Hiscox Insurance can trace their history back to 1901. They are a London Stock Exchange listed business with over 3,000 people across 14 countries.
Kate Markham, who lead the UK’s Direct business, appointed Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? to work with her leadership team to create an over-arching vision, and establish a single unifying goal that they could work towards. In our language, they wanted to create their ‘Crazy Goal’. Their inspirational and stretching vision for the business which the entire workforce could become aligned to.
The Challenge
It certainly wasn’t for lack of “SMART goals” or objectives. Kate’s team were keen to find an ambitious and stretching goal to drive their next 5 years of growth. They build on the strength of the business and co-create their vision with the key output being one unifying Crazy Goal.
The Solution
Crazy Goal Workshops are bespoke for each client we work with as every client has different needs, objectives and cultural norms. However, they share a common framework, designed to foster a creative and collaborative environment.
Preparation and research: In advance of the Workshop, Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? interviewed every member of the leadership team to understand each person’s perspective. The output was a diagnostic report which was distributed amongst the whole team so they could digest the information before the session.
Launch dinner: Ben Hunt-Davis MBE shared his story about the process his Olympic Gold Medal winning crew went through to create their Crazy Goal. The whole group were able to ask questions, and began discussing ideas of what their Crazy Goal could look like.
Crazy Goal Workshop: The group collaboratively defined and agreed a Hiscox UK Direct Crazy Goal. They explored their personal motivations for working and shared with each other ‘what’s in it for me?’ if we achieve our Crazy Goal. Most importantly they defined the layers of goals that need to happen in order to make the Crazy Goal possible.
The process we followed (in summary) as follows:
Designing a defining vision, goals and objectives, broken down into bite sized chunks that individuals become accountable for. We facilitated a process to define and agree the key elements of its implementation and follow, with trackable progress markers
We prepare a leadership team to communicate a clear and compelling plan to the rest of their organisation
We help crystallise and answer key questions about the next stage of growth for that organisation, and, if required, we help the wider team play their part in making the boat go faster in the months and years ahead
The preparation by the Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? team was thorough, and ultimately what drove the process to a successful outcome. The time spent with the leadership team in interviews before the group session proved a springboard for a really productive process.
The Results
Kate shared the following ‘results’ with us to mark their progress so far:
For me, it’s been interesting and illuminating to see how the process of crystallising our vision and articulating our Crazy Goal has developed.
As a team, we are working out how it will apply to every element of our business. We’re committing to our Crazy Goal more strongly as each day goes by, as we see how to drive our day to day operations with that vision in mind.
We have a planned programme of testing and challenging the goal between now and July, when it will be launched to our organisation as a whole, and rolled out throughout the business. Once we launch this to the organisation in July, we will establish ways in which we will measure progress towards our goal, from the bottom up.
In terms of style of delivery – Tom & Ben make a strong pairing, with each complementing the qualities of the other. For us, and our leadership culture, it really worked. I had high expectations of the Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? programme – I’m pleased to say they’ve been exceeded.
