Page 142 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

Focusing on Results 131

To trigger these experiments intentionally, you can use an approach
like one we’ve used called “rapid results initiatives,” or RRIs, pioneered by
Ron’s former firm, Schaffer Consulting. In this approach, a leader sets up
a structured process for empowering small teams of managers and em-
ployees to take an element of the company’s growth strategy and generate
real results in 100 days. As they do this, the teams figure out on their own
what it takes to execute the strategy and achieve results. They experiment,
try things, fail fast, and iterate toward what works. In the course of doing
that, they build their own capability and the company’s to make it happen.
As an example, at XL, one of the key elements in Macia’s growth strat-
egy was to target specific geographic markets that would be fertile ground
for its P&C products. To carry out this strategy of proactively finding new
business rather than letting business come to it, the organization had to
develop new capabilities: how to identify key market opportunities; how to
educate brokers about XL’s products and partner with them in finding new
business; how to collaborate across business lines; how to better leverage
underwriting time and cost on the best opportunities instead of assessing
everything; and more.
To develop these capabilities at scale and deliver results at the same
time, Macia commissioned five RRI teams. She gave each team the chal-
lenge of winning new business in a geographic market that XL had not
previously penetrated, such as Kansas City or St. Louis, and to get first
results (measurable premium dollars) in 100 days. The team members in-
cluded underwriters, representatives from the eight business lines, distri-
bution people (who oversaw the broker network), and others.
During the 100-day period, the teams experimented with different ap-
proaches to achieving their goals and quickly began to learn what worked
and what did not. To capture and disseminate these learnings, Macia
brought the teams together at thirty-day intervals to check in on progress
and share insights. These sessions also helped inject urgency and competi-
tion into the process as the more successful teams shared their early results
with pride (for more on the power of these early victories, see the box “The
power of small wins”). As Macia described, “We had the check-in confer-
ence call at thirty days, and one team was way behind. You don’t want to be