How to Grow Great Leaders Fast with Chris Chippindale | 071

How to Grow Great Leaders Fast with Chris Chippindale | 071

Welcome to Lean Leadership for Ops Managers, the podcast for leaders in Ops Management who want to spark improvement, foster engagement, and boost problem solving – AND still get their day job done. Here’s your host, Leadership Trainer, Lean Enthusiast, and Spy Thriller Junkie, Jamie V. Parker. 

Jamie: [00:00:29] What happens when you need leaders fast? You’re growing and expanding, your current leaders are getting promoted and you’re doing it now, where this challenging employment market kind of slow the rate at which positions are filled, right? Which people are coming into your organization? So what do you do? 

How do you grow the leaders that you need? How do you build the leadership bench strength that you need? Well, we are closing out the Q4 Executive Series today with Chris Chippindale, who serves as Senior Vice President of Northern Operations at Ent Credit Union. 

Now, Chris has more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, and throughout his career, he served in roles in operations, information technology, enterprise initiatives and strategic initiatives. Now he’s serving as Senior Vice President at Northern Operations at Ent Credit Union, which is committed to creating financial help since 1957. 

It has improved the financial lives of their owner members with education, better rates, lower fees and access to the highest quality financial products. And fun fact, I did not know this. I had to look this up. So it began as a single Ent Credit Union to serve an Air Force base, which is down in Colorado Springs, and now they’ve expanded. So you’ll hear about that from Chris today. But so they have more than 400,000 customers and 45 retail offices so expanded from that one little single Ent Credit Union that was serving the Air Force Base. 

Now I have to tell you, I have been friends with Chris for a few years and have had the chance to work with one of his previous teams. One of the things I love about Chris is how much he cares about people, and he really embodies that servant leadership approach. And if you stick around to the end, I’m going to share a little secret about Chris, too. 

Now remember, you can find links to connect with Chris and learn more about Ent Credit Union at our show notes processplusresults.com/podcast. This is an important conversation today because we’re talking about building our leadership bench strength, and this is something that a lot of organizations struggle with just in normal times and now that’s been heightened. So let’s jump into the conversation.

Jamie: [00:02:45] Chris, welcome to the show today.

Chris: [00:02:47] Thanks, Jamie. It’s so good to see you. It’s been far too long.

 

Jamie: [00:02:51] It has, yes. Well, I’m excited to have this conversation today and just share some of your perspective. But before we jump in to talking about leadership development, why don’t we start off learning a little bit about you? So tell us what a value or mantra, a principal, quote, or something that you feel really embodies your beliefs about leadership.

Chris: [00:03:16] Sure. Know, I think probably more of a principle than anything, but I would say just this notion of pay it forward. I think most all of us as leaders, if not all of us are in this position because somebody or many people along the way have taken an interest in us, right? And they’ve put us on the right path, kept us from the wrong path, whatever it is. 

And so I feel it’s important that once you have those opportunities to lead other folks, you take that very seriously and you’re super dedicated to it. And again, it’s just that notion of paying it forward. Someone took the time for you and let’s let’s do it for that next group of up and comers.

Jamie: [00:03:56] Oh, I love that such a fantastic way when we think about serving people and giving. And if we come, I think we like if we come at leadership with that, it’s going to be a good thing.

Chris: [00:04:07] Yeah. You know, I think it’s important to as I get further along in my career and certainly hopefully have a ways to go. But closer to the end than the beginning, you start to reflect a little bit more. And one of the things that’s important to me is, you know, I want to make sure I leave this place and whether this place is the world or my company or my circle of influence. But I want to leave it in a good place. I want to leave it in good hands. And so trying to do everything I can to make sure there’s as many good hands out there as possible.

Jamie: [00:04:35] Oh, fantastic. All right. Well, I want to make sure our listeners have a little bit of context for our conversation today. So tell us a little bit about your organization. Who does your organization serve and how do you create value?

Chris: [00:04:50] Sure. So I am with end Ent Credit Union based out of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and our Senior Vice President of Northern Operations for us is basically Castle Rock, Colorado to the Wyoming border right now, the northern region that we have. And and as a Ent Credit Union, we’ve been in business for about 70 years. 

We have again headquarters in Colorado Springs and then right now, forty five retail offices in Colorado Springs, Pueblo. And then again, what we call northern Colorado with more to come. We serve about 400,000 members again, primarily in the state of Colorado, so we don’t have a physical presence. 

 

But again, over 70 years, people, you know, they tend to pick up and move. And so we have members in all 50 states. We have a strong military background. And so therefore we have members all over the world, but primarily at Colorado Financial Services Organization. We’re about $8 billion in assets. And over the last year or so, we’ve grown tremendously for a lot of the same reasons in terms of COVID, and people have saved a few more dollars than they have in the past. So we’ve experienced a lot of growth from that, which has pushed us to about thirteen hundred employees again, primarily going to see most of those folks in the Colorado Springs area. But up here in Denver and northern area, we’re about 200 employees.

Jamie: [00:06:19] Ok, wonderful. And just so we know what is your area of responsibility? Tell us a little bit about that.

Chris: [00:06:25] Yep. So I oversee nineteen of our retail branch locations soon to be twenty five. And as we get into the conversation, we’ll talk about the challenge of getting to 25. But again, in that geographic area, oversee the retail locations and then a secondary focus on coordinating all of our non retail efforts in support of just all of our all of our member service up here, meaning we have some lending efforts and we have some business development and business banking and all sorts of other things. 

And so try to work with all of those folks to make sure we’re all on the same page in terms of serving our members and making sure we’re adding as much value as possible. And I didn’t answer your question about creating value. I think what what we do, our mission is around improving our members quality of life, and we do that through hopefully educating them, giving them the best financial advice possible and then giving them access to hopefully the best products and services so that they can eventually go out and realize their short term and long term financial dreams.

Jamie: [00:07:32] All right, awesome. So I’m actually really excited about this whole growth thing because that has been a theme with just about every executive I’ve talked to. Everybody is growing, but today we’re talking about leadership development, and the reality is that, you know, the world of work is changing. The employment market is really challenging right now. People have more choice and there’s more awareness of that choice. 

And I think that’s one thing that certainly came out of this pandemic is people are being more deliberate about where they choose to work, which, you know, means for those of us who are hiring and staffing and growing. We have a challenge. So thinking about your current state, the immediate future. What’s one of the biggest leadership challenges that your organization or industry is facing right now?

Chris: [00:08:19] And it’s probably a twofold answer, but it’s one thing, and I think the first step is we can’t find enough people right, and I’m sure everybody you talked to has that that same problem right now that for a multitude of reasons that we don’t need to go into, but it’s just hard to find people right now. And I think specifically those of us who deal with public facing employees, you know, there’s a lot of reasons not to want to be out in public doing that. 

 

And so it’s been a definite challenge, just finding enough people. But I think the bigger long term challenge is getting people ready to take on leadership roles. You know, we work in a really complex business and we tend to hire a lot of people who are not super experienced in what we do. And so the ability to get them in and up to speed in a manner that they can still be successful because one of the things I think is important is you don’t get people put into positions before they’re ready and set them up for failure. 

So how do you do it at a pace that is acceptable to them, that they’re going to be successful but still meet the needs of the organization? And again, just again, retail? It’s high turnover, so we always need people, but particularly at the end and what we’re doing here in Boulder, Colorado, we’re growing pretty fast. And so we’re newer to this part of the state. We don’t have a lot of depth built already, and so we’re just out there trying to hire people, get them ready so that they can take on these leadership roles. And it’s a tremendous challenge right now. A lot of fun, but it’s a challenge for sure.

Jamie: [00:09:56] Yeah. And I think, you know, I think that there’s been a lot of conversation about just hiring and filling roles, but you’re really talking about taking this next level, which is OK. So now how do we get people ready to be leaders, right? So it’s not just that, you know, I’ve got a staff, my front line. We also have to develop leaders in a time when we can’t. We don’t have enough people.

Chris: [00:10:17] Yeah, I’ve been, you know, I’ve been doing this for a long time and I remember getting into the business and being told, “Hey, you know, work really hard and maybe four or five or six years, you’ll get to be a leader.” All right, that’s OK. We’re now telling our folks, “Hey, you know, work really hard and hopefully by the end of the year, you know, there may be an opportunity for you.” And so you want to address it. 

Obviously, part of what we’re trying to do is make our part of the business not as complex, but you know, we’re highly regulated and we deal in a lot of different facets with our members. And so that’s a big ordeal in itself. But trying to find people who are able to come in and really get their teeth around, what we’re trying to do quickly is it’s a great challenge.

Jamie: [00:10:59] Yeah. Ok, so tell me a little bit about this challenge and why you think it’s just so critical to to address to put in the time, the energy, the effort, the investment to actually really tackle this, what makes this the critical thing that needs your attention?

Chris: [00:11:17] Sure. You know, again, so seven years in business and those of anybody listening from Colorado Springs probably know very well it’s an institution down there. It’s multigenerational. You just know it down there. But as we’ve expanded into Castle Rock, Denver, Fort Collins and places in between, you know, we’re not as known. We’re having some really good success and we feel like this is a great time and space for growth. 

 

Now part of this was set in motion before COVID, and that slowed some things down. But as Colorado continues to prosper and we see those opportunities, we think we’re bringing a great value proposition into this part of the state and we don’t want to miss out on it. You know, we want to make sure we strike while the iron is hot, as they say, and make the most of those opportunities so that we can go out and serve the members to the best of our ability. 

So we want to take full advantage of what we think is a great opportunity right now. And a team member of mine said it well, he said. We being retail leadership, we don’t want to be the reason we have to slow down any of this growth, meaning we don’t want the lack of qualified leaders to be the reason we have to tell our leaders back in Colorado Springs, Sorry, we can’t open another branch up here. We need to slow it down when everybody’s working their hardest to get us ready. 

So for short term success, which will really turn into long term success, we just want to make sure we’re ready to take advantage of this moment. You know, at the same time, what’s been wonderful with Ent Credit Union is so many people who have what we’ll call back office jobs and that leaders and those type of roles started on the retail side, started in the branches. 

And we pride ourselves like many organizations, but really pride ourselves in the ability to bring people on, teach them what we do and then give them a future opportunity. And that’s worked really well over 70 years. The challenge becomes again, as an organization, we’re growing. When the supply side of people coming in the front door to take the jobs of the people who are getting promoted starts to dry up. It can start to cause some, some sleepless nights, for sure.

Jamie: [00:13:30] Yeah. You know, I’ve seen that in several different kind of retail or field based organizations when you have field based folks who then do promote into support roles and it’s great because they can serve, you know, they know what’s happening and can serve really well. But you’re right. So there’s this always kind of this constant need to always be developing leaders. And now that it sounds like that’s just been really heightened significantly.

Chris: [00:13:54] Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Jamie: [00:13:55] Ok, well, let’s dive in to what you’re doing. So tell me a little bit about maybe some steps that you’re taking to address the challenge and maybe what’s working, what’s working well, where where you’ve found some success?

Chris: [00:14:08] Sure. Yeah, I think it starts with the conversation has probably changed a little bit. You know, as we interview and recruit folks, I think we talk more about that long term vision than maybe in the past where it may have been. Hey, come join us. It’s a good organization. Get your foot in the door and we’ll see what happens, you know? 

And now I think it’s more a conversation of let us paint this picture of, yeah, get your foot in the door, but here’s our plan for you and we have high hopes for you. And you know, it’s always yes, in your best interest. We want to develop you, but to be open and honest and tell them and selfishly, we need you to succeed. We extend an offer and someone takes a seat, if you will. You know, we have a limited number of seats and we need people to be successful. 

But I think it’s having that conversation and trying to paint that compelling vision of what the future may look like because again, we hire a lot of folks. Maybe this is their first real job, as we like to call it, and they come to us for different reasons. And sometimes it’s in banking because they don’t want to work nights and they don’t work Sundays or we have a tuition reimbursement or whatever it is. And folks, you know, sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. 

And so we try to paint that vision of saying, Well, it’s maybe a job today, but let’s start thinking about does it become a career or does it become a passion for you one day and get people excited about that? Maybe much sooner than what we did in the past? And so I think what’s working well is we found people like that. 

Everybody likes it when you take an interest in them. And I think maybe again previously it’d be a little more secretive, right? We have some people who we think they could probably be a star one day. I don’t know that we always told them that right? 

And you know, we didn’t want it, maybe to go to their head. Or maybe we didn’t want to make it seem like, Oh, we’re promising all these great things down the path. But right now, we’ll tell people there are no promises, but we see a great future. And this is why, and this is what we think it looks like. And here’s what we’re going to do to help you get there. 

And so I think being a little more transparent about some of the decisions that we make and a good example in our business is, again, we have a multitude of branches and sometimes we like to move people around here and there while helping explain like, Hey, we’re not moving you just for the sake of moving you. But maybe by going to this other location, you’re going to get to work for this manager who’s really good at this thing and we need you to be better at this thing. And so, yeah, you’re doing the organization a favor, but we’re going to put you someplace.

So that move becomes really meaningful for both parties. So I think, you know, just having people understand why, why we’re doing, that’s been helpful. And I think also organizationally, we’ve done a better job of defining what does success look like. 

 

And so when I came back to the Ent Credit Union, I had been here 16 years and then left for a few years and came back. One of the initial conversations we had around was What are these core competencies? What does success look like and what should people be good at? 

And that was the easy part, because we could say, Well, yeah, our people should have good attention to detail right there dealing with people’s money. They should be good with that. But let’s make sure we have a common definition so that if we tell our managers, Hey, make sure your people have strong attention to detail. We don’t have 20 definitions of what that looks like. 

And as simple as that sounds, you know, I found, particularly in my region where we’ve hired a lot of people externally and they come in with amazing backgrounds. Well, it’s all based on maybe where they’ve been, and so try to make sure we get on the same page of what does success look like and when we say, you know, good communication skills or conflict resolution or whatever, this is what it means for for Ent Credit Union. So we found a lot of success in those areas.

Jamie: [00:17:51] Yeah, I like this idea of really aligning, particularly in the standpoint of helping people identify, you know, folks who may be a really good fit to move through into leadership quickly. Because because you’re right. Some of us, it’s like almost like a gut. Like, it’s almost like a gut feel, right? And we rely on our gut. Yeah. But when you define that and align that, I think it could really help lead your field based managers, right? Your branch managers and the folks that are out. Here to be able to identify potential talent better and faster.

Chris: [00:18:26] Right? You know, and then what it does also. Again, we’re a good-sized organization, and so we’re able to marshal the resources of the organization and say, Hey, these are our core competencies. How do we develop that right? And sometimes it’s, hey, we’re going to send people to a training class internally or externally, or we’re going to give them an assignment or whatever. But it, you know, allows us to lean on those experts to tell them, here’s what we need from you to get our workforce ready for those next steps. 

And I think the secondary part is also gives us some common definition across the organization because if you think about it and going back to if we say attention to detail is important as somebody who works with money, well, if they have, you know, their dream is to be an accountant one day, it’s probably something that’s important in the accounting role is also attention to detail. 

And it’s it enables us to tell that story to say the things you’re doing today directly relate to the things you want to do in the future. And so when you go into that interview with the accounting manager and they’re like, Tell me about your attention to detail, you’re like, You know, I have a great answer. 

 

And you can really speak to it versus some of the things you talked about, gut. And we kind of like here, we kind of don’t like you. And it allows us to have some of that common language to say, Yeah, this is kind of how you get from point A to point B. And maybe there’s a detour in between, you know, maybe there’s not a direct line between what you’re doing today and what you want to do. 

But here are this next stop along the way is good because it’s going to fill in some of those gaps, so we still have a long way to go with that. But we have an amazing team who thinks along these lines and we’re starting to put those pieces in place.

Jamie: [00:20:00] Mm hmm. Yeah. And really leveraging the strength of people to develop more than those that are just in their direct span of influence. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Ok. Well, so you’ve got you talked about some things that are going well. Tell us a little bit about maybe what you’re still working on or you just haven’t quite been able to figure it out or overcome it yet. What’s what’s that gap still that you’re working on?

Chris: [00:20:20] Yeah, probably two things. You know, first I talked about it earlier is how do we make our business less complex? Because again, the folks we hire tend to not always come to us with a ton of previous experience with this thinking of our younger folks just starting out. And I don’t see that changing. That’s just the nature of who we hire into those entry level roles. That’s why they’re at their entry level. 

And so how do we look at our business and say yes from a regulatory standpoint, complexity and we’re large and all those reasons, it’s very complex. How do we peel that back? So that’s something we’re working on long term. 

But for my region specifically, a big challenge we have is this notion of at bats. And, you know, I’m a big sports guy, so we’ll talk a little baseball here. You know, we need enough at bats. 

We don’t have a ton of volume as far as people coming into our branches on a daily basis, you know, giving our leaders the opportunity to work through all these complex problems, right? And you want to be careful, right? You don’t want to create problems just for people to solve problems, you know, and irritate your members and make everybody mad along the process. 

And so a big part of this is how do we give our folks enough? That’s how do you get them into a position to make some tough decisions or experience some different things over a shortened period of time without disrupting the whole, the whole enterprise? And so it’s caused us to be creative in terms of how do we take maybe challenges and turn them into opportunities. 

So a good example is, you know, on occasion, we have people take vacations, right? And so is there an opportunity to say, Hey, when this the leader is out for a week, do we find somebody to go in and step in as a leader right there and see what they can do and tell them, Hey, we’re putting you in this position and don’t shy away from problems we want? 

 

You dive in into problems because that was this whole week is about and then have those follow up conversations with them. And so again, it’s being very purposeful in terms of how do we solve some of those challenges? So we’re solving it for the short term, but you’re also building some long term wins out of it.

Jamie: [00:22:26] Yeah, OK. So I can see that I’m thinking through just the power repetition and the power of kind of reflection of collaboration, right? All of those things to try and try and overcome that.

Chris: [00:22:41] Yeah, just try to speed it up as much as reasonably possible and not to overwhelm people. But at the same time, how can we do this quicker?

Jamie: [00:22:51] Yeah, OK. So imagine then, that your best friend is facing a similar challenge. So they’re out there trying to figure out how to overcome the same challenge. What do you think you might say to this person that you care about who’s facing the same challenge?

Chris: [00:23:08] You know, I think what I tell them is go find somebody who is passionate about this and really make it their job because I think you look at when you’re a leader, all of the things you have to do at the end of the day, we always say this is the most important thing, but the reality is, you know, people call in sick and you have upset members and systems go down and you have bad weather. 

You have all those, you know, excuses to not get it done right. And so you come in in the morning and you’re like, Hey, today I’m going to develop right and systems go down. Ok, Jamie, we’ll get to it later. And then Jamie wants to go to lunch. Chris wants to go to lunch, and then this happens. And all of a sudden tomorrow Jamie’s off tomorrow, you know, and then days become weeks and weeks become months, and you just don’t gain the traction fast enough. 

And so by having somebody where it’s their job, they don’t care about all that stuff. And it’s not that they don’t care, but their job isn’t to worry about, is the system up or down? Is the weather good or bad? Their job is to kind of hold everybody accountable and say, Are we developing people? I don’t really want to hear your excuses. Are we developing people? And so one of the things I did at my previous employer that, you know, we’re going to try to work in here also is having someone who is this is their job. 

They’re dedicated to that, that, you know, morning, noon and night. That’s all they’re worried about and all the other businesses going on. But they kind of have a little bit of blinders on to that to make sure that we’re really moving this forward so that we can continue to develop people as quickly as possible.

Jamie: [00:24:40] Yeah, I think that you’re really talking about making an investment, which is, you know, in your time and energy and priorities. And you know, this really, I feel like happened a lot through the pandemic, where at first folks were organizations and folks were saying like, Whoa, we got to put some pause on some of those we’ve got, you know, we’re in crisis mode and I can remember working with clients where we’d start to have conversation like, well, we’ve, you know, we put a pause on some stuff or we slowed some stuff. 

The problem is this stuff isn’t going away. And so you’ve got to figure out, how are we going to do both? How are we going to continue to develop your leaders and give your leaders the resources and the opportunities that they need to develop without trying to say, well, when we get to a better place, when things are less chaotic, when we’re fully staffed, right, then we’ll do it. And I just don’t think that that ever happens, right? 

Chris: [00:25:34] It doesn’t. And it’s a tough thing to really get that commitment to right, because if you’re in a production environment at the end of the day, you can look back and say, I did however many of whatever it was supposed to do, you can you can lean on that and you can go home and say, yes, today I did whatever. 

You know, when you’re developing people and you go home and you’re, you know, your significant other was like, What you do today? Oh, I developed people. How did it go? I don’t know. I’ll let you know in six months, right? You know, it’s one of those things you got to have faith in your process and faith in what you’re doing and kind of that. 

Stick with it ness, if you will, to say, Yeah, we’re not going to see the results of this for a while, but once you get that ball rolling, you know it’s going to work. And so we’re really committed to understanding that, you know, you’ve got to start now because you’re right, they’ll they’ll never be that opportunity where we’re like, Oh, that’s all done. You know, let’s focus on development because we’ve got nothing else to do. I mean, you’re absolutely right.

Jamie: [00:26:29] All right. So really love this focus here on developing leaders and figuring out how we can do that when things are crazy, when we have this challenge in a labor market and getting them to be as successful as we are preparing them to be as successful as possible to take on these leadership roles. 

So thinking through this, our listeners are operation leaders across different industries, from executives to first time supervisors all across the country. For those operations leaders out there, what words of advice or encouragement would you leave them with today?

Chris: [00:27:05] You know, I think I’d just be following up kind of what you were just saying and just prioritize it today. There isn’t going to be a better time to do this right and be, I think as you get into this. Be realistic. You know, it’s not like, Hey, I’m going to block out all eight hours of my day to do it today. Can you find 10 minutes? Can you find 15 minutes? Can you just get the ball rolling and start to put that plan together and make it important? 

Because if you if you don’t prioritize it today, there’s no better day than today to do this. And again, today may feel like the worst day because of all the things going on. But tomorrow brings its own challenges, so that would be my advice and something I try to remind myself all the time too.

Jamie: [00:27:46] Yes. All right, fantastic. Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing a little bit about what you’re doing and some of the successes and challenges. We really appreciate your contributions today.

Chris: [00:27:57] Thanks for having me and hopefully this is helpful.

Jamie: [00:28:03] Developing leaders and building a bench to grow and expand is hard enough just on its own in general, and you know, you heard how that challenge is heightened right now. And I think that’s just something that we all need to recognize is that, you know, as much as it was a thing we had to do and we had to pay attention to, and many of us were not very good at it before. 

Well, now we’ve got to really put in more effort and more investment, and we heard Chris talk about that now. I promised you that I would share a secret about Chris. It’s not really a secret. Just kind of maybe some information that not everyone knows, so not really a secret. And I do want to do that, but let’s debrief this conversation first. 

So I loved this idea that Chris started with like, pay it forward. And, you know, as he thinks about his legacy and how he’s leaving things that he wants to leave things in good hands. And he sees part of his role is to build and support as many good hands as possible. 

And it kind of reminds me of that conversation that I had in September in the September executive series with Marc Braun, where Marc talked about developing your successor and having multiple people ready to replace you and starting that from day one on the job. I really think that’s something that every single leader needs to do and really every single individual contributor as well. So if you want to hear that episode, you can go back and listen to it. It’s episode number 60. 

Now, Chris also kind of talked about, So what is he doing about this challenge? And he talked about really showing the path and painting that picture and being more transparent with team members and prospective team members about what that path might look like for them and where they stand and what they need, and why a certain move wants to be made and how it’s going to serve them. 

He also talked about defining those core competencies and how that helps managers to be able to see it and identify it. And then for the organization to marshal those resources so they can better develop those competencies and how it gives a common language. And it really helps them also to serve team members by connecting those core competencies with future goals and using all this common language to talk about all the stuff. 

So you might actually resonate with some of that. I would not be surprised if some of that kind of struck a chord for you. I also really liked his explanation around simplifying the business and kind of the situation of what do you do when there just aren’t enough at bats? How do we get enough at bats? All right. What about you, your next step? I want you to reflect on this conversation and pull out that one gem that you want to take with you to noodle on, to explore for yourself or for your organization and share it.

Get in the practice of not just consuming information, but reflecting on it and sharing it. And of course, you can also share on LinkedIn and tag me at Jamie V. Parker and tag Chris Chippindale because we would both love to see what resonated with you. Remember that you can find the link to connect with Chris at our show notes processplusresults.com/podcast. 

All right, it is secret telling time. It’s not really a secret, like I said, but I did not tell Chris I was going to do this, so hopefully, hopefully, Chris, you’re OK with this. All right. So do you remember me talking about Hunt A Killer and murder mysteries and red string murder boards? I think I talked about it in episode four, episode number 004 all the way back in September of 2020, a long time ago. 

Well, in case you don’t remember. And by the way, if you didn’t listen to it, you should go back and listen to it. I think the episode is called Be Obsessed. But if you don’t remember to bring you up to speed, I have on occasion hosted a hunt, a killer murder, mystery parties, which we do in my basement, by the way. So these are it’s like a subscription box, like a subscription box murder mystery thing. And so I, you know, would set it up in my basement and I’d have the big cardboard on tripods and we have thumbtacks and red strings and all the things.

Well, my friends, Chris and his partner Liz have joined us on a few of those murder mysteries. And if I must say so myself, he’s pretty good at connecting the dots. I can remember the very first one that we did. I can actually picture if I close my eyes, I can picture us all sitting around the table in my basement having this conversation. 

But we were to the point we weren’t quite to the end, but we were getting closer and we narrowed it down to two potential suspects and we were each talking through who we thought it was and why. And I remember thinking, like, Oh, his logic is pretty good. Like, Oh yeah, his logic is pretty sound. In fact, I’m guessing that that logic and that analytical and investigative mind probably helps him in his role as senior vice president as well. 

All right, so that’s a little secret. Now that wraps up our Q4 executive series. A big thank you to all five of our executive guests this quarter. Dave Conner, CFO and CEO at Anchor Industries. Kelly Ogunsanya, CEO at Stride Community Health Center. David Pender, vice president of operations at Sage Glass. Jasmine Gorie, vice president of Human Resources at Sunland Logistics Solutions. And of course, today’s guest. Chris Chippindale, senior vice president of Northern Operations and Ent Credit Union. Now, if you know someone who would be a fantastic guest in an upcoming executive series, make sure you reach out and let me know until next time.

 

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