what UCLA strategy professor Richard Rumelt calls a structural break, "the moment in time series data when trends and the patterns of associations among variables change." In the words of a business person, structural breaks are when the poop hits the fan and all bets are off.