Textbooks say it won’t work, but Robert Garrett and John Lloyd said there is no battle of egos in their co-CEO leadership of the new $4.3 billion Hackensack Meridian Health system.The two announced receiving final approval for the merger between Hackensack University Health Network and Meridian Health Tuesday, and will officially launch as the new system July 1.

Meanwhile, the “Bob and John Road Show” is under way as the two make their way around the region to visit as many of the facilities under the new parent organization as possible- a task they started Monday.

Both said that whether it is walking into a Meridian or a Hackensack site, the reception has been phenomenal.

“Everyone is excited,” Lloyd said.

It all began with a dinner and a piece of paper.

Lloyd and Garrett wrote down a list of areas they feel they should be in charge of, and then they wrote down what the other should be in charge of. When they swapped papers, the result showed they were on the mark for about 90 percent of the list.

“It showed we were on the same wavelength from the beginning,” Garrett said. “The key is defining roles early on. We trust each other and have known each other for long time.”

They have known each other for more than 30 years and watched each other’s careers and networks grow.

Now, the shared duties will be as follows:

Garrett will be in charge of the hospitals, physician enterprise, academic and research divisions. Lloyd will be in charge of population health, the ambulatory network and the two foundations of both the systems.

Lloyd emphasized his enthusiasm with working on population health.

“We’ve had a very robust approach at Meridian, not that Hackensack hasn’t, but we have been at it longer,” he said.

Another focus is to expand the relationship currently between Hackensack and Uber, Garrett said.

Then, after 2.5 years of working on integrating the state’s second largest health network, Lloyd said he will be retiring.

The merger doesn’t detract from his original timeline, he said. “I’m 70 years old. I was on this timeline anyway.”

Many speculated that Lloyd would retire when the merger was first announced.

“I know people have said that. Candidly, there are few, if any other, maybe one other person, other than (Garrett) I’d be a co-CEO with. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it. When you have all that experience, I have 34 years of it, you have an interest in the future of the organization. It’s not about egos, it’s about how to get things off the ground to be successful, to be innovating and to provide better care,” Lloyd said.

And both passionately defended that they “don’t sit around and argue,” which is a key to moving the integration forward.

The biggest challenge, according to Garrett, has been bringing two big organizations together into a true integration. The work was complete by many meetings, a steering committee and at least 16 functional integration teams.

“I’m stressing integration because there are lots of health care systems in the country that are more like a federation of hospitals. They are not integrated health networks. That’s been a challenge,” Garrett said.

The new almost 28,000-strong workforce includes 2,300 union members which expressed support for the merger at the announcement Tuesday, but the C-suite is where much of the shuffle took place.

Lloyd said that they identified a team of 15 executives early on in the process. Five are from Meridian, five are from Hackensack, and the remainder five were hired from outside.

Borrowing from the example set by the Cleveland Clinic and around the country, Garrett said the new chief experience officer will focus on patient satisfaction.

The term is a buzzword in the health care industry and is used as a way of judging the quality of health care.

“John and I both spoke about this, the office will be focused on patient satisfaction and patient experience,” Garrett said. “Making sure that patients and families and communities have consistent experiences wherever they visit is important. We are modeling it off of the best practices in the country like the Cleveland Clinic, which has the same office and saw significant improvements.”

In addition, the new headquarters for the joint organization will be in Metropark in Edison. A move-in date is anticipated in September, Lloyd said.