Mike Manes

Are you prepared for the future as it will be, or are you still assuming a neat and clean and comfortable life with incremental change?

Before 2020, did any auditor or risk manager ever mention a pandemic risk to any regulator, carrier, prospect or client?

With “place” eliminated as part of the value provided by your office, will you compete as well in a virtual market as you did on your Main Street?

What if we, as professionals, ignore the pain of our clients and don’t reinvent ourselves and our industry to work first for the consumers?

As John F. Kennedy said, "There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction.”

Do you take the time to grow each team member, making the person better-prepared for tomorrow?

Don’t ask what changes mean for you. Ask instead what these changes mean to the marketplace – to each of us as consumers.

As a buyer and seller of insurance, as an agency owner and a business owner,  as a center of influence in your world, BE PREPARED.

Today, there is ambiguity in the role of leadership. Many people who need to be leaders are actually serving in a management role.

You won’t have all the answers--you don’t yet know all the questions--but begin a crisis management process with your families and firms.

In leadership – KEEP IT SIMPLE – speak in a common language and make certain that what is heard and what is said align.

Goliath was the best until he wasn’t. David had better technology and youthful confidence, and he was nimble. Take heed.

It’s what you learn after you know it all that is really important. This often includes scar tissue gained when things don’t go as planned. 

Simple initial projects allow for an easy challenge so you build confidence in the processes of innovation and planning.

Want to be here tomorrow? Heed Peter Drucker's advice: “There are only two functions in business: marketing and innovation.”

Shouldn't we begin redesigning our own operations and industry and future before a competitive innovator does it for us?

Eventually, organizations evolve into totally dysfunctional bureaucracies that must be ripped apart to allow for something new.

If we don’t attack the cost problems because we believe nothing can be done, we will lose the agency system as we know it.

Insurance is a risk-sharing process requiring underwriting but is rapidly moving to a social welfare platform that acts as if it can repeal gravity.

Two memories from the '70s personify the best and worst of our industry -- and suggest a path to differentiation and prosperity.

Does your organization live its Purpose, with Passion, Persevering regardless of the circumstances?

Maxine (the cartoon character) says it best, “Change is good as long as I don’t have to do anything different.”

Take a minute to draw a picture of your organization. Where are the customers in the chart? Did you forget to include them?

In most organizations and most cultures, change management is not about the change; it’s all about the management (control of change).

As George Bernard Shaw stated so correctly, “The problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred.”

When an owner dies, becomes disabled, disappears or loses the ability to lead effectively, the best insurance can be a succession plan.

Healthcare focuses on the body, on the organ du jour, not on our spirit and on wellness. Reform uses the same flawed focus.

We service professionals all too often tend to define our business model in terms of products and services offered rather than clients served.

If you can't break the stranglehold of your culture, your future will be lost in a world of transformational change.

The second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains 171,476 words in current use. Here are the 26 most important for businesses.

We can go enjoy a smoke and a Sudoku on the bank of the nearest tar pit and wait for a meteor to end our pain and frustration, or...

Here are 10 questions that will tell you whether you and your business are prepared for a natural disaster -- and help you get ready.

Exercise this risk-management discipline: Imagine that 70% of your city is gone tomorrow? What do you do?

Don’t expect the marketplace to adapt to your style and values and needs — you must meet theirs.

Agencies tell themselves they stand out from the competition, but when you try a little test the differentiation disappears very quickly.

Some of us still like walking to the curb at 5 in the morning to get our newspaper -- but we aren't the future. Stop focusing on us.

Three articles, one memory and one invoice show that the speed of change in insurance is far faster than most want to accept.

Despite healthcare reform under the ACA, too many healthy people will drop coverage and leave too much risk. The market must innovate.

If your customers voted tomorrow, who in your organization would be retained? Who would be fired as examples of dysfunction?

Independent agents have been declared moribund for decades but are prospering. Why change now? Because of that "freckle"....

Many set prices by totaling costs and adding a profit, but you have to start with what the market will bear, then work backward to price-driven costing.

A nasty surprise awaits many agency owners. Two exercises can avoid it.

A house divided cannot stand? Not any more. You need to divide your house.

Pursue 2020 with enthusiasm and childlike curiosity. Forget what you know and believe. Ask “what if?” Don’t try to define “what isn’t.”

This diagnostic will help agencies fully critique themselves and prepare for the strange new world that is rushing at us.

In the past, 80% of change was cyclical and 20% transformational. In the future, 80% will be transformational and only 20% incremental.|