Page 140 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

Focusing on Results 129

line the process so that they could instead spend their time moving into
new territory to grow policy revenues, without creating undue risk for the
company. The dialogue during the session revealed that the key was to get
the underwriters away from their desks to actually work with brokers in
the field. By doing this, they could jointly look for targeted new business
that would meet underwriting standards in a more efficient way. So in-
stead of underwriters waiting to see what the brokers would bring and then
passing judgment, the underwriters could help develop standards about
what brokers should look for regarding types of business, markets,
geographies, and products.
For the underwriters at XL, this was a major cultural shift as well as a
process change, but it was a critical factor in helping Macia achieve her
aggressive revenue targets. Over time, as early results started to come in,
underwriting became an enabler of growth instead of an anchor creating
organizational drag.
Every organization, of course, has undue complexity that limits perfor-
mance. Sometimes the complexity is baked into the culture and becomes
invisible, as with the barriers that Macia dealt with at XL. At other times,
the complexity is visible, but considered to be like a sacred cow that people
can’t do anything about. How well you eliminate or simplify it will dictate
how quickly you can reach your business goals.

Building capabilities while growing results

High goals and organizational simplification won’t help you improve your
business results if your staff doesn’t know how to do the work you need
them to do. Increasing sales, for example, could be straightforward
enough: make more sales calls, target different customers—these require
the same skills. But more often, improving business results is not just a
matter of working harder and doing more. Rather, it requires new ap-
proaches and smarter ways of working that may not be obvious. Increasing
sales could also mean that your team should do more cross-selling, team
selling, consultative selling, shifting to indirect sales, creating online or
outbound sales, or some combination of them all. But what if the team has