Description: As leaders and managers, we have results to achieve. To get those results, we have to do the right things. Those “things” include the management and deployment of our resources.

Description: Considerations in the assessment of when to leave a job include mentorship, fit to company environment and culture, and timing.

Description: This article contains best practices on actuarial modeling based on the author's personal experiences and provides useful advice for actuaries to consider in their daily work.

Description: In today’s market of post-pandemic consolidation and org chart streamlining, we’ve observed significant changes to actuarial career development and advancement opportunities. But, those changes aren’t occurring in equal measures across the arc of the actuarial career. Our focus is on the impact felt by experienced reinsurance actuaries.

Description: This is the third in a four-part series dedicated to strategies for improving EQ, based on the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 written by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves. In previous issues of The Stepping Stone, I discussed the skills of self-awareness and self-management. In this article, I will share a few more of the book’s strategies and provide examples and personal insights to illustrate how to develop the third skill of social awareness in personal, social, and business situations.

Description: We will demonstrate three analytical tools along with a sample case study showing how they might be applied to a fictional actuarial organization within ABC Life. The goal is to highlight how they might be applied to perform a health check of an actuarial function organizational design. This can measure effectiveness quantitatively via benchmarking how an actuarial function might stack up against the industry and management expectations. The tools and techniques are critical for actuarial leaders and managers but are also relevant to all actuaries, since we can all benefit from understanding how our individual work efforts fit into the bigger picture of an organization.

Description: Even if you aren’t interested in going to Rome, this article is the first in a series on the process of innovation. It defines innovation, describes an overview of the innovation process, and includes a few innovative techniques and examples of innovation. However, it does not provide directions to Rome, as all roads lead there anyway.

Description: This article addresses how to best use body language to one's advantage

Description: Vision and objectives and projects for the International Section.

Description: In this article the authors ask: “what if you could be more focused, calmer and better able to perform? …what if the only thing you needed to do to perform better was to become aware of a few things, and that by doing these things, you could improve performance and help others achieve better results?” Referencing David Rock's latest book, “Your Brain at Work,” which shares key findings on the science of the brain and how the brain functions, the authors explain how we can be more focused and productive and help others do the same, and how to understand and correct what's happening when we head off-track.