2001 Best Practices Study

Analysis of Agencies with Revenues Between $500,000 and $1,250,000

L EADERSHIP D EVELOPMENT

“My parents probably wouldn’t have had the confidence to enter into the buy-sell agreement if they hadn’t given me the ability to prove myself. Each time they gave me a new responsibility, they supported me but allowed me to succeed or fail on my own.” “Continuous learning is ingrained in our culture. We pass around articles and books that we read and share.” “Leadership in our agency is not about being ‘king of the hill’. It is more a matter of helping each employee be a leader with me in the areas where they have talents. If I encourage them to grow and continue to improve on those talents they are going to demonstrate leadership to our clients.” “We open our income statement to our producers every month at our sales meeting and report to our staff quarterly on how we are doing with our income and how that affects their individual bonus and profit sharing plan. We also report to them how we are doing with regard to profit and our goals and objectives on the MBO(Management By Objectives) plan. Then if there are areas that we need to improve on we discuss how we are going to make and implement changes.” “Someone said to me that I needed to start working on my agency rather than in my agency so much. Now I spend one afternoon a week working at home just to work on the agency. Whether it is a budget, or a plan or developing an idea, I’m not inside the agency where I can get disrupted.”

Best Practices agencies intuitively develop leadership skills in their people, partly because their size requires that they delegate and share responsibility in order to be both an agency owner/manager and producer. They expect their employees to take responsibility for what needs to be done in the agency and to accept ownership for what they do. The owners include their employees in decision making and encourage input regarding agency goals and objectives as well as the strategies to achieve them. As a result, the employees also participate in the rewards and failures of those strategies. Ongoing personal and professional development is encouraged and supported by allowing employees the time and the financial support to obtain professional designations and continuing education.

B USINESS P LANNING

These agencies engage in and prepare business plans. Some are very formal and others very simple. Regardless of the style used, the agencies’ open style invites input from everyone in the agency in setting goals and objectives for production, service, and profits, which are then monitored and adjusted periodically. Often the agency shares its plan with its carriers to determine how the agency will be able to work with the carrier in the coming year.

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