In 1983, Australia hosted one of the most grueling endurance races the world had ever seen: the Sydney to Melbourne Ultra Marathon - a punishing 544-mile footrace meant only for the fittest professional athletes.
On the day of the race, a curious figure appeared at the starting line: Cliff Young. Sixty-one years old, wearing overalls and work boots, Young wasn’t an elite runner. He was a potato farmer. And the few who noticed him - if they noticed him at all - must have quietly prepared for the inevitable: Cliff would be humiliated, maybe even injured.
But Cliff Young didn't race like the others. He didn't sprint. He shuffled, slowly but relentlessly, without stopping. While professional runners slept at night, Cliff kept moving. Five days, fifteen hours, and four minutes later, he crossed the finish line first - setting a new course record and becoming a national hero.
Cliff didn’t beat the competition because he looked the part. He won because he never stopped moving forward.
Today, in an era dominated by AI, there’s a different kind of race happening - and a different kind of challenge facing organizations like credit unions.
The technology revolution no longer looms in the future. It is here, now - reshaping how work gets done, how members are served, and how efficiency becomes existential.
Last week, an IncMagazine article quoting Shopify’s Tobias Lütke and Fiverr’s Micha Kaufman, delivered a clear warning: It does not make sense to hire more people before we learn to do more with what we have. Before asking for more headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI. Stagnation is almost certain without it.
In other words: if you're not moving with AI, you're losing.
Credit unions stand at the convergence of two profound truths.
First: AI must be leveraged. Not as an experiment, not as a marketing headline, but as a core tool of operational survival. Growing headcount without leveraging AI’s ability to automate, optimize, and accelerate will create bloated, inefficient organizations that cannot keep pace with fintechs or digital-first banks. AI isn't replacing the mission. It’s preserving the mission - by making it faster, sharper, and scalable.
Second: People still matter. The workers who show up relentlessly, the MSRs who build trust over years, the people with human judgment and a service constitution that AI might not weigh to the right degree…these people are Cliff Youngs. Their work ethic, their drive, their connection to the human side of finance - these are competitive advantages that you might not want AI to try to replicate.
The new formula for unstoppable credit unions isn’t AI or people. It’s AI plus exceptional people.
It’s a workforce that understands AI not as a threat, but as a companion to their expertise. It’s an executive team that doesn’t ask, "How many people can we hire?" but instead asks, "How can we help our people climb higher with the right tools beneath them?"
Those who learn to wield AI while honoring the timeless power of grit will win across every vector that matters:
Service
Convenience
Value
Financial advice
The world didn’t see Cliff Young coming. And maybe, just maybe, the future won’t see credit unions coming either - if they choose now to combine relentless human perseverance with unstoppable technological force.
The race is already underway. It’s time to shuffle forward - faster than anyone expects.