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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →The most reliable way to think creatively about efficiency is to begin with a real point of friction, not a fashionable technology. TwinStar Credit Union’s historical Imagination Lab illustrates a practical sequence: employees identified member and workplace problems, assessed feasibility and likely impact, tested ideas, and reported what they learned. The approach is useful beyond credit unions, provided “efficiency” is defined by who benefits and how the result will be measured.
What TwinStar’s Imagination Lab was designed to do
This is a historical case study, not a current performance report. Marc Rapport’s 2019 CreditUnions.com feature described an Imagination Lab that began in 2013 at TwinStar Credit Union. The program grew from Chief Administrative Officer Mary Beth Spuck’s work with the Filene Research Institute and CEO Jeff Kennedy’s view that the credit union should devote more resources to innovation. Spuck and COO Scott Daukas were assigned to lead the employee team.
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The lab was a selected group of 10 employees. Applicants went through a selection process that included a Wonderlic test, accepted a two-year commitment, and received training in IDEO human-centered design. TwinStar selected new members annually. The intent was not to create a separate research department detached from operations; it was to give employees from the organization a defined way to surface problems and investigate improvements.
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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →The lab’s stated objectives covered products, services, processes, and business models that could help members or employees, streamline work, be tested, and ultimately be implemented for meaningful impact. Participants were expected to experiment, seek expert guidance, study the underlying problem, bring ideas to life, test them, and report their findings.
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One earlier report, published in 2017, said TwinStar had considered more than two dozen process improvements and product proposals during the preceding four years. The 2019 feature described roughly 30 ideas assessed, many submitted through the Bright Ideas employee suggestion program. Those counts describe ideas considered or assessed, not a tally of completed projects or verified savings.
Why the problem comes before the solution
Spuck summarized the central discipline this way: “It’s important to understand the problem before looking for a solution.” That principle prevents an organization from choosing a tool first and then searching for a justification. It also changes who gets heard. The people who open accounts, answer calls, process payments, underwrite loans, or handle exceptions often see friction long before it appears in a management dashboard.
Member-facing friction the lab examined
Rapport’s 2019 CreditUnions.com feature gives several examples of the lab’s scope:
- Streamlining ACH setup.
- Improving how checks appeared online.
- Speeding loan-modification applications.
- Investigating whether form design contributed to confusion about payments.
These examples show different kinds of problems: a process that may require too many steps, a digital display that may be hard to understand, an application workflow that may delay help, and a communication or design issue that may create avoidable questions. Rapport’s 2019 feature presents them as subjects considered by the lab, not as proof that every change was deployed or produced a measured outcome.
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Employee and infrastructure questions
The group also examined workload, headcount, and employee perks. It reviewed manual processes and considered technical issues involving authentication and indirect-lending systems. An overdraft-protection overhaul was being handled under a steering committee. These items matter because efficiency can be lost in staffing arrangements, policy design, or system dependencies as easily as in a customer-facing screen.
A useful implication is that an innovation program should accept both small and complex questions. A form change may be testable quickly; authentication or lending-system work may require specialists, vendor coordination, security review, and a longer decision path. Putting both into one intake process makes the organization’s priorities visible without pretending they have the same risk or lead time.
How ideas moved from suggestions to decisions
TwinStar’s process included the Bright Ideas suggestion program and an “Efficiencies Matrix Impact Scoring” spreadsheet. The matrix tracked projects through assessment and possible completion, postponement, or termination. That status discipline is important: an idea does not become a success merely because it was submitted, discussed, or assigned to a team.
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A practical evaluation record can use the following questions, adapted from the lab’s stated objectives:
| Decision dimension | Question to answer | Evidence to collect |
|---|---|---|
| Member benefit | Does the proposal remove a specific point of friction for members? | Observed complaints, task delays, confusing steps, or other documented problem signals. |
| Employee benefit | Does it reduce avoidable work or improve the employee experience? | Process observations, workload information, error patterns, or staff feedback. |
| Process improvement | Which activity becomes simpler, faster, clearer, or less repetitive? | A defined current-state workflow and the proposed future-state change. |
| Testability | Can the idea be tried safely on a limited basis? | A pilot boundary, success measure, owner, time period, and stop conditions. |
| Implementability | Can the organization operate the change after the test? | Required approvals, systems, skills, vendors, controls, and ongoing ownership. |
| Impact | Is the expected benefit worth the resources and tradeoffs? | A stated measure, affected population, costs, risks, and assumptions. |
The matrix’s possible outcomes—completion, postponement, or termination—are all legitimate results. Postponing an idea can be sensible when a dependency is not ready. Terminating one can prevent further spending on a weak or unsafe proposal. Reporting those decisions preserves learning instead of allowing the organization to repeatedly revisit the same suggestion.
A repeatable employee-led efficiency playbook
An organization can adapt the case without copying its exact staffing model. The essential sequence is a set of decisions, not a particular job title or spreadsheet.
- Name the person and the pain point. Write who experiences the problem, what they are trying to do, where the friction occurs, and what happens when nothing changes. “Improve payments” is too broad; “members misunderstand a particular payment instruction on a form” is testable.
- Invite people from the work. Include employees who perform the process and, where possible, people who receive the service. Cross-functional participation helps expose handoffs, policy constraints, and duplicate work that a single department may miss.
- Describe the current process. Map the steps, systems, approvals, queues, rework, and manual entries. Establish what is known and what is only assumed. This is where an attractive solution often proves unnecessary or misdirected.
- Check existing options first. Ask whether another department, an existing procedure, a configuration change, or a current vendor capability can address the problem. Creating a new product or system should not be the default when a simpler change is available.
- Assess feasibility and likely impact. Consider member and employee benefit, process improvement, testability, implementation requirements, risks, and the resources required. Record the assumptions so a later review can challenge them.
- Run a bounded test. Choose a limited population, workflow, or channel where the change can be observed without compromising required controls. Decide in advance what evidence will support continuation, revision, postponement, or termination.
- Report findings and share learning. Document what happened, including unexpected effects and failed assumptions. A negative result is useful when it prevents a larger investment in the wrong solution.
- Make an explicit disposition. Move the idea to implementation, another owner, a later review, or closure. Assign responsibility for any change that leaves the pilot stage; otherwise a promising test can become another abandoned handoff.
Define “efficiency” before claiming it
Efficiency is not a single universal number. Organize North Carolina’s Strategy Note 94 frames the key questions as “Efficient for whom? By what measure?” Its warning is especially relevant to financial services, where a faster process for one group can create extra work, risk, or confusion elsewhere.
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For example, reducing employee handling time may shift effort to a member who must complete more steps. A shorter application may omit information that another team needs later. A change that looks efficient during one week may create maintenance work over a longer period. Results can also differ by branch, channel, geography, member segment, or product type.
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Before comparing proposals, state the perspective and boundaries:
| Definition question | What to make explicit |
|---|---|
| Who benefits? | Members, frontline employees, back-office staff, managers, vendors, or several groups. |
| What is measured? | Time, error frequency, rework, queue length, administrative burden, clarity, completion, or another declared outcome. |
| What is the time horizon? | Immediate handling, a full operating cycle, ongoing maintenance, or a longer period in which downstream effects appear. |
| What is the scope? | A branch, channel, product, member segment, region, or the whole organization. |
| What inputs and outputs count? | Labor, technology, approvals, member effort, risk controls, service quality, and the resulting task or outcome. |
| What has been omitted? | Exceptions, accessibility, security, compliance, training, vendor dependence, and work shifted to another team. |
These are measurement choices, not TwinStar results. The case does not quantify realized savings, error reductions, or member-outcome improvements. It demonstrates a way to ask better questions before assigning a number to “efficiency.” Strategy Note 94’s conclusion is concise: “Efficiency matters. But we need to think carefully about how we apply that concept.”
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to compare competing ideas without killing creativity
A scoring process should make tradeoffs visible, not turn early-stage ideas into a false exercise in precision. Start with the lab’s own axes—member help, employee help, streamlined work, testability, and implementability—then require a short explanation for each judgment.
Use evidence appropriate to the idea’s maturity
- Early suggestion: identify the affected person, the observed pain, and the assumption that needs testing.
- Promising concept: map the current process, identify dependencies, and define a safe experiment.
- Pilot candidate: name the owner, population, controls, measures, and decision date.
- Scale decision: compare observed effects with the original problem and account for costs or work shifted elsewhere.
Do not award certainty to a proposal simply because it uses new technology. A modest change to a form or workflow may have clearer value and lower risk than a large system replacement. Conversely, a technically difficult issue may deserve attention when it blocks a critical member or employee journey. The purpose of the comparison is to allocate learning effort intelligently.
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What this historical case does—and does not—show
- It shows a small, selected employee group being given responsibility for finding and exploring practical improvements.
- It shows a shift from scouting interesting technology toward defining problems before considering solutions.
- It shows a portfolio that mixed process changes with larger or technically complex questions.
- It shows how an intake program and an impact-scoring matrix can give ideas a route to testing, postponement, or termination.
- It does not establish that every proposal was implemented, that the lab continued in the same form, or that it delivered a quantified financial return.
The feature’s quick-facts panel listed TwinStar at $1.2 billion in assets, 115,159 members, and 20 branches as of December 31, 2016. A 2017 Writers’ Choice Awards summary described a $1.3 billion institution. Those are dated figures from separate reports, not a current combined statistic. The cited 2017 and 2019 reports do not verify current TwinStar membership, assets, branch count, or the present status of the Imagination Lab.
Applying the method in a modern credit union
A credit union considering a similar program should begin with governance that protects experimentation without bypassing normal controls. Senior leaders can define the lab’s authority, budget, data access, and escalation path, while operational owners retain responsibility for compliance, security, lending, and member protection.
Recruitment should value firsthand knowledge of work, curiosity, and the ability to test assumptions. A two-year commitment and annual selection were TwinStar’s reported choices; another organization may choose a different term. What matters is protected time, a clear remit, training in human-centered methods, and a way to return participants to their regular teams with what they learned.
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Every proposal should have a visible record. At minimum, capture:
- The problem statement and affected people.
- The evidence that the problem exists.
- Existing processes, departments, or vendors that might already address it.
- Expected benefits and possible tradeoffs.
- Test design, owner, controls, and measures.
- The decision: implement, revise, postpone, or stop.
Finally, publish the learning internally. Employees are more likely to submit useful ideas when they can see what happened to earlier suggestions, including ideas that were respectfully declined. That feedback loop turns an innovation lab from an occasional campaign into an organizational habit.
The practical verdict
Creative efficiency is disciplined curiosity. TwinStar’s Imagination Lab offers a concrete pattern: assemble employees who understand the work, start with member and employee pain points, assess feasibility and impact, test what can be tested, and record the decision. The critical safeguard is to define efficiency before measuring it. Without a stated beneficiary, measure, time horizon, and scope, a faster step can simply move cost or confusion somewhere else.
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