Page 241 - Executive Warfare

Culture

a culture that allowed for creativity. No one in this culture got punished
for having bad ideas. Somebody might say no, but you’d never be pun-
ished for proposing something.
I tried to reinforce that freedom. I can remember once in a meeting
someone suggested that we target single
mothers for life insurance products.
A financial guy jumped on this idea. ORGANIZATIONAL
“Single mothers don’t have enough LEADERS, LIKE
money,” he said scornfully. POLITICIANS, HAVE
One senior woman turned to him TO PROVE THEIR
coolly and asked, “Exactly how many HUMANITY.
single mothers do you know?”
“Well, there’s a single mother who
lives down the street from me, and she’s really struggling.”
The woman said, “So your entire conclusion is based on a survey of
one?”
By this point, people were waiting to see what I was going to do. Were
we really going to have a fight about what we do and do not know about
how people live?
My thought was, let it fly. Let them talk. Let them get agitated. It was a
social clash, but with a business purpose. The truth, of course, is that sin-
gle mothers have an even greater need for life insurance than married cou-
ples, and many of them could afford it. So, out of that meeting, we came
up with a product for them.
It turned out to be a great thing for our women brokers and agents to
sell because single mothers tended to trust women advisors. And we sold
a lot of it.
Of course, if you want to create a culture that encourages risk-taking
and some healthy dissent, you have to appear reasonably well balanced
yourself. If you are wearing lederhosen and a feathered hat whenever you
get the chance, that tends not to inspire confidence among the vast major-
ity of your non-lederhosen-wearing employees.

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