Page 59 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 5 - PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 5 - Planning and Development
As I said earlier, I met Alan Mason on my transfer back to Johannesburg in 1970 on being promoted to Assistant General Manager Sales and Marketing to the Deputy General Manager, Dick Braun. At the time, Legal and General (L&G) never had a Planning Department and Alan was brought in from the UK to set up the Department in the General Insurance Division. There was another person, Don Campbell (who later became Chairman of Auto & General Insurance in Australia, better known as Budget) who was seconded from the UK to set up an Organisation and Methods Department for the whole company and another ex-pat John Solomon, who set up Planning in the Life Division. We were all waiting with bated breath as to what would be the outcome.
What we call planning today was in those days preparing a budget and forecast which then went through the Board and we were monitored against the financial outcome. However, Planning took it to another level and we now started to prepare three year plans, forecasting how we would meet the budgets and the requirements of the future which included of course underwriting, marketing, capital requirements resources and business strategy.
I decided I should join the new band wagon and Planning became extremely important from there on. For the first time, the management team including General Managers, Branch Managers and Department Heads were starting to do their own plans and this resulted in us involving the general staff through conferences and seminars. It was quite amazing how the staff reacted and simply loved the idea of being involved, having the opportunity to show their attributes to their counterparts and in particular the general management team.
We sold the benefits of the importance of planning in an organisation, building a road map for the future, efficient use of resources, setting goals and performance challenges and team building.
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