Those businesses that merely hoped for the best—or, even worse, carried on in denial that anything had happened—were doomed from the start. The ones that hunkered down, made dramatic cutbacks and waited for the storm to pass would fare slightly better. They aimed merely to survive, and many of them did. The leaders of The Connor Group also decided to take drastic measures. But their goal wasn’t just to survive; it was to thrive.
“When the world was coming to an end, everyone had a decision to make,” said Connor Group managing partner Larry Connor. “We simply decided we weren’t going to participate in the Great Recession.”
The company went on to make strategic changes and systematic tweaks and continued to post record years throughout the recession and beyond. But it all started with a mindset.
It’s a concept that was true in 1992, when the company’s founders believed they could bring a completely new operating model to the apartment industry – even after a bank seizure delayed their first acquisitions by a full year. It was true during the Great Recession. It was true during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the company never shut down, never instituted layoffs and never created a work-from-home policy. Instead it set records while being featured on CNN and Good Morning America as an example of how to treat associates during difficult times.
Belief-before-results is a concept that holds true for every Connor Group associate who has earned partnership in the company. And it’s a concept that is the underlying theme of this entire book.
In this book you’ll find the fundamental beliefs that make up The Connor Group’s culture. It’s been our experience that where these beliefs and culture exist—no matter the endeavor—results will follow.
But let’s make one thing clear. This book is not a mission statement. At The Connor Group, we don’t have, never will have a mission statement. We have culture. When you have the latter, the former is wholly unnecessary.
A mission statement is something that hangs on the wall and collects dust. It’s something a few people conjure up, fewer people look at and even fewer practice. To have a successful organization, you need much more than a mission statement.
Successful organizations often talk about their “way”—“The Yankee Way,” “The Patriot Way,” “The Marine Way.” For that matter, even “The American Way.” Their victories are not accidents or coincidences. They win on purpose and with purpose. Their disciplines are reinforced over time. Their philosophies are passed down from veterans to rookies. Their consistency, eventually, becomes a culture.
The strongest organizations have the strongest cultures. (Again, that’s no accident.) We at The Connor Group have developed our own culture. It’s a culture rooted in integrity, discipline, training, innovation and hard work. And, admittedly, it’s not for everyone.
“When I get a chance to talk to people who are in the hiring process, sometimes I have to keep myself from going into sales prevention mode,” said long-time Connor Group observer and leadership coach Roger Lipson. “Because I don’t think most people really realize what it’s going to be like and how strong the culture really is. To me, it comes down to one word: relentlessness. It’s an intense, overachieving, competitive environment. People who like candid feedback like The Connor Group. That works for certain people.”
And if that culture doesn’t work for a person? If he or she doesn’t buy in or believe? Then he or she can’t stay.
People—and how they fit into our culture—always have been the No. 1 key to our success. Always will be. No person is irreplaceable, but every person is important. Everyone holds the rope; those who pull hardest are rewarded and recognized for their efforts. The Connor Group started with three partners. It has grown to more than 65. Company leaders plan for the number to reach 100 by 2027. That group includes service technicians, administrative assistants, property managers, sales associates, trainers and top executives alike.
In 2015 we promoted our first groundsperson to partner. We’ve never had a glass ceiling, so our associates have a sky’s-the-limit attitude.
Our people pride themselves on constant evaluation and improvement, but certain concepts are non‑negotiable. They’re detailed in this book, but they’re more than catchphrases or words on a page. They are, more accurately, the language we speak. Every day.
When we decided we wanted to crystallize our culture for future generations, instead of researching and tweaking some kind of top-down preachy mandate, we decided to take an introspective look at ourselves. It was much more mirror than microscope. It was organic, and it was fairly easy. Again, we merely had to look in the mirror. Over a long enough time period, every organization wears the face it deserves—for better or for worse. More than three decades into our history, we looked around and asked, “What do our people believe? What do they do? What has made them, and this company, successful?”
We came up with the concepts detailed in these pages. They’re broken down into two categories. “Non-negotiables” are the absolute essentials for anyone working within our organization. “Guiding principles” are best practices. Collectively, the lists represent who we are and what we want to be.
That’s culture.
Mission statements, by contrast, are an attempt to answer one question: Why do we exist? That’s never been a question at The Connor Group. We exist, quite simply, to be the best. It’s the concept upon which the company was founded, when we had no assets and no apartments. Although our size has changed dramatically throughout the years, that ideal never has.
But be the best at what? The best company in the apartment industry? We’re competitive by nature, but measuring ourselves against others who just happen to make their living the same way we do has never been our focus. We don’t join professional organizations. We aren’t regulars on the conference circuit. We are, for lack of a better term, outsiders. And that’s OK. Frankly, we’re not very concerned about what others are doing or the industry’s conventional wisdom.
We never rule out goals because they seem unattainable. Instead we set and embrace audacious, impossible goals.
In our experience, people never outperform their own self-image. So … aim high!
We’ve grown from $0 to roughly $4 billion in assets. And we’ve done it mostly with individuals who have never worked in the apartment industry. Our associates don’t know the industry standards. They have no knowledge about what has been deemed impossible by others in the business. We like that. Because we don’t deal in industry standards, or impossibilities for that matter. What we do—as recruiters, trainers and leaders—is find the best and brightest individuals and teach them The Connor Group way of doing things.
“We’ve never really focused on what anyone else does,” Larry said. “There are some good people in the apartment industry and some not-so-good people in the industry. But that’s not really relevant to us. We focus on what we can do with our people and our properties.
“Our methods are different and unconventional. And anytime you’re different and unconventional, people are going to criticize you. Either they don’t understand it, they’re envious, or they just can’t perform at that level. No matter the reason, we’re not going to spend a lot of time worrying about it. We’re going to continue to focus on our business and how we can improve it.”
Frankly, we’re not all that passionate about the apartment industry in and of itself. We’re passionate about the concepts detailed in this book.
The Connor Group happens to own and operate apartment communities. But we feel these concepts are central to being successful in any endeavor. They’ve led to tremendous results, but they’re rooted in belief.
Since we don’t recruit from within our industry, people come here with extremely varied backgrounds, skillsets and areas of expertise. But because of the way we do trait-based hiring, we end up with people who—at their core, when it comes to the most important stuff—are extremely similar.
They’re achievers. Work is important to them. They need to feel success. They have high integrity and immense grit. They thrive on feedback and accountability. People who take their careers very seriously do very well here. People who take themselves overly seriously often do not.
You could be our next CFO or our newest groundsperson. Those are the baseline qualities you need.
Alabama football coach Nick Saban often says,
“Mediocre people don’t like high achievers and high achievers don’t like mediocre people.”
Said differently, this place isn’t for everyone.
It’s a notion we admit freely and often during the interview process. We’re looking for the top five percent of the workforce. Our guidelines for finding, motivating, managing and developing those people are as follows....
There’s a famous Steve Jobs quote that has made the rounds on LinkedIn.
“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do,” Jobs supposedly said. “We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
We don’t subscribe to that philosophy.
The Connor Group strictly adheres to proven systems that are in place for a reason—they work.
We encourage new associates to ask a lot of questions, but not question the systems.
We’re open to new ideas, but only if they come from a knowledgeable and believable source. If new hires have new ideas they should write them down and revisit them in a year. More often than not, they’ll realize the majority of their ideas aren’t cultural and aren’t better than what we have in place.
During that first year, here is what they’ll learn about our systems.
Most people would look at The Connor Group and insist the company’s basic communication philosophies are backward. We’d agree that we communicate differently than other companies. And in some ways, yes, we take the exact opposite approach.
For example:
We start from the position of telling everyone everything, then work backward from there.
Good news, bad news, financial details, personnel issues—it doesn’t matter. From senior management down to the most entry-level associate, when something is important to the entire organization—we give them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Sometimes there are reasons to hold back some information, but not very often. Most companies, by contrast, give small nuggets of information on a need-to-know basis. We think that’s backward. People have an inherent need to feel in the loop. If they’re not completely in the loop, they’ll fill in the blanks on their own—often with misinformation. Our kind of communication fosters trust and loyalty. More importantly, we just think it’s the right thing to do.
We utilize bottom-up communication.
Ultimately, decisions are made by leaders. But in our culture, the communication leading up to those decision flows upward to leadership. When it comes to professional development, agenda-setting, follow-up, scheduling, etc.—the onus is on the associate, not his or her boss. In some ways, it’s a subtle difference. In others, it’s the complete opposite of the norm. But in our experience, it creates ownership and personal accountability while freeing up leadership to make the highest and best use of their time and talents.
Below are more specific examples of The Connor Group’s communication philosophies.
The Connor Group might own and operate apartment communities, but the physical buildings and grounds we operate have little to do with our success. We are first and foremost a people-based organization. The real estate is just a collection of physical facilities.
But if there was an inanimate object somewhat responsible for our success, it wouldn’t be a multi-million-dollar piece of real estate.
It would be a leather-bound planner.
Planners are a Connor Group cultural staple. They’re 13 inches by 10½ inches, come in a variety of colors and retail for $75. And, at The Connor Group, they’re everywhere.
New associates in most positions get planners shortly after starting. They’re trained on how to use them to schedule and prioritize their time, hold themselves and others accountable and manage projects.
In the last 30-plus years, they’ve been present at every important Connor Group meeting. And many of them have had the following concepts notated inside.
Managing partner Larry Connor, regional head Sal Gracia and senior director Katie Powell discuss what makes a plan successful, measurable and executable.
Watch Ep. 4: PlanningPublished on April 6, 2021
At the core of every Connor Group success story is a solid plan driving the outcome. Planning is where it all begins. Partner and senior director Katie Powell has plenty of experience putting together a plan – whether it's hitting the next revenue target for a supplemental loan or positioning a property for sale. She joins Larry and regional head Sal Gracia to discuss what makes a plan successful, measurable and executable.
If The Connor Group had an assigned reading list, the book “Tribal Leadership” would be near the top. Associates began sharing the book around 2010. It spoke to many of us and in many ways mirrored our culture. It became quite popular with our associates.
One of the book’s main themes is the idea that true leaders aren’t anointed from on-high; they’re lifted up by the tribe. Deeds and actions—as the book points out and we’ve always believed—mean much more than having the right resume.
Frankly, we’ve never been very good at titles. They’re used to attract talent and to reward and recognize high-achieving associates. But we don’t have a set hierarchy with standard titles and levels that denote impact or importance.
Leadership isn’t a title; it’s an action.
Very few places is that more prevalent than at The Connor Group, which is a meritocracy if ever there was one. We’ve fired MIT graduates and promoted high school dropouts to partner. At The Connor Group, what you give is what you get.
And while the “get” can be life-changing for some associates, we expect a great deal in return. The following are some concepts key to being a leader at The Connor Group.
They’re not easy.
They’re not supposed to be.
Practically everyone at The Connor Group uses a pencil.
Look around during a meeting or poke your head in a row of offices and you’ll see them. The yellow mechanical pencils are basically standard-issue. You don’t see many pens. There’s something cultural about that—if you work here you’re going to make mistakes, corrections, improvements.
You’re going to need an eraser.
Some of the following concepts are excerpts from Ray Dalio’s book “Principles,” which we’ve found to be aligned with our culture, especially in terms of how it addresses failure.
Practicing accountability is a bit like owning a boat. Most people like it as a concept much more than a reality.
Accountability the buzzword has never been more popular. We talk about the need for accountability in education, in government, in sports, in the workforce. Accountability the habit is in much lower supply. Which is probably why it’s in such demand.
And at The Connor Group, we believe the only real accountability is individual accountability.
Think about low-achieving organizations in which you’ve been a part. How often did you hear “We’re going to do X and then we can do Y and after that, we’re going to do Z?”
How often did the group make it past X?
It’s great to have goals; it’s even better to have plans. But even the best-laid plans fall apart without individual accountability. In the above example, the problem isn’t X or Y or Z. The problem is in “we;” the problem is that X and Y and Z aren’t being assigned to individuals who are then held accountable by the group.
“People tend to be OK with screwing up as long as they’re all screwing up together,” said long-time Connor Group partner Mike McQuiston. “That doesn’t work here.”
Below are some of the other accountability concepts and practices we follow.
Almost nothing can stop you from succeeding if you have flexibility and self-accountability.
It started out as a seed of an idea. A question really.
It seems like an odd question for a company to ask itself 20 years into its existence. But that’s exactly the question Connor Group leaders were asking one another in the fall of 2012, huddled around a conference room table in rented office space in a Centerville, Ohio business park. The question came as part of our strategic planning process. Specifically, it came in response to a problem concerning long-term company growth.
“A-ha” moments sometimes come when you least expect them, but we’ve found our odds for one go up exponentially during strategic sessions. We don’t wait for apples to hit us on the head.
At the time, we owned and operated nearly 17,000 apartment units. Conventional wisdom in our industry—which we’d never done a very good job following—told us that in order to be considered a big player in this space, a company needed at least 25,000 units.
The question quickly shifted from “how can we get to 25,000 units” to “why do we want to get to 25,000 units?”
One of the company’s mantras had always been “be the best, not the biggest.” So in order to be the best—in order to become more profitable—did we even have to grow at all? Could we actually shrink and get better?
Again, how did we really make money?
Surely not just by owning and operating apartment communities. No, we made most of our money through apartment transactions—what we bought, sold and refinanced—which totaled less than $150 million a year at the beginning of the decade. We didn’t need more apartments to do more transactions. We just needed to get better at our core business. That realization led to an “a-ha” moment: the creation of what we called the Transactional Model. Not only was the model a game changer in regards to how we thought of our business, it also came with an aspirational strategic goal that would push us to new heights: more than $1 billion in transactions a year.
(We’re now surpassing $3 billion annually, with plans to hit $6 billion by 2027.)
The numbers, however, are almost irrelevant. The important lesson and lasting impact is that when faced with a problem, we created a game-changing solution. We did it by following some of the concepts on the following pages.
We don’t often compare The Connor Group to other companies. It’s not a particularly productive exercise. But from time to time we’ll make a nautical comparison in order to spur action.
Unlike some organizations that act like oil tankers, we are a speedboat.
Said differently, we can start, stop or change direction quickly. Some of that ability is based on size. But more importantly, it’s mostly predicated on mindset. Individually and collectively, Connor Group associates often make decisions quickly. On the following pages are guidelines for making sure those decisions are the correct ones.
“Winning is a habit,” says one of the myriad quotes hanging in The Connor Group Central Support Office, “unfortunately so is losing.”
Said differently—and to borrow another quote—for better or worse, we are what we repeatedly do.
Below are some of the good habits that have made Connor Group associates successful.
Doing the right thing. In our experience, the most fulfilled people and fulfilling companies have a cause. A “why.” A higher calling. A reason for rolling out of bed, for coming to work, for doing one’s job. To be successful at The Connor Group, that reason can’t strictly be a paycheck.
One could argue that we exist to help our associates succeed at the highest levels and then make them feel that success. We do that in several ways—opportunities for advancement, the chance to build generational wealth, reward and recognition, etc.
That’s what our associates get for working here.
And, all things considered, it could serve as a pretty damn good cause for the organization.
But we’re also big believers that what one gets is—and should be—limited by what he or she gives. Think about it. In life, if you give respect, you get respect. You give encouragement, you get encouragement. You give your best, you get others’ bests. That goes for individuals and organizations.
Connor Group associates give—individually and collectively—through The Connor Group Kids & Community Partners. This non-profit arm of the organization functions similarly to any other department. Same culture. Same high expectations. Same high accountability.
The main difference is that Kids & Community Partners will devote roughly $500 million over the next decade to programs that will help pull kids out of generational poverty.
Those programs include The Greater Dayton School, a first-of-its-kind private school for under-resourced students. Kids & Community Partners opened this innovative educational model in 2022 after more than five years of research and planning.
Each and every GDS student receives an extremely individualized education worth more than $30,000 annually. The school features 10-to-1 student/teacher ratios and runs on an extend-day and extended-year schedule. The school provides breakfast, lunch and dinner at its $60-million state-of-the-art campus, as well as other wraparound services.
Pediatric care, mental health services, vision and dental care, as well as family services, are all coordinated and provided on-campus.
The entire model was designed based on creating long-term goals for the school’s alumni—mental health, physical health, financial security, civic responsibility and self-satisfaction—and working backward to provide the proper supports and development. Although academics are just a piece of the puzzle, GDS students routinely outperform their peers on standardized assessments.
“There isn’t another school like this in the country; it’s the start of an educational revolution,” said founding principal A.J. Stich. “We are going to prove what kids from low-income backgrounds are capable of if they’re given the resources they need to succeed.
“And it’s only possible because Connor Group associates have made it possible.”
GDS, as well as Kids & Community’s other endeavors, are mainly funded by Connor Group operations. The better associates perform, the more money goes to under-resourced kids. Every job description in the organization can be traced to its monetary nonprofit impact.
In addition to GDS, Connor Group associates have helped fund two other non-profits.
Kids & Community partners also invests in a portfolio of other nonprofit programs that help pull kids out of generational poverty. On average, every dollar invested by Kids & Community brings $15 in value to under-resourced kids.
Said differently, if Connor Group associates continue to perform at an elite level, the organization’s non-profit could have a $7.5 billion impact on our society’s most vulnerable populations. Their work, their noble cause, has the potential to leave a lasting legacy for generations.
It’s a familiar refrain whenever Connor Group associates gather. No meeting is officially over until it’s asked at least once. Every endeavor—from the way technicians repair an air conditioner, to the way executives evaluate multi-million-dollar potential acquisitions—is a cyclical process of assessment, adjustment and innovation.
The company’s Core Values and its associates’ core traits are constant. Everything else is evaluated and improved over time. So while the basic beliefs in this book will remain unchanged, the book itself will continue to evolve in future years.
And when it comes to change, at The Connor Group no project is too big and no detail is too small.
One example: In March of 2000, on the eve of the company’s acquisition of The Villager Apartments, members of The Connor Group’s Senior Management Team visited the Dayton, Ohio property. There was one detail they wanted to review before officially taking over operations.
It was trash night at the property, and they had come to look at garbage. That night some of the company’s top associates went from dumpster to dumpster, recording how empty or full each one was. They were, as it turned out, very empty. The next day Connor Group associates reset the number of weekly collections and made the size of the dumpsters smaller.
The Villager’s trash bill went from $35,000 a year for the prior owner to $8,000 a year for The Connor Group. It’s a story that’s been told and retold to associates, investors and others to explain the company’s relentless culture.
Some of The Connor Group’s methods have changed over the years. “Dumpster diving,” for instance, has been replaced by a standard pre-purchase audit of the property’s trash disposal contracts and practices. But the company’s attention to detail and dedication to excellence in all endeavors never have wavered.
In 2014, The Connor Group entered a new era with the completion of its Central Support Office on the grounds of Wright Brothers Airport south of Dayton. The building, an architectural marvel, won an international design award before it was even completed. The company added a matching hangar in 2018, and then doubled its size in 2022. In 2023 we added an addition to the CSO and still have room for growth on our 14-acre campus. The campus is more than just a workplace. It’s a project and symbolic statement as unique as the company that inhabits it.
“We wanted our associates to work in an environment that inspires, motivates and rewards them,” Larry Connor said. “But mostly, we just love when people say something is impossible.”
Yes, the company now is headquartered at a state-of‑the‑art building, in the middle of a thriving intersection with development on all corners. Yet it’s next door to a hangar that houses a working model of the “Wright B Flyer”—the Wright Brothers’ first production airplane. The aircraft often takes off from the adjoining runway—its wooden frame and fabric-covered wings a stark contrast to the metal and glass of The Connor Group’s headquarters and hangar.
