Insurance organizations are getting very good at introducing things. Systems, workflows, automation, AI capabilities. New ways of capturing, analyzing, and moving data. But introducing them is one thing; the harder part is getting those changes to stick.
Technology can work exactly as designed and still fail to become part of the way an organization actually operates. Employees find workarounds. Producers return to the process they already know. Managers use the new system differently from one team to the next. Six months later, everyone is technically using the same tool, but not necessarily in the same way or for the same reason.
Innovation means change with effect. Making innovation stick has far less to do with what the change is than who is taking on the change. Success in innovation hinges on the ability of the organization as an entity to make changes. Thankfully, that ability is not formed on luck, but is a literal set of skills that individuals and teams can master.
The Mindset
The concept of growth mindset isn't a new one. There's endless literature for individuals about cultivating a growth mindset and using it to achieve personal goals. A group has a mindset, too – it's just called "culture," and it exists whether it was intentionally formed or not.
The first applicable step in culture building to prepare for innovation is to unwind anti-growth mantras. Leaders, whether it be CEOs, department heads, sales managers, training leaders, or anyone in a position to influence a team, need to scan their speech for ways they might be blocking their own goals by verbally placing limitations on how their team can learn. People do it all the time and don't even notice, but the growth of a business can't outpace the growth of its people for long, no matter what tier of people you start with.
There must be constant and consistent effort applied to the task of building belief, real belief that work and change is desirable, possible, and worth it.
The Dance
Getting a whole organization, particularly a large one, to move together with agility is a bit like ballroom dancing. The best dancers aren't just the experts in a set of pre-choreographed movements, but trained in a system of perceiving and responding to signals that communicate a goal or status. A pair of dancers is called a "Lead" and a "Follow" – the Lead sends signals for objectives, and watches the Follow for signals of status.
An organization is a little different from a ballroom dance pair. Most obviously, there are more people in the mix. More people to think, more people to act, more places where single variables can spin energy into unknown directions. This fact about organizations cannot be changed with any amount of tighter regulation or greater discipline, but it does have its upsides (more on that later). While movement through change is a little more complex than a single Lead and a single Follow, in the most effective organizations the direction and type of signals sent are the same.
Lead From the Top
Successful adoption starts well before the implementation. People need to understand what the organization is trying to accomplish and how the change will support that goal. A new system can't be dropped in with the assumption that everyone will automatically see the connection.
The role of the CEO or leader is to give people something to align around. A clear vision in its absolute simplest, most condensed form is the most desirable output. The vision should not be overly detailed and prescriptive at the operational level (as hard as that might be to resist), but it should be unquestionably clear. It's best stated as a simple goal with context, and perhaps a corresponding anti-goal. Because of [context], we will [goal]. We must avoid [anti-goal] because of [additional context]. This is the "signal for objective."
Clear leadership has to create the reference point. If the organization can define what success looks like, teams can make better decisions about how a new process fits into the bigger picture. This is the aforementioned "upside" to the chaos of having so many moving parts in an organization; as the signal for objective moves down the chain of command closer to the actual work, the goal can remain as simple and as clear as ever, but the context increases through every descending layer until it is quite apparent what action needs to be taken.
Once the action needed is clear, then the organization is ready for invention, implementation, and training.
Teach to the Top
Much can be said about ways to handle the invention and implementation pieces of innovation. Training deserves a little extra love in this article, as it's the matching piece to leadership and is critical to adoption whenever a human touches a product or process.
What does the best training look like? Is it adequate to simply get everyone together on a webinar once or twice to go through the new workflow? There's a school of thought, a movement even, within the education profession that recommends this method for bringing a whole group of diverse students to their best performance: Teach to the top, and scaffold down.
The truth is that within our organizations, there's a diverse spread of performance ability. There is strong temptation to design training to target the least able so that no one is left behind, but the outcome of doing that is usually the inverse of what is desired. If the 20% of high performers that create 80% of the productive output (pareto distribution) are supported in using the new innovative process or product to 100% of its capacity, the majority of the change that was needed has already happened.
When "teach to the top" is applied properly, high performers soar, but the performance floor also rises because of the high target and scaffolding provided. What does that scaffolding look like? A few points to ponder:
- Direct, rigorous instruction
- Acceleration through depth, not speed
- Optimal concept sequencing
- Strongly positive relationships
- Excellence exhibitions
Teaching to the top doesn't mean skipping half the content because it's presumed to be understood. Teaching to the top means digging in a little deeper at every level.
Humans at the Center
Culture building to support agility and change-aptitude can't happen just once. It has to continue as the organization learns. Successful innovation happens when products and trainings are designed around the idea that expanding human minds leads to business growth.
The technology, process, and data all matter. But in any insurance process that still has a human in it, the human matters too. That is often the difference between introducing something new and creating a change that actually sticks.
