CUES Emerge Winner: ‘Keep an Open Mind’ and ‘Do It’

The 2023 CUES Emerging Leader says the best advice he got about the CUES Emerge program was not to go into it with a preconceived notion about what his business case for the competition phase would be.

In this episode of the CUES Podcast, Jayde DelGado, CCM, branch manager for $1.8 billion Harborstone Credit Union, Lakewood, Washington, tells the story of a 1:1 meeting with his CEO, CUES member Geoff Bullock and the 2017 winner of the challenge, then called Next Top Credit Union Exec. DelGado brought several ideas for problems his business case could help solve.

"Forget about all that,” DelGado recalls Bullock saying. “Don’t go in there with your business plan already done in your mind. Go in there with an open mind. Be open to learning. Be open to hearing. You very well might come out of this program with a completely different concept than you had ever thought, completely different than what you have in mind for your business case now.”

“And I did just that,” DelGado says. “I put it all aside, went in there, was really, really listening to the problem identification lecture that we had on how to ideate what some of the challenges are, how to identify those challenges.

“And it really helped because … I could see … how easy it would be to go in there looking through the lens of, ‘I have one problem. I know how I’m going to solve this problem.’ But to be able to go in there with that open perspective and kind of see everything that came, I think really helped me get to the point where I was able to get the business case that I had.” DelGado’s business case was a transitional housing loan program.

DelGado also recalls Bullock encouraging him to apply for the experience. “What have you got to lose?” Bullock asked him.

If you’re considering applying for CUES Emerge, DelGado would say pretty much the same thing.

"I can’t really think of a reason to not do it,” he says in the show. “It’s professional development. It’s something that needs to be invested in. At times it can be challenging with … the workload, but if it was easy, everyone would do it, and that’s part of professional development … learning how to balance your time and learning how to prioritize.

“If you’ve thought about it, if you’re thinking about it, if you’re considering it, just do it,” he emphasizes.

In the show, DelGado also gets into:

• the three phases of the CUES Emerge program: application, education and competition
• how teamwork is important in all things, credit union work, the CUES Emerge competition and more
• details about his business case for a transitional housing loan
• why DelGado thinks credit unions are such financial services standouts

Links for this show:

• CUES Emerge
• DelGado’s pitch during the CUES Emerge 2023 pitch show
• DelGado won a free registration CUES Advanced Management Program from Cornell University and leadership coaching from Envision Excellence
• The 5-second rule that DelGado describes in the show
• Transcript