Don't Wait to Innovate



Dramatic Results


These are major improvements. How did this happen?

It turns out that the company's system for processing claims, though efficient and rational, was missing the real stories of the people seeking disability. The forms contained important information and were necessary, but they were ultimately too constraining. Essential information was being left out. That's because the process strained out firsthand information in favor of provable facts. When analysts actually spoke to the people they were evaluating, they learned far more, and it led them to better solutions.

Eliciting the Right Information

One analyst, David Brown, told us of a particularly startling case he experienced in early 2006. A claim had come in from a man who said Type-II diabetes had made it impossible for him to continue working as a factory laborer. Brown called the man at his home to find out what was going on. As it turned out, the man had no real interest in earning disability compensation. What he wanted, more than anything, was to return to a job that he loved and a company he had been a part of for more than thirty years. He craved self-sufficiency, not a pay-out. None of that had made it into the claim.

Intrigued, Brown called up the company to hear its side of the story. Here, too, the official record had missed the big picture. The company was also eager to have the man back at work.

Spurred by his conversations, Brown referred the case to a medical analyst at his insurance company, who surmised that the claimant might be a candidate for an insulin pump. A visit to the doctor confirmed that a pump would indeed be appropriate, and the man returned to work in just six weeks. The factory kept a valued worker whose contributions would have been hard to replicate with a new hire. The insurer covered, for a fraction of the cost of permanent disability, the price of the insulin pump and its operation. The claimant was overjoyed. He even sent David Brown a Christmas card. When was the last time you sent your insurance company a Christmas card?

When Leslie McMillan joined Industrial Alliance, she could have waited for direction from her superiors on how to change her business. Instead, she got to work reinventing how analysts in the disability division did their work. In the process, Leslie delivered measurable evidence of the power of empathy to change an organization by accelerating growth, inspiring employees, and improving overall performance.

Too often, we think about change as something that comes from the top. Success often seems to require the blessing of senior executives and years of work in organizational design and human resources. But why wait to do something great? A small group or even an individual can set off an empathy revolution simply by changing the way they work everyday—regardless of what the rest of the organization is up to. All it takes to get going is the drive to believe that things can be different, and the willingness to get started.

Dev Patnaik is CEO and Peter Mortensen is communications lead for growth strategy firm Jump Associates. They are the authors of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy.

Peter Mortensen is communications lead for growth strategy firm Jump Associates. He is the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy.

The Epic Hack

(enter your email)
(enter up to 5 email addresses, separated by commas)

Max 250 characters

Sponsored Links

Buy a link now!

blog comments powered by Disqus