Talking Shop: Book Presents the Best of Grieve’s Shop Talk Columns

Over the years, we've written hundreds of thousands of words on the most important topic in insurance technology: core systems replacement. George Grieve, himself, is responsible for many thousands of those words and quite a few of the better ideas that have arisen from the magazine on how best to implement a core systems strategy.

George is the author of the Shop Talk column that appears in each issue of Tech Decisions magazine and on this website and it has been my pleasure over the years as editor of the magazine to be the first set of eyes to look at his columns and apply only the most subtle of edits to his work.

Much of the best of George's work—and I'm glad I didn't have to be the one to choose which columns were included and which ones weren't—is now available in a single source, a book simply titled Shop Talk.

Those of you who are subscribers to Tech Decisions will receive a copy of the book with your June issue of the magazine. Those of you attending next week's IASA conference will also be able to get a free copy. The rest of you can send me a note and I'll make sure you get one.

One of the things I like best about reading George's work is that he treats his topics seriously, but he does it in a relaxing manner. His words glide across the page—or screen—and often make me jealous for not thinking of a particular phase first.  

Being able to craft words is one thing; crafting ideas is quite another and George has accomplished that as well. It certainly helps that George has been working in insurance technology for 30 years, which, come to think of it, means he's a legacy system himself.

Seriously, though, one of my best introductions to the world of insurance IT came about a decade ago when I ran into George for the first time at an IASA conference. He regaled me with a few tales of failed implementations that he had seen over the years and the effects these failures had on the careers of insurance IT leaders and the technology companies that sometimes made promises they couldn't keep.

As George has stated in his columns over the last few years, the technology systems that insurers are buying today are more mature, which means the chance of project failure has decreased.

That doesn't mean insurers can afford to proceed without the good advice of someone like George Grieve. If you read some of the columns in the book I think you will be reminded of two things—what a wonderful writer George is and how blessed we are to have such a thoughtful person covering such an important topic.