Brief blog post today and about my favorite subject, Insurance – sorry to all those people reaching for the unfollow button.
So apart from a strong stomach what else does it take to work with insurers? How do you get the best out of them if you’re running a Managing General Agent or some other delegated authority arrangement?
By way of help and advice I contributed to some work being undertaken by Evermore Digital. The blog link os below. It’s worth a quick read but feel free to make contact if you need any more advice or support.
It’s tough in the UK market (amongst others) at the moment with insurers again recognizing that profits on underwriting are important. This is driving prices up, capacity down and a focus on core coverages. It’s bad enough for intermediaries but a B nightmare for customers. And at the same time as the industry has been found wanting on Bi coverages from Covid losses. So making sure you get snd keep high quality capacity is critical for any Delegated Authority holders or MGAs.
Like many people I watched the video of the killing of George Floyd with a quiet disbelief. That someone can kneel on the neck of a fellow human being and think that is acceptable I find shocking. . What is more shocking is that the racism that led to Mr Floyd’s death goes on under my nose and across the world and I barely notice; I am privileged that society over the years has favoured both men and people with white skins.
As a strong advocate of Diversity and Inclusion at work and as the chair of our D&I council progress has been made particularly in the relationship between men and women but its clear we and I have a lot more to do.
But I do see a lot of comment about all lives mattering. And I thought I’d share the following as I think this gives a really simple explanation of why Black Lives Matter.
There is so much to be done but I am going to play my part and make a difference if I can.
Ok I know this is not the biggest new story to be floating around the ether at the moment but I was looking forward to the resumption of football in the UK this week. Like so many things in the UK at the moment we are behind others who have already started playing again but we have got there eventually.
Oh but where did we end up – games that look like they are being played in a pre season environment with no crowds. I know that we can’t have crowds (I get it) but football without crowds is like watching paint dry. Even being able to watch some football on the BBC didn’t make it any better.
And so if I could chose the colour I’d watch paint dry every time.
Google's prototype driverless car has been unveiled at the company's California headquarters. Photograph: /Google
Trust is something that is extremely important in business. Whether it is between colleagues or between companies and their customers or between companies and their suppliers trust underpins everything that is written down in a contract. Without trust business simply doesn’t work as well as it should.
Of course trust becomes even more important when dealing internationally with people from different backgrounds and cultures.
So let’s get a definition written down
Trust as a noun is the firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.
The little Google Car pictured above is a prime example of a growing need to trust. In this case trusting a software engineer who has written the code that is helping you navigate your way around town. As I talked about in ‘Can sheep drive?‘ we will all to have a lot of trust in technology going forward.
But what about trust in business. Well there we seem to have a problem. According to a report by the World Economic Forum – We’re losing trust in business. How can we get it back? people are losing trust in business. And while this is not really a surprise with the focus on fake news currently it does present serious challenges, particularly to businesses that operate outside of their locality ie where the owner or staff are not known by their customers or suppliers.
The article goes on to highlight a number of areas businesses need to think through such as
how to focus on developing a narrative about the business that is not just about shareholder returns explaining how the business contributes to improving society
how to actually communicate this narrative to a broad range of people who might be interested in the business and what it is doing for society and
actually doing something about it
And while I think the irony of the World Economic Forum highlighting a lack of trust in business is interesting in itself the article seems to miss one very major aspect. The almost complete focus on the investor and shareholder above all others. The quarterly reporting cycle focusing as it does on numbers and shareholder returns is probably the biggest contributor to a lack of trust.
Perhaps its time for a quarterly reporting process on what value has been added to society rather that just focusing on the eps?
Well yes I did but you’ll have to forgive me if I take a look at some other things. I will try and be a good business person and focus a bit more. And todays posting is all about communication. Communication and how to design a business that people want to work in.
Communication is extremely important in the world in which we live and work today. This is even more important if you’re looking to do business in another country.
Image courtesy of porbital / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
As an Englishman in New York I was, even after over 3 years, still surprised about how differently the British and Americans use the English language. Sometimes even though I try and speak the same language I’m afraid my version of English sometimes means I don’t always communicate as clearly as I could.
Obviously I’d prefer it if I could have encouraged my American friends and colleagues to speak the right version of English but after 36 months of trying I am close to admitting defeat.
At the office I work sits one of the most fearsome devices known to human kind. Well, me anyway. The automatic coffee machine.
Image courtesy of Vichaya Kiatying-Angsulee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
You would think getting a coffee is a fairly easy thing to achieve. Yet it has taken me more than two years to finally get the coffee I want. And it was, and I am sure you’re ahead of me at this point, all my own fault. I kept saying to myself, ‘how difficult can it be to get the right coffee?’
Well actually very difficult.
The coffee machine has a number of buttons. At first glance (and for the next 300) it looks simple; if you push the top button you get decaffeinated coffee and if you push the second one down you get regular coffee. It all seems simple so far except that when you push the top button nothing happens. Push the second button and you get a hot cup of something that smells and looks a little like coffee. But not something I want to drink.
The trouble is I want decaffeinated. And over the two years that I have pleaded with and begged this machine, it failed to deliver what I wanted.
Last week I went through my usual ritual and nothing happened. I pushed the decaf button and nothing, zip, nada, nowt (that’s a North of England term – see even my blog is globally educational). I stabbed the button again in the hope that somehow it was all in the timing of the button press but nothing happened.
At this point, spying the maintenance man, I did something that men typically find very difficult to do. I asked for help.
‘Read the instructions on the front’ was the reply. Well if it was that simple I would have sorted it out a long time ago so really what use was that? Except it was very useful indeed; standing back from the machine I took a look. And there in front of me were instructions on how to get the coffee I want – press the top button followed by the second button. Sure enough two presses later I had a cup of decaffeinated coffee. Almost two years to the day and after asking for help, reading the instructions, and pressing the buttons in the correct order, I finally had what I wanted.
And a thought struck me – how many times do we do things in a way that is more complicated than necessary (or just give up) simply because we have never asked for help, or read the instructions? I recall that during my time as a COO I was always struck by the fact that the same process, for example issuing an insurance policy, could vary between 20 minutes in one office and two days in another. People would blame the process when in fact it was more about the lack of training, a refusal to ask for help, or lack of clarity around the instructions.
So what?
If you’re responsible for a customer service, whether its a coffee machine or an insurance policy, spend as much time on making sure instructions are clear and on training your people correctly, as you do on developing the product you sell. And, whatever your role in an organization, take responsibility for training yourself. Shout loud and long when there is a lack of support or training. You might be surprised when people actually listen.
While my lack of decaffeinated coffee didn’t impact customers it probably impacted my colleagues – my having three cups of regular coffee is not going to make their lives any eaiser!
So I can now get the coffee I want. Shame I haven’t yet mastered my laptop with its 500 page instruction manual, all on-line and in most parts completely unintelligible.
And thats a story for another blog.
Anyone else out there ever gone against their natural tendencies and asked for help? What was the result?
The business world has so many opportunities to reshape itself and drive better outcomes - we are only scratching at the surface of the change agenda and all the possibilities open to us. What ever happens next must embrace how we all work better together, how we are organised, the things we do and the many tools we use to make the change. Let’s make good things happen
The Burble 