Cooperation Meets Collaboration

Directors confront change at TEC conference

A foundation built on trust is important to success in the business world, and electric cooperatives are no different.

“You’re not going to be loyal to a business unless you think they care about your interests,” said Mike Williams, TEC president and CEO. “I think trust is something that we focus on. We’re spending time as an organization to make sure that’s part of our culture because the most effective organizations are high trust, high-performance cultures.”

Williams and other speakers at the 25th annual TEC Directors Conference, held Jan. 13–15 in Georgetown, encouraged collaboration and trust as important tools for combatting challenges including aging infrastructure, safety and loss prevention, cybersecurity, and population growth.

For example, care must be taken to ensure integrating generative artificial intelligence into the workspace doesn’t erode the role of employees. That trust must be protected.

“The way we use AI is primarily automation,” said Slade Griffin, president of Contextual Security Solutions, who spoke about AI and cybersecurity. “What we don’t use it for is decision making, and I’d encourage you to keep that in mind.”

While generative AI can be an invaluable tool, Griffin warned attendees that it’s still far from perfect. The same applications used to help streamline processes can be used against organizations by hackers, and AI services are continually evolving.

“When someone brings you a technology, and they say, ‘Look how convenient this is.’ Roll it back a second and say, ‘Tell me how that works,’ ” Griffin said.

Technological evolution isn’t the only continual change facing co-ops. There are more and more Texans every day.

“The population of Texas is now at 31,290,831. With that, we ranked, between 2023 to 2024, No. 1 in the whole country in numeric population growth,” said Monica Cruz, state data center lead for the Texas Demographic Center. “We saw an increase of about 562,941 people coming to Texas within that year.”

She expects growth trends to continue, adding strain to the state’s infrastructure. “Since 2020, we’ve added 2 million [Texans], and we’re on the same track as we were,” Cruz said.

The next TEC Directors Conference is set for Jan. 12–14, 2026, in San Antonio.