On a hot and humid Saturday in Houston, Texas, I was honored to facilitate offsite strategic planning for Cy Fair Federal Credit Union. Cy Fair is a former education-based credit union, transformed into a community CU charter, but the board substantively consists of current and former educators and administrators. The CEO is Cameron Dickey, and […]
Author Archives: David Peterson
Innovation… in the Restroom Stall?
Recently I was facilitating a small group of bankers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago- an iconic old building with magnificent architecture, soaring columns and lots of marble. But of course, the inside is modern; our meeting room had every electronic audio and visual convenience- the best of everything. During a break, I went […]
Battling Confirmation Bias and My Lying Eyes
I had previously written about my experience flying from Albuquerque to Houston and how I was able to overcome confirmation bias in getting through security and making my flight after a long security checkpoint shutdown. On the ensuing flight, I was reading an article by Ben Yagoda in The Atlantic about cognitive biases. I […]
The Power of Misinformation
My wife Samantha and I arrived at the Albuquerque (ABQ) airport several hours early today. The idea was to check in our bags and then go find a place to have a nice lunch together; we were traveling to different destinations and wouldn’t see each other for several weeks. Check in went smoothly, but as […]
What Paper Towels Tell Your Employees
I recently walked into the break room at U.S. Dataworks and noticed someone had bought replacement paper towels. Based on my status of not having anything to do on my off time, along with my Sam’s Club membership, I had assumed responsibility for provision of our kitchen items. However, I had been out of town […]
The Importance of Speaking Well
As the emcee of the Community Bankers Association of Georgia Annual Conference, I get to introduce speakers and listen to their presentations. One of the highlights of this year’s conference was a talk by the newly minted ICBA CEO Rebecca Romero Rainey. Rebecca comes from a line of community bankers and was previously CEO of […]
Do What You Can Do
After two long, but rewarding weeks teaching technology and innovation at the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Colorado, I was at the Denver airport waiting on my flight back to Houston. I had parked at a charging station and was working on my computer when out of the corner of my eye, […]
Apple Watch and the Kardia Watchband
While in a Graduate School of Banking class on Effective Use of Technology, I discussed the future of technology, such as the Apple Watch. Along with the future C-Suite leaders that were in attendance, I talked about the fact that there was still no “killer” watch app for banking. Other than notifications that come to […]
How Hard is it to Just Say “I’m Sorry …”
Mistakes happen. I know that I make my fair share. And it happens from time to time as we interact with physical and online merchants. I am very tolerant of mistakes but I also do take note of how companies remediate these issues. Two recent examples come to mind. I had a reservation at a […]
Counting the Apples in a Single Seed …
Every July, I teach at the University of Colorado’s Graduate School of Banking for two weeks. This is an amazing experience for these bankers since they are being groomed by their institutions to become future leaders. Many of the students I teach will become C-Suite members in the years to come, so I take my […]