During my first number of months with the company I have had the opportunity to meet many employees and agents. These important meetings and discussions allowed me to listen and understand your concerns about the company and your ideas and feedback for improvement. Thank you for being open, frank and optimistic with me. Your feedback helped the Executive Team put together sound financial plans for 2020 and shaped the development of our business objectives and initiatives for the year.

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Below is a picture of the company’s four business objectives that are shaping 2020. (Click on the image below to view a larger version or to download, or click here for a PDF version.) Three should sound familiar to you. The fourth, improve our spread of risk by product and geography, was added recently. This fourth objective recognizes that the company, agents and customers will benefit from growing commercial lines both within the state and over the long term, beyond our borders. We are in the early stages of organizing and planning to take advantage of this opportunity.

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A couple of weeks ago I announced some organizational changes that will align people and skills with these goals. I’m confident that the changes will result in an improved organizational ability to meet these objectives and our mission.

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In addition, a number of strategic initiatives have been defined that align with these business objectives and that the organization is mobilizing around to deliver in 2020. A strategic initiative is a project that is viewed as the highest priority project in the organization, having significant near and long-term benefits. Strategic initiatives are usually cross functional, large in scope (i.e., often involving the heavy use of technical and project management resources and expensive) and require exceptional organizational planning and execution to complete on a timely basis.

 

Five strategic initiatives have been defined for 2020. An Executive Team member is responsible for working with the project management office to organize, plan and move these initiatives forward to completion. Regular reporting on progress and obstacles is expected by me as we build accountability into our projects. The five strategic initiatives are shown below. (Click on the image below to view a larger version or to download, or click here for PDF version.)

 

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