There are two things we’re not really big on: One is giving advice. The other is New Year’s resolutions. Nevertheless as 2021 winds down — another year of challenges, COVID-related and otherwise — we wanted to share something that seems meaningful, at least to us.

We recalled having seen, at some time or other, a list of things called The 10 Commandments of Leadership. We looked them up. As we read them again from our present-day perspective, they didn’t seem to be so much about leadership. Rather, they seemed more like sound constructive contemplations for a life well-lived. So, given the fact that we’re taking a victory lap on the old year and getting into the blocks to await the starting gun for a new one, we decided we may as well share them.

The Pre-Race Stretch

Since 2022 is likely to be more akin to a marathon than a sprint, these 10 suggestions may help keep us limber and energized:

1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.
2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
3. If you’re successful, you’ll win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
6. The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.
7. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
9. People need help but may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway.
10. Give the world the best you have, and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.

Best Wishes

Since none of us is likely to master any of those suggestions — let alone one of them — in just a year, maybe we can adopt them for the longer run. We certainly could have less noble aspirations.

Whatever your aspirations might be, we wish you a very Happy Holiday Season and a bright, prosperous New Year.

Go!

We’re often asked what it takes to be a successful software vendor. What it takes to be a successful software vendor is, in fact, what it takes to be a successful human being. While we’re not in a hurry to give away our Secret Sauce (patent pending), we do think it’s only fair to share our answers. So, here we go:

First, speak the language. Based on the people you’re talking with, and presuming you have some idea of what they think about and the ways in which they think about it, talk with them in the terms they know and prefer.

Second, if you make a commitment, make sure both parties to the commitment share an understanding of the terms of that commitment. If you expect a top-fuel dragster and we show up with a VW bug, even if it’s fully restored seeing eye-to-eye is likely to be a challenge.

Third, follow through on your commitments. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. Do it well. Do it thoroughly. Do it as if you were doing it for yourself. And bear this in mind: If you under-promise and over-deliver, you’ll never go wrong.

Fourth, stand by your work. We understand the need for flexibility. By the same token, we don’t have sliding scale of second best, third best, and so on. We’re determined to do our best and give our best in every engagement. We’ve done pretty well by that determination so far.

Fifth, be accessible. Especially if you’ve sold something to someone, buy and bye-bye is a formula disastrously unhappy outcomes. If the folks to whom you’ve made commitments can’t find you, they’re not likely to think of it as much of a commitment. Desertion may be more like it.

Finally, be accountable. Anyone can talk about responsibility, and everyone does. But there’s difference between taking responsibility for doing something and being accountable for having done it — and for having done it right.

All of that boils down to this equation: Commitment + accessibility + responsibility + accountability = success.

In case you’re still wondering, that’s how you get from here to there.

In part one of this series, we wondered why the seeming infatuation with insurtech continues apace as if software that’s already on the market were inadequate to overcome reliance on legacy technology. And we asked this question: “Since many of those new [insurtech] wheels are unproven (hence, the risk), why wouldn’t we work with the ones that already roll?”

We have no desire to appear defensive. But we’re compelled to say we’ve worked — and continue to work — hard to provide the best of both worlds. Here’s why we say that:

First, we’re not peddling legacy technology. (Why in the world would we do that?) On the contrary, we developed our software and our business model to take the pain out of replacing legacy technology. Second, we developed our software to enable the integration of whatever aspects of insurtech demonstrate productive, business-improving value to our customers.

20/20 Foresight

“Hindsight is 20/20” is a very common expression. We can’t help but wonder why people wouldn’t want their foresight to be a little more acute. Case in point: In part one of this series, we also excerpted some text from an article we’d read. Some of that text said this:

Successful companies often struggle to anticipate and adapt to competition from new entrants … until it’s too late.

We’re not sure what constitutes successful in that sentence. It seems to us companies that struggle to anticipate and adapt to competition from new entrants until it’s too late might be a lot of things — like unsuccessful or gone — but not successful. But setting that aside, it seems to us that if companies choose to work with vendors that keep their eyes open, that take advantage of the investments being made in insurtech, that recognize the winners, and that make their software flexible and configurable enough to integrate and employ those winners, they’d be much more likely to be successful. And they’d significantly mitigate their risks of being too late.

It’s a good thing developers and investors aren’t willing to settle for the status quo. But neither are we. That’s why we work hard to ensure our customers don’t have to settle for anything, especially legacy technology.

Remember: The software you choose may define your legacy.

In a rather random Google search, we came across a paper published last year by the global IT consulting firm, Coforge. The title of the paper is “8 Challenges Threatening the Insurance Industry in 2020”. Since threatening sounded rather ominous (we might have gone with facing), we decided to give it a read. Lo and behold, we found almost all of the challenges listed by Coforge to be interrelated.

Here they are, in order, in bold, followed by our own thoughts on the matters:

1. The increasing demand gap between the multi-generation customer bases. This point is well taken. But there are gaps between all generations — social, cultural, intellectual, musical, expectational, etc. That’s life. Some of those gaps, particularly as they pertain to dashed expectations about job security and the desire to be one’s own boss, led to …
2. The untapped gig economy. No generation thinks the preceding generation got it right. It’s no wonder the gig economy blossomed.
3. The fast changing digital space, systems, and technologies. The reality of this point is attributable to changes in technological capabilities, of course. But it’s also attributable to #1 and #2 — bridging the demand gap and tapping the untapped gig economy. The decentralization wrought by #1, #2, and #3, makes #4 inevitable.
4. The growing concern over the privacy of customer data. Well, yeah. Decentralization and broader distribution of work, transactions, and the data associated with them yield liabilities in security. And them comes …
5. The added strain of COVID-19. Add the decentralized, distributed chaos of COVID-19 into the challenges posed by #1, #2, #3, and #4, and Coforge’s notion of threatening might be correct after all.
6. The risks associated with the ever-evolving socio-political and economic landscape. And while the concerns of our customers aren’t necessarily socio-political, we’re certain the ever-evolving economic landscape is a direct contributor to #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5.
7. The competitor threats. We don’t mean to be dismissive. But competitor threats are like generational gaps. They’re a part of life in 2020, 2021, and every other year.
8. The effect of global-level changes on the insurance sector. The biggest concerns for our customers are the constantly changing regulation policies. And we agree with Coforge here:

The only way to be prepared and cope with such issues is to have an agile team with a robust digital infrastructure and a standardized code of conduct. 

While we surely have to be aware of all the changing conditions in our environments, our first priority should be the work at hand. Whether you’re in the insurance industry or any other industry, we might all be better off following the advice of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881).

Know what thou canst work at, and work at it like a Hercules.

It still pertains. So, don’t worry so much.

We happened to see a piece on the Gartner website the other day that said this, in part:

Policy administration systems [provide] full end-to-end life cycle management … vendors are increasingly offering a comprehensive range of products with vendors looking to alternative capabilities to differentiate their offerings; for instance, front-end portals with embedded engagement tools.

We have to admit that every time we see something described as end-to-end, we think of two things: The first is a short story by Ernest Hemingway called, “The End of Something”. It was written during what some scholars refer to as Hemingway’s suggestive period, in which he was trying to say something without saying anything. The other is The End of It, a beautiful novel in which a young American artillery officer is driven nearly insane by the barbarity of World War II but is saved by the beauty, the people, and the culture of Italy.

But as you might guess, this isn’t supposed to be a post about literature. So, we’ll get back to our Gartner reading.

Vanishing Point

We have to admit to being perpetually perplexed by the phrase, end to end, for two reasons. First, regardless of the business you’re in, why would you want to suggest the end of anything? We completely understand that nothing lasts forever. But no matter what you’re creating or selling, why invoke even philosophical curiosity about when it might cease to be created or sold?

Policy Lifecycle

Bill: Well, ya know, everything has to end sometime.
Will: I know. But we just started.

Second, maybe we’re being too literal. But if we’re talking about a lifecycle — in this case, a policy lifecycle — where could we say it ends? Isn’t a lifecycle self-perpetuating? Shouldn’t it sustain itself by the fulfillment of commitments, responsive service, and operational transparency? And where or why would it end? When the policyholder stops paying premium? When the insurer refuses to pay a claim and the policyholder takes his business elsewhere? Are we too conservative? We don’t know. But setting aside the argument that the insurance industry is and should be conservative, why even flirt with any of that?

We get the idea that end-to-end is supposed to connote comprehensiveness, a set of processes from policy application to claims adjudication, with billing and a few other things in the bargain. But why not say comprehensive instead of suggesting some point of termination?

Why take it to the vanishing point?