Transcript

Colin Uthe:

I'm going to size you up real quick with the microphone.

Jeff Meredith:

Okay.

Colin Uthe:

I'm just going to scoot it a little bit forward. All right. I think we're rolling everywhere. This... Thank you so much, again, for agreeing to be on this show.

Jeff Meredith:

All good.

Colin Uthe:

I really appreciate it. Why don't you start by telling me your name and your title within the company?

Jeff Meredith:

I'm Jeff Meredith, CEO at the Chamberlain Group.

Colin Uthe:

Welcome to Connected, a podcast about the operations and the people that make up Chamberlain Group. I'm Colin Uthe and, this month, we're closing out the year by reflecting on some of the organization's biggest changes through the eyes and ears of Jeff Meredith. Jeff started his career at Chamberlain Group in 2018 as Chief Operations Officer. There, he oversaw some of our biggest accomplishments to date, such as the launch of our very first integrated camera in a garage door opener, our MyQ partnership with Amazon delivery, and the superb resilience demonstrated through the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Late last year, it was announced that Jeff would step into the role of CEO, effective January 1st. He has since led us through our brand new partnership with Blackstone, our long-term transformation into Access Solutions, and much more. As we catch our breath and prepare for 2023, join me as I sit down with Jeff and go over the most significant developments of 2022. This episode runs longer than our past episodes but I thought it fitting to leave this interview mostly uncut. So, sit back, relax, and let's get connected. You took the role of CEO at the beginning of this year and before that, you were chief operations Officer, correct?

Jeff Meredith:

Yes, I was.

Colin Uthe:

You were there for... What was it? Three years?

Jeff Meredith:

About three years.

Colin Uthe:

Okay. I think I remember because I started in 2018. And then, I think about a month later when I was in IT, they said, "You got to set up the new COO's office. Make sure you be real nice to him. Treat him real good." And, I said, "No problem at all. I got you covered."

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah, you did a good job. I remember.

Colin Uthe:

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Jeff Meredith:

My PC worked from day one.

Colin Uthe:

That's good.

Jeff Meredith:

That's a rarity when you join a new company.

Colin Uthe:

Yeah, it sometimes is. I want to go back to the very beginning of the year, right when you were about to take on the role of CEO. I just want to know what was going through your head. What were some prominent thoughts?

Jeff Meredith:

Honestly, throughout your career, you aspire to do new things and to continue to progress. I always aspired to move to a CEO position. I was excited, definitely, about achieving a target that I'd set for myself. I was scared. Anytime you push yourself out of your comfort zone and into a new area of responsibility. And, I always really take to heart the responsibility of leading people. For me, there was anxiousness and just the nervousness. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think when you enter into new roles and you push yourself in new ways, you're going to have some of that anxiety and some of that nervousness. But, I think that comes along with a drive to succeed and to push yourself.

As I entered the role, we'd just been acquired by Blackstone. So, there was a little bit of uncertainty with regard to how that was going to play out in terms of day-to-day operations and interactions. And then, Joanna had done a great job in the company for the last five years. So, following the footsteps of somebody who'd done really outstanding work to drive transformation, there's a bunch of emotions that went into it. I think that, above all else, I just wanted to still be me.

Colin Uthe:

Okay.

Jeff Meredith:

I think that's really important, that I'm not defined by a title. My character and who I am is consistent. I'm still a husband, a dad, somebody that wants to do a good job in his occupation and all those kind of things. So, just stay true to myself. I like to have fun and joke around sometimes. I'm serious other times. But, not to deviate from the person that I am.

Colin Uthe:

Right. I feel like you had the opportunity to establish your character before getting into that role too. You got the chance for the business to know you before you assumed that role. Do you feel that that was a good step?

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah, I think so. But, the two roles are pretty different. As an operations leader, you're really responsible for delivering the results of the P&L and driving the day-to-day operations of the organization. Sometimes, there's a little bit of hard ass in that piece of the role. I think what the organization... The organization knew me as a COO, not necessarily a CEO, so I had to really make sure I expanded my purview. I looked more broadly at the organization and I represented not just the day-to-day operations of the company, but the whole of the company.

Colin Uthe:

A lot more.

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah, I wanted to evolve not only my areas of focus but, also, let the organization see me as the leader of the entirety of the company, not just of the operational performance-based dimensions of the company.

Colin Uthe:

Going back to... You mentioned there was a lot that you were anxious about, obviously. This was a really big goal that you had set for yourself. What were you really excited to get started on when you took the role rather than anxious about starting?

Jeff Meredith:

I was fired up about just continuing to aggressively advance our transformation strategy. I really fully believe in what we're trying to do here. This idea of taking an outstanding hardware-based business industrial, but hardware-based business that's thrived for years, and using the foundation or the footprint that we've established both in the residential space and in the commercial space, driving that into a connected install base. Then, ultimately, really providing enhanced access capabilities and services to our users. But, it all stems from that foundation of a really strong install base of hardware.

When I first joined, and I say it to this day, if there's anybody who's going to be a leader in connected access in the world, it should be us. We're best positioned to be able to pull that off. There's a lot to it. We have to make sure that we advance in a pretty aggressive way. It's not a forever opportunity. Somebody will seize it if we don't. But, driving growth in video, driving growth in delivery, driving growth in auto, driving the new initiatives around community and, ultimately, facility which is still about a year away, I'm jacked up about those things.

I think that, as a company, they not only represent big opportunities, but a ton of opportunity for personal growth for people. They should be really fun things to pull off. They're challenging. There's problems in there and we have to work collaboratively to solve them. But, at the end of the day, we're going to be able to look back and say, "Look, we made this company. We truly transformed this company.d we made it go from one form of great to a even expanded form of great." There's a lot of value, personal value, in pulling something like that off.

Colin Uthe:

This transformation was a long time coming, if I'm not mistaken. We're really starting to pull the trigger on a lot of big transformations. Everything just lined up that way. We transformed with our leadership a little bit. We got you. We got Blackstone. There were also some things that we didn't really have as much control over that were still a great deal of change, like COVID protocols and whatnot. Do you feel like you had to change up your approach to leading the organization through that type of change depending on whether or not we had control over it?

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah. I mean, this year presented the ultimate in my career of a no-control scenario in Bigfoot. I'm super proud of how the organization responded to Bigfoot and rallied to really navigate through a time that could have been devastating, honestly. I mean, you shut down a business, terms of being able to ship to your customers for seven weeks, that could be truly devastating. But, we navigated it pretty deftly and we did it through an organization that really rallied together.

So, some of the things... I guess as I've progressed... When I was young in my career, if things went off path a little bit, I kind of wigged out. Because I had an idea of where I wanted to go. And, if something disrupted that, I felt like it was a massive setback. I think as I've progressed and grown in my leadership responsibilities, I realized that it's an inevitable that you're going to... Hopefully, we don't have a Bigfoot-like thing. But, the idea that you're going to have things that take you off center are going to happen.

I think your leadership is actually more defined in those moments than in moments when things are progressing on course. Being able to remain calm, being able to set course when there's chaos, being able to... having the organization see you as confident in a storm, that we're going to get through it, I think does wonders for people to first calm themselves but also believe more in you as a leader. So, this year has presented a lot of challenges. Everything from supply issues that held over to costs that rose over the last couple of years. So, as an organization, we've battled through those and I'm really proud of our ability to do that. And, I think I've grown as a leader in the midst of them and figured out how to... Because you got to keep driving the strategy. You can't just punt on what's going on in the business in those moments. You actually have to keep driving the strategy and mitigate whatever the chaotic or unexpected situation was.

Colin Uthe:

Making sure you're pivoting a lot and realigning when those things happen, you.

Jeff Meredith:

But, you got to stay on. We can't stop connecting our units and we can't stop drive driving our service business while we tend to Bigfoot. We have to do both simultaneously. And, I think those challenges make a resilient organization. Also, from a leadership standpoint, you can't just move people from one problem to the next. You have to actually set a strategy and it's down course and then deal with the things that occur in the midst of that.

Colin Uthe:

So, I guess your answer would be, "Got to handle all of it."

Jeff Meredith:

You do. Yeah. You really have to handle all of it? And, I think that's just the norm anymore. It's the predictability of business and economic environments is not there right now.

Colin Uthe:

You mentioned a little bit earlier about having to change up your approach a little bit as a COO versus a CEO. I'd like you to reflect on that a little bit more, about how you had to change up your leadership.

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah. It's been interesting because I think when I joined the company... I've talked to a lot of people about this. When I joined the company, I had been in a company for eight or nine years and everybody knew me. They knew my heart. They knew that I was direct in my communication, but that didn't mean that I didn't like you. It was just my style. And, when I came here, I continued that. And, it was really a miss on my part because people didn't know me. Stylistically, this wasn't the... Real direct communication wasn't the norm in the company. So, I think even as COO I had to adapt style-wise to fit. Because, ultimately, what you're driving for is you want to be an effective leader. And, style can actually interfere with that pretty significantly. Even if you got all the answers and you're super smart or whatever, if people think you're a jerk, it's really probably not going to..., Nobody's going to listen to you anyway, even if you got really good ideas.

So when I first came, I had to back off a little bit and do more self-reflection of what was the most effective leadership style. But, still, as COO, you're hard-charging, you're into every detail, you're trying to drive a transformation. So, a lot of things are... a lot balls in the air simultaneously. You're having operations-level meetings and driving deep-dive conversations. That was where I was coming out of the COO role. Moving into the CEO role, I realized one of the biggest challenges that we have is that engaging our employees right now is just hard. I can't walk around the office and talk to everybody on a daily basis. We see each other less frequently and interactions are on Zoom calls or on Teams calls and that kind of thing.

So, to really help people understand what we're trying to do and hear what they're interested in and what their aspirations are career-wise. Bring people together outside of specific work projects. That used to happen with a lot more frequency than it does now. It's not natural when people aren't here to gather up and go grab lunch together, stop, and have a beer after work or whatever like that. So, I felt like I shifted focus. And, I still maintain an operational focus, but how do I really help our employees to feel like they truly are part of one team and make that be not just a token statement that we say, but a real thing? And, how do we engage more deeply?

So, I tried to just expand my purview from the operations focus to thinking about nurturing our employees and making sure that people and the company knew that they were valued. We switched up the nature of town halls and we put in one team MVP and we redid the values this year. I think we've accelerated what we're doing with the Women's Network and with Polka. There's numerous examples of things that I wanted to really work on this year to drive engagement amongst our employees and to really unify us more deeply as one team.

Colin Uthe:

In line with our transformation this year, we determined our new purpose, which is what's projecting to everybody, both externally and internally, in what we're setting out to do. We settled on making access simple. What does that mean to you when we apply it to an organizational standpoint?

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah. I joked when we were talking about this as a company, and even when we made the decision. I said everybody's going to look at this and say you guys spent six months and you came back with making access simple. That's it?

Colin Uthe:

Pam was really ready to defend that when she was delivering.

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah. No. But, I said it because I was part of it and I said it because it's ideal when you go through this process that you churn and churn and churn and you ultimately want to get to the least common denominator with regard to what you're trying to say. So, if you can say it in 50 words if you say it in 50 words, can you say it in 40? If you say it in 40, can you say it in 30? If you say it in 10, can you say it in five? Ultimately, down to three, making access simple. Why I like it so much is that if I'm an engineer and I've designed a user experience or designed a product and I pick it up and look at it in the eyes of a user and ask myself, is this simple, it's telling. Right?

We've had experiences that I look back at and, at the time, they're probably the best that we could do with the technology that we had and so forth. Or, maybe not. But, you got to look for the number, count the number of beeps and look at the colors of the beeps and the colors of the illumination. Or, you got to climb on a ladder. It was that simple. It's not really simple.

Colin Uthe:

We can work harder at- [inaudible 00:19:26]

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah, we can do better than that. When we first did Amazon Delivery, I think we had 26 steps in the process and we got it under 10.

Colin Uthe:

Wow. Okay.

Jeff Meredith:

So, was 26 steps simple? No, it wasn't. I think there's a gut check embedded in the idea of make access simple. I think it applies even down in the organization. So, if our hiring practice are complicated and really difficult to execute, that's a byproduct of what we're trying to do as a business and supports us making access simple. If that's not simple, what do we do to make that user experience one that is fluid?

So, I like it as a unifying idea. I like it as a challenging idea. I like it as just a question we can ask each other. Is that process simple? It's got a kind of slap you upside the head, almost nature to it. And, it's like, no, that's awful. That's complicated as hell. So, for me, that's what I hope it does for us. I hope it forces us into discussions that continually challenge us back to have we done everything we could to make that user experience simple, that process simple, that engagement simple.

Colin Uthe:

Yeah. I actually love that because you blended together both my questions I was going to ask. I was going to ask how do we apply that to the organization. How do we apply that to the customer experience? Your answer was, "It's one and the same."

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah, no, I think it is. I think it traverses across the business. I'll be honest, I don't think it's been a major point of emphasis in the past. I think there's a lot of headroom for us to close the gap in the area of making things more simple, particularly as it relates to our users. One of the things, it's different in the business model that we're moving to versus the one that we're in. When you buy from us once every 12 years, if the process isn't really overly simple, is it a big deal? Because I don't have to do it again for 12 years.

But, if people use our app and watch their kids come home every day from school in the app, and that's a really complicated process, it becomes very frustrating because you do it repeatedly. And then, that factors into retention issues. If it's a wonderful experience and I love using our application to get into my apartment building or to watch videos of goings and comings or even get my packages delivered, that kind of thing, I'm going to re-up it time and time again. I'm going to renew it. I use this example sometimes. I got Stars. It's a streaming service like Showtime or whatever.

Colin Uthe:

Are we going to start talking about streaming UI?

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah. No, no, not streaming yet.

Colin Uthe:

Because, I have lots of thoughts.

Jeff Meredith:

Not streaming UI. I bought it for one show, but it did... There's nothing else there that I want, so I just canceled it. If you have an initial experience with something and it doesn't sustain value to you and it isn't something that you want to interact with, you get rid of it. I think, for us, the worst thing that we can do is go through all the process to sell the hardware to people, get them connected, offer them a service, they think it's terrible and they write it off and they don't use this ever again. This idea of driving sustained simplicity I think is important.

Colin Uthe:

On that topic, I know that we're making some efforts in the future to simplify our product line for that same reason, trying to make the purchasing process as simple as possible.

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah, I mean, I think we're looking at simplification in every realm from... Our sourcing team is looking at buying from fewer suppliers. We're looking at sourcing in conjunction with engineering. How do we consolidate components so that we buy fewer components? Our product team with engineering is looking at how do we consolidate our overall product lines down to the least number of skews necessary to drive the market. Our finance team is looking to automate and simplify a lot of the processes. I could go on and on. But, this idea of driving. Because, with simplicity, you get focus. One of the things that's critical for me, especially as I enter into '23, is we need to do less things.

Colin Uthe:

And, those less things, we need to do bits of them [inaudible 00:25:01]

Jeff Meredith:

We need to do better. But, we need to do less things. So, driving OKRs down to just a few, unifying across the organization so that we don't have one function focused on 10 things over here and then another function focused on six over here and only two of them overlap and we're not focused. This idea of picking the big things and really driving attention against them and leaving the little things off to the side and we'll pick those up after we've got all the big things done is a major area of emphasis for me and what I'm trying to drive into my leadership team as well.

Colin Uthe:

I think that's a really strong cadence to have and it's resonating really well throughout everything.

Jeff Meredith:

Good.

Colin Uthe:

Awesome. Love it. I heard through the grapevine that you've had a really diverse amount of experience leading teams in different cultures and backgrounds. What sort of tactics have you picked up from those experiences and brought back to Chamberlain Group?

Jeff Meredith:

For me, if I just go through major influences in my career, managing, living in different countries and managing teams in different cultures has definitely been a major driver in my development as a leader. So, it's interesting because my experiences are pretty different. I've always run global teams. So, the fact that we're a more US-based business has been a little weird to me, to be honest. I hope to diversify that even more as we go forward. But, if I think about my experience living in Beijing and running a team that was 95% Chinese nationals, in China, the bosses... I don't know. This may sound stupid. But, they're almost God-like. I mean, it's like a superior figure. I broke that down.

So, you got to understand. I think the first thing is you got to understand the culture that you're walking into. When I lived in France and working with a full European team, cultures varied across every country. So, you have to understand the framework with which people are coming to the table initially. From that, you can be adaptive. If I know that in China they're going to view me as on a pedestal, how do I first acknowledge that that's how they're going to view me? And then, break that down so that they don't view me like that because I want to be viewed as somebody that's not distanced from the team, but in the midst of the team.

I think first thing is understanding the culture that you're walking into. And then, you got to be true to yourself. Because you can't adapt everywhere without taking some core tenets of how you want to lead. For me, I've always wanted to be collaborative with the teams. I've always wanted to be a problem solver in conjunction with the teams. I've always wanted to look approachable and just authentic. But, if you don't understand the starting point from people, it's going to blow up.

The other thing that I really valued in the Europe examples, I had a team that had, I think, 13 countries represented on my leadership team. Everybody had a very diverse viewpoint just based on their upbringing, much less the race differences and the background differences and all that kind of thing. I think leading it across different cultures has also helped me to see the value of drive and diverse thinking into decision-making firsthand. A lot of people say that, but when you're sitting around a table with 13 people from different countries and you're trying to reach some decisions, and the people from Northern Europe versus the people from Southern Europe couldn't be more different, finding paths where we can all work together and make agreements, that was challenging as a leader. Very challenging as a leader. Because, you like those diverse thoughts, but somehow you got to lock arms on a decision.

I think navigating through that was a challenge. But, for me, it's not even just what's come back to Chamberlain. It's just how I've evolved as a leader over time. I mean, I think I place a lot of value on diverse opinions. I place a lot of value on constantly taking a pulse of the organization and the teams to figure out if I need to lead this way or that way and not just be driven by this is my style, take it or leave it. But, some leaders are totally tone-deaf to what's actually happening in the organization. So, to adapt around that I think is important.

Colin Uthe:

Let's plug Chamberlain group into that equation then. It sounds like you were able to take that same principle. First, know what kind of culture you're getting yourself into and then be flexible with it and adapt to it.

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah, I think definitely it goes back to the points that I made around my leadership approach at the beginning and how I adapted pretty quick. I've worked in public companies my whole career and the pace and the points of emphasis are just different than in a private company. So, when I came in here as my first private company, I'm a hundred miles an hour all the time kind of a person. It was just a little different. You want to evolve an org, but you got to start from where they are, not start from where you want them to be. I think that's an important point.

Colin Uthe:

How did you manage to lean into your own character qualities when assuming this role? It's funny because you've been listing your character qualities through this whole interview, which I think is awesome because you're very aware of how you're presenting yourself.

Jeff Meredith:

I think that self-awareness is important. I've done many 360 evaluations and self-assessments over time. Sometimes it's painful to look at because certain dimensions of your character you wish were a little different and you try to tweak them. But, for the most part, you want to make sure that you're just aware of the things that could be derailers. I'm a very passionate person, but sometimes that passion can turn into a frustration, and that rubs people the wrong way because they see a frustrated leader, not a passionate leader. And, even though it may have started as passion when we fall short a few times, it turns into frustration.

So, I think for me in this role, I've really tried to let people see authenticity. You can't really fake it. People see right through that sort of thing. So, you just have to be true to yourself. And, I think sometimes if you've been true to yourself and you botch something someday, like maybe you get too animated in a meeting or whatever because you get frustrated. If people have seen you for the last four months in a very authentic way, they're like, "Yeah, Jeff must probably be having a bad day today," rather than that guy's a total jerk. I think if you behave and lead in an authentic way, you get a little leeway from time to time if you screw something up.

For me, I want to hang it out there on the sleeve in terms of leadership style. I want to be deeply engaged and I want people to know that I care about them and the business. Not just the business, but also them. I've had opportunities this year through the Java with Jeff or different sessions like that to have more intimate engagement with people. As a lot of the company knows, in those forums, I'll answer any question that is ever posed as long as I know the answer. But, there's no off-limits where I say I only want to be asked these kinds of questions. I think, for me, just maintaining that authentic approach and showing passion and being deeply invested in the organization, wanting to engage with our employees, not only as just employees but as people.

Like we had the summer festival this year and that was great because we hadn't really done anything like that in a long time. And, just to be able to walk around and talk to families and see significant others and kids and stuff like that of people was important. That kind of thing's really important. Even though I spent about half the time in the dunk tank, but-

Colin Uthe:

I was going to say.

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah.

Colin Uthe:

Couldn't get you out of here.

Jeff Meredith:

I met a lot of kids, but I met them as they were knocking me into the dunk tank. But, I think those things are really important. Because, if you think a leader is aloof and doesn't really care about you or on a personal basis and is just trying to drive betterment of the company's financials, it's not really very motivating.

Colin Uthe:

I personally think that authenticity is one of the strongest traits any leader can have. I mean, that transcends the corporate world too. I feel like that's important everywhere. But, no, you seem very, very grounded in that.

Jeff Meredith:

Well, I mean, sometimes you get full of yourself. When you have three teenage kids, you always get grounded back to, yeah, you're just our dad. It's not... Yeah. So, that helps me stay on the bottom floor.

Colin Uthe:

Well, on the subject of being grounded with things, I'd like you to reflect on a low point from this last year.

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah, a low point. Man, in the Bigfoot thing, I had a lot of low points because we felt like... I shared a lot of these with Susan Bell. She and I commiserated with each other a lot of nights where we thought we were going to get one kind of ruling and we got a different kind of ruling. I just felt like the deck was stacked against us a few times. And, it's just depressing, honestly. We fight and we think we've got a good argument put together where it's, whether it's with the I T C or whether it's with customs or whether it was with federal circuit or even you use some PR and public stage kind of things. And, a lot of times it just didn't work.

So, for me, that's been some of the... Just felt helpless. I know Susan, because she leads our legal function, felt the same. So, it was good that we had each other to go through that together. But, man, those were some tough moments. Because I'm coming in as first-time CEO, I'm leading the company trying to get us out of this hole that we're in. And, it seems like we're just digging deeper some days. Yeah, those were some tough times.

Colin Uthe:

Was that at all a battle you expected to have?

Jeff Meredith:

Not at all, man.

Colin Uthe:

Were you briefed on that?

Jeff Meredith:

No. Yeah, I just didn't think that that was something that was going to be on the agenda in the first year. So, it all came as a bit of a shock to me.

Colin Uthe:

But, you just had to... It's there. You got to handle it and ignore everything else-

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah, yeah, you got to deal with it. And, I feel good about our ability to navigate through it. But, it wasn't without some moments that you're just like, I don't really know what the answer is. How much further can this thing go? So, yeah.

Colin Uthe:

How about a high point? What, in your own opinion, not Chamberlain Group's opinion, but what is your single greatest success from this last year? If it's different, what are you most proud of from the last year?

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah. I think I'm proud of a few things. I've articulated some of these to the company in all-hands meetings. But, I think it's useful to say again in this form. While we fell short a little bit of our budget goals this year, we really had a strong year. So, to have a strong year, performance-wise, in the midst of all of the challenges that we went through, we grew 11% from a revenue perspective. We grew six, 7% from a profitability perspective. Numbers are still being finalized. But, even though we fell short of our budget, we performed incredibly well and we didn't give at all on our strategic investments. We continued to hire people. We continued to promote people and move into new roles. I mean, you're an example of that, Colin, yourself. You moved out of from IT since you were here into communications because you have that capability to move across functions and do something else. We've made conscious efforts to try to identify strengths in people across the organization and find places where they could develop.

The internal movements this year, the fact that we didn't give on our investments and we still had a strong performance year, albeit a little short of our budget, but we didn't... Some companies, if you're going to be off-budget, immediately start cutting every expense and you derail the... That's more like the public company view. But, we didn't do that. We stayed true to our strategic investments. And, we'll be better for it in the long term, even though we fell a little bit short this year. So, yeah. I'm really proud of that. I'm proud of the team. I'm super proud of how we rallied around Bigfoot and turned what could have been into an absolute disaster to something that unified us as a company. That's a big deal.

Colin Uthe:

Make or break.

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah. It really is. It's a big deal. I'm proud of the fact that 360 people or something created new values for our company. It's like a cool thing, a really cool thing. I'm proud of how our companies stepped up and we had another, I don't know, 50-something nominations for one team MVP that I just went through this week as we're picking the Q1s. So, having our people talk about their colleagues and really acknowledge them is super cool. So, I mean, there's a lot of stuff I'm really proud of that I think that we've done this year.

Colin Uthe:

How would you pit our oneteam culture against other environments?

Jeff Meredith:

I think people genuinely care about their colleagues here at a very high level. I think the difference in some cultures is that the culture and the business objective is more intertwined than it is here. I'd like to see us continue to make that evolution. One of the things that I'd like to see us evolve to, the one team idea I think is more around non-work related activities than it is work-related activities. And, for me, what I'd like to see it evolve to is that it's both, and at a high level. One of the things that I would like to see us do from an OKR perspective is that to align us better than we ever have. So, we know that there are six people that share this objective with us in the organization, two from marketing, one in the product group, one in development, two in sales, or whatever. It's probably not six, but you get the point.

But, those people, that's like our group, our squad. And, we're responsible for driving this initiative. We rally as a collective group, not by function, but by objective. Those are our close-knit people that we're going to form together as one team and achieve the goal. I think that, as a culture, we care deeply about our colleagues. People are proud, I think, generally of the company. I think we're growing in terms of our valuing the customer. I looked at data and, since the beginning of the year, the people that feel like we're a customer-centric organization or that we use customer insight to drive our strategy has moved like 24 points just since the beginning of the year. We were 60 or so percent and now we're in the eighties.

So, I think we're starting to... The one team isn't one team just to be one team. It's one team to do something. And, that something is to make access simple for our customers. It's also to make sure that we enjoy being at work and enjoy each other. But, the purpose of what we're trying to do and why we assemble ourselves into a collective team is to deliver value for our customers. So, I want to make sure, and not just general value, but we want to make access very simple for our customers and make it fluid in their lives. So, I'd like to see us continue to evolve as one team and not just that be a ideal around how we interact with each other, but how we form our purpose as a company.

Colin Uthe:

Makes a lot of sense though, when it comes to applying OKRs, collaborative OKRs, and sharing those. Yeah, you're painting the big picture for me there.

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah. That's really what I wanted to do with OKRs is... I think, historically we've operated more as functional teams. To pull off what we're trying to do in the future, there's two of this function and three of this function and one of this function, and five of that function that come together for a purpose. That could be to drive the growth in our community business that Jenny Lidle runs. I mean, that requires a bunch of people.

But, frankly, we have to rally around that as an organization and we need better leads of new customers. We need to sell differently than we ever have. We need to follow up with our customers more deeply than we ever have and make sure that they're satisfied and every resident in the communities actually benefiting from it. We need to make products that are incredibly reliable. So, there's a group of people in the organization that have to rally together to do that, that live in all kinds of different functions. They have one team driving the community initiative that is, ultimately, trying to make access simple for people that live in communities and people that manage properties. So, I hope people can see the logic of why we're doing OKRs and how it ties into the evolution of our culture.

Colin Uthe:

I didn't dwell on it nearly as much as I had before I sat down with [inaudible 00:46:48]. And, Cas was telling me about how the fact that we are transforming two access solutions means that we have to drastically rethink how we develop a product. I think what you just said really applies to that. Almost thinking backwards, not so much from a functional operation-

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah, I mean, what I always say in terms of how we have to move going forward is, in the past, we've started with the hardware product and worked out from that. Now, I think we start with the experience that we want to deliver to the customer and make sure it's a truly simple access experience. Then we work back to the software that enables that experience. And then, finally, we get to the hardware that's at the core of it from an enablement perspective. So, you basically flipped on its head the start point of how we initiate programs.

Colin Uthe:

Crucial, if you want to make it simple.

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah.

Colin Uthe:

How do you feel that our oneteam mentality empowers leaders specifically?

Jeff Meredith:

Well, I think leaders need to actually facilitate the oneteam mentality.

Colin Uthe:

They got to use it?

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah, I think it's one... I think it's reverse. I think a leader needs to make sure that people are aligned, that make sure that you've got the right resources in place in the team to be able to be successful. The leader needs to motivate and inspire and educate, when necessary, the team members to make sure that they have the tools and the capabilities to be able to pull off. And then, ultimately, the leader needs to get out of the way and let the team actually pull it off.

Once you've provided the motivation, inspiration, resources, clarity, that kind of stuff, you need to let it move. But, I hope the team holds themselves accountable and it doesn't require a leader to actually do that. But, yeah, I've talked tons about leadership in the last year. For me, this idea, a leader is really a driver of change. If I break down the ultimate responsibility of a leader, it's a driver of change. So, I think facilitating that and enabling teams to actually get there is the role of the leader within the one team construct.

Colin Uthe:

What important lessons has the role of CEO taught you in your personal life?

Jeff Meredith:

Honestly, Colin, I'd be lying if I said that this year has been so different than the last 30 years that I've worked in terms of teaching me lessons. I think there's some things that I picked up this year based on moving into this role. But, I think I've tried to stay in a constant learning mode for all of my career. This was an important step for me in terms of taking on a different role. But, I think all that I've learned along the way has been I've been able to apply it in this role. So, there's a couple of things that I've tried to, or that I might have been more conscious of this year, and that's to make sure that I'm still seen as a part of the team, not just the aloof guy that has the role of CEO and that title in the organization. But, somebody who really is approachable and into the business and cares about the business and cares about the people in the organization. Consciously, just try to make sure that I take the time to exhibit that.

I think the second thing is, again... And, we've talked about this, but just around maintaining composure and sense of calmness even in the eye of the storm. And, in terms of application to my personal life, that one in particular. My kids will tell you that I've mellowed a lot over the years and figured out how to show patience in moments when it would be much easier to be impatient. That's part of maturity and it's part of just being prepared to know that the unexpected is going to happen. And, setting your mind that, when it does, I'm going to react in a certain way so that inevitably when that comes, you've already predefined your behavioral response.

Colin Uthe:

Those are great lessons learned. What are the transformation areas that you're looking to focus on in the coming year?

Jeff Meredith:

I think this is a really important year for us in terms of driving step change in our transformational achievements. There's three key things that I'm really looking to impact this year, and those are selling new products at a higher level than we ever have. Historically, we've had 10 to 15% of our sales and products that we launched in the last couple of years. This year we need to do 30, 30%. So, that's a big change. The second thing is we talk about our strategy. We talk about driving our core business and optimizing that and then connecting our install base. Well, as we've connected our install base, we've sort of stagnated in terms of connection rates. This year we need to really reinvent our focus on connectivity and drive a new trajectory. We've talked about moving from the 45 range to 10 point improvement this year to 55, 56 even.

I hope that we can get up to 60% connectivity on our residential side. And then, getting from in the 10 range to 15 or higher on the commercial side. I want to see us make a big step change in terms of connectivity this year. And then, the last piece is our services business this year was just over 10 million bucks, and next year we need it to be in the 30 million range. So, a big leap forward there. This is a crossroads year for us in terms of executing our strategy. People are going to have to... That's why I talked about the focus earlier. We need to think big and do the big things and leave the little things off. We need people to work collaboratively better than they ever have to make impact. And, I hope people take a more personal mission on... find themselves in the strategy and see what their individual role is and think about this year. When I look back on the year, I want to be able to say I made this impact. And then, drive all year with that in mind.

Those are the key things that I want us to really drive from a focus perspective this year. It's a big year. It's a really important year because we're on the verge of actually moving into the next phase of this transformation, which is we're starting to get business benefits from what we've transformed to. We just have to execute this year. Everybody needs to come at it with a level of focus and rigor to be able to pull it off.

Colin Uthe:

I think with the framework we've already laid down, that focus is going to come easily.

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah. I hope so. I think with the strategy that's remained unchanged for three years and a lot of clarity around it to OKRs that should unify us as an organization and really not only help us to see what to do but see what not to do, which I think is equally important, I think it'll help us get there.

Colin Uthe:

Terrific. Is there anything that you would change within this last year if you had the chance? Anything you'd do differently?

Jeff Meredith:

I wouldn't have Bigfoot, for sure.

Colin Uthe:

I think we can all agree on that.

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah, I mean... No, man. I don't really think like that. I just... I think more forward than backward.

Colin Uthe:

That's all I have for you, Jeff. I-

Jeff Meredith:

Great.

Colin Uthe:

... had a great time. I really, really appreciate you sitting down and I'm looking forward to sharing this with everybody.

Jeff Meredith:

Yeah, appreciate it. Appreciate it, Colin. Thanks for taking the time and thanks for making this available to our employees. Hopefully, there's some nuggets in there that they can pull out that are meaningful.

Colin Uthe:

Yeah. Thank you.

Jeff Meredith:

All right. Thanks, man.

Colin Uthe:

All right. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next year to share more stories of how all of us at Chamberlain Group are connected. This episode was written, recorded, and edited by me, Colin Uthe. Our producer is Thomas Missoula. Our music is provided by Pixabay and Soundstripe.com. Special thanks to the Chamberlain Group corporate communications team.