A Timely
Moment
The CU
Team has devoted a large part of our lives to getting here. Beginning in 1999 with gaining
a clarity of what
we wanted to do for people to influence change; analysing and creating
ideas on how to do it; learning new things and how to go it alone; trusting in a creative process,
devising a multiple approach proposition for customers and corporates; meeting with some of the
world's most successful corporates and listening to them; and remaining focused on our vision:
CU,
this enterprise has become a way of life, and passion for us to complete. Fully
realising these strands of the
CU dream
now begins with customers:
TheWire
ImprovementForum
CustomerCharters
Customer-Corporate-Partnership
CU-Train
CU-Pay-It-Forward
CU-Hall-Of-Change
and MarketPlace.
And we are encouraged that
CU is arriving -
we could not have planned for this synchronicity - to find that this time now,
in the Digital Age, is the moment for
CU to be here
to help customers regain influence. |
First. Customers, all affected by the global crisis caused by banks, need to influence change now more than ever before.
And the
Digital Age offers the opportunity for us to do that.
Second. Regulators, in high office, disconnected from the reality of
ordinary people on the ground, need
the influence of people to focus their attention and cause
pre-emptive regulatory action.
Third. Banks in particular, still showing signs of greed even after taking bail-out,
need customer influence to change the way they treat customers, and
include a fair-deal in their business model.
Fourth. Now is our time for customers and
CU to work with
corporates: for there are many more forward-looking CEO's than when we started, who
are building a more customer-centric, corporate culture
on the inside; seemingly ready to engage with a fresh approach, a "daring to be
naive"1,
independent customer-centric culture on the outside:
CustomersUnited.
Fifth and last but not least. The Cameron-Clegg leadership, with new
ideas, is here now. And have said they want more openness and want |
people to be empowered to improve society.
Encouraged by these words, the CU team prepared and delivered (early May 2011) our proposal
for CustomersUnited, openly and independently of government,
to empower the influence of people, on all the regulated sectors; so that never
again will society be led into crisis by the regulated or the regulator of
any sector.
We have now heard (end May 2011) from No.10 that Mr Cameron is "considering our proposal"
which asked for
CU to
"pilot" TheWire
with the new regulators who have begun to replace the abolished FSA. This means
ordinary people - "customers of democracy" - using
TheWire
to influence how the banking sector is performing for customers. And to bring that influence
to the attention and actions of the new regulators, other "supervisors", the FOS, and government departments
overseeing banks.
"To everything,
there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
The Byrds 1965 hit single:
"Turn! Turn! Turn! ” / Ecclesiastes 3:1
|
1 "Dare to be naive."
in creativity and innovation
and trying new things:
Buckminster Fuller |