About Milwaukee Electronics: Milwaukee Electronics is an American electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider based in the U.S., Mexico and Asia. Founded in 1954, we have evolved into a one-stop shop for custom electronics design, printed circuit board (PCB) prototyping and assembly as well as project management.
Jered Stoehr Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jered-stoehr-3b78351/
Milwaukee Electronics: https://www.milwaukeeelectronics.com/
Hiring For Good Website: https://www.hiringforgood.net/
Tanis Morris: Director of Business Development at Acumen Executive Search Email: tanis@acumenexecutivesearch.com
Suzanne Hanifin: President at Acumen Executive Search Email: suzanne@acumenexecutivesearch.com
Acumen Executive Search Website: https://www.acumenexecutivesearch.com/
Hiring for Good Transcript
0:00 well hello everyone and welcome to the hiring for good podcast sponsored by
0:04 Acumen executive Search we are honored to have with us today Jered store
0:09 president of Milwaukee Electronics Jered is a Visionary leader known for his
0:13 collaborative and customer-centric approach to business with over two
0:17 decades of experience in the electronics manufacturing industry Jered has
0:21 cultivated a reputation for fostering innovation empowering teams building
0:26 strong lasting client partnerships his leadership style
0:31 emphasizes transparency adaptability and continuous Improvement which has driven
0:36 Milwaukee Electronics to deliver exceptional quality and reliable
0:39 solutions to its diverse customer base Jered’s ability to align the company’s
0:44 operational strengths with evolving market demands has positioned Milwaukee
0:48 as a trusted and forward-thinking partner in the electronics manufacturing
0:52 space Jered is a second-generation leader at Milwaukee electronics and will
0:58 be paying special attention to to his experiences and wisdom gathered through
1:02 the leadership transition process Jered thank you so much for being with us
1:07 today welcome to Jered for good thank you and then I will also mention as
1:11 usual my lovely co-host Suzanne is here with me um and um I’m sure Suzanne has
1:19 lots of fabulous things to say about Jered and us but we’re both thrilled to
1:23 to be here with you um before we kind of get into all of the leadership stuff I
1:30 think it would be really helpful for our audience to know just a little bit about
1:33 what Milwaukee Electronics does and just a kind of brief synopsis of the company
1:40 um and then the company’s story and then we’re going to get into your story after
1:43 that so go ahead yeah Milwaukee Electronics is an electronics design and
1:48 manufacturing company we have about 700 employees and three factory locations
1:54 one here in Portland our headquarters back in Milwaukee Wisconsin and then um
1:59 we have a factory in Tate Mexico near San Diego um and we have about 180,000
2:05 ft of manufacturing space and um then we have a couple of uh offices in Asia to
2:12 support our North American manufacturing footprint so great and I’m gonna probably
2:17 throw in some extra tidbits um Milwaukee also does an amazing job prototyping
2:25 working with customers from concept to completion right and I think that’s a
2:31 huge benefit of yeah we have a we have a a kind of a special a different brand
2:38 for the prototyping so we were the first ones to um create an e-commerce platform
2:43 for prototyping and for engineers so that they could rapidly get their
2:47 prototype so we’ve been doing that for 23 years now uh and we do that all here
2:51 in Portland which is which is nice so you have the prototypes you have the
2:55 contract electronics and then you have your own parts that you also manufacture
3:00 correct yeah and so we kind of have the the prototype and then we can do things
3:06 domestically here and then if the volumes get big enough and price
3:09 sensitivity comes then we can transition down to Mexico we’ve never had a factory
3:14 in China we’ve always kind of been a big fan of Mexico and it’s been uh in recent
3:20 years that Mexico’s really come up as a place you know kind of an alternative to
3:25 China and so we’ve at the moment we’re we’re riding that wave and and that’s
3:30 been good for us because we’ve been there since the 90s yeah well and and
3:33 how smart if you you know if businesses could have a crystal ball and see you
3:40 know these decisions 23 years later what a smart smart choice yeah and really
3:47 about hiring for good is about leadership and so I would love to ask
3:51 you about your journey and especially being gen two share with us how you got
3:58 where you are today yeah um so I was an entrepreneurship
4:04 major in college and uh I had like the lawn mowing business and stuff in high
4:08 school and college and things like that um and then right after school uh
4:14 finished I had the opportunity to come out here and start that e-commerce
4:18 division um so that was really wonderful because I kind of got to flex all those
4:23 entrepreneurial muscles and do that and so I did that for six or seven years and
4:28 um at that point I was in my late 20s and kind of knew I wanted to be in the
4:34 business long term but wanted to get some experience outside of the business
4:40 um at times I felt like it was a mistake that I went to work for my family right
4:44 out of school so I went to Asia for seven years uh spent a lot of did a
4:50 number of things there towards the end uh I came back to the business and
4:53 started our Singapore and India offices so I got to you know kind of um put some
4:59 of things I learned over there to work for the company and then um around the
5:03 time I had my first child to moved back here to Portland which beautiful place
5:07 to call home well and and I’m gonna and I know this and I should probably say you
5:12 know we’ve worked together for a couple of years now but you have multiple
5:18 siblings does everybody work for the company or had they worked at one point
5:22 or another everybody has but it was mostly like uh high school jobs so um
5:30 you know we actually when my parents bought the company when I was five we
5:34 had 22 people and at that time things were so tight that um we did all the
5:40 janitorial services for a number of years so my brothers and sisters we’d go
5:45 in on Sunday afternoons and you know empty the garbage cans and stuff like
5:48 that so we’ve all been around the business but as adults uh I’m the only
5:52 one that has stayed in the business so yeah it just me which has kind of made
5:57 things clean and easy uh in some levels so and then I’m curious
6:03 so you know you it sounds like a great fit that you had the chance to kind of
6:08 run your own brand you know underneath the company label and then go get all
6:13 these other experiences so at the point that you came back to the company um you
6:18 know what was the journey to now being the the senior leader yeah um so we had
6:24 our our VPS sales was retiring and that was kind of the thing that triggered it
6:28 um so it just aligned well for me with with having our first kid so I moved
6:32 back and moved into the sales role which was a huge um shift in what I had been
6:38 doing I did a lot of sales when I was working in the e-commerce division so
6:42 and I consider myself you know to be a Salesman primarily but so I came back
6:48 and was in sales for six years and then uh four years ago became CEO okay yeah
6:55 well and I think we learn more from our mistakes or you know when when these
7:02 formative experiences happen share with us some things that you’ve really
7:08 learned over this big career whether it’s at Milwaukee when you left when you
7:14 came back yeah um you know with that e-commerce group um after six years it
7:22 had grown pretty pretty aggressively and so by the time when I
7:27 was about 27 it was it had outgrown me and I was not the right person to be
7:34 leading that anymore I was you know still in my 20s in very light on
7:37 managerial experience and um I read a book by Adesus he was like a really
7:43 popular consultant back in the 80s um corporate life cycles was this concept
7:47 he created but um I got familiar with that and just realized yeah this is I’m
7:53 not the right person to lead this anymore based upon the size and the
7:58 number of people and so it was good good time for me to step back from that and
8:04 just kind of get some life experience and then um after I came back from
8:11 Asia I was when I was VP of sales I was on the executive team for the first time
8:16 and sort of learning about about all of that and things just move more slowly
8:22 when you’re when you’re you know at that level and you have to be more patient
8:26 and and uh kind of choose your best battles um so I had you know one moment
8:32 in particular um I saw this issue where there was a lack of ownership
8:41 on innovating with the screaming circuits our e-commerce group innovating
8:47 their um their product offering and so I wanted to bring
8:52 product management to our organization we didn’t have any product
8:56 managers and so I I spent about a year selling that to the executive team
9:03 and it was a very difficult and slow process for me so that led to a lot of
9:10 difficult conversations um fortunately I did get that opportunity
9:15 to do that and that has really I think helped our
9:20 organization increase our rate of change in terms of bringing a better and better
9:25 product to our customers um but that was you know just one where I kind of I was
9:30 react I was reacting strongly to things getting frustrated getting impatient and
9:34 so there was just a lot of maturing yeah uh with with that one um well in your
9:39 industry you talk about these life cycles and your industry as a whole has
9:45 become more and more commoditized and a lot of competition
9:50 especially you know 15 years ago seemed like there was a lot of Mom and Pops
9:56 kind of coming in and then they’re getting bought up how have you kind of
10:01 kept up with all of the industry changes yeah when I I graduated in 2002
10:08 from college and so that was the time when um everything was going to China so
10:14 like that that whole stretch was really tough um you know we’ve got some we’ve
10:21 always been what we call like a high mix low volume company so we we never really
10:28 did the big high high volume stuff that was the first stuff to go over there so
10:34 a lot of our uh our niche kind of kind of protected us um but then that was when I
10:42 started that whole prototype group because the thinking was okay maybe the
10:46 high volume stuff’s going to go but the prototypes they’re not going to do those
10:51 overseas and if we do them really quickly with all the time it takes for
10:56 you know FedEx or UPS to fly across the ocean we can we can always have a Time
11:00 Advantage yeah so that was part of the rationale uh for starting that and then
11:06 the Mexico facility was our alternative to China so for companies that had
11:11 intellectual property concerns or other concerns that was our
11:16 solution yeah I think it’s brilliant again in hindsight what wise
11:22 decisions yeah not my decisions and so the question for me is
11:26 now crystal ball look forward 10 years 20 years what is going to be that next
11:32 that next place what are the things we need to be doing today um to prepare for
11:38 the unknown right for whatever those next shifts exactly that’s it’s always
11:42 the the rub yeah takes real vision and I look at that Vision as people as part of
11:49 that strategy it’s not just what and where but who’s going to help you get
11:55 there so to kind of circle back on the leadership part
11:59 you know I would love to to hear some learnings on that piece of how do you
12:05 manage different or how do you lead different um through again this whole
12:11 transformation of gen one gen two employee yeah yeah that’s that’s been an
12:18 interesting one for me um so I’ve been in this role for four years and I I
12:23 really think that my job is about living in the future um if if I’m working on today’s
12:30 problems we’re we’re going to be in trouble pretty soon I need to be working
12:34 on tomorrow’s problems and so that’s just a fundamental thing
12:39 that that I uh the an expectation I have for myself in terms of you know what
12:45 what my role is um and you know with that there’s a fair amount of anxiety
12:52 when you start worrying about you know all these big global yeah
12:58 trends and things so you know for me emotional intelligence or just
13:08 um self-awareness I guess more fundamentally and working with that
13:12 anxiety because some anxiety is a good thing some anxiety straightens your
13:16 spine gets you out of bed a little earlier in the morning helps you bring
13:20 your a-game um so there’s like a healthy dose that I try to maintain um just as
13:29 I’m you know uh going about going about things yeah um so that’s been a big part
13:35 of of it for me because I took over in January of 2021 which was about 10
13:42 months into COVID wow so it’s been a very dynamic time um and so just a lot just there’s
13:50 just been a lot going on a lot and our industry in particular I don’t know if
13:54 you remember but car manufacturers were shut down because of electronics right
14:00 our industry in particular everybody had a tough time but our industry in
14:03 particular was really struggling by the supply chain set the supply chain side
14:07 just went I mean stuff that nobody had ever seen before you know 52 104 we lead
14:15 times on parts so we had a very um a very difficult road the whole industry
14:21 yeah um so it’s been it’s been just a dynamic couple of years I’m sure were
14:27 you planning on taking over leadership at the time that you did or was it I
14:32 mean was this part of like a planned out transition and you stepped in and then
14:36 the unplanned stuff was covid and supply chain or was it a little bit more of a
14:42 you know unplanned um transition yeah yeah we we made the decision about six
14:49 months before we implemented it so we had made that decision the summer
14:54 before and then um you know unfortunately my dad got diagnosed with
14:59 cancer like the month before we announced it so we we made the decision
15:04 in like July August and then um in December he got diagnosed and then we
15:09 announced in January so there was just it was like it was a lot going on um but
15:15 we were intentional about that and even well before that we had been working
15:20 with um someone who specializes in family business succession for like 2
15:26 years before that so we we it had been a good long road I
15:32 mean and it sounds all nice and neat and planned I mean these things are are very
15:37 difficult and complicated but we’d been you know devoting time and energy to it
15:42 um but it it was evolving you know just kind of has these things do yeah and
15:47 we’ve talked to other organizations that did the transition and it’s interesting
15:53 because you devote who you are with what we do we we kind of identify that
15:59 and the ego and having to let go and the I I’m going to say this to all the
16:05 business coaches on the part of the retiring CEO all the great transitions really do
16:11 have that outsider to help coach to let go to bring out the down the Egos and to
16:18 say this is not a battle you should be fighting Let It Go or what have you um
16:24 and it sounds like that really helped in this it’s it’s definitely a hard thing
16:30 you know my dad was the CEO for 36 years I mean it was like it was like a ch—his
16:35 fifth child you know and um so yeah having having that really helped bring
16:42 some consistency and it created a little bit of accountability for both of us um and
16:49 yeah it it made a really huge difference and I think it was like the fourth or
16:54 fifth person we we looked at a number of people and finally found a person that
16:59 really um had influence with both of us you know I think that’s the challenge is
17:04 someone who can really speak to and challenge both both parties um it’s a
17:10 it’s a deeply personal thing yeah yeah yeah well and you’ve used a lot of great
17:16 words um whether it’s humility High EQ on your leadership style and and it’s
17:23 these values I think these leaders bring and it you know kind of gets pushed
17:29 throughout the organization but share with us some of these values that you
17:34 really do try to operationalize in the organization yeah it’s tough it’s tough
17:40 for me to give a sutin answer on that I mean I I I think it’s it’s really a lot
17:45 of my dad’s values um you know he he really set the tone and and um
17:56 he I the word that I use a lot is just care I think uh care for others and care
18:02 for our people genuine genuine care it’s it’s it’s such a simple thing and you
18:09 know um sounds so so typical but um you know in in the family business world
18:19 um those relationships the people it’s it’s really what it’s
18:27 about I mean that’s that’s the the example that was set for me
18:33 100% um we have anybody who makes it to 25 years in our
18:39 company gets a secret red envelope with an undisclosed amount of money that they
18:44 cannot share or talk about with anyone their pictures up on the wall we bring
18:48 their family in we have a big celebration there’s a lot of things that
18:54 happen around around people in a family business and so
18:58 it’s a it’s a unique it’s a unique environment and I I think that’s really
19:03 the heart of it um so yeah that’s the word that I use the most is is care um
19:10 well and it’s interesting 700 employees and you still refer to it as a say
19:15 almost the exact same thing like at what point is it I mean yeah it’s it’s a
19:20 large company now yeah there were years when every person in our employee got a
19:25 handwritten note from my dad for example wow it’s like stuff like that that was
19:29 I’m just like how did he find that time wow it’s like it’s amazing to me that’s
19:35 actually like a perfect segue into one of my next questions which was how did
19:39 you balance respecting your dad’s kind of legacy and practices while
19:44 implementing your own vision and leadership style like how do you
19:48 navigate that process yeah you know I think philosophically um people say oh
19:54 you’ve got big shoes to fill right that’s something we’ve all heard a bunch
19:58 and and you know the way that I say it is you know I get to be my own person
20:02 I’m I’m not here to fill his shoes but I’m here to walk the the same
20:06 path um and so so that’s kind of um how I approach it um I’ve just lost my train of thought
20:18 here so give me a moment um you know honestly I think we’ve we
20:27 have a a ton of alignment on those values so there haven’t been a lot of
20:33 moments when um I feel very conflicted on on the value side of
20:40 it the stuff that we had challenges on was like how much should we invest in it
20:45 you know he was an older generation and that wasn’t as much of a thing but for
20:50 me huge huge part of how I approach things like well what are we doing from
20:55 a systems perspective the information cuz I’ve grown up you know in the
20:59 information age so we’ve had a lot of that stuff um if there was something
21:05 that we uh have just had a difference on style-wise I would say um I really have
21:13 tried to bring more vulnerability into the organization and more cander you know
21:20 for me those two things are really really important you know we’re a 71y
21:26 old company um there’s a lot of stuff that we do that is out of dat there’s a lot of
21:35 things we do great but there’s plenty of things that we need to to look at
21:39 critically and and modernize those things and to have that perspective that
21:45 critical eye we we need to be candid with one another about what’s working
21:49 what’s not working and and for people who are in different parts of the
21:54 organization there’s some vulnerability to that to raising a hand or challenging
21:59 so those are two things that I’ve tried to create um more of in in my role well
22:06 and and not only was there a transition with you and your father but you look at
22:11 the leadership team and there’s been a lot of transition to where you know like
22:16 you said people have been with your organization 25 30 sometimes more than
22:22 that years yep and and looking at building the next level of teams
22:29 and what what do you value and what do you look for when you’re looking at this
22:36 leadership change yeah um I really value uh versatility so um we encourage internal
22:48 promotions or people applying for different jobs so we’ve got a number of
22:51 different people that have maybe had five six seven roles in 10 or 15
23:00 years um you know I can think of a person who um has had a number of different roles
23:07 at one point in 2015 we were having some really hard times we were we were doing
23:12 some layoffs this person’s position was being eliminated um because we couldn’t afford
23:18 it they took a night shift supervisor role for about nine months or a year uh
23:25 and now they’re kind of back in in a similar department but I really value
23:29 and appreciate people who learn different areas of the business because over time then they
23:35 really understand a lot of different parts of the company well and they
23:39 develop a really good sense of judgment and understanding um so I really try to
23:46 encourage people to take on different roles and move around the company and
23:51 then we also have um an executive development program so we have seven uh
23:57 employees currently in that program and those are people that are being groomed for future
24:04 executive roles um so we get together every year and we provide them training
24:09 and do a lot of stuff um for them to get to know one another because they’re
24:13 going to be that next generation of of leader that’s great and was that
24:18 something that you implemented or has that been around for that is something
24:22 that I implemented after I took on this role so that’s been something you know
24:26 one of my passion projects for sure and it’s been really fun to to do that and
24:31 you know see those see those people um you know growing and and I think for
24:35 them everybody’s felt really honored obviously to be to be a part of that and
24:39 we’ve tried to add a little bit of you know a little bit of uh Swagger to it
24:43 for them so it’s been a it’s been a really nice one yeah it’s interesting
24:47 listening to you talk well in you know this podcast is called hiring for good
24:52 so we always finish up with what does hiring for good mean to
24:56 you yeah I think um you know the thing that I heard from my father over and
25:03 over and over was take a long-term perspective as much as you can afford to
25:08 take a long-term perspective and I think in a family business you you can do that
25:13 you have that that freedom and so when it comes to people um you know take taking that
25:21 long-term perspective and and see people beyond just whatever their immediate
25:25 role is or their immediate sense of productivity and you know that brings in that whole
25:31 concept of caring and just caring for that that person in the 70 to 80 years
25:37 of life that they have and whatever journey they’re on um doing what we can
25:43 for them while we while we run a business I think that’s what it’s about
25:48 well that’s beautiful thank you so much for being our guest and it was just such
25:53 a pleasure to uh have this conversation with you I know our audience is going to
25:57 really benefit from your wisdom thank you Jered yeah thanks for having me
26:02 thanks for joining us today at Hiring for Good if you inspired by our
26:05 conversation don’t forget to like follow and subscribe wherever you get your
26:09 podcast and if you want to learn more about our Executive Search Services
26:14 check us out at www.hiringforgood.net or our company website Acumen
26:20 Executive Search thanks so much and don’t forget to join us next time for
26:24 another in-depth conversation about transformational leadership till then
26:28 have fun