Chris Keaveny is the Founder and CEO of Meritize, an organization helping students pay for programs that unlock better careers. The amount of business Meritize generates has quadrupled in the past two years, but the staff has not. Chris says that is a testament to the solid team they’ve built and the leadership lessons he’s learned.
Chris started his professional career as a trained statistician. He was a self-described propeller head until one day, he was thrown into the deep end of the leadership pool. Looking back he’d give himself an F for his performance, and Chris says he’d do just about everything differently. Listen in to hear why leaders aren’t meant always to be the ones with the answers and learn how Chris’s technical background serves him well today.
Craig P. Anderson:
Welcome to the Accidental Leader Podcast, the only leadership podcast that shows how today’s successful leaders develop the competence, confidence, and calm to lead their team and organization to success.
I’m Craig Anderson, and my career journey is a tale of accidental leadership. I started out with a degree in English and a growing comic book collection, and my plan was to be a high school teacher, but what we plan and what happens aren’t always the same thing. A college job turned into a career in education finance. An entry level in my alma mater became over time increasing leadership roles in Fortune 500 companies, including many national leadership roles. As that chapter closed, I spun off a business from a large operating not-for-profit and grew that into a successful business that was named a great place to work in Indianapolis.Over my career, I have learned a lot of leadership lessons the hard way. I created this podcast so you don’t have to.
Chris Keaveney, welcome to the Accidental Leader Podcast. Chris is our guest today. He is the president, founder, and CEO of Meritize out of Texas. Chris, why don’t you give us a quick 30 second overview of what you do at Meritize?
Chris Keaveney:
So Craig, first, thanks for having me on. So at Meritize, we founded the company coming up on six years ago now to help provide access to skills-based training. What we found is that there are a lot of people who want to take alternative pathways to jobs outside of the traditional post-secondary school. And many of them, unless they had the ability to just pay in cash, had a really hard time finding ways to actually go get those skills that lead to good jobs. So we help do that. We look at people differently than in a traditional credit sense through what we call the merit dimension, using people’s academic history, military history, or even in some cases job experience to help qualify them.
Craig P. Anderson:
That’s great and so needed. Right now what we talk about on the Accidental Leadership Podcast is accidental leaders, people who didn’t set out to lead but find themselves in those situations. So we start out with our lightning round. Three quick hit questions to get a sense from you about how you look at leadership. So the first question in the lightning round. One, what is the best leadership or business book you have ever read?
Chris Keaveney:
Oh geez. I think that the best book I ever read was called Extreme Ownership, and the gentleman’s name is eluding me, but he was a Navy Seal and talked a lot about the way that they approach leaders taking ownership for everything that happens.
Craig P. Anderson:
All right. Question two. Who is your leadership crush?
Chris Keaveney:
If I’m being honest, I have to say Jamie Diamon. I think he definitely has a different approach to things, but at the end of the day, his ability to lead is, in my mind, unquestioned.
Craig P. Anderson:
Yeah, he is a Titan. Full disclosure, Chris and I used to work together at Chase back in the day, as they say. Third lightning round question. In 10 words or less, how would you define leadership?
Chris Keaveney:
It’s the ability to sacrifice and to motivate.
Craig P. Anderson:
I love it. No, that is so true because it takes a lot out of people to lead. And until you sit in that big chair, you don’t really know all the pressures and all the challenges that you face. So no, that’s a great definition. Awesome. So I know you started the company you said several years ago, but we all had our first leadership role. So what was your first role in leadership and when was that?
Chris Keaveney:
Oh boy. I think in one sense I’m actually a really good person to have on here because when you talk about accidental leadership, that’s truly how it’s happened for me. It was not the plan. So I was kind of trained as a statistician. I was one of those propeller heads, proverbially speaking, who liked to be in the data, liked to build models, liked to predict things, et cetera. And so I think the example I would give you is I ended up managing a couple of other statisticians as I kind of advanced in my career. This is probably around in the early 2000s. And I ended up taking responsibility for a couple of additional functions through a bank merger, and was asked to be a leader of some functions that were way outside of anything I had ever done before. So these were business functions, not analytical functions. And I learned a lot of things, most of them the hard way through that, and just being thrown into the deep end of the pool, so to speak.
Craig P. Anderson:
So if you could look at yourself then, how do you rate your performance? Because that is how so many leaders, that’s why we’re doing this, is everyone thinks, “Oh man, it’s just me. This has never happened to anyone else like this.” But it happens to so many. How do you feel you did?
Chris Keaveney:
Is there a grade below an F? Honestly, when I look back on it now, I think there are so many things I would do differently. I had the wrong approach initially. I didn’t realize that it was okay to not know things. And I think I’ve seen that in a lot of people that I’ve worked with over the course of time too. I think that’s one of the biggest hurdles is for a leader to learn that leadership isn’t about knowing everything. And I definitely made that mistake. I felt like I needed to be the one who knew everything and people did my beckoning so to speak. And I learned that through some hard lessons.
And then I mentioned, I’ve come to realize that in my belief system that leadership is about sacrifice and it’s about motivation. You mentioned it, as a leader there are so many times where I’ve found that the best thing to do is not to say anything, and that’s a hard thing to do a lot of times, and I definitely made that mistake as well. So honestly, if I could go back, there’s probably more that I would do differently than I would do the same. But I think it’s part of the learning experience is the way I’ve rationalized it to myself.
Craig P. Anderson:
It is. A lot of times people say leaders are born, not made. And I don’t believe that. Most of us never intended to be there and we had to kind of grow up into it and do some pretty interesting mistakes as we grow.
Chris Keaveney:
Even my leadership crush Jamie Diamon. I mean, if you read about his history, he definitely had some rough times, and I think goes to your point.
Craig P. Anderson:
And you look at what he’s doing today, just the respect that he has and the success he’s had over however many 20 years it’s been over at Chase at this point, probably 20. So now in your leadership role today, you’re leading a whole company. What are some of the things that you face every day as the leader of Meritize?
Chris Keaveney:
It obviously runs the gamut, so there are some pretty technical and tangible things that pop up all the time. But what I would tell you, I think I spend more time than anything else on, at least internally, is making sure that we are communicating the right things at the right cadence across the entire company, and making sure that we have put mechanisms in place where we are listening to what our employees are telling us. Those are two things that I would encourage any leader to make sure that they focus on. The folks who are truly on the front lines with our customers, our customer service agents, our underwriters, they see things in real time so much faster than anyone in a management position, especially in upper management position will see. And the thought that we’re going to come up with the answers is in many cases, folly.
So putting in place the mechanisms to let those people tell you what they’re seeing and have their voices heard, I think is something I spend a lot of time focusing on, especially at the stage of growth we’re at. We’re growing pretty rapidly and there’s so many things changing. If I didn’t do that and if that wasn’t a focus of mine, I don’t think we’d be able to continue to have the success we’re having.
Craig P. Anderson:
And how do you think that impacts your team when they know that their voice is so valued in the growth of Meritize?
Chris Keaveney:
It certainly has a very positive impact. And I know that because there were times in our history where that wasn’t the case and people were not nearly as engaged and not nearly as happy. And so, it’s another thing I’ve kind of learned the hard way, which people are probably going to see a theme here. I tell people that making a mistake is one thing, not repeating it is the most important thing. So, that’s the thing I try to hold myself to.
Craig P. Anderson:
Oh yeah. And when you’re thinking about growth, your background is in credit and you said statistician and some of those things, which we don’t think of those as particularly people oriented leaders. How has that evolved for you when you’re in a very different position leading the whole company?
Chris Keaveney:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I know enough about myself to say this. I’m not an extrovert. A lot of people think leaders need to be extroverts, and in no way, shape, or form am I saying I’m a great leader, but I think I have some leadership qualities. And you don’t have to be an extrovert to do that. I will tell you that the leadership part of my job can be exhausting just because of the way I’m hardwired, and the technical background that I have helps a lot in ways that you wouldn’t imagine when you’re leading something, which is simply like the background in the approach to problem solving, which I think there’s probably lots of ways you can develop that. But certainly, my background helped me develop that. Just the way you think about a problem, the way you attack it, and the way you determine what the feasible region is for the solution and then determine what the optimal outcome is. I lean on that pretty heavily all the time.
Craig P. Anderson:
It’s interesting how our backgrounds inform how we lead. There’s, you’re right, the big extroverted leader who throws his arms around and gets everybody excited and gets everybody going in a meeting – that’s a leader. But there’s also those of us who are much more quiet about it. We lead in a different but still effective way. Clearly communication is something that you’ve learned from that first leadership experience and brought into this role. Are there any other things that the early lessons from leadership that you’ve now brought into this role and approach differently that have helped your success?
Chris Keaveney:
Being a leader doesn’t mean you have all the answers. And honestly, people don’t want to follow someone who gives them the answers. And so, one of the things that I’ve learned over time and try to make part of the culture of Meritize is letting people develop and learn things on their own. So the age-old proverb, you can either give a man a fish and feed them for a day or teach them the fish and feed them for a lifetime, it is true. So there are times where I may feel pretty confident that I know the answer to a particular problem, and I’ve learned sometimes to just bite my tongue and let the team work on it and arrive at that answer themselves, or in a lot of cases of even better answer. But letting them do that, do the work, see how everything fits together is important, and in some cases can seem counterintuitive from a leadership perspective.
Craig P. Anderson:
And I would imagine sometimes using that method, things may take a little bit longer to get where they need to be, but probably only that first time, because now they know.
Chris Keaveney:
Yeah, that’s exactly it. It’s short term pain for long term gain.
Craig P. Anderson:
And building a team that way, and especially in a rapid growth phase. Where were you at two years ago with employees and how many do you have today?
Chris Keaveney:
So two years ago we were probably at, I don’t know, we probably had 40 people give or take. We have 70 or 75 now. But the real impressive thing is that in terms of some key business metrics, we’re probably four times larger than we were then. But we’ve been able to do that without having four times the people, which is a testament to the team we’ve built.
Craig P. Anderson:
And certainly your learnings from Jamie Diamon?
Chris Keaveney:
Yes. Yeah, I have channeled him once or twice.
Craig P. Anderson:
And that must bring unique challenges as well, because now with more people, you need more people in leadership roles. How do you see those leaders evolving in your company under your leadership and that of your senior team?
Chris Keaveney:
I talked about me spending a lot of time on communication and making sure that we’re creating ways for people to have their voices heard. And for me, the absolutely critical piece of that is with the senior team, and two components to it. One, making sure that I’m doing that with them, that they are able to have their opinion voiced and they feel comfortable doing that even if they know I’m not going to like it. And then the second dimension is making sure that they’re doing that with their folks so that they’re echoing that same type of approach down in the organization.
And to be honest with you, over the course of six years, as you can imagine, we’ve had a number of different people come in and out of pretty senior roles, which is not atypical for a startup. But there have been times where we’ve had people who are successful and times where we’ve had people who are not successful, and I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to be successful in the type of company we run in a senior role. And it’s like that extreme ownership mentality; you have to be willing to do everything.
Craig P. Anderson:
So I might be able to guess the answer, but if you could time travel back to that statistician in his first leadership role, what’s the one piece of advice you would give him that would make the way a bit easier for him moving forward?
Chris Keaveney:
First, I would probably tell him to short the housing market. If it’s related to a leadership conversation, I would tell him to listen a lot more than speak.
Craig P. Anderson:
Thanks again to Chris Keaveney for such a great interview. The work he is doing at Meritize is important. And more importantly, he has made the journey from accidental leader to successful leader, and I really appreciate him sharing those lessons with us today. So as always here in The Accidental Leader, I want to give you three takeaways from the interview today. And I always work to frame them in the three key leadership growth areas of confidence, competence, and calm. So let’s talk about that.
Confidence. Chris talked about his own confidence in growing as a leader, which is what allowed him to listen to his people to realize he doesn’t have all the answers. And that shows the level of confidence he has grown in as a leader.
Second, competence. Let your team come to you with the solutions. That’s how you will get the answers that you need. That’s a level of competence to know I can trust in my people and give them, as Chris said, teach them how to fish so that they can feed themselves. When you let your team come up with the solutions instead of giving them the solutions, that is going to give you a better team that can deliver more for you.
And then finally, calm. We talked with Chris about how he evolved from someone who is very involved in making decisions and telling people what to do, to learning to sit back in leadership, let people come to those decisions themselves.
Are you an accidental leader looking to level up? A great place to start is by leading better team meetings. If you’d like help with that, go to clearpathcoaches.com/bettermeetings to download my 10 rules for better meetings. Your team will thank you and you will feel a lot more confidence, competence, and calm in your next leadership team meeting. Thanks for listening today, and remember that leaders aren’t born, they’re made. You can go from accidental leader to the greatest of all time leader. It just takes confidence, competence, and calm. We’ll see you next time.