Forgive Philip H. Urban if he makes running a billion-dollar business sound simple.
He’s sitting on the back of a bus with some senior executives from Grange Mutual Casualty Co. talking casually about how the insurance provider has nearly doubled in size, to $1.3 billion in revenue, since he joined in 1999.
He’s relaxed as he goes through the story because this portion of his annual bus tour is almost over. He and his senior leaders hit the road to do 16 large presentations across 13 states for independent agents selling their product.
But almost lost in his demeanor is the fact that a bus tour like this didn’t exist before he came to Grange. The company was doing well, but it wasn’t the standout provider in an extremely crowded field. What Urban brought to the company is a philosophy that he now shares at every graduation for the company’s management class.
“Figure out what’s expected of you and then exceed that expectation in terms of performance or delivery,” he says. “If you want to stand out and be successful, the clearest way is to figure out how you’re going to be measured and do a better job than that, then you stand out. It’s that simple.”
But that simple isn’t exactly simple. In his 10 years with Grange, Urban has overseen a transformation in the way his 1,600 people do business with independent agents. A lot of it was Business 101 to him, but the rub was exceeding expectations. That mindset started with Grange completely rethinking its advantage in the market and building off of that. Along the way, the company changed hundreds of processes and ingrained a new philosophy into its culture.
So while Urban, who announced in May that he will be retiring in February 2010, shrugs it off now, a trip back to 1999 shows a glimpse into how he grew Grange.
