If you had all executive power possible, how would you reorganize State Farm? I hear ALL of us complaining, but rarely people offer advice. What would you do? How would you fix things?
10 replies (most recent on top)
Start by taking a course on workforce management. It's not rocket science.
Thoughtfully with the input of people who actually do the work, for starters. It was asinine to change so much at the same time. Change was and is necessary, but unorganized change driven by an outside consulting firm that knows nothing about our business is ignorant. Slower, more thoughtful change is welcomed by nearly all employees.
FW1 and FIP are right on. How about trusting your people and asking them? You hire them then don't trust them. TALK to them. Youre so insecure and arrogant you have to hire highly vendors who dont know our business to come in here and help you screw thjngs up. It worked!
Few are offering any opinions or advice because - wait for it - they don't care what you or I think. We have a useless repositor called Innovation Central. Ineptitude: this is what we have leading the company.
I would put Systems back to exactly the way it was before CDE, but with fewer layers of management and broader (less specialized) roles. I could get specific about what roles I'd have doing what, but that's too granular for this forum and really besides the point. The point is that I would have started doing this BEFORE CDE and therefore wouldn't be rushing around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to gut the company in record time. We could in fact have started this 20 years ago and accomplished ALL of it via attrition.
And perhaps my most important advice for the executives: before taking a course of action, actually LISTEN to what your employees are telling you. They are way closer to the front line than you are.
Tips probably asked the question because he's clueless. Heck, he can't even manage a wife and mistress without screwing it up! Tips, Assley, Arnold, and F-wad need to go ASAP! No more AVPs or VPs. Flatten the organization starting at the top where bad decisions are made!
Interesting question, I would assume probably some executive is asking since they don't know what to do. Okay here is what I would do. I would replace everyone on the 12th floor and every SVP in Systems for starters.
Here is why. They are paid to innovate and steer the company into the future. So far they have done a very poor job of this. All they have proven they can do is spend a ton of money on consultants and make the wrong decision. Examples of this: CDE/ICP cost 1-2 billion dollars no tangible benefit, EOM cost unknown no tangible benefit, moving to the hub structure cost billions no tangible benefit. Hubs were supposed to be the work, live play in the same area. Except no one can afford to live near them. Also our claim satisfaction scores continue to plummet. We took our claims and underwriting jobs that used to considered professional jobs that people did for careers. Now they are horrible call center jobs that no one wants. In spite of losing record numbers of policies the company made $4.5 billion in 2016, $9.5 billion in 2017. They are sitting on close to $100 billion in cash. Their stance is we need to control costs, but we are making billions of dollars a year. As a mutually held company, we don't want to make a profit. If we make a profit it needs to be returned to the policyholders. So cost containment is not our real problem. The real issue is that our so called leadership has no idea what to do. So they are falling back on the only thing they know how to do, cut costs.
The company has so much money they could have easily spent half a billion dollars or less and put a very good early retirement package together and reduced staff easily. I think everyone agrees that staff needed to be reduced, my problem is how they are doing it. They spend a ton of money on stupid ideas. Why not spend it this way and keep morale high.
I would slash management in ET. Management that remains would be only as high as technology engineers. Have small hr department to cover hr issues only.
Drop the chronic 1's before they get golden handcuffs, offer early retirement to everyone, drop external contractors, freeze new highers, drop the hubs (why be a training ground for other companies) distribute workforce so they can best service the customer, allow mobile/home workers again though validate their productivity on a continual basis, real basic common sense type stuff. I think the cultural damage is permanent... need to have one he'll of an ooops party to fix this.
I'll provide no unpaid advice. Ever.