Description: A compilation of reader responses is presented to a real life situation posed involving a management, leadership, or other business decision. This issue’s case study involved a very new actuarial manager trying to deal with a disruptive employee.

Description: Actuaries must be able to present compelling arguments to win over their audience. For the first time, they may be managing a staff looking for direction, making recommendations to senior leaders, or trying to persuade non-actuarial colleagues who see the world differently. This series of articles is intended to educate young actuarial professionals on key business influencing skills that will be beneficial in the near term as well as throughout their careers. Part 1 is focused on leading and influencing a team.

Description: Two of the greatest challenges a leader faces are knowing how to build a high-performance team to achieve superior results and then instituting the mechanisms necessary to actually create that team. "Managing with Metrics" is one of several key areas that a manager must focus on. In addition, "Managing with Metrics" applies equally to the team as a whole, as well as its individual members

Description: Humor in the workplace can improve productivity. This article describes a typical office relationship problem and how humor helped disparate teams work together.

Description: Predictive modeling is a powerful toolset for assumption setting (mortality, lapse, etc.). The multivariate approach has its advantages in handling high-dimensional data, address correlations, and statistical significance. However, building insurance assumptions is far more than a simple modeling practice. One must take care to address how the model is applied and its business implications. This session will share the learnings from multiple projects.

Description: Effective communication

Description: What does “accountable” mean? You will see how the accountability culture can transform spectators into protagonists following the Four Steps to Accountability.

Description: The authors discuss best practices in building, retaining, and growing diverse actuarial teams and evidence that points to the benefits to companies of doing so.

Description: Issue introduction and theme of how to improve our technical skills and soft skills to better cope with a rapidly changing world.

Description: This article addresses dealing with distractions, avoiding habits like multi-tasking, and providing guidance on how to reach a state of "flow" to concentrate on deep work.