Last week, I hosted the fourth Virtual Meeting of the Novarica Women’s Network on the topic of Leadership in the Digital Age. We enjoyed a candid conversation with Pinnacol Assurance CIO Tamela Vaughn, F&G Manager Michelle Belsaas, Penn National Director Traci Ducceschi, Electric Insurance Lead Katie Wendling, and Society Insurance Director Gina Popp, who shared valuable insights into leading remote teams. I’ve included some key takeaways from our Virtual Meeting below:
Insurers should consider adopting certain structural changes within their organizations as well as an Agile company mindset for better products and faster development.
The pandemic caused disruption, which necessitated quick pivots and greater flexibility company-wide. Small, multidisciplinary, cross-functional teams are better positioned to enable fast delivery of new products and more creativity throughout the development process.
Cross-functional pods facilitate collaboration across members with different expertise and skill sets. Additionally, giving each pod autonomy and ownership of their product increases staff buy-in. By empowering staff in such a way—to lead, manage, innovate, and iterate—employees are more likely to feel fulfilled in their roles, which can go a long way in retaining top talent and decreasing overall staff turnover.
Leaders are encouraged to embrace an open mindset and demonstrate greater flexibility and adaptability.
Iterative development, the Five Whys approach, A/B testing, and Lean methodology are all techniques that can lead to positive outcomes including faster delivery of new capabilities, identifying the root cause of a problem, greater speed to market, eliminating manual processes, and developing efficiencies. Strong leadership is critical to encouraging enterprise-wide adoption of a true Agile mindset, which is the backbone of the above techniques.
An Agile mindset alone is not enough to bring about change; a greater appetite for risk and potential failure fosters digital successes. By creating an environment that tolerates and learns from failures, true innovation is soon to follow.
Leaders must also transition from managing work to removing obstacles and encouraging staff development. Leaders should be open to new approaches, ideas, and methods, and seek out opportunities to continually improve existing processes. To achieve this, leadership should be intentional about staying connected with their remote teams. This can involve scheduling regular one-on-one meetings, actively engaging team members during video calls, and organizing knowledge-sharing sessions when onboarding new staff.
Critical thinking, a skill sometimes overlooked, should be encouraged among employees at all levels within an organization.
By encouraging a culture of continuous learning and radical transparency, leaders can help their employees understand the whole business. Critical thinking often leads to a spike in innovation, collaboration, and productivity. IT leaders can model critical thinking by responding thoughtfully and transparently when questioned by staff, asking for and providing candid feedback, and ideating consistently with the entire team.
The next Novarica Women’s Network Virtual Meeting will take place on August 14, 2020 at 1 PM ET on the topic of “Communicating the Value of IT.” Speakers include Deb Zawisza, Vice President of Research and Consulting at Novarica. More information is available at https://novarica.com/womensnetwork.
Add new comment