Leading Cultural Transformation at a Century-Old Insurer
The Rarest Kind of Transformation
At the Business Agility Institute Conference in New York, Pete co-presented with Amjed Al-Zoubi, CIO of Amerisure, on something rarely seen: an organization that chose to transform before crisis forced them to.
Most cultural transformations begin with a burning platform - declining revenue, competitive threats, or survival pressure. Amerisure's story was different. This commercial insurance provider with over 100 years of history looked at culture assessment data, saw the gap between their control-oriented present and the innovative future they needed, and made a choice.
What Actually Drives Cultural Change
The presentation revealed a critical insight often missed in transformation stories: only half the battle requires changing the existing culture. The other half is changing people's belief about what the culture needs to be.
Over three years working with Pete, Amerisure's leadership team focused on three areas simultaneously - business agility through project experiments, leadership agility through mindset shifts, and everyday agility through decisions and ceremonies. They formed cross-functional teams, ran controlled experiments, and measured progress through culture surveys showing gradual movement toward their desired state.
Results included 30% reduction in time-to-market, nearly halved lead times, and multiple industry innovation awards. But Pete and Amjed didn't shy away from the harder truths: stress still triggers old habits, uncertainty remains uncomfortable, and the journey never actually ends.
The Winning Ingredients
Eight factors made the difference: defining business goals rather than "agility" as the goal, executive education and genuine engagement, culture awareness through data, whole-business involvement crossing traditional silos, a committed senior council driving the journey, sustained attention with yearly re-intention, internal self-direction rather than consultant dependence, and an experimental mindset that builds on success while pivoting on failure.
Watch the complete case study presentation
Co-presented with Amjed Al-Zoubi, CIO of Amerisure, at the 2022 Business Agility Conference, New York
Pete Behrens | Leadership Insights
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