THE BIGGEST “OUTSIDE THE BOX” BUSINESS MOVE OF MY CAREER
In my early 30’s, I had the good fortune to get promoted by a boss that changed my life. His name is Jim Strohl. He joined Allstate, where I worked within their Commercial Insurance division. from outside the company…highly unusual in those days. Jim was smart, plain spoken, knowledgable, intimidating to most, not at all formal nor fancy and he had a few minor flaws that made him seem human to me. I loved the guy from the first day I met him.
Jim’s first day on the job saw him calling all of us together to acknowledge that he knew our morale was low and that many of the employees were hating their jobs. He said all this to hundreds of employees whom he had never met. He then pointed to the back of the room and said “I hear you…I don’t doubt your assessment and you and I will work to overcome the current situation. And…we have the advantage of not having the worst jobs in America. I want to share what a really bad job looks like…so pick up your free copy of North Dallas 40 written by Peter Gent. I won’t spoil it for you, but I think you will see that we are not starting from the bottom position in job dissatisfaction. So, read the book, thank God for the job you have and then let’s do the work to make this place a work space we are proud of and enjoy.”
Well…that start was certainly unusual.
That evening, I was working in my small office at about 6pm, and Jim showed up at my door. “Mind if I come in?” I tried to stay calm and quickly noticed he did not have anyone from H.R. (Human Resources or “Personnel” as it is called in those days)…so quickly figured he was not there to fire me. I invited him in and he sat down…as if for a long talk. He said he heard I was the President of the local Society of Chartered Property and Casualty Underwriters (CPCU, as it is known in the industry) and he said he was a CPCU and would like to start going to our meetings with me. Done deal…and we are off to a good start. Then he closed the door…and I thought I might pass out. A closed door with a new big boss at 6pm on his first day could not be a positive thing. Jim has one eye that is just slightly lazy, and he pointed that bad boy at me…a look that others came to fear. He then said…”I need you will tell me the truth about why this place is so uptight, unhappy and messed up.”
Now, let me be clear. I did not report to this new guy. I reported to a guy who reported to him…the big boss of the Underwriting Department…a guy REALLY well connected politically and maybe 30 years older than me. My actual boss had been pretty good to me, so I felt some loyalty to him…and, did I mention, he was really well connected, so I was not too keen on throwing him under the bus. But Jim Strohl had asked me a very important question…just the right question…and it demanded a straight answer.
Jim and I talked for maybe an hour. I told him that we were not properly organized to work efficiently, told him I thought we had too many young managers managing very experienced workers and that the workers resented that situation, told him that the departments did not work well together…looked out for their interests only, mentioned that we often felt like a distant relative to the heart of the Allstate organization…the personal lines auto and home owners business and that we did little to partner with those good folks to be seen as important to their overall success. And I told him that I did not feel like some of our top managers really understood the numbers…and it is hard to be profitable when you do not really understand the numbers.
Jim took it all in…silently…he just let me talk. When I ran out of steam, he said “I have not heard your assessment of your boss. What is it?” I had been pretty glib to that point. However, his direct question got me sputtering. He did not let that go on for long. He said “Let me help you…your boss has a great reputation all the way to the top in our Zone Office and I have already decided to move him back to the Zone Offie immediately…a lateral move he will like…he might even see it as a promotion. So, what should the new lady or man, who will be taking his place, need to focus on immediately?” Again…just the right question…and I gave him a straight answer. He did not even bother to tell me to keep my mouth shut our conversation or his plans. He just thanked me for the great input, said he would call on me again in the future when he needed the truth and left for the night. I stayed in my office for another hour trying to calm down and figure out what had just happened.
Unfortunately, I was not in any kind of line to replace my old boss. I was too young, had not done time in the Zone or Home Office and there were several really excellent candidates ahead of me. At best, I would have been fifth place or lower…probably lower..to get the job of Underwriting Department manager for a quarter of the USA. But, I did feel that whatever happened would probably be good for me…get my slow moving career headed in the right direction. Oh, and Jim would not really be the guy to pick the new Department head…that person would be the overall head of Underwriting in Home Office, Larry…and Larry did not much like me.
You can imagine that I made sure I was still in my office each night until I saw Jim Strohl headed to the exit. He would often stop by my office and say good night or have a brief chat. Not too many days down the road he told me that he would announce my current bosses “promotion” to the Zone office the next day. And then he came in and closed that damn door again. He reached out his hand and congratulated me on becoming the new Underwriting Department Manager and a direct report to him…effective tomorrow. For one of the few times in my life, I could not speak. He told me that he had put his career on the line to promote me…that Home Office strongly objected and that I should not expect a lot of help from them. He said he stood for my success…would make sure that neither of us would fail and that he would help me where I was weak and I needed to help him where he needed help…mostly with fitting in with the rest of the Allstate Executives and that he would count on me to be the first to bring him bad news and without any sugar coating. I simply said…”Deal”.
At 7pm, a top guy visiting from Home Office, came by my office so we could go out to a pre-arranged dinner that night. He swore me to secrecy immediately. Told me that my current boss…my soon to be old boss…was getting fired or transferred tomorrow and that there would soon be a new Underwriting Department Manager for our office. He told me that he suspected it would be him. He then went down a list of the other candidates and disqualified them one by one. At the end he looked at me and said he did not mean to just ignore my chances, but we both knew that my chances would come five or ten years down the road…not a chance in hell now. I could hardly wait for morning.
The next day the announcements were made. My old boss came over to me and said “I had hoped it would be you.” and I think he meant it. I soon learned from HR that he had turned down several promotions to Home Office for me..jobs he never ran by me…I am guessing because he wanted to hold onto me. Whatever…it all turned out just fine. Everyone seemed to be happy except Home Office and the other people who were on that promotion list…a couple of whom were now working directly for me. Over time, I worked it out with the local managers that had been skipped over…all good people. It took years for me to win over the Home Office folks. In fact, one of them, Larry…the national head of Underwriting…did not warm up to me until he was retired and facing the end of his life. He sought me out at a National CPCU meeting, took me out for coffee after my presentation and apologized to me…sincerely. He said “Don, I am here to right a wrong. I know I tried to screw you in your career and I was wrong in doing so…and want to apologize. ” I said “Larry, you will need to be more specific, you tried to screw me over multiple times…let’s go through them one by one.” We did. He apologized for each. I accepted his apology. He died shortly there after and I think I may have been the only Allstate person who attended his funeral. If so, that is a shame. Larry was smarter than all of us, had an ego bigger than all of ours combined and was not all that good with people interactions. But he was brilliant and I have always wished he could have been a mentor to me. I could have learned a lot from him.
That is the prelude for what I really want to share with you. My biggest “out of the box” business move. This was not the biggest thing I ever did, nor my proudest moment, nor particularly brilliant…but it was WAY out of the box and it worked. So here is the deal…
Our department was made up of managers, supervisors, underwriters and their assistants. In those days, we lived in a paper environment…every insurance contract or quote had a paper file. Commercial lines can be easy (as in…insuring a shoe store would be super easy) or complex (as in insuring the Allstate fleet of automobiles or a major car dealer or a huge manufacturing plant…those are complex). When I took over the new job, EVERYONES desk was piled high with those files. I had been at Allstate since I was 21, so I could tell how far each person was behind. I knew that some of those files were months behind…and that we were losing opportunities and premium because we could not handle the work on our desks. I also knew what got dropped from the job when Underwriters fell behind…the careful review of losses and investigation into loss trends and pricing implications. The net result…unhappy employees…customers not being well served…deteriorating profits…distain from our personal lines brothers and sisters who could not understand why we could not do our jobs properly (they learned of our problems from our cranky agents who had to deal with us and the state insurance departments that had to handle legit complaints about our service}. Add to that…the other departments in the region felt ignored by us (they were) because they had ideas on how to help us and we did not have the ability to listen. Lastly, some of our folks needed to be fired, like right now…they had horrible attitudes, lacked the skills to do the job or were otherwise detrimental to the workplace. Prior management tolerated them because they felt that any help was better than no help…and it would take time and money to replace them.
I knew this backlog had to be fixed before anything else could be addressed. I had no budget to hire temps or more staff. I did try to get other offices to loan us some people, with mild success. I did organize work parties to have at the problem. Turns out that employees do not consider coming in and working eight hours on a Saturday for some pizza that I paid for myself, to be a great and rewarding experience. Nope…this would take some different kind of thinking. Allstate was not really set up for different kind of thinking…but things were bad and they needed addressed RIGHT NOW.
I came up with an idea and ran it by Jim Strohl. Jim did not jump up and down at its brilliance. He listened…thought about it…and then said “You can do it…but just know it will be your neck and mine if it fails.” Well, at least we were in it together.
The head of the Operations Department would be key to our success…they made things happen to get policies issued and renewed. The head of that department was a young guy, new to the region, and a friend of mine…London Bradley. You may have heard of that name. London was a long time NCAA Division 1 Basketball ref on weekends. He was the ref that Bobby Knight, of Indiana, threw the chair at during a game. We never let him forget that…but we all knew he was a great ref. London was used to dealing with pressure. He pledged his support to our efforts and off we went.
The idea…I went out after everyone had left for the night, removed every single piece of paper from each employees desk, took every file that was hidden away in a “Follow Up” drawer…took all these files…hundreds and hundreds of pounds of them…into a large conference room. Every employee now had a completely clean desk…no backlog. They had been relieved of that pressure. The next day I would explain that it was my and managements fault that we had let it come to that kind of a situation. I apologized…sincerely.
I told them that their new job was to handle work as it came in and to do so on a timely basis…fully doing all aspects of their jobs. I asked them if they thought they could keep even without the burden of those old files. Most, if not all, said they thought they could. I told them that if they felt they were falling behind or unable to do all aspects of their jobs, they were to come directly to me and be as clear and specific as possible…so I could get them the help they needed to succeed.
Well, that all went surprisingly well. It helped that Jim Strohl and London Bradley were at my side. I had carefully briefed my management and supervision team, and they pledged their support, as well. Let me be a bit more clear about that support…I think most of them felt I had lost my mind and felt we were doomed as doomed could be. But, to their credit, they got after the task and worked the plan.
Do you remember me, early on in this story, saying that our experience Underwriters were not universally thrilled to be managed and supervised by people, in many cases, who were WAY younger and WAY less experienced than them? So, at some point in the meeting with all of our department employees I asked if there were questions. First question…”Don…what will happen to the huge backlog of files you took off of our desks? ” I answered…”Those are all now safely housed in Conference Room A. Your managers, supervisors and myself will be handling those files to completion.” I promise you…you have never heard a louder chorus of laughter in your life. Everyone in that room KNEW that management could not do that job…they had no idea how to do it…that is part of why they did not think much of our management team.
When the laughter died down, I looked over at our red faced management team and said “My cousin is a famous music producer. He once gave me the best work advice of my life. He said “Never leave the studio.” What he meant was never lose the ability to do the actual work, as good or better than your employees. At the time, he was the CEO of a major label, but he would produce one or two albums a year himself…just like it did while working his way up in the business. I believe he is right. And I know for sure that we either never had those skills or have lost them. So, we are going to learn how to do things right. In doing so, we may learn that some of what we do is wasted energy and we will correct it. We will come humbly to you to teach us those things we need to learn. And, we hope to earn your respect with our dedication to become the kind of management team that can support your efforts to win, rather than to just find fault so we have something to say during your annual Performance Review. By the way…our management team, to a person, has pledged to work an extra two hours each day and a full day either Saturday or Sunday, until this back log is gone and forgotten. Oh…and I will personally update you weekly on our progress or lack of progress. I will let you know how many files are left to be handled, the date of the oldest one, the size of the biggest one still to be handled and our projected finish date…which I expect to change over time as we learn how to do this work and get better at it. Right now, I think this will take three to four months. And at the end of that time…I expect your desks to be up to date…Conference A to be available for whatever goes on in there on a regular basis and I expect all of your managers will have new respect for you and your abilities and for you to feel the same about them. And at that time, we will all sit down and figure out what miracle we want to tackle next…because we will be THE most talked about and admired Underwriting Department in the country.
I let all of our personal lines Allstate offices know what we were doing. I let Home Office know our plan. I let our agents know our plans. Everyone wished us luck…with Home Office secretly hoping we would fail. We did not fail
Oh…and those problem employees…the ones that should have been fired long ago…I helped them find ways to leave the company. I did so personally, quickly, effectively and completely. In fact, I remained friendly with most of them…helped them find jobs, retire with dignity and treated them with respect. With all that was happening, I doubt that people even recognized that the problem employees were leaving. And, wherever possible, I transferred in existing Allstate employees to take their place…as we did not have time for new employees to ramp up and learn their jobs. I estimate that I replaced five percent of the staff in my first year…maybe more. Replacing that bottom five percent each year continued throughout my career.
It has been so many years since this happened that the fog of time has erased much of the pain all of this caused. There was pain. It was a humbling experience for all involved. We learned a lot. It became a set up for the way I managed going forward. I did not do things the way they have always been done…we experimented…tried things…had victories…learned to cut our losses when we did not come up with plans that worked…tried something else. Underwriters are happiest when you give them a set of rules and a process and your expectations and then never change any of those things going forward. That was not what I introduced. So, to be honest, some hated working in a changing environment…some left…some worked against me and found that was not going to be tolerated. What was tolerated and encouraged was to tell management the truth…leave off the frosting and just give us the cake…and then let’s all sit down and figure out how we can stop doing what is not working and find a path to success…together.
So this is a story about not accepting the way things are…not being afraid to explore new processes…putting the truth on the table…being humble enough to learn from anyone willing to help you…communicating before, during and after and being the kind of boss that stands for the success of EVERYONE. Risky? Heck, yes. But the reward is worth the risk. Give people a real chance to succeed and they might just do so. They did for me…and I am forever thankful…to them…and to Jim Strohl.