Archives for June 2011

Insurance Legal Operations

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The project’s charter was to facilitate a task force charged with determin­ing the “best way” for claims information necessary for legal defense of policyholders to be communicated between claims and legal, including whether files should be created. The primary contacts for this engagement were the client’s Assistant Chief Counsel and a Vice President.

Within the scope was what should trigger attorney involvement in a claim, which tasks should be performed, who should perform specific tasks, at which point they should be performed, how much time should be allowed for litigation file make up (if one is to be made), and how the litigation file should be constructed. The analysis involved twenty-three Field Offices and Legal Offices. 

The task force used statistical sampling to determine the frequency of predetermined problems associated with current practices. Task force members observed the work to determine the time required to perform identified necessary tasks. The task force interviewed scores of client employees and representatives of law firms, other insurance companies, and the court system. The task force developed, distribut­ed, and analyzed surveys to establish work force percep­tions. Brainstorming techniques unveiled specific triggering events for employees to use as indicators of the need for or desirability of legal counsel.

Righting the Economy – Economic Reovery

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In the May 30, 2011 issue of Time, Fareed Zakaria presented a compelling analysis of the causes of and solutions to the sorry state of the United States economy. Mr. Zakaria referee to a global recession and, almost simultaneously, made a case for the economic downturn being less than global. Data from an on-going study of leadership with participants from more than fifty countries supports statements by Mr. Zakaria that some countries and economic sectors have suffered less, if at all, during the so-called global recession than others. Leaders hoping to change the current course of the United States economy can learn from these other leaders.

Mr. Zakaria identified five areas for leaders’ attention: manufacturing, retraining, growth industries, small businesses, and immediate needs. Each of these areas is more discussed than acted upon by leaders in the United States. Leaders wring their hands over lost manufacturing jobs and take few effective steps to stimulate the technical, skilled manufacturing jobs that the United States can sustain and that are difficult to send offshore. Leaders have talked about retraining as essential to economic recovery for several decades, but the talk receives inadequate translation into policy and funding to prepare people who lost jobs for new positions in potentially new industries.

Healthcare, especially tourism related to healthcare, media production, and general tourism stand out for Mr. Zakaria as growth industries. While worthy of exploration and strategy development, other industries must have comparable potential. Leaders in the United States should convene public fora to stimulate thinking about and planning for new growth opportunities for the economy. Small businesses are well-known job stimulators. Leaders need to examine and, where possible, remove barriers to small business growth. At some point, perhaps the definition of small business needs to be stratified so that companies that employ ten or twenty people do not have to compete with companies employing several hundred people for small business set-asides.

Mr. Zakaria recognized the need to get people in the construction and housing sectors back to work. Housing, with apparently systemic or systematic problems with realistic valuation and demand, may not be addressable quickly. Infrastructure, on the other hand, with frequent mention of “shovel-ready” projects dating to at least 2008, should be straightforward for leaders willing and able to lead. Roads, bridges, airports, and other infrastructure elements are in obvious need of repair.

The United States taxpayers invested, or authorized through their representatives the investment of, approximately one trillion dollars, give or take a couple hundred billion, to stimulate the economy. Some day we may learn what stimulation actually occurred, if any, and be able to compare where the money went with where long-term gains might have been seen.

A Lack of Leadership – Prison Overcrowding

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In a letter to the editor in the June 2, 2011 Wall Street Journal, Charles Plushnick of Brooklyn, New York cites the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling calling for the release of prisoners from California’s prisons as an example of failed leadership in California’s statehouse. Plushnick observed that neither former Governor Arnold Schwarzeneger nor former-now-current Governor Jerry Brown were or are capable of the kind of leadership demonstrated by former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, who increased the capacity of his city’s jails when faced with a similar challenge three decades ago.

Plushnick may be accurate in his assessment of the comparative leadership capabilities of the mayor and two governors. Plushnick seems to avoid the more compelling story of failed leadership. Failed leadership created the overcrowding in our correctional institutions. The problem is not that current facilities lack the needed capacity but that the demand for housing in correctional facilities dwarfs current capacity. That the demand for correctional facilities is so high is the real evidence of failed leadership.

Why blame the prisons? Somehow blaming people responsible for building prisons is easier than blaming parents, community leaders, churches, schools, civic organizations, and myriad other individuals and institutions and their failed leadership. It is easier to say we need more correctional capacity than to say our society is doing a poor job raising and socializing the children we conceive. It is easier to say that a governor in a budget-challenged state did a poor job allocating resources than to say that the number of children we are incapable of raising and of developing into employed, productive members of society, for which leaders at many levels and in many locales should be accountable, has become a number that is unacceptably, even unconscionably high. As a society, we have to start identifying and solving the right problems and stop wasting our time on tangential issues.

Failed leadership is a significant problem. Identification of good leaders by electorates at all levels is also a problem. Perhaps the problem of the electorate is another symptom of the problem behind prison overcrowding.