Issue #101: Random Thoughts
Good Morning! I hope you had a good week! I hope you have a good week next week! I hope you have a good life!
Lots of thoughts are coming to mind when I think about what to write in this week's edition of “Thoughts of the Week.” The summer solstice. The passing of the greatest cat ever, Pudding Perkey. My desire to sell bumper stickers that say, “HONK IF YOU ARE A REPUBLICAN RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT!!!”
But the topic I keep coming back to is…
Randomness.
What got me started down this track is the retirement of Chris Oddleifson from Rockland Trust in Cohasset, Massachusetts.
What a great run Chris had as CEO of Rockland Trust! 20 years as CEO…growing the organization tenfold to over $20 billion in assets. Chris built an amazing culture at Rockland on a foundation of employee engagement. Rockland Trust operates with the belief that engaged employees deliver superior customer service resulting in greater customer satisfaction and profitability, which results in …a heightened ability to invest in those engaged employees. The entire Rockland culture is built on this “virtuous circle”!
How did Chris Oddleifson make his way to the CEO role at Rockland Trust in Cohasset, Massachusetts?
Randomness.
Let me take you back to September of 2002. I had just joined Russell Reynolds Associates, to head RRA’s Atlanta office. I get a phone call:
“Hey, Rich, this is Nick Hurd, you and I haven’t met. I head the Boston office of Russell Reynolds and hear that you know something about the community banking space. Hey, I got this CEO search that I am doing for Rockland Trust up here in Massachusetts, and they are looking for somebody who is really strong in the consumer banking space and someone who is really strategic…do you know anybody?”
I think for a second. Well, me thinking is more like Tigger in the “Winnie the Pooh” cartoons…”Think, think, think, think, think, think….” I give Nick the first idea that comes to mind.
“Nick, there is a guy at Wachovia in Richmond, Virginia by the name of Chis Oddleifson. I have never met him, but I have heard good things about him. He is ex-McKinsey. I hear that he wants out of Wachovia. He is ex-Signet Bank and had been running First Union’s home equity business before the merger with Wachovia…”
Randomness.
I had never met Nick Hurd.
I had never met Chris Oddleifson.
I am not sure how I knew that Chris wanted out of Wachovia.
I could not have picked Chris Oddleifson out of a police lineup if you paid me a billion dollars – he might have had three heads for all I knew.
I had no idea where Chris Oddleifson grew up. (The answer is Rochester, New York).
I had no way of knowing that Chris Oddleifson had spent his summers as a kid visiting his grandmother in Hingham, Massachusetts, which is 5 miles away from Cohasset, Massachusetts, the town in which Rockland Trust is headquartered.
Randomness.
Fate?
I give a guy that I don’t know (Nick) the name of a guy I don’t know (Chris), and that random guy (Chris) is selected as CEO by the board of Independent Bancorp (the parent company of Rockland Trust) and helps Rockland Trust grow from $320 million in market capitalization to over $3.8 billion in market cap at the end of 2022.
Amazing.
I start thinking about the random events that have impacted my life…
If the neighbors up the street from my family in the Rainbow Forest subdivision on the outskirts of Lynchburg, Virginia, Mr. and Mrs. Godsey, had not decided to pave their driveway with asphalt and put up a basketball net in 1964, would I have played 30 minutes in a college basketball game against the #1 ranked team in the nation, the Duke Blue Devils, in 1979?
In 1976, If a gentleman by the name of Lea Booth had not asked my mom where I was going to college…if Mr. Booth had not had a daughter, Dea, who was one of 12 in the first class of women admitted to Davidson College (in 1972)…if Mr. Booth had not been best friends with the former president of Mary Baldwin College, Dr. Sam Spencer, who had gone on to be the President of Davidson College… would I have gone to Davidson?
If a friend by the name of Rad Lovett had not called me in March of 1990 to ask me if I knew anybody who might know something about the Washington DC real estate market, would I have called a co-worker in Charlotte by the name of Jill Stewart…and married her 18 months later? Would I have a wife and two kids that I love more than anything in this world if not for that random phone call from Rad?
Randomness. You got to love it!
Have a random week!
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