The fastest car doesn't always win
Why a successful insurance transformation is more Formula 1 than software implementation
When people look at a Formula 1 victory, the debate is often "Was it the driver or the car?" The reality is more straightforward: Championships are won by the interaction between the car, driver, pit crew and team management. The fastest car helps, but it rarely wins on its own.
What to do when the car is faster than the team?
For decades, technology was the limiting factor. Core system replacements took years, new products required months of development and every process change became a major IT project. In a strange way, it was convenient when IT projects took years because the rest of the organization had years to adapt.
Today's challenge is that technology has never moved this fast, and it will never move this slowly again. Governance, decision-making, leadership and organizational routines rarely move at the same speed. Insurers see this every day. For example, a new workflow can be configured in weeks, whereas employees are still being trained for a process that no longer exists. When technology outpaces the organization, the key question is no longer what platform to implement, but what kind of organization you want to become.
No exceptions on the way to exceptional
Faster technology requires faster decisions, clearer ownership and a greater willingness to delegate authority. Many organizations discover this the hard way. Executives who approve a transformation must ask what needs to change both in their own behavior and in the organization's behavior. Everyone wants change, but understanding what they themselves need to do differently becomes much harder. Leadership can unintentionally undermine a transformation as it declares every initiative should follow the new way of working, only to ask minutes later: “Could we be the exception?”
A new platform operating underneath an old organizational model rarely delivers its promised value. Leaders should beware of asking their teams to work differently while they continue to measure success in the same way. Agile teams may be encouraged to work iteratively and adapt quickly, while leadership continues to manage through fixed budgets, annual planning cycles and traditional approval processes: "It's great that you're working agile, as long as everything is finished within that budget."
Yet transformation ultimately lands with people. Which employee wakes up in the morning thinking: “I wish I had a composable IT platform?”
They don’t.
Employees care about what changes in their daily work: A claims specialist wants to know how automation affects their role and an operations employee wants to understand which skills will matter tomorrow.
Formula 1 teams know that championships are rarely decided by horsepower alone. The same is true for insurance transformation. While technology may set the pace, results depend on how well leadership, processes and people move together in the same direction. The winners will not be defined by the platform they selected, but by how fast the organization they built around it can move.
Want to make sure the transformation truly lands in your organization? Simply reach out to:
Peter Hardy
Director Transformation
+31650929204
