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The meeting that Chuck Fisher brings to our attention began not unlike hundreds, if not thousands, of other meetings that he has sat in on during his 25-year business career.

However, it was at one particular gathering that he witnessed the thinking that would trigger one of the last decade\u2019s greatest strategic bets.

Back in 2013, Fisher had only recently joined the business development team at Charter Communications when he found himself in a meeting that included Charter\u2019s then-CEO, Tom Rutledge.

The meeting had begun, like many others, with Rutledge highlighting a number of Charter\u2019s recent \u201cwins\u201d\u2014before his message became far more nuanced. 

Fisher recalls Rutledge saying, \u201cThe thing that we need to understand as a company is that we can be the best operators in the business\u2014which I think that we are\u2014but as long as we\u2019re subscale, we\u2019re always going to be playing the game by someone else\u2019s rules and we will never have a seat at the table to define the direction of the industry.\u201d

It was later in that day\u2014or perhaps a day or two later\u2014when the Charter M&A team began to contemplate the acquisition of Time Warner Cable, a company roughly four times its size.

\u201cIt was audacious to think of Charter as the acquirer, inasmuch as every logical design as far as how industries evolve goes would have had Time Warner acquiring us,\u201d explains Fisher, who adds that the Time Warner deal ultimately took 3 years for Charter to complete.

Along the way, Fisher reports, there were plenty of headline-grabbing twists and turns, but the organization stayed focused.

\u201cWe believed that we were the better operators and had a better strategy,\u201d remarks Fisher, who turns our attention back to the early meeting with Rutledge, when the CEO made Fisher and others realize that Charter\u2019s operations edge wouldn\u2019t matter unless the company did something bold to \u201cmove the needle.\u201d

\u201cOur one big question became, \u2018How do we fix things?,\u2019\u201d continues Fisher, who observes that Rutledge\u2019s insights brought clarity to the transformative role that a deal the size of the one involving Time Warner Cable could play in the company\u2019s future.

Says Fisher: \u201cThose comments became the guiding principles for us as an organization.\u201d - Jack Sweeney