A Lifer’s Journey

For Marilyn McLaren, happenstance has been transformed into life’s design.

Having recently had a baby and looking for part-time seasonal work in 1979, McLaren thought a temporary job supervising data entry on the evening shift at Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI) would be ideal. “I had an opportunity to work evenings for three to six months of the year and spend the rest of the time home with him. It was perfect.”

Part-time has long since become full-time and temporary supervision has grown into all-day decision-making at the highest ranks of MPI, a non-profit Crown Corporation that provides basic automobile coverage to Manitobans.

Now president and CEO of MPI, McLaren would agree she’s a lifer — but one seemingly content with the sentence.

That sentence has not gone unnoticed. She was recognized in December 2011 as a recipient of The Women’s Executive Network (WXN)’s 2011 Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Awards.

Challenging Comfort

Comfort, support and continual learning emerge as running themes in McLaren’s more than 30 years at MPI. “I think people who are really wanting to get ahead in their careers need to find the sweet spot between ‘never take on more than you can really truly succeed at,’ and ‘be willing to push yourself and take on more than you can do comfortably at the beginning,’” she says.

Feeling supported can help drive performance. Too much comfort, though, threatens to undermine effectiveness. “You need to really stretch yourself, because that’s when accelerated growth happens,” she says. “You don’t want to be comfortable all the time, but you don’t really want to be out on a limb where you’re not legitimately able to succeed.”

McLaren certainly succeeded at supervising evening data entry. After about six years of that, a full-time opportunity to supervise on the day shift presented itself and McLaren was quick to apply. She got the job and a few years later, secured her first management position.

McLaren progressed, eventually having a number of managers report to her, before being promoted to a director-level position. There, she was responsible for implementing MPI’s new online, real-time computer system used in brokers’ offices.

“That gave me exposure to broker relations, broker management responsibilities, to really understand a lot about policy development and making sure that our own internal efforts to be more efficient and responsive to customers also worked well for our business partners.”

As all this was under way, McLaren worked as part of the design team for the “no-fault injury compensation system that was introduced here in Manitoba in the mid-90s.”

She joined the executive team — both the youngest and the only female at the time — as a vice president in 1997, and became president and CEO in 2004.

McLaren’s step-by-step climb helped her get comfortable with a full spectrum of tasks, demands and responsibilities at MPI. Still, it was not always smooth sailing when it came to balancing work and home. “There were a number of times when I just spent a ton of time at work because that’s particularly what the job required.”

Fortunately, these stints were usually short term. The saving grace may have been that she “was in a marriage that really allowed each of us, when the time was required to focus more on work, to have the other pick up the slack.”

Not everyone has that opportunity. “I think it’s really important for workplaces to be sensitive to that,” McLaren suggests, adding that they at least seem to be starting to embrace the concept.

Public Advocate

As for McLaren, she fully embraces the model of public auto insurance. Asked if she ever considers moving into the private sector, she responds that she has occasionally been called a public auto insurance zealot, “in the nicest possible way,” she adds with a laugh. “I really believe in the model. It makes perfect sense to me. I think we can do so much more for what basically every government in this country has decided is an absolute essential requirement.”

MPI does not determine mandatory coverage or rates. That said, “We do have a lot of control over the service we provide, the access that we provide and I believe that by really working effectively, we can enhance the value that MPI provides to Manitobans.”

McLaren points to progress in the war on auto theft. When she was hired as president in 2004, Manitoba had a huge auto theft problem, 90%

of which was in Winnipeg. Working with the provincial government, the corrections department and police agencies, MPI developed a multi-faceted plan. Part of the initiative involved funding the installation of after-market immobilizers into the most at-risk vehicles. These included vehicles used in Winnipeg or to commute to the city, those that had been stolen or that someone tried to steal, and those imported into Manitoba from another jurisdiction.

At one point, there were 10,000-plus vehicle thefts in Manitoba, McLaren reports. That number is forecast to drop to about 1,200 next year.

“Theft has been lowered by more than 80% in Manitoba since about 2005 or 2006,” she says. “We are now saving about $30 million a year in terms of what we otherwise were spending or would be spending now in terms of auto theft,” McLaren says. She counts this progress as among the biggest accomplishments at MPI under her tenure.

Manitoba has since made immobilizers mandatory and Transport Canada requires the equipment in all new vehicles manufactured for sale in Canada after Sept. 1, 2007.

McLaren says she is perhaps most proud of how MPI has been redesigned as an organization to emphasize the value in strong team players. Being a woman in insurance decades ago could have been a tougher slog had it not been for the support McLaren received at MPI. She was the willing recipient of an organizational approach that afforded opportunities for growth and promotion from within. “I finished off my B.A. and actually earned my Master’s degree [both in Public Administration] with the company’s help while I was working here,” McLaren says.

She hopes to foster the same approach under her own stewardship. “I think there was a real lack of opportunity in the early years for anybody — not just women, but younger men as well,” she says. When MPI launched in 1971, many people who started there were men in their early or mid careers.

“But once that turnover started to happen, there have been all kinds of opportunities,” she says. “Particularly in the public sector, there are expectations and requirements to have very transparent and objective human resource policies. You just can’t sustain an old boys’ network, even if you wanted to.” The seven-member executive now includes five women and two men.

Much of how McLaren views things now and likely in future may have its genesis in “the huge role that the Y played in my teenage years,” she says. “I value leadership and I value the concept of helping people grow and develop and accomplish objectives,” she says.

“It’s about a balance, but it’s always about understanding what makes people tick, what makes organizations tick. How are they different today than they were yesterday? Where do they think they’re going in the future? It’s really dynamic and it’s really exciting for me.”