Description: In today’s increasingly competitive environment, one key to success is understanding, measuring, and managing the factors that drive one’s business. Most traditional financial measures, such as net income or return on equity, are myopic lag indicators that tell us where we have been while saying little about where we are headed. How do we know whether our current actions are creating future value? This article discusses 'the balanced scorecard,' a tool created by Robert Kaplan and David Norton which seeks to identify and measure key business drivers by supplementing financial data with measurements from three additional perspectives: customer, internal business processes, and learning and growth.

Description: In this article, the author recommends the book, 'Stop Managing, Start Coaching!' by Jerry W. Gilley and Nathaniel W. Boughton, to managers who believes in the potential of human capital and are willing to make some investment. The book emphasizes the importance of using coaching to achieve 'buy-in' from employees on managerial decisions. In this process, manager and employee develop a collegial relationship, which ultimately increases the self-esteem of the employee and his or her commitment to the job and the organization.

Description: This article summarizes the October 11, 1973 meeting of the Actuaries’ Club of Boston devoted to a discussion on the education of actuaries. George L. Hogeman,Pesident of Paul Revere Life, noted that while insurance industry management was generally satisfied with the work of the actuary, there were a number of shortcomings of actuaries, including a reluctance to utilize new techniques and a lack of much needed communication skills. In a very articulate presentation, Denis W. Loring, Actuarial Associate at John Hancock [representing the actuarial students], expressed the consensus he had reached with his fellow students. They felt that management development training and an awareness of EDP constraints and opportunities were missing from the syllabus. He stressed the need to gear exam preparation toward problem solving and felt that the actuary should be much more in the forefront in developing research techniques. The E and E Committee members, rather than defending the existing educational system, added to the number of problem areas pointed out by prior speakers. Deficiencies in the syllabus were noted for underwriting, investment and finance, and marketing and advanced underwriting. It was felt that the effect of the insurance industry involvement in providing broader financial services should be considered in future syllabus changes.

Description: Reengineering has become a corporate buzzword of the 1990s. This article addresses why companies decide to reengineer and explores the risks, as well as the benefits.

Description: This article is about change, how it affects us, how we react to change, and how leaders need to be change agents.

Description: This is a book review of 'Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices' by Peter F. Drucker, considered by some to be the high priest of management. The book is divided into three parts- The Tasks, The Manager and Top Management. The last named contains much food for thought, not just for top management but for the underlayer as well. The first two parts reveal Drucker’s knowledge of and insight into what is good management and what is not. Repeatedly, he makes his point by citing real cases and describing real companies. His occasional comments on the life insurance industry are pointed. The book is also noteworthy for giving us another law to stand alongside those of Parkinson, Murphy and Peter- Drucker’s Law: 'If one thing goes wrong, everything else will, and at the same time.'

Description: Article from The Actuary April 1993 – Volume 27, No. 4 is about leadership and management skills

Description: Among the most outspoken of the life insurance industry’s authorities is Ronald Butkiewicz, president and CEO, Irish Life of North America ILONA. In speeches to industry groups, including a 1995 presentation to the Actuarial Society of Greater New York, Butkiewicz makes the challenging statement, 'American society doesn’t need the life insurance industry. I am also quick to add that I don’t think American society needs banks, either.' However, said Butkiewicz in an interview for this article, 'It does need our products.' The article goes on to explain how Butkiewicz sees life insurance becoming part of one, big financial services industry.

Description: This article is a review of Peter F. Drucker’s 1980 book ‘Managing in Turbulent Times.’ The reviewer notes that this is a troubling book ‘to anyone familiar with the unsettled outlook for our economic, political, and social environment,’ because of Mr. Drucker’s credibility as a management analyst, and because ‘the turbulent times that he identifies call for changes in management attitudes and practices that are difficult to make.’

Description: Editorial discussing management style.