Jason Tilley has spent 26 years in credit union technology, working his way from network development manager to CIO. He's held the top technology role at 1st Advantage Federal Credit Union in Yorktown, Virginia, for nearly nine years with similar roles at ABNB Federal Credit Union and Picatinny Federal Credit Union.

That tenure gives him something most CIOs lack: deep operational knowledge across every business unit. He can sit with the chief lending officer and trace a loan from origination to check, identifying exactly where processes cross departmental boundaries and create friction. Over the last five years, his focus has shifted from infrastructure to organizational improvement and what he calls operational debt.

The Cost of "Just Make It Work"

Operational debt borrows from the technical debt concept. It accumulates every time an organization launches a product or process without thinking through the cross-departmental impact. A new product rolls out. Department one gets a spreadsheet. Department two reviews it. Department three monitors a report. The member-facing product looks fine.

The cost shows up internally. Manual processes that require more staff to scale. Errors that multiply with every handoff. Expenses that climb until the process becomes untenable.

"You're ransoming your future for maybe a little bit of expediency today," Tilley said.

Nobody on the Balcony

Tilley uses a metaphor from Ronald Heifetz to explain why operational debt goes unnoticed. If you're on the dance floor, you're focused on your steps. You can't see the room. If you're on the balcony, you see every dancer, every pattern, every collision.

Most credit unions don't have anyone on the balcony. Staff focus on their piece of the operation and don't see how the pieces connect. Tilley's 27 years of institutional knowledge put him in that position, able to see where processes intersect and where friction compounds across departments. Tilley is happy to be on the balcony. But organizational resistance is real. Getting past "you're the IT guy" has been a longer project than any system migration. When he raises questions about short term decisions that will unquestionably have a long-term impact on operational debt he's asked why the IT guy cares about that?

The problem has a second-order effect that matters right now. Organizations carrying heavy operational debt can't easily adopt AI, automation, or RPA. If every process depends on a person doing a manual task, there's nothing to automate. The processes need to be rationalized before technology can improve them.

Tilley sees this pattern across credit unions of every size, from $200 million to $5 billion in assets. Growth creates more processes, more handoffs, more manual steps. Eventually the organization hits a ceiling it built for itself.

Negative One

When asked to rate how high addressing operational debt is on organizations' priority list, on a scale of one to ten, Tilley didn't pause. "Negative one."

Production rules. Processes "get done" just fine today. The focus is on the dancefloor and not on the balcony. It's a decision to focus on "good enough" rather than make meaningful changes that will pay out over a longer term. What's missing is the belief that investing in process improvement will produce demonstrable results.

A Demographic Clock Is Running

Tilley also sees a demographic shift bearing down on credit unions. The average credit union member is in their mid-fifties. The average age of a credit union board member is 76.3. The average American is 39. When older generations pass, their assets won't flow to grandchildren's credit union accounts. They'll follow them to Chime, Venmo, and the digital banks where they already live.

Credit unions need to partner with fintechs rather than try to outbuild them. A $500 million credit union cannot compete with a digital bank's product team. The operational improvements Tilley advocates would position credit unions to make that shift before the demographic window closes.

"I think the resources are there. I think the belief that this is a lever that should be pulled, and that it will have a demonstrable benefit two years down the road, is the challenge."