Monday Morning Musings
Volume XXIV, Number 20 (Issue 1171) May 18, 2026
Staying Relevant
Read the tea leaves. Follow the money. Connect the dots. Evaluate the trend. The preceding are but a few of the axioms that advise us to pay attention to what is happening and act before we become irrelevant. Yet how many individuals and organizations are you aware of that persist in clinging to the familiar until it is too late? Call it what it is: stuck, resistant to change, fearful of change. When we refuse to innovate, we all but ensure our eventual slide into a full-blown state of irrelevance.
Take your typical service club as an example. Numerous service clubs have experienced a significant decline in both participation and volunteer membership over the past four decades. Study upon study suggests their decline is due to an amalgam of causes including a shift in our priorities (i.e., most adults’ time is being reallocated in favor of parental involvement at the expense of community involvement). We can add to that the fact most of these entities lack a long-term vision stemming from dated leadership models and attrition rates where the aging process is purging membership rolls faster than they can recruit new members and you have a setting for what is happening today.
While these and similar causes are at work, are they irreversible? In some cases, even when corrective measures are enacted, it seems the focus is on the symptoms more so than the underlying issues. But for most the real problem is a resistance to change. For example, not long ago I became acquainted with a local civic organization that does incredible work that addresses a tremendous need in our community. Nonetheless, their volunteer membership is, like so many other organizations, in decline.
In conversations with some of their membership it strikes me that a key factor in their poor recruiting results is the lack of widespread understanding of their mission. In that regard, they are guilty of hiding their light under a basket. Another factor in their decline in membership is an alarming resistance to modernization of their processes and thinking. As explained to me, that resistance is borne out of a fear their current membership will disengage in the face of anything that smacks of change. Thus, they keep doing what they have always done, avoiding even minor changes at the margin. The consequence is they are running hard but losing ground as new, younger members quickly become frustrated when their ideas are vetoed left and right.
Of course, such resistance to change is not limited to the universe of service organizations. As individuals many of us resist keeping up with the times. I admit there are times when I fall into that category and shame on me for that mindset.
In contrast, I recently spent hours with a friend who also happens to be the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar financial institution. During our wide-ranging conversation he shared an overview of what his team is doing to make use of AI. Among the uses they have found are generating software code for applications in minutes rather than months, preparing and analyzing management and board reports that speak to a range of audiences, performing complex loan underwriting, and evaluating customer transaction patterns and assessing possible product modifications. Needless to say, I was amazed by their success in leveraging technology.
Granted, there are risks and costs associated with being a pioneer. However, such risks should not prevent the rest of us from being fast followers – particularly when the tea leaves are telling us to embrace new ideas and new ways of doing things.
Soli Deo Gloria
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19
J. Keith Hughey
Mobile: (210) 260-0955
E-mail: keith@jkeithhughey.com
Website: www.jkeithhughey.com
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Copyright 2026 by J. Keith Hughey. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for reproduction and redistribution of this essay as provided under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Recent issues of Musings may be found at www.jkeithhughey.com. Your comments are both welcomed and encouraged.