Getting From the “Mind Trap”

As the final image on the large-screen television faded away, the golf professional clicked a switch and the lights in the small room came on. “Okay, people,” he said with a smile. “These were the fundamentals of how to get up and down from a greenside bunker.” He quickly passed out two sheets of paper clipped together to each of the six men and women sitting in the room. “The diagrams and explanations cover all that you saw on the video. Read them again at home and before our next practice session.” Then he smiled again. “Before too long you won’t groan when you land in a greenside bunker because you’ll feel confident about getting up and down every time.” He paused for a second and grinned. “…or, almost every time.”

I walked out from the little training room with Bob Davies, who was co-owner of a highly successful midtown brokerage. As my company’s senior marketing representative I had a long-standing business relationship with many brokers in my territory, but in this case Bob and I were united in our love of golf. We usually managed several games together during the year at broker or company tournaments. This season we had decided to bite the bullet: we had signed up for a series of lessons from the professional at one of the city’s best golf centers which incorporated an excellent driving range and practice area.

We made our way over to one of the large practice bunkers and sat down to put on our golf shoes. I looked over at Bob and saw that he was still intently studying the two sheets of instruction material the professional had just given us. “Still make sense to you?” I asked. Bob slowly lowered the sheets and I could see a wry smile on his face. “Dave, this is an excellent example of how to translate a complex procedure into simple language. And they support the words with simple, clear graphics. I only wish some of the training manual stuff that comes down from my companies was as good as this.”

I picked up my set of instructions for “Sand Saves Every Time” and looked it over. Bob was absolutely right. The illustrations were simple. The text was short, easy to read, and to understand. Plus, it was mercifully free of technical jargon. “You’re right, Bob. This explanation of what to do and how to do it, couldn’t be any better.” Bob leaned forward on the bench. “You know, Dave, it’s one of the things in our business that just drives me nuts. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars perfecting new systems to handle business more efficiently, but when they produce manuals and guides and training material for brokers – well, they seem to throw it all together in ten minutes and toss it out the door. It’s often badly written, full of inconsistencies, riddled with jargon, and with enough ambiguous instructions to drive any CSR to drink.”

I threw my street shoes into my bag. “Some of this can be traced to the shorter time-line that companies have nowadays, Bob. In a very competitive market, new products and new systems have to be up and running much faster. Development has to be quicker and in the rush to get it all out to brokers, mistakes can be made.”

Bob scratched his jaw thoughtfully. “I think there’s more to it than that, Dave. Seems to me some companies have their priorities screwed up. Look, here’s what happens. They want to develop a new system or product. Naturally, they give this task to some of the brighter minds in their shop. They eventually turn out a slick new offering. But then when time comes to produce the rollout pieces and the training material, they give that job to their “B team” who just don’t have enough experience in technical writing, and haven’t been involved in the process from the beginning. Result? They churn out something second rate for us.”

I sighed, because I knew Bob wasn’t trying to be argumentative. He had a point. I had seen it happen with my own eyes, and in my own company. “Unfortunately,” I said, “writing broker manuals, rollout pieces and training material is not everyone’s idea of a good time. It’s not glamorous. It can be a pretty dull and mechanical task. Nobody ever remembers the stuff when it gets done right, but make one mistake and all hell breaks loose!”

At that, Bob leaned forward and punched my arm lightly. “But, Dave isn’t that the whole point? Writing this kind of stuff is very specialized work. It takes a particular kind of person to do it effectively. There are lots of them in the business world. They’re called technical writers. They’re professionals. That’s what they do. They take complicated and technical material and turn it into clear, understandable prose so that the ordinary guy or gal can make sense of it.”

“It’s why there’s a booming market for all those ‘Dummies’ books,” I added. “Windows for Dummies, Auto Repair for Dummies, Gardening for Dummies – that sort of thing, eh?” Bob smiled and nodded his head. “Exactly. These books are popular because they eliminate the jargon, use plain and simple language to explain technical or complicated stuff. Those Dummies books are aimed at people who are not computer programmers, mechanics, or expert gardeners. They’re average people who want, or need, to tackle something they’re not familiar with.” I interjected, “but the support material we create doesn’t have to be too basic and simple, after all, the people we’re producing it for usually have a fair bit of knowledge about our business, and some experience in it”. Bob held up one hand. “Agreed, Dave. But my beef is, insurance companies rarely use their qualified technical writers to create this material. They just don’t put the same professionalism and effort into manuals and training materials as they do in creating the systems and products.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said in mock horror. “Systems are sexy, but manuals are not?” Bob chuckled. “You could say that.” We paused for a while to watch two of our fellow students hit some sand shots from the practice bunker ahead of us, then I spoke again. “One of the flaws in this whole area of product and process development is the lack of communication. We companies shouldn’t develop broker manuals and training materials in isolation. Brokers should be involved in the process from inception – but they usually aren’t.” Bob nodded his head. “Some insurers make an effort to seek broker input, often through their ‘broker liaison groups’. Your company is pretty good on this score. But there are lots of other who either feel we’re not to be trusted or just don’t feel it’s worth the effort.”

Another thought occurred to me. “While we’re on this topic, there is something that really gets up my nose. When we companies launch a new system, we often seem compelled to remind our brokers of all the things that the old system could not do. I can recall seeing many company bulletins that tell of the good things that new systems can achieve, but keep reminding brokers of what the old system was incapable of doing.”

“Exactly!” Bob answered. “Why remind us of the old system’s inadequacies?” It’s history. Forget it. Give us clear and simple information about the new system.” He pulled a couple of cans of cold soda from his bag and handed one to me. “Hell, Dave, we should be discussing our golf swings instead of talking shop like this, but you and I have known each other for a long time and sometimes I need to get these things off my chest.”

He took a swig from his can, and continued. “Now here’s another thing, we brokers and especially broker principals, are the focus of company management. We get treated to the sizzle of your latest systems and services and products. Problem is, it’s our staff that has to make it work. It’s our CSRs who have to make sense of your manuals and training guides, and make them work during the daily grind – not us.”

“I know what you’re saying,” I answered. “I’ve seen this many times during my marketing visits. I’ve gone in to some brokers’ offices and found the principal happy as a clam. He’s bought into some new company program and likes the concept. But when I speak to the rest of his staff, I find they’re fed up with the inconsistencies, ambiguities and outright er rors in the training and administrative material that same company has provided them with. “Which is why,” Bob cut in swiftly, “a company’s technical superiority doesn’t always translate into market superiority. Think of Apple computers versus IBM and Dell. Think of Beta versus VHS. If a system or a product isn’t properly supported at the marketing, training and service levels it just won’t matter how good it is. It’s doomed. ” At that point the bunker ahead of us was vacated by two other players, so Bob and I grabbed our sand wedges, half a dozen balls, and slipped into the expanse of fine quartz sand. For ten minutes, side by side, we dutifully tried to follow the pro’s instructions, thumping away at the sand and getting up on the green more times than not. Finally, Bob tossed his club off to one side and picked up the handful of golf balls he’d been using. “I’m done, Dave. I think I have half-a-pound of sand in my shoes.”

As we sat on the bench putting on our street shoes again, I turned to my broker friend. “You know, Bob, I think that in this insurance business, we do a pretty good job of shooting ourselves in the foot sometimes. Let me give you an example.” Bob tossed his golf shoes towards his bag , then sat back on the bench to listen. “As you know, our company is moving ahead as fast as we can on the web business front. We’ve spent a lot of time and money on developing a credible Internet business plan, we’re helping brokers create their own websites, and of course, we’ve been doing a lot of missionary work among our brokers – first of all to get them excited about the possibilities of web-enabled business, then to assess their readiness for the buying into this form of insurance processing. Early on in this process, our personal lines’ people developed a list of our brokers who had been selected for the pilot test of our web business plan.” I shook my head and chuckled to myself as I recalled the incident. “It seems that one name on the list – a small rural broker in Western Canada – was a bit of a surprise. He gives us a modest chunk of business, mostly personal, but nobody ever thought of this man as being leading edge in the technical sense. But he’d signed up for our pilot and was apparently very enthusiastic about it. Anyway, our marketing rep drove out to check him out. Sure enough, when he walked in to that broker’s office he discovered that the owner was the only person in his entire office with Internet access. And, not only that, it was dial-up access that was shared with the fax machine they had! The nice lady who would be handling all this web business had never been on the Internet, didn’t know high-speed access from apple-sauce, and obviously had only the haziest concept of how web-enabled insurance would be transacted.” I sighed and shook my head. “It was pretty darned obvious that this office was not going to join our pilot any time soon!”

I finished my can of soda and slid my sand wedge back into my golf bag. Bob hoisted his bag on to his shoulder and we began to walk away from the practice area towards the parking lot. “You know,” I said. “They say that golf is a tough game. You never stop learning and you should never stop practicing ways to get better at it. Sometimes I think that compared to the insurance business, golf is pretty simple. Put the little white ball into the cup eighteen times. That’s it.” Beside me Bob chuckled, “true enough, Dave. But, you and I can at least make a living in insurance. If we had to earn our keep from golf…” He paused for a split second, and we both delivered the next words in chorus: “We’d starve!”