6 Things You Learned Watching the Super Bowl

When I am watching football in my basement on Sundays during the season, I am selfishly engaging in work essential to my understanding and assistance of the credit union industry. Now that the season is over, there is much to be learned about working in a successful organization from watching the Eagles (35) and the Chiefs (38). What a great game! Here are some examples.

1. Everyone has a role to play. If you only watch the Super Bowl, football may appear to you to be little more than a gladiatorial struggle during which freakishly fast and strong men either try to violently tackle each other or avoid such a fate. The most basic job of a coach in football is to break down complicated plays into individual responsibilities. Suddenly, a wide receiver only has one route to run, a running back one area to block and a quarterback has a limited number of options depending on the play call. In other words, everyone has an individual responsibility, and trust that the other person is going to do his or her part of the job. Similarly, many an outsider would be overwhelmed if they ever were put in charge of running your credit union and told they were responsible for everything from customer service to making loans to guarding against bad guys. A successful credit union has distinct and well understood responsibilities for its employees.

2. Trust your teammate. Not only does everyone have an assignment on each play, but everyone has to trust that their teammate is doing their job. Imagine if all 11 Eagle defenders felt that only they could stop Patrick Mahomes; they’d surely give up a lot of rushing yards. Similarly, if the teller decides to ignore policies because she doesn’t trust the compliance staff, neither responsibility will be effectively met.

3. Keep up with the latest trends. To be successful in the long run, you have to change with the times. Andy Reid has been coaching in some capacity for the NFL for 31 years. He’s successful no matter where he goes, however, because he changes with the times while keeping what’s best about his own approach to designing plays. He now lets players have input on developing certain plays, something that no hard-nosed NFL coach would have dreamed of doing 30 years ago. He went up against 41-year-old Nick Sirianni, who calls plays the way some people play poker. He’s not afraid of going for it on fourth down in his own territory, an approach that crusty old-timers would have scoffed at not too long ago. There is no industry changing faster than the financial services industry and this pace is only going to increase. Regardless of whether your CEO is in her 60s or 30s, she must recognize trends that are going to reshape how the credit union does business.

4. Diversity matters. This is the first Super Bowl that featured two Black quarterbacks. Think about that. In other words, as a result of changes in society’s attitudes, we now have a larger pool of athletes to play one of the most complicated positions in sports. If the NFL can improve the quality of its play by allowing everyone to play any position they’re qualified for, then certainly every financial institution can benefit by making sure it is recruiting candidates from as large a pool of qualified individuals as possible.

5. Culture starts at the top. What the Eagles and Chiefs have in common with every other NFL team is that they started this season with the same exact record. Elite teams like the Chiefs and the Eagles only got to the Super Bowl because they were willing to start from scratch and prove again just how good they are. It’s an amazing commitment to success, which demonstrates why teams that repeatedly win, such as the Patriots, are so amazing. You don’t win based just on talent, but because the organizations foster an environment where everyone is committed to the goal of doing their best toward achieving a common goal. That’s a commitment that starts at the top. Similarly, every CEO in every business should ask themselves if their workplaces are someplace that most employees want to do their best work in or if their employees are simply marking time.

6. Money matters. Kansas City starting quarterback Patrick Mahomes has a 10-year, $450 million contract. In contrast, Philadelphia Eagle’s starting quarterback Jalen Hurts is struggling along with a mere $6 million-plus over four years. Both teams made shrewd investments by appropriately balancing the cost of a quarterback against the potential benefits he could bring to the entire team. This is exactly what your credit union does when it decides whether it should invest in a new technology or vendor product, or use that money to strengthen other parts of the organization. Some people just make lucky guesses, but the organizations that win consistently, like Kansas City and now the Eagles, are either incredibly lucky or have consistent, high quality due diligence processes in place.

Henry Meier is the former General Counsel of the New York Credit Union Association, where he authored the popular New York State of Mind blog. He now provides legal advice to credit unions on a broad range of legal, regulatory and legislative issues. He can be reached at (518) 223-5126 or via email at henrymeieresq@outlook.com.