Ask your clients for help
With simple ideas in hand, Case went out and got a few
stamps on his passport. Since taking over Aon, he’s been
around the world and home again, visiting China, New
Zealand, Europe, Dubai and many other places.
That tour cost money and time for the company, but its justification was simple for Case.
“One thing that was very clear from the beginning, it was not
about me, it really was about our clients and our colleagues,”
he says. “As such, I actually spent a great deal of time early on
spending time with those constituents, not the regulators, not
the investors, — all those are important constituents and are
critical, but it was our colleagues and our clients first.”
He focused on how Aon’s clients and colleagues thought
about the evolving world of risk, asking them to really pay
attention to what issues kept them up at night. Then he asked
them how those issues could best be handled in the context of
their business and how they thought Aon did at handling those
issues.
“When you ask the same sets of questions, it turns out you
start to see pattern recognition fairly quickly,” he says. “What
was stunning to me is a set of themes that came back from
clients that were very powerful and those themes were common across almost anywhere in the world that I traveled.”
The themes that came to the forefront were the world of risk
is getting bigger, the complexity of risk is increasing, the level
of scrutiny around risk is going up, and finally, risk is about
understanding opportunity as much as understanding any
potential downside. Those themes helped Case learn a valuable lesson in what the market wanted.
“So what you heard loud and clear was the opportunity to get
this right for companies and help them understand risk better
has never been greater,” he says.
To Case, it is the willingness to really take the time to listen
to your clients that really will make a difference in shaping a
new vision.
“It’s very much shared understanding, shared development of
what we’re trying to do with clients,” he says. “It’s about us
understanding together what we’re trying to do, this is not a
Greg Case answer. First and foremost, you have to listen and
understand to be able to summarize a very simple but specific
set of actions that we’re going to make to improve our firm.
Without talking to clients, you’re not going to get the insight
you need to be effective. So we have to take the temperature,
get understanding, get input and guidance, both about what
they’re thinking about as well as about how we’re serving
them.”
