Can You Change the Inertia of Your Insurance Practice?
Whether your insurance agency, brokerage or other firm has inertia (like the Rams in the Super Bowl) or momentum (like the Patriots), I want to point out that neither inertia nor momentum will last forever.
Sooner or later inertia will die out. If I coast my golf cart down a steep fairway, I might roll right into that water hazard. It might be fun to watch in the movies, but not to experience in real life.
Sooner or later we’ll need to change. If I pay attention when I coast downhill on that golf cart, I’ll notice that I’m headed for the water, engage the brake and turn the steering wheel.
Simple examples, yes, but they apply.
In insurance, inertia helps make insurance professionals like you and me be productive. Until it doesn’t work well enough — when processes, people and products change and we get left behind.
Why? Because our inertia — the continued, repeated motion in the same direction — leads us to believe we’re as efficient as possible. In short, our instincts lead us to believe that doing something the 1,000th time should be as effective as the 100th time we did it.
We should not trust our instincts in this way.
We need to repeatedly disengage from our professional muscle memory — and then look at our processes and workflow from an outside perspective.
Once we step away from the inertia of our workflows, we can earn that outside perspective. And we can look afresh at what we’re doing in our professional lives, in our workflows and on our teams.
Getting left behind is something I both fear and forecast for many insurance professionals, whether they work at agencies, carriers, brokers, MGAs, tech firms or member organizations.
I write this respectfully and carefully: Our insurance industry needs to change its workflow inertia.
Let’s talk further. Is your agency inert now, or creating momentum? Please leave a comment and let us know your thoughts and your challenges with implementing change.
If you missed the first post in this two-part series, please see part one – Momentum or Inertia – Which did the super bowl teams have?