What do you think is the biggest threat facing property/casualty insurers today?
Executive Summary
The failure to implement and accomplish strategic goals is a top risk for P/C insurers, according to Carol Williams, a risk management and strategy consultant for P/C insurers. Here, she offers a counterintuitive fix: cut down the number of goals and initiatives to a handful, and go all-in to get them done. She draws upon the ideas of Dr. Gerald Weinberg, a computer scientist and psychologist, and Todd Herman, an executive coach, to explain how "context switching" required for multitasking erodes the time and focus available to execute goals set by individuals and by organizations.Is it escalating claim volumes? Litigation? Higher reinsurance costs? Other industry-specific challenges?
The answer may stun you. It’s actually none of the above.
One of the top risks to P/C insurers can threaten any type of organization—namely, failure to implement and accomplish strategic goals.
Despite some improvement over the last couple of decades, strategy execution is still a significant problem. According to research from Bridges Business Consultancy provided in the book “Excellence in Execution: HOW to Implement your Strategy,” 90 percent of companies surveyed in 2002 reported that they failed to achieve at least 50 percent of objectives in the time allotted. Although this number had dropped to around 67 percent by 2016, this still represents a significant number of companies that fail to meet their strategic goals.
