Now don’t get me wrong, I was raised by a truck driver with very blue language and I learned most of it at a very early age and I have been know to use a few curse words.  However, there are a number of places such language is just inappropriate.  I know many people that think it is never appropriate.  But I know others that think nothing of just letting this language fall out of their mouth, in their posts on Facebook and in their other writings.

I was taught in high school that we shouldn’t be offended by curse words in the books we read.  We were told that this was reflective of the particular situation.  In two of the companies in which I worked in the 1970s, blue language was rampant.  During this period I was reading a book about a law firm.  My mother-in-law asked what the book was about.  I told her and she said she would like to read it when I was through.  So I passed it onto her when I was finished.  A few weeks later she gave the book back to me.  I asked her if she enjoyed it.  She said “I really liked the story, but I didn’t like some of the language”.  I didn’t understand.  Later I was discussing this with my husband.  He told me that during her 25 years at the lumber company where she worked, no cursing was allowed in the office.  The president of the company had advised the men in the yard that they were not allowed to curse if they came into the office and if Miss Edna was in the yard, they were not to curse in her presence.  I visited with her about this the next week.  I told her that the language in my workplace was similar to that in the book.  Thus, since I was conditioned to such language in the workplace I had not noticed it in the book.  She was appalled to think that people really talked like that at work.

In my consulting career there have only been a couple of offices that I have visited that had this problem.  At one, it was really only the owner.  When he went on one of his tyrants on the first afternoon, the staff were extremely embarrassed that this was happening when I was there.  The next morning a couple of them apologized.  I thanked them but told them they had nothing to apologize for.  They were not the offensive party.

Mr. Ramsey seems to think that it is perfectly okay to curse at his employees, anyone he meets and in his home in front of his four children.  This really made me think about today’s workplace.  I know they are not all perfect and that these situations must exist.  While it may not offend those in the office, might it offend a customer?  Over many years I have learned that frustration can be expressed without cursing.  I work hard to be sure that language I have know my whole life and used in the past stays put away as much as possible.  There are much nicer ways to offend those you want to offend.  I have learned how to do that while smiling.

If you have faced this problem in your office, how have you solved the problem?  What similar cultural problems have you faced and solved or are facing in your office.

A presentation by Brady Polansky last year at the Nebraska Big I Tech Day reflected on change we didn’t choose, but accepted readily.  Brady used the evolution of how we buy and listen to music as his example of how people have migrated from records and record players to MP3 and iPods with a few stops in between.  There were many steps in this process, but we just seemed to accept each new source and device with relative ease.  This was an aspect of change I hadn’t considered.

Let us also consider what happens when there is a sudden change in circumstances.  In my case it was an accident my husband had while we were on vacation.  The details are in my post “Where Has Pat Been?“.  In a case like this you give little thought to the immediate effects of change.  You are concerned with what has to be done to get the situation in hand, make necessary arrangements, and dealing with the issues at hand.  However, there is the longer term effects of change that must be considered and managed.  Most of don’t actually understand or appreciate what all another individual does each day.  Since I travel a great deal and Gene is retired, he takes care of many of the errands in our life.  Things such as picking up the mail at our PO box, taking and picking up the dry cleaning, fueling both vehicles, etc.  He also takes care of the yard, garbage, and other household chores.  None of the chores have gone away.  It was necessary that I figure out how I would manage to take care of him, these chores and my work.  To say that some days this has been overwhelming would be an understatement.  Being in the midst of such change has made me think about how this relates to the workplace and how to manage equally sudden changes.

I once worked with an agency in which the principle owner and father of two of the producers became ill and was gone in a few short months.  While the two sons were great producers, they were struggling with how to manage the agency.  They were having issues with receivables, timely marketing of renewals, staff using the system correctly and in general how to run the agency.  As the elder brother said “I had no idea what Dad did every day and all the detail involved in running this place”.  It was refreshing how once they understand what needed to be done, they just “stepped up to the plate” and got on board.  They actually got on board quicker than their staff did.  But the staff soon saw that these men were serious and either needed to join the party or be replaced.  They were able to recover in this short period of time as they didn’t wait a long time to realize they had a problem and get help.

Consider what would happen in your office if a key owner, manager or employee was suddenly not able to work.  I have seen many occasions where everyone pulls together in the short run and everything is handled very well.  But what happens if this is a situation that goes on for a period of time?  It would be a rare insurance agency that could lose a staff member for any length of time and be able to absorb their work without overload on remaining staff.  I find many agencies that I work with that struggle when an account manager who handles a large book of commercial lines business is out for only a day.  So what would they do if it were for several months?

There are many types of change as illustrated here.  Is your agency prepared for them?  Do you have a plan for these types of changes?  Share your tips and your questions.

A number of my friends have asked that I blog about what happens when you are 1,000 miles from home and you are injured.  My husband, Gene & I were on vacation when he injured himself.  Here is our experience.  I always buy travel insurance when we go out of the country so that we can get back home incase of accident or illness.  I have never done this for domestic travel, but I am reconsidering.  Today’s airline flights are so full that you are only flying on the plane you are scheduled on in many cases.  The proper travel insurance would have allowed us to return home a few days earlier.

My plan was to take a short break from blogging and social media.  I knew that during the first part of our vacation in Yellowstone National Park we would not have access to the internet.  I thought this would be a great time to clear my mind and do some planning.  Well, all of that part went as planned.  However, the afternoon of June 18, 2010, my husband slipped and fell and tore the quad muscles on both of his legs.  This rendered him immediately unable to walk.  We were in the Badlands National Park and 1,000 miles from home.

He was first taken to the emergency room in Philip, SD.  We both tried to convince them to take him to Rapid City, SD as we knew they had a much larger medical facility.  However, their protocol requires that they go to the closest emergency room.  So off we go.  At the Philip emergency room they did X-rays.  No bones were broken.  The doctor said he thought Gene had just severely strained the quads.  He gave him a pain shot, prescribed paid drugs, advised us to ice each quad and then use heat and that he should be better in a couple of days.  They put Gene in our rent car and off to Rapid City we went.  Now mind you Gene can still not stand.  I had to use the hotel’s wheel chair to get him in the room and call and rent a wheel chair to use to move him around.

On Sunday morning Gene said he needed to go to the Rapid City emergency room.  So we get him in the car and head out.  They do triage, ask a lot of questions and then put us in a room.  I took out my Kindle and starting reading to occupy the time.  When the emergency room physician entered the room, he said hi and wanted to know all about my Kindle.  He said Gene looked like he wasn’t going anywhere and could wait while he checked out the Kindle.  What a hoot.   As soon as the emergency room physician examined him and felt of his legs he said the quad muscles had been torn and would need surgery.  They admitted him to the hospital.  Now I have to say, for a small city, this is a really nice hospital and the staff were very nice and attentive.  When the orthopedic surgeon saw Gene he wanted to do surgery immediately.  However, when the doctor advised Gene that recovery/rehab would be a minimum of 6 weeks Gene said no.  We would take our regular flight home on Tuesday and have the surgery here.

So on Monday our day was all about contacting doctors here to get a referral to an orthopedic surgeon and talking to American Airlines to confirm that the Rapid City airport could handle getting him on board the airplane in an aisle chair and that the proper staff would be available.  American just started flying out of Rapid City a few months ago and they only have this one flight a day.  I wanted to be sure we were going to be on it before we left the hospital.  My final hurdle for getting everything arranged was to talk to Park N Fly where our car was parked and find that they don’t have a handicap van.

So Tuesday was all about getting checked out of the hospital on time, getting to the airport and getting home.  Once we were in DFW, I left Gene with the young man that wheeled him from the plane to baggage claim.  I went off to catch the Park N Fly van to get the car and come back to pickup Gene.  Now we had been away from home 11 days where the highest temperature was maybe 77degrees.  It is 101 degrees at 5:30pm when we landed.  It is a weekday and rush hour traffic. Yikes!!

I retrieved Gene and stopped by our house to drop off luggage.  Then it was off to get him checked into the hospital here.  Yet another emergency room.  They had no record that they were expecting him.  They finally located the orthopedic surgeon who said yes he should be admitted.  On Wednesday night at 8:00pm he had surgery.  All went well with surgery.

So since your husband can’t get up and down to walk, you must find a skilled nursing facility for him.  This was my Sunday duty.  So for anyone that doesn’t know, a skilled nursing facility is a nursing home that has been medicare approved that can provide physical therapy as prescribed by the patient’s physician.  I can’t even express how depressing this process was.  I visited the three that were recommended in our local area.  I chose what seemed to be the best.  Gene was transferred to this facility on Monday morning.  Things either move really slow or extremely fast.  I have to say this part moved far faster than I was prepared for.  After Gene was settled in the facility I set off on some errands to gather some items he would need.

I will just say that nothing went well that afternoon or evening at this facility.  I spent the evening researching my options for other facilities.  On Tuesday morning I set out on my new search.  I found a really nice facility.  They sent out their assessment nurse that afternoon and by the evening he was moved.  We celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary in the new facility.  They brought a each a dinner tray and the food was actually very good.

While being in any facility is trying, overall this facility is much better than any other I have visited.  But no matter how nice the facility, you must be attentive to what is going on, be available to assist your loved one and most of all be their advocate.  Gene has now been in this facility for 1 1/2 weeks.  We had a post op visit with the surgeon.  He advises that he will see us again on August 18.  Physical therapy has been moved to a new stage, but it will be after our August visit before Gene will be allowed to try standing up from a normal seated position.  It seems I have finally taken care of all the out-of-the-ordinary tasks and I can return to taking care of business and back to blogging.

We had a wonderful time in Yellowstone and on our trip from there to Rapid City and in the Badlands until the accident.  I will be posting blogs about our trip over the next few weeks.  Remember, you can have an accident or get sick anywhere.  If this happens you need to sit and contemplate the best plan of action.  There are options if you look for them.  We accomplished our goal of getting home.  Our goal now is to get Gene back on his feet so we can get back to life and more “Glamour of the Road”.

The excuses I hear most often are:

• I am too old to learn computer stuff.
• I am retiring in a couple of years and I am not learning anything new.
• My accounts are different from everyone else’s in the agency and they won’t fit the system so I don’t need to learn it.
• I can’t learn new things in a group setting.
• I have been here a long time and I know too much for them to let me go if I don’t learn this.
• If I learn more, I will have to do more.

Wow, are you surprised by these or have you heard them too?  I read somewhere recently that you can’t teach people who don’t want to learn.  And my experiences seem to prove this out.  I guess I just don’t get any of these excuses.  I loved school and I loved to read.  I was an only child until I was ten.  I lived in neighborhoods that didn’t seem to have any other children.  So my social life was at school.  Good grades were expected by my parents, no excuses.  Books could take me anywhere in the world.  One of my grandmothers cleaned houses for wealthy people in Lubbock, TX.  In the summer when I stayed with her I would get to sit quietly in the libraries of these houses and look at books.  One seemed to have every copy of National Geographic Magazine ever published.  I loved going to this house and the time I got to spend with these magazines.  I believe reading fueled my desire to travel.  I usually have 3-4 books in progress at all times.

The learning gene seems firmly implanted to this day.  When I am working with an agency and I hear one of these excuses I often just look at the individual speaking.  The too old one just doesn’t get any traction at all.  I have yet to find an account that could not be managed in the system.  In a very few cases, some additional resource are needed to support multi-location billing where a system doesn’t handle this.

The issue about learning new things in a group setting is really puzzling.  Didn’t you go to school?  The last time I checked, school is a group setting unless you are home schooled or have a private tutor.    I know a number of home schooled people and they are well adjusted and learn well in group settings.  So how did you get here?

Those individuals that think they know too much or are too valuable to be let go just may be in for a big surprise.  When profits are down and agencies do restructure, they just may decide that others know enough to take over your work.  I believe these individuals live in a vacuum.  They ignore the fact that there are others in the agency that do know what you know.  More than once I have seen staff step up and learn very quickly when a disagreeable individual or someone who thinks only they can do this work is gone.  Other staff is often relieved when this person is gone and happy to do the work.  I have seen a total shift in the attitude of the office staff to one of a positive, can do atmosphere.

I read an article several years ago about the use PCs in the insurance industry.  This was before insurance carriers had PCs on desktops.  The article advised insurance professionals that if they wanted to succeed in the future, they had better purchase a PC for home and learn how to use it.  How true this became.  In the mid 90s I managed a general agency that employed several underwriters that had previously worked at carriers.  We were a PC shop.  A couple of these underwriters had not previously used a PC and doing so was a challenge for them.  However, they each took on the challenge and learned fast and well.  They were both over 55 at the time.

Some days our work is not particularly challenging.  But others can challenge you beyond anything you could imagine.  I believe this will only continue to increase as our world continues to become more integrated and complicated.  I do like that in our more connected world, we can reach out to others for information and help.

What are your challenges in learning?  What are your tips to learning new technology?  What are your tips to learning new insurance information?

Technorati Tags: Insurance Agency processes, insurance agency culture, insurance learning, technology learning, national geographic magazine

Our world of social media continues to explode. Along with that comes new technologies and new design. While creating a new social media plan for a client over the past few weeks, I determine that my site was too busy and outdated in its design and performance. It has only been about a year since I last had a re-design. However, as someone working with clients on updating who they are and how they operate, I think I need to be as current as possible in addition to looking to the future.

Remaining as current as possible is a challenge. While assembling my social media presentation for the client; there were changes to some of the tools I was recommending. Just a few days ago I became frustrated with the blogging software I was using and decided to go back to a previously used software. Well, just today I received an update to the blogging software I was using and now it is superior to the one I returned to, so here I am again and loving the new features.

Now in the world of an agency you can’t go changing software everyday, but you need to be involved with your current vendors to engage them in moving forward in their development. When I talk to a vendor and ask what they are doing to design and implement touch screen functionality I usually just get ignored. Sometimes they tell me their clients are asking for it. I suggest that most agencies don’t know they should be pushing for this technology.

Insurance agencies are so focused in their world that they are not always aware of what is happening in the outside world and what technologies they should be engaging. I believe that if insurance agencies and companies want to hire and retain the best people they need to have the best technologies. Many days I feel our whole industry is going nowhere fast toward achieving the best technologies.

What are you wishing for? Have you talked to your vendor? What is their response?

Technorati Tags:
Insurance Agency processes, insurance agency workflows, social media

A few weeks ago I helped an agency set up Microsoft Windows Live Writer for their blogging.  This is the software I was using when I changed to my Mac.  After testing 4 different Mac blogging software I am going back to the Windows Live Writer software.

I am enjoying the best of both worlds.

I had designed a product called Web 2.0 Strategies some months ago. This was its initial outing. What fun and what a challenge. I initially met with the agency for a Q&A. One of the great parts of this session was that the owner thought it was important that I also get feedback from various staff members on what they think the agency’s social media plan should look like. I received great information from them and ideas on a couple of items we had not discussed in the executive meeting.

Back in my office I began pulling all the information together for a presentation and recommendations. While a small number of social media outlets are meaningful, to support them properly, there are a number of tools needed. How was I going to take this very confusing world and make it easily understandable?

Only a few days before my initial meeting with the agency I didn’t have a clear understanding myself of why you would want or need to use foursquare. I had inquired to the twitter community about this question and my friend Liz Kittell provided me with a definition. However, it just didn’t seem to fit a social media plan in my mind. Oddly enough the owner was describing to me a benefit that the agency negotiates on behalf of all clients with some of the agency’s commercial clients. While he is talking it become crystal clear to me what foursquare is all about.

Another challenge I found while working on this plan is that Web 2.0 and social media are ever changing. Each day there are new articles with great ideas and uses for social media. Functions as social media sites are changing frequently as well. Then when you think you have documented everything applicable a new idea comes along or you find that piece of information you have been looking for endlessly.

This is a chart I used to simplify the plan visually for the client. Then I provided them with a detailed report of what each of these could accomplish and suggestions on how to use. Additionally, we discussed tools such as hootsuite for managing their twitter accounts and their usage of foursquare.

This picture was our focal point for the meeting that we could re-visit at anytime. As the client said, this chart helped them through the mass of information to focus on the tools that would benefit them. What additional tools does our agency use to facilitate your social media plan? What questions do you have about putting together a social media plan?

Technorati Tags:
Social Media, twitter, facebook, business to business, youtube, foursquare, linkedin, joe vincent seminar, web 2.0, independent insurance agents of texas

The following is the opening of this session as reported by the Insurance Journal’s Stephanie K. Jones.

One of the primary reasons why insurance agents don’t jump into the world of social media — such as blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the myriad other Web-based avenues for reaching out to the world at large — is that they are unsure how to go about it, according to a Texas-based agency consultant, coach and mentor who said there’s a lot of resistance to using such tools in the agency universe.

The link will take you to the Insurance Journal article written by Stephanie K. Jones Social Media Can Drive Traffic to Agency’s ‘Home Base’

Thank you Stephanie for a great article.

Best Practices Documentation and Management – TAAR – November 2009

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This conversation occurred between two ladies that I am friends with on facebook, follow on twitter, and enjoy meeting up with at industry functions. I call both of them movers and shakers in the insurance industry and bright minds that will shape our industries future.

Now I challenge you to find two busier individuals. Here is the toll:

Liz

• Marketing Representative – Independent Insurance Agents of Nebraska

• Marketing Major – University of Nebraska – Lincoln

• Married

• StepMom that attends wrestling matches and other young people events

• Active in community projects

• Sports Fan

• Active in other insurance industry events

Ashley

• Vice President of Operations – Harbor/Brenn Insurance Agencies

• MBA Student

• Single Mom – Attends young people events

• Maid, Cook, Chauffeur

• Active in Independent Insurance Agents of Michigan

• Active in other insurance industry events

• Active in community projects

• I’m not sure about her stance on sports

However, they both find time for social networking. They use social networking to interact with their friends and family and for business. The example here is Liz needs information for an accounting class for Project Invest and Ashley hooking her up with Janet Tuttle. Liz had a question, Ashley had an answer and Janet will probably have a new client. Janet is a new entrepreneur. She is using social media as one of her tools for building her business. This all happened in a span of about 15 minutes.

I met both of Liz and Ashley through social media through other insurance industry individuals. I knew Janet through her work at her previous employer. Look at how small social media made the world and brought all of this together.

Please share how social media has help you in business or your personal life.

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Social Media, twitter, facebook, business to business, independent insurance agents of nebraska, independent insurance agents of michigan, harbor/brenn insurance agencies, university of nebraska-lincoln