Gary Dunn, Regional VP Sales, EMEA shared some of his leadership secrets for COVER’s 2023 Leadership Edition. He elaborates on attracting skills, adding value, clear priorities/ goals and adaptability.
Tony: Can you tell us what you see as the three biggest challenges that leaders in business face in ensuring stability and sustainability?
Gary: The first is around attracting and sustaining, top class resources, that has changed a lot in the last couple of years. When I joined the insurance industry, we mostly had people who only worked in insurance.
When we all left college and university, there were people who went into banking, telecoms and all these other organizations, and we did not cross paths. Whereas now, there has been a divergence of talent because of all the exciting things we are doing with data, digital, AI and many other spaces.
Potentially, there now is a lot more people coming in from outside the industry and a bigger pool to fish in, which is exciting. We need to change our organizations to make them more attractive to people who are coming in.
Secondly, we need a purpose driven approach to delivering positive environmental and social impact. My comments when I talk about this are really from an EMEA angle because there are different pockets of EMEA who have different views on this.
Things like diversity, equity, inclusion, environmental, social governance are all big topics. What we are finding now is that it is not even just our own stakeholders who are asking us these questions, it is potential partners as well. We need to ask how we are changing as an organization and what goals we are setting ourselves as an organization.
Thirdly, we need to get the balance right between innovation and longer-term stability. Especially now with everything that is going on, we are all very conscious about cost and there are cost challenges. Short-term insurers do not want to be passing cost increases on to customers. So how do you get the balance right between being stable, being cost effective, and innovating for your customers?
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Tony: When you have cut cost everywhere and you have done everything you can to be sustainable, the next lever would be innovation, which is exactly the space where you currently are.
Gary: You do not have to do everything, and innovation does not mean you have to go and buy something to innovate. The alternative strategy is partnerships and the ecosystem environment, which is becoming so important for insurers and for us.
Tony: In this uncertain environment with varied future, you cannot really plan with certainty, so how do you then plan and strategize for a couple of years ahead?
Gary: I have tried to look at it from a three to five-year angle. Because if you try and focus on the today, there are too many variables. You must have a longer-term strategy of between three to five years when planning.
The other thing we used to do, which businesses are getting a lot better at now, is to not just create a plan and lock it in the drawer. We are all reviewing strategy on a much more regular basis because we are having to, because of the challenges.
So, do not leave it static, keep looking at it, keep tweaking, keep comparing it to the environment. And be mindful of the EMEA region for example. There are different things going on in the Nordics than in Europe, the Uk, and in Africa.
So, we must keep looking at it from a regional angle, as I mentioned earlier, the partnership piece is important as well as embracing technology. You must have a longer view with those partners and we all know there’s fantastic things out there from a short-term insurer perspective.
You also need to evaluate what you can get from AI and predictive analytics and more, providing huge value. Same as for us, as a technology company, companies should not try to build everything because we know that there are things out there that can bring massive value to us. We would bring it into our ecosystem, we do not need to build things and buy things all the time.
Technology, it sounds obvious coming from a guy who works in tech, but embracing technology is a big one.
Lastly, it is about the team. Having a team that can pivot and change as the environment changes, that is a big part of our strategy. So is operational resilience, which must be a big part of everyone’s strategy.
At a recent conference, someone made a great comment on resilience: ‘psychological safety’. I really liked this, because I thought it talked to teams having the authority to be able to take responsibility and, when something changes, go with it without having to think. For people to be empowered, to be able to make those kinds of decisions, that is important.
Tony: In my first question, part of your answer was about the skills resource. In my second question, part of your answer is to have the right people. So, my third question must then be, where do you find the right people and what are the three top skills business leaders should have to be able to identify the right people?
Gary: Finding the right people is an interesting one and as I said earlier, you do not only need to look within insurance nowadays. We can look across many different industries to get good people.
Working with colleges, universities, schools, thinking about how we can attract people into the business in a unique way. Guidewire and many of our partners are doing internships now. A lot of the South African companies are also doing this so, we have had to look in different pockets. But a lot of it is about us making our businesses look attractive to people. There has always been this kind of stigma around insurance.
Selling the value of insurance, is important. People understanding the social good that comes from insurance and how important it is, is hopefully a driver for people to come into the industry.
Your second point around the kind of skills, the first one for me was around, Adding value to customers and to partner meetings. Whenever there is an interaction with a customer or a partner, think about how you can add value into this? People now expect everyone in the industry to have a point, to be able to add something. So, every time you have a meeting with a customer or a prospect, try to think about how you can add value to that discussion.
The second one is to make sure the priorities and goals are clear and consistent. We, as Guidewire, have benefited from having the same mission since I joined the business eight or nine years ago, and it has stayed very consistent. Keeping that consistency and making sure that everyone is aware of that, helps us.
Thirdly, it is about adaptability. I talked about resilience, and the importance for us is to discuss sustainability of our businesses, making them future proof. There is a big element of us, as people, being future proof as well, and thinking about how we can adapt? How can I be ready for what is next? So, for me, resilience is a major issue.