James J. “Jamie” Maguire Jr. is a man who has spent his life running. Running toward the next horizon. Running toward the next
goal. Running for fun. Running for achievement. But always running.
A need for constant motion is what drives him to compete in
triathlons, including two Ironman World Championship competitions. It’s what has helped fuel his climb to the top post of the
Philadelphia Insurance Cos., a $1.25 billion specialty insurance
provider with locations in 41 cities nationwide.
But everything — the triathlons, the business life, all the running
— nearly came crashing down around him during a morning work-out in 2001.
While bicycling in the street, Maguire was hit by a car. He broke
his neck, his jaw, both kneecaps and a hand. He spent six months
rehabilitating.
“Just when you think everything is fine, that’s when you should
worry the most,” Maguire says. “That’s generally when the rug gets
pulled out from under you, when you think everything is fine and
there won’t be any issues.”
At that point, Maguire’s life wasn’t about running. He says it
was about climbing, about rebounding, about forming a determination to come back stronger than ever, both as a triathlete
and as a businessman.
These are the business lessons he learned along the way.
Long-range vision
The Ironman World Championship is held each fall in Kailua-Kona, on Hawaii’s Big Island, and it might be the most grueling
endurance test in all of sports.
Participants must swim 2.4 miles through Kailua-Kona Bay,
bike 112 miles across fields of lava rock, and then they run a
marathon-length race along the island’s coast.
You can’t possibly complete the race, Maguire says, without
looking ahead, knowing your strengths and knowing how hard
you can push yourself. You need the same sense of what lies
ahead in the world of business, too.
“There are a lot of similarities between the Ironman and the
business world,” he says. “The same characteristics, the same
traits that are needed to successfully complete an Ironman are
needed to successfully compete in business.
“You have to persevere in the Ironman, you have to persevere
in business. You have to be disciplined in your training for the
Ironman, and you have to be disciplined in business. You have
to have fun in the Ironman, even though it’s a lot of work and
suffering, and you have to have fun in business.”
When Maguire took over at Philadelphia Insurance Cos., first
as president in 1999 and then as CEO in 2002, he wanted to
focus on managing the company’s long-term growth, which
he felt was essential to perpetuating its success.
Maguire sat down with his senior management and identified three areas he felt were essential to the long-term health of a
business.
First, he wanted to manage his company’s growth. Second, he
wanted to improve its technology platform. Third, he wanted
to perpetuate the culture.
He says a big part of managing growth is to have the right
people on the job. Just as a triathlete must be fanatical about
training and preparation, a business leader must be fanatical
about research, preparation and finding people who share that
fanaticism.
Maguire tries to find those kinds of initiative-takers among
his company’s ranks.
“We get opportunities thrown at us all the time,” Maguire
says. “We get them from our independent agents, from our
employees, from our insurance partners. We have a products
committee that consists of a variety of different members, who
look at all the opportunities on a regular basis. A lot of
research is done into the products to determine whether or not
they make sense.”
When it comes to research, Maguire says the best perspective
is the one you probably haven’t heard yet, so he goes out of his
way to bring together employees from different levels of the
organization when researching a growth opportunity.
“In the insurance business, sometimes you don’t know if you
have a problem for 12 or 15 months after you launch a product,” he says. “Only after the losses start coming in will you
find out if it was a good decision. So before getting into a new
product, you want to make sure you do your homework, you
get as many different opinions and perspectives as possible.
Then, based on everything you hear, all the information you
garner, make the decision.”
Another stated goal of Maguire is to create a system that
allows employees to get work-related information anywhere at
any time. Again, the importance of looking ahead and preparing for the future became evident to Maguire as he led his company away from its legacy information systems that had been
in place for years, and toward an entirely Web-based client
data system that could be accessed by associates all around
the country.
It was an important step because the new system could be
scaled as his company grows. Maguire says if your company is
growing, you need to be able to see your company not just as
it is, but also as it could be with continued growth. Then, you
must put in place systems and procedures that can grow with
your company.
“I realized that, with 41 offices, we needed the kind of performance across our network that is good not only for 1,300
employees right now, but for 5,000 employees as we grow,” he
says.
Perpetuating the culture
Maguire says he caught the triathlon bug about 15 years ago.
Growing up, he was always active in sports, playing football
and tennis in high school. He swam as a child, took bike trips
around the country with his family and took up distance running after graduating from college.
At one point, he decided to put it all together.
“I had run a number of marathons and had tried my hand at
my first Olympic-distance triathlon in Chicago,” he says.
“That’s probably when I caught the bug.”
As Maguire got more involved in endurance competitions, he
says he began to see parallels between the culture that exists
around triathlons and the culture that exists in successful businesses.
Both value perseverance, dedication, a drive to succeed and
a desire for continuous improvement.
In other words, the characteristics Maguire wants to exemplify when training for a triathlon are the same characteristics
he wants to see throughout his work force.
Maguire says the only way you can teach your employees to
display the cultural characteristics of your company is if you
set the example first, then reward employees who carry the
torch and perpetuate your culture.
He says it all comes back to a single principle: You must communicate thoroughly, transparently and often.
Before they know the culture, employees have to know you.
“I go to all of the offices and visit with employees,” he says.
“They get a sense of who I am, and that really translates into
what the company is. I have town-hall meetings on a quarterly
basis where I give a state of the state in terms of where the
company is, then I take questions and give answers to
employees in an open forum. It’s an interactive process.”
He says finding the time to get out and visit your field
offices is a matter of prioritizing. You have to make up your
mind that in-person engagement of employees is important and
put it on your schedule ahead of other tasks.
“Staying in touch with our employees is the lifeblood of our
organization,” says Maguire. “I’d say I spend 40 percent of my
time communicating with employees. There are a lot of
demands on my time and the time of senior management. But I
think it’s important to not lose touch with what has made us
great and hearing the issues and concerns of our employees.”
But, even if you are the world’s greatest corporate communicator, chances are you won’t be able to become a corporate
version of the mythological Greek god Atlas and lift the task of
building and maintaining your culture entirely onto your shoulders.
At Philadelphia Insurance Cos., Maguire gets a large communication assist from the people he calls “culture carriers.”
They are the employees who have been in the company for 15
years or more and are thoroughly indoctrinated in what the
company is all about.
He says your culture carriers are probably your managers and
executives, and all the hours they’ve spent learning and internalizing your company’s culture can bring you benefits that are
worth reaping.
“It’s through (the culture carriers) that I really try to perpetuate the culture and have them reward newer employees for
embracing and carrying out our culture.”
Maguire says a culture is the product of a company’s people,
not the other way around.
In much the same way that a triathlon course would be nothing but pretty scenery if no one was there to run, bike or swim
through it, Maguire says a culture is nothing but a set of
abstract principles if people aren’t there to live it.
Your employees are going to be the ones to bring your culture
to life, and as such, they need to be encouraged for the work
they do in maintaining the culture.
Maguire rewards employees with spot bonuses, a reward
points program and company-logo merchandise. But, as in
endurance races, Maguire says the true value of a reward isn’t
in the item handed out. It’s in the acknowledgement of an
accomplishment.
“Employees like notoriety,” he says. “They like to have their
co-workers see that they’ve done a good job; that they’re valued by the company. A lot of times, money doesn’t do that.
“It’s almost like a paternal or maternal relationship. It’s not
enough just to be given breakfast, lunch and dinner. You have
to have that intangible — that caring to help you feel like you
are an important and meaningful part of the company.”
Hanging tough
A year after his bicycle accident, Maguire competed in a
triathlon. Two years later, he competed in his first Ironman
championship in Hawaii. He competed in his second Ironman
last year.
If his accident taught him to be aware of the possibility of
getting struck down when you’re at your zenith, it also taught
him that no hole is too deep to climb out of.
Six months of painful rehabilitation helped Maguire become
a more dedicated triathlete and a more dedicated businessman.
After he went through it, he says he knew what type of
adversity he was capable of facing and overcoming.
“It took a lot of work and discipline and effort to recuperate
from my injuries and get myself back into shape,” he says.
“But it taught me that no matter how down you are, you can
always come back. As bad as things may seem, they really
aren’t that bad if you apply yourself, work hard and persevere
through the situation.”
HOW TO REACH: Philadelphia Insurance Cos., www.phly.com