Our industry is constantly evolving, and the pace of change is accelerating. This will lead to significant shifts in the coming years. Although change can cause uncertainty and feel intimidating, it also creates opportunities for innovation, transformation and growth.
What’s the best way to prepare? Get started now.
Whatever opportunities you want to explore with your brokerage — whether it’s scaling your operations, adopting AI and automation, building a distinct brand, upskilling your team or something entirely different — the longer you delay trying new processes and approaches, the further behind you’ll be.
Some of your competitors are already experimenting, learning and improving. Waiting only makes it more challenging to catch up.
Learning to embrace a culture of experimentation at all levels of your organization will become an essential skill for progressive, growth-oriented brokerages. This mindset shift will foster curiosity and empower your team to spend more time exploring bold ideas and new technologies.
Mistakes and failures are part of the experimentation process. Immediate success is rare, especially when trying something for the first time— and that’s okay. In this culture, the focus must be on learning, adapting, and making progress.
Where to start
When selecting initiatives for your team to experiment with, some brokerages may find Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ one-way and two-way door decisions framework helpful.
A one-way door decision is a choice that can’t be undone. These are important moves that require in-depth discussions and careful planning because getting them wrong could have major consequences for your business.
On the other hand, a two-way door decision is something you can easily reverse. These don’t need lengthy debates. Instead, just go through the door and see what business benefits exist on the other side.
Once you’ve identified the right projects to start with, plan a little and iterate a lot. You don’t need to have everything figured out to get in the game. It’s more beneficial to start playing around and experimenting. This is the time to take chances and be creative.
Didn’t achieve the outcome you’d hoped for? No problem. Learn your lessons and apply them to the next round of testing. Track your results, measure your progress and keep refining your approach based on the data.
It’s important to trust and follow what the data tells you. Anecdotal evidence has its limits and we’re all familiar with the colourful adage about opinions and how everyone has them. Listening to folks on the sidelines in lieu of the data could skew your results.
If data proves your hypothesis to be wrong, change course. At our brokerage, in many instances, we thought we knew something for certain. But then we unlocked another small piece of the puzzle, saw something we missed, and had to take a different direction.
Being adaptable and investing in a culture that celebrates learning and experimentation will help drive innovation and better position your business to capitalize on emerging opportunities. Start now and stay curious.
Adam Mitchell is CEO of Mitch Insurance, a Whitby, Ont.-based insurance brokerage.
Feature image by iStock/tomazl
