By Leslie Lacroix, CRM,CAIB

Not too long ago, a coworker of mine was getting married. Duringthe lead-up to his wedding, he researched and selected vendorsquite differently than the way I did several years ago. He publiclytweeted questions and requests for information, and then choseservice providers based on whether, how quickly and how well theyresponded. I'm not all that old, but certainly I feel so when Itell a story like that, as I did in my opening remarks at TENCon 2013 last fall.

We're living in a different world today. People have access tomore information than ever before. And they have access to it morequickly and in different ways. That raises the bar for us asinsurance professionals. We're called on to know more, so we canbetter fulfill our roles as expert advisors. And we're called on todo more, because we can.

In an era of changed expectations, a shifting workforce andevolving workflows, we need to be ready to respond and deliver. Itwould certainly be easier to keep doing things as we've always donethem, which is something insurance organizations have struggledwith for as long as many of us remember. But we can't maintain thestatus quo—as organizations or as individuals.

We need to find ways to keep growing our businesses and ourpersonal value. We need to change our perspectives. We need to beopen to new approaches.

As principals and managers, we need to encourage employees tothink differently, to find creative approaches, and to bedifferent. As employees, we need to be willing to let go of how wealways did things, and make sure we're willing to adapt. All of usneed to ask ourselves, our staff and our co-workers: “Why do we dothis?” and “Does it make sense anymore?” Opening our minds tosomething new, to something different, can bring greatrewards.

When it comes time to drill down and ultimately implementchange, it helps to have a guide, a foundation, if you will. It'sbeen said that if you don't know where you're going, any road willtake you there. We need to make sure our new ideas will take usdown the right road. We need a foundation on which tobuild.

At our firm, we have such a foundation, which we refer to as TheFour Pillars. It's a very simple test against which we measureourselves. The elements of this foundation are “assessment, advice,execution and retention,” and they provide guidelines for everyonein our office.

Actually, these are terms that insurance people are familiarwith. They're part of the fabric of what we do: assess risk, offergreat advice, execute on what we say we'll do, and set ourselves upto retain clients. But we use these pillars for internal processesas well. As we deal with colleagues, we make sure we're doing agood job of assessing the situation, providing the right coachingand advice, doing what we said we'd do, and retainingstaff.

Employees at every level in our organization can articulate andunderstand the pillars. As a result, despite any role differences,experience differences or generational differences, we all talk thesame language and operate in a common culture.

Having a foundation in place allows us to stay centered as wefind new ways to respond to customers, interact with employees andbusiness partners, and build bright futures for our organizationsand ourselves.