While traveling I got to thinking about what I see and experience at the various user group meetings that I attend. I frequently see agencies send staff that are not well prepared for the meeting. Sometimes an agency owner sends someone just to have a representative attend and be seen. Very often I find people that attend a lot of sessions but never share with anyone else in the agency what they have learned.

So what is your pan for attending the next user group meeting for one of your agency’s products?

• Who will attend?

• What sessions will each person be attending?

• How will information learned at the meeting be shared with the rest of the agency?

I would like your feed back on how your agency would answer these questions. I would also like to hear what you and your agency expect your user group to do for you.

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Insurance Agency management system, technology, technology user group meetings.

This article was created after reading “Driven by Distraction – How Twitter and Facebook Make Us More Productive Workers” from the March 2010 WIRED Magazine. I would encourage you to read the entire article.

My prospects and clients often tell me that they want everyone in their agency to do things the same way. That is what they expect me to accomplish when they engage my services. Well, what exactly does that mean? Do they want a bunch of robots that can’t think for themselves? It is very important that an insurance agency has standards, procedures and workflows and that everyone follow them. But these defined standards, procedures and workflows address processes. What about thinking, negotiating, customer service, marketing and a host of other situations that arise everyday?

What happens if you have hired robots and they can’t think on their feet, so to say? Is there one standard answer when one of your clients has an issue with an insurance carrier? Is there only one way to negotiate the terms and pricing on an account. Are all of your clients the same which makes it easy to know what your staff is going to say to them in every situation? I fear if the answer to any of these questions is yes, that your agency has become one of those direct writers that advertise on TV.

The article in WIRED Magazine really got me to thinking about this. I often have my best ideas or find the solution to a problem at times when I am not immersed in work. Haven’t you had a great idea in the shower, with no place to write it down? And sometimes you forget the idea before you can get to something to capture your thoughts. So apply this to your staff. Where to they get their relief to have creative time. It might not be via Twitter of Facebook as suggested in the article, but there are other outlets. I always encourage agencies to look at business models outside the insurance industry. In many other industries firms employ a number of tools which incorporate the work life and other activities into the work day.

I recently saw a piece on TV about a firm that adopted a school in their area. Members of the firm became volunteer tutors at the school. While the students at the school benefited greatly, the staff members of the firm said they were the ones that had benefited more. I know a few insurance agencies that have competitions with prizes. Think Wii bowling, trivia and other fun games. I have always found that fun and laughter are great for the creative juices.

I know some of you are sitting there thinking so what is creative about the insurance business. Think about these ideas:

1. Putting together the best coverages for a difficult risk usually takes some creative thinking. These might include, what markets do I need outside current markets, would the client take more of the risk and how do I convince them of the benefits of that. As a broker in the surplus lines market for 25 years, I had to be creative many days.
2. Negotiating terms and pricing on accounts. It is important that all of the facts, the good, bad and ugly about an account be divulged to the insurance carriers. However, does your staff know how to put this information in its best light and negotiate effectively. I do not mean the squeaky wheel or high pressure approach here. I don’t believe that works in the long term for you or your client.
3. Your client has just had a serious loss. While it is properly covered there is still lots to deal with. Will a standard, predetermined answer or process necessarily address the issues. You and your staff may need to roll-up-their sleeves and be prepared to help your client deal with the details of getting all the information needed by the adjuster and wading through the paperwork, emails, phone calls. Remember you told your prospect that you are their trusted partner. Now is time to deliver.
4. Marketing must be approached with a creative mind. In today’s world there are more marketing outlets and ideas than ever before. You will be stuck in the old mold if you don’t get your creative juices and ideas rolling on this.

These are just a few examples of where creative thinking is needed in the ever day operations of an insurance agency. Solutions and ideas come at the most unexpected times. Don’t suppress the creativity of your staff. Because yes there should be creativity in an insurance agency. Would you please share with us the tools you use to help your staff think and act creatively?

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Insurance Agency processes, insurance agency workflows, insurance agency culture, creativity, twitter, facebook, Wii bowling, negotiating

1. What is the best way to publish our best practices?

2. How and when do we review and update our best practices?

3. Who edits our best practices?

Let’s talk first about ways to publish your best practices documentation. You need to consider “How do I make this information the most user friendly possible for our staff?” The staff will not use the best practices information if it takes longer to find what they are looking for than just doing the process their old (own) way.

I always suggest a format that is in a searchable “help authoring tool”. There are a number of software products available for creating this type of documentation. I did two different Google searches to see what the current results are. I search first for “help authoring tools”. Such products as RoboHelp, DocToHelp and a number of others showed up in the search. Then I did “asp help authoring tools” search. In this search I found products such as HelpSmith.com and Helpauthoring.net along with others. Some of my clients decide that they will use Adobe .pdf or a Microsoft Word document. These documents are not as easily searchable as the help authoring tools but can work for you. I would suggest that you research various products to determine which format will work best for your staff.

Reviewing and updating your best practices is a continuous process. Earlier this year it was necessary to amend and update a section of a client’s best practices just a few weeks after that section had been defined and agreed upon. The agency management system vendor made a major change to the functionality for that particular process. Thus, what had just been defined needed to be re-defined, documented, trained and implemented as soon as possible. With older agency managements systems, changes don’t occur as frequently. However, in today’s world of newer developing systems, improvements and modifications to the systems are happening more frequently. Staying ahead of the research, defining, documentation, training and implementing phases are more challenging. Online agency management systems share information with their clients about the next release, however, until its actual release, it is difficult to know exactly what the functionality will be and what changes need to be made.

I have also seen a change to a process made on-the-spot during a conversation or meeting. When this happens, frequently there is not proper documentation or communication to everyone about the change. Each of these events cause confusion and a disintegration of the published best practices. When this occurs, people begin reverting to their own processes.

As you can see there are many occasions that will require a review and editing of your best practices. So who edits? In a recent conversation with some of my colleagues on this subject, they said that they thought the agency’s best practices should be in an open wiki that anyone in the agency can edit. Their basis for this comment is that the staff knows the quickest/simplest way to do all processes, thus they should define the processes and edit them. The definition of a wiki is:

A wiki is a website that uses wiki software, allowing the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked Web pages, using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor, within the browser. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, in corporate intranets, and in knowledge management systems.

As you might imagine, I have a few issues with the self-define, self-edit program. Some of these are:

1. Usually each staff member has their own way of doing a process.

2. When there are such differing opinions on standards and processes, it seems someone would be overwriting in the wiki all the time to show their preference.

3. Will the wiki track what process was in effect at the time an errors & omissions claim questions that process?

4. If everyone is allowed to change a process at will, everyone will have to constantly check for the most current way to perform the process.

My colleagues let me know my ideas were old-fashioned and out-of-date. Well, of course that set me to thinking they might be correct. So I sought out the thinking of some other sources. I checked with insurance agent’s errors & omissions underwriters. This is the combined responses I received. Everyone agrees that those that do the work should help create the procedures, however, the standard best practices documentation should be available to staff in some unalterable format with traceable dates of publication. This creates a time certain during which the process was in place and insures that all employees, including managements are advised and are of the correct procedure at all times.

Now a properly set up wiki is highly searchable and very user friendly and would be as good a solution as the others discussed at the beginning of this article. However, this particular section of an agency’s wiki should not be editable by anyone except the same individuals that would have the authority to edit the other solutions. It is important that when there is a change to your best practices, that a new version be published with a new edition date. The recently retired version should be stored in a permanent location on your network. All previous versions should be retained in accordance with your document retention policy. In this way, you will have the needed documentation should there be questions about the process for an audit; an errors & omissions claim or other instances when you may need to refer back to prior versions.

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Insurance Agency processes, insurance agency workflows, best practices, robohelp, doctohelp, intranets, wiki, helpsmith, helpauthoring, adobe, microsoft word

I am inviting you to sign up to subscription to this new blog. Currently I plan to have new posts for you on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week. I have several committed communicators and some thinking about it. If you know of someone that does not regularly blog that you would like to hear, let me know and I will see if I can entice them to join us. If you are a regular blogger, but would like to join in the conversation here with guest posts, let me know.

I believe that the more we have involved in the conversation the better.

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Insurance Ecosystem, insurance technology, twitter, blogging, wordpress, intensedebate, insurance technology

09.09 2015_and_Beyond.pdf

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I had no idea what a mentor was, but I had just met the most important mentor of my life. He was a tough interviewer. He made it clear from the beginning that he would not put up with any nonsense and while I was at work I was expected to be working. However, I was so very unhappy at the agency where I was working and this seemed like such a nice place I took the position.

On my first day Mr. Grace explained the rules:

1. The customer was our first priority as that was how Russell Grace Insurance made its income.
2. Never bind coverage without the premium or a downpayment and signed premium note agreement.
3. I was here to be working, not visiting with other employees or having personal phone calls.
4. And a few others. You get the idea.

For the first few months I learned the ropes in the agency, did my job and stayed out of trouble. I earned a raise after my ninety day probation period and just kept my nose to the grindstone. One day Mr. Grace and the other employee in the agency came to a file cabinet in my office to discuss the up-coming quarterly billing of the physician’s malpractice policies that the agency wrote. She had a negative approach to almost any discussion. Her comment that afternoon was that “these doctors are more trouble than they are worth”. Now I did the deposits and I saw the amount of money these quarterly billings generated and knew that this book was growing by leaps and bounds each month.

That afternoon after she left, I went to Mr. Grace and told him that I would be interested in learning the physician’s program and take over the quarterly billing and certificate renewals as it seemed the other lady was too busy. For the next five years I handled this program, our hospital malpractice program and supervised the other specialty lines as well. When I left we had 1250 physicians and 250 hospitals in the State of Texas as well as a full fledged managing general agency. In this time I had developed a career in the insurance industry in the special risk arena. My noticer, taught, coached, mentored and let me grow in knowledge and confidence to move ahead in life and my career. I will forever be grateful for his confidence in me.

Do you have a mentor? Do you actively mentor others? Do you think mentoring is important. Let me know.

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The Noticer, mentor, managing general agency, agency culture

I will watch anything program about New York. I will read any book about New York. I take The New Yorker magazine on my Kindle. From time-to-time I take the The New York Times on my Kindle. Several years ago on Sunday Morning one of their reporters did a piece on Manhattan Unfurled by Matteo Pericoli. It was close to Christmas and it was the only thing I requested.

I visit this book frequently so I can remember exactly what the skyline looks like.

Last Sunday morning Charles Osgood did a piece on Mattio’s newest book, The City Out My Window.

I ordered it that day. It arrived just a few days later. I have read and re-read several of the entries with each window over the past three evenings. Such great insight into what people see out their windows and what the views mean to them. I am sure I will visit this book as often as I visit other materials on New York. And yes, I have these books in hard cover. That is how they are meant to be consumed. All books are not meant to be in electronic form. A Love Affair must be fed.

What place in the world fires your imagination? What books, publications or other resources provide you with insight to this place?

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Manhatten, New York City, The City Out My Window, Manhattan Unfurled, Matteo Pericoli

07.09 FirstLook_Aspire.pdf

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Insurance Agency management system, Impowersoft, Aspire, technology, insurance agency workflows

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t

I first read Good to Great several years ago. When I was an employee of IBTX Risk Services the entire staff was required to read the book. The agency’s culture was based on many of the principles of this book. I return to this book as reference material often.

The portions of the book that I continue to use with my clients are:

1. Good is the enemy of great.

2. Have the right people in the right seat on the bus.

3. Disciplined People, Disciplined Thought & Disciplined Action create “A Culture of Discipline.”

This is another book that I often request that the management of an agency read when they are my client. It contains many valuable lessons. If you have read Good to Great would you please share what you believe are the top lessons of this book. I am always looking for other’s points-of-view.

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Good to Great, Jim Collins, insurance agency culture, book review, insurance agency values

Once we were seated in the club, Gene looked at the young man on the stage singing and asked me if I thought he was missing an arm. The young man had on a jacket and it appeared that the jacket sleeve on the right side was tucked into the pocket. I told him that I thought so. After the young man sat back down Gene went over to him. As soon as Klay saw that Gene is also missing a part of an arm, he lit up and acted like he and Gene has been friends forever.

For those that don’t know, Gene was born missing the lower part of his left arm. It is natural to him and he does nothing to hide it. Shortly after Klay and Gene met and spoke it was Gene’s turn to sing. There weren’t many people singing, so Klay’s turn came just a few people later. When he got on the stage this time, there was no jacket and it was quite obvious to everyone that the lower part of his right arm is missing. Klay told Gene that he lost it in an auto accident when he was 17.

Jessica commented to us later that it was amazing to watch how Klay’s comfort with his arm seemed to change before our very eyes. Once he was on stage without his jacket, he was smiling and line dancing with his family. He came and introduced himself to Jessica and I. When we left it was hugs for everyone.

Klay lives in North Carolina. He was visiting Nashville with his family. I thought to myself as soon as I knew that Klay was missing part of an arm “In all of Nashville, what are the chances of meeting up with another one armed person from out-of-town in the same bar.” Was it providence or just coincidence that we all ended up in the same place that evening? These sorts of events are the ones that make “The Glamour of the Road” so special.

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the glamour of the road, franklin tn, nashville, lifework 2.0 seminar, amputee, north carolina, providence