Career Development: Mission-Driven Planning and Management

Career Development Plan

Stop operating on autopilot and become a driving force in your organization’s success.

How does your insurance organization align itself and move toward a more effective, mission-driven organization? Mission-driven businesses are able to achieve their goals and, ultimately, fulfill their vision.

Let’s explore how to start incorporating mission-driven exercises in your insurance organization.

Define Your Mission and Vision

Your mission is your organization’s reason for existence.

Your vision is the future state of what your organization looks like and how it operates.

For a retail broker, a mission may look like, “Become the largest retail broker in the Southwest, known for deep insurance expertise and for providing an extraordinary customer experience,” whereas a vision statement may be more along the lines of, “ To help our customers and communities in the Southwest realize their dreams by ensuring they’re protected from risk.”

In order to achieve your mission, you must understand what the critical success factors are—what is necessary to ensure that your mission is actionable?

Identify Important Success Factors

Here’s where you will identify the areas that are important to the execution of your strategy over the next three to five years.

Some things to consider as you outline your strategy:

• What domain expertise do we need to develop?
• What capabilities do we have and which do we need to acquire?
• How will we differentiate our company?
• What infrastructure will we need to have in place?
• What kind of customer experience do we want to provide?
• Are the needs of tomorrow met by the organizational structure of today?
• Are the right people in the right roles?

These success factors can be converted into goals that everyone in the organization can work towards. Departments, leaders, and individual employees will be able to align their goals to the success factors, thereby aligning directly to the company’s mission.

Not sure where to start? Here’s an example of critical success factors once again using a retail broker case:

1. Acquisitions in California, Nevada and Arizona to increase our footprint.
2. Successful conversion to a new Agency Management System that will provide clean data
3. Optimized and streamlined processes that deliver the best customer experience while ensuring efficiency and reduced expenses.

Create a Plan

Below is an easy and effective framework that can cascade throughout the organization. The plan is divided into three time periods, with focused objectives for each.

1st Year: During this time, you are building the foundation you need in order to take action in years two and three. Work on your fundamentals, such as due diligence, gaining capabilities, and developing expertise. Tasks should be prioritized by what is urgent or necessary to make real progress.

Example:

1. Develop criteria for acquisitions and identify potential targets
2. Develop business requirements for new Agent Management System and begin RFP process
3. Develop staff expertise in streamlining and documenting processes

2nd and 3rd Years: Once you’ve dealt with foundational issues in the first year, the real work of deployment and implementation begins to help you reach your goals.

Example:

1. Begin acquisition process for identified target organizations
2. Selection and implementation of new AMS
3. Completion of documentation, optimization, and standardization of all processes

4th and 5th Years: Years four and five are where you will be achieving and tracking the effectiveness of your goals.

Example:

1. Ongoing acquisitions
2. Successful conversion to new AMS, providing clean data
3. Continuous optimization of processes, reducing costs and enabling better customer experiences

Implement Your Plan Across the Organization

At a high level, once you’ve completed these plans, you should know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. Now it’s time to cascade the plan throughout the organization. Essentially every employee in the organization should be working within a plan that aligns the company’s mission with their position and performance goals.

To create individual plans, repeat the steps listed above—define goals, identify critical success factors, and outline a three-to-five-year plan. Annual reviews are a great time to review success factors with each employee on an individual basis and ensue they are moving forward along with the company.

Need help getting started? ReSource Pro can help. Contact us.