P R A D

nothing meaningful done, as no one is ultimately responsible or accountable for the strategy’s success in any practical sense.

The first key to ensuring real leadership is that one person must be identified and visibly supported as the producer recruiting and development leader. The fact that many agencies cannot answer the leadership question with a single name speaks volumes about the lack of strategic importance assigned to this key initiative. Without a clear understanding of who is responsible to whom for what and when, even a well-crafted strategy is likely to deliver mediocre results. Someone must lead and own the entire process.

In our experience, the producer recruiting and development leader is typically already serving as a senior member of the agency’s leadership team. In fact, if the development and implementation of the strategy is among the most critical strategic initiatives of an agency, it is somewhat foolish to think otherwise. However, the producer recruiting

“There is no more important role for me to own than driving producer recruiting and creating the sales culture that we must have to succeed.”

CEO for Regional Insurance Broker

and development leader does not necessarily need to be the agency CEO or the President. As long as the producer recruiting and development leader is given the authority and visible support to do the job, any number of functional leaders within a firm can get the job done. Depending on the specific organizational structure of the agency, an effective producer recruiting and development leader may just as easily be an HR leader, a branch leader, a sales manager or a COO. The producer recruiting and development leader, though, must have the professional gravitas necessary to fulfil the role. Needless to say, not every senior leader in an insurance agency is well-suited to serve as the leader. The effective leader will necessarily possess a number of professional skills and personality characteristics, including being an excellent judge of people, respected within the organization, effective in their current role, highly enthusiastic, fully committed to the strategy and possessing an ability to “sell” the agency. The leader must be one of the agency’s A-players. Depending on the size, organizational structure and geographic footprint of an agency, it is also possible that there will be many producer recruiting and development leaders within the organization (e.g., a commercial lines leader, a practice group leader, a regional leader, etc.). These individuals would have the same general responsibilities as the ultimate owner of the initiative, only on a more localized or focused basis. These individuals should, however, report to and be accountable to the senior producer recruiting and development leader . Regardless of the organizational structure, one leader must ultimately own the strategy.

46 Producer Recruiting & Development Study