In the summer of 1964, my parents rented a small, red cottage on Cherry Street at Chapman Beach in Westbrook, Connecticut. Headed east along the shoreline, the next beach is Chalker Beach. The one after that is Indian Town. That matters because that same summer, my cousin, Gary Brainard, was staying in a cottage in Indian Town. That meant Gary and I, both 10 years old that summer, were within walking distance up the beach from each other. It also meant Gary and I could share comic books with each other. (In case you're curious, they were 12 cents apiece in those glorious days.)

I primarily read the flagship titles of DC Comics (formally known as National Periodical Publications), Superman and Batman. But Gary had discovered the Marvel Comics world. His sharing it with me changed mine. (Gary still doesn't believe any of this.) As a result, this book and this book, both of which I was fortunate enough to acquire before they went out of print and, so, became collectors' items, are two of my most treasured possessions. I frequently re-read them — not just to experience the stories again — but to remember what I am and why.

I'm a writer because of Stan Lee. Yes. It really is that simple. I knew in an instant, even at 10 years old, that his Marvel stories had what my DC stories did not: personality. They had an authentic voice. They had actual life. They had wry wit and sarcastic bravado. They were revealing and human. They used language — even more than imagery, a fantastic and audacious feat in what had been a predominantly visual medium — to engage, move, entertain, and inspire me. They had style. I knew it because I felt it. My life wouldn't achieve meaningful direction until 40 years later. But I had my calling at 10. I didn't know it then, but I also had my brand.

Do the Math

There is no better definition of brand than this: Brand is the personality made manifest in your work. That means brand is as much a voice as it is a vision. It means your brand doesn't reflect identity. It IS identity. It's why most companies can't answer the question: How does your brand say me? It's why the most difficult thing for companies to render is the proverbial elevator pitch. They find it difficult because, in the elevator pitch, identity — the combination of voice and vision — has to be made clearly manifest in one to three short sentences. And rendering your brand with that kind of cogent conciseness is only possible if you know — and are not afraid of expressing — its personality. Such expression isn't just a matter of courage, it's also the product of imagination.

What Stan Lee gave me most of all was the courage to imagine. I was no longer afraid of I don't know. Rather, I was encouraged and energized by I don't know yet. Yet transforms I don't know into positive potential. It connotes the possibility that what there is to know, or what needs to be known, hasn't been created yet. It yields the opportunity to create it. And that opportunity yields an equation somethiing like this:

Opportunity x imagination = the number of possibilities.

Could anything be more inspiring, more empowering, or more liberating than that? The numbers are all — and always — in our favor.

Stan Lee

Self-Faith Is Its Own Reward

Hulk debuted on June 20, 2003, the 17th birthday of my younger son, Quinn. We saw the film together. When we got home that evening, I sent an email to Stan Lee, telling him the story I just told you, telling him we'd seen the film, and asking him how rewarding it was that — 40 years after the fact — cinematic technology had finally caught up to his imagination. He didn't reply. It didn't matter. All that matters is the wonder and the wondering.

Isn't that, by definition, imagination?

Three notable writings meandered into my imagination this week. Though they ostensibly explore three different topics — three seemingly disconnected sets of ideas — they are, in fact, of a piece. They point out the truism that the more things change, the more they stay the same. And they remind us that, while our modes and means of escape and escapism multiply momentously, we will never escape the fundaments of our human nature. The writings appeared in this order:

First: The Obvious

This article came via Ad Age Blogs. In a thinly veiled pitch for the author's public-relations flackery, he offers this solipsistic slice of self-serving non-news:

In the same way that the mass-market culture of the 1950s created the need for brands, today's social-technical culture is forcing brands to employ a new model for interacting with the public. A model based not in the slow-drip Chinese water torture of traditional advertising, but in the kind of focused dialogue that public relations specializes in … It's not your strategy; it's your story. The dirty little secret of advertising is that agencies burn most of their creative time developing the creative strategy, trying to get buy-in on a single, seven-word silver bullet. But as Peter Guber, former CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, wrote in a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review, "Critical details, data, and analytics are more effectively emotionalized and metabolized by the listener when they're embedded in a story." Instead of trying to encapsulate your brand in a strategic statement, try writing a narrative for your brand.

What does this mean? It means we're human beings. It means we're creatures that engage and compel each other by telling stories. It's what we've always done. Beowulf and The Epic of Gilgamesh (to name just two) are stories that pre-date writing. But they remain — and they continue to be told and read — because, through myth and history, they continue to teach. It means, as the purveyors of social-media Newspeak constantly remind us, content is king. This, too, fails to qualify as news. Content has always been king because we've always been storytellers.

Second: The Reminder

I happened across this review, which led me to this book, which says this, in part:

The storytelling mind is a crucial evolutionary adaptation. It allows us to experience our lives as coherent, orderly, and meaningful. It is what makes life more than a blooming, buzzing confusion … most of what is actually in fiction is deeply unpleasant [serving as a] powerful and ancient virtual reality technology that simulates the big dilemmas of human life.

Place that phrase — powerful and ancient virtual reality technology that simulates the big dilemmas of human life — in the context of the earlier discussion of "traditional" advertising versus storytelling. Then try to imagine a headline, regardless of how compellingly it may be composed, competing with a well-told story. That headline may be more effectively persuasive to some creatures. But not us. We're human. Our history and all of our predispositions are about telling, learning from, and responding to stories. In that sense, social media — the focus on content — brings us back to the future. What's important is your story. And your story is your brand.

Third: The Humbler

This article came from one of my myriad RSS feeds. Accident? No such thing. In the contemplation of advertising, pubic relations, social media, storytelling, and technology that simulates the big dilemmas of human life, what could add to this story more perfectly than a nod to the existence of the ubiquitous phone? It's a device that could only have been invented by a race of storytellers — in answer to the race for storytelling. It transformed our ability to communicate utterly. It transformed our means of communicating not at all:

Now that telephones are virtually everywhere, observed The New York Times, “telephone manners are, quite naturally, becoming equally complicated.” The year was 1986 (when a few people had car phones but the mobile phone was not yet widely distributed). Strikingly, it could have been last week — or it could have been around 1900, when, the German critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin noted, the phone arrived in his Berlin household, with an “alarm signal that menaced not only my parents’ midday nap but the historical era that underwrote and enveloped this siesta.”

In 1986, the latest shift was “call waiting,” which Judith Martin compared to “standing at a cocktail party and not paying attention to the person you’re with, waiting for a more important person.” Now, of course, as we stand at that same cocktail party, fidgeting with our smartphones — which, despite rarely looking like something designed for speaking into, we not only talk on, but to (summoning the iPhone’s electronic concierge, Siri, for directions or the weather) — the interruptions that once occurred on the telephone line now occur in real time and space.

We have been fretting about the phone for years, even as it has moved closer and closer to us — once relegated to the back hallway, “between the dirty linen hamper and the gasometer,” as in Benjamin’s day, now in our back pocket. But it is difficult to say, as it seems to be morphing once more as a cultural form, whether the telephone has profoundly changed us in any way.

It's a wonderful thing to realize: We've created tools and media that have revolutionized our ability to connect with each other. We've made the world smaller and our access to it bigger. We've taken science that would once have been considered magic and made it mundane. We've smashed time and space as obstacles to communication. Yet we still communicate in the same ways we did before fire, let alone the first electronic spark: We tell stories.

So, go tell your story. Read a novel to make sense of the world and your place in it. Then call me. Have I got a story for you!

Perhaps the only thing that drains us of that kind of child-like wonder faster and more completely than the onset of adulthood — that saps our own joy and genius and renders us unaware that we can choose to retain it for a lifetime — is our entry into the world of business. Ironic, isn't it? In business, we're constantly compelled to talk, write, read, and hear about innovation, invention, and ingenuity. We're bombarded with superlatives — biggest, fastest, greatest, best. But none of it contains the sense of wonder that might make such expressions genuine, credible, persuasive, and contagious.

Why do we settle so? Why do so many of us bind ourselves to futures of unconvincing rhetoric and going through motions? Is it really that difficulty to find reasons to marvel — to find opportunities to refresh, re-invent, and re-invest in our joy and genius? The answer is no … but … there needs to be purposeful deliberateness about the effort to retain perspectives of wonder.

Case in point: In 2005, Paul Orfalea, the founder of Kinko's, was the subject of a feature article in Fortune Small Business. (You can download the article here.) I was sitting in the lobby of a client's office, waiting for a meeting, when I read the article. It took just a few minutes. But I've never forgotten what Orfalea said:

It's pretty popular among chief executives these days to brag about their open-door policies – how they get to the office at 7 a.m., eat lunch at their desks, and don't leave until well into the evening. That is crazy! When do they ever have time to sit back and think? Or wander or wonder? … I worked in cycles, spending roughly three weeks on the road followed by three weeks back at the main office … I found that leaving headquarters got me away from the mundane, daily grind that left no space for insight, inspiration, or innovation. Instead of "chief executive," I preferred the title of "chief wanderer." While constant motion suited my constitution, it also fueled my creativity, which never seemed to flow in the office.

The Wellspring

Wonder and wander. That's what children do. It's what their natures compel them to do — untainted; uninhibited; not yet self-conscious; not yet aware of being judged or conditioned to being criticized; not aware of limitations, imposed by the predispositions of others, that translate into self-limiting insecurity and lack of faith. The world is the playground of their curiosity. And their curiosity is boundless. What happened to ours?

For many of us, we went to work. And for some of us who went to work, we went about work that neither motivated nor fulfilled us. It may have rewarded us with money. But cash is not the currency of the soul or the reward of the spirit. And while money may be a means to some ends, it's no muse. In exchange for a salary plus benefits, we checked our creativity at the payroll window and never wondered at our loss of wonder.

Several years ago, a co-worker in the ad agency we both served was miserably unhappy in his job. He used to ask me routinely: "What am I going to do?" My reply was always the same: "If you can't find something in this for yourself — if you can't invest in it in any way that delivers some measure of fulfillment — you have to go." He couldn't do it. Sometime later, he was fired. It was a a Friday. By Tuesday of the following week, he was teaching music in a local public school system. He's been an award-winning teacher every year since. He was lucky. His muse found him. But he might have done the finding — and sooner — if his perspective had retained the creative spark of self-faith and wonder he'd carried through music school. Like beauty, joy and genius are in the eye of the beholder:

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

It's Yours to Find

In thinking about your job, your company, your company's brand, its products and services, its accomplishments, the people with whom you work — when's the last time you sought to marvel? When were you last mindful of finding at least one thing of which you could say or think, "That's wonderful" — that struck you as literally full of wonder? What would it take to amaze you? If you don't know, find it. If you do know, and you can't find it in whatever you're doing now, make a change. Shift your perspective. Pretend you have new eyes and ears. Pretend you've gotten younger and that everything — like your voice when you learned to scream as a baby, like your feet when you learned to walk as a toddler — is new and limitless. If that doesn't work, look for another job. Start a new career. Create something. Suggest something that has everyone telling you you're crazy — and do it.

Exceptions prove rules, and rules were made to be broken. Change something. Do something different. Do one thing — anything — differently. It might be your last chance. You can't know till you try. As an added bonus, you just might remember where the days of the week live.

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

Vincent van Gogh

We are experiencing a dearth of leadership in society. We see fewer prominent leaders who seem genuine and highly capable, and many who have been compromised, deposed, or defeated. Even more seem to have run out of ideas, or simply appear unable to craft the necessary consensus to lead … it isn't so much that today's leaders fall short of the capabilities or character leaders had in the past. It isn't that the visionary, principled, courageous type we would all prefer to follow was once common and is now a rarity. Rather, it's the context of leadership that has changed, so that people with just as great capability as their predecessors find it much harder today to lead.

James S. Rosebush, Harvard Business Review

Wow. This guy came so close. I actually thought he had it, that he had figured out why it appears we suffer, in industry as in life, from a seeming dearth of leadership. But he whiffed. He went on to hypothesize that leaders of the past had the advantages of privileged access to information, the reflected glory of their institutions, and broadly shared foundational principles. It is in the last that he came closest. But he whiffed, nevertheless.

I, Me, Mine

The fact is that what Rosebush perceives as a crisis of the ability or willingness to lead in our business culture is not that at all. Rather, what we are all witnessing is a crisis of the ability or willingness to follow in our national, cultural psyche. We’ve swapped the w for the m. It’s no longer we, it’s me.

Baby picks off your plate. Yours looks better.
And she throws hers on the floor.
Here, in the home of the brave
And the land of the free,
The first word baby learns is more.*

We’re encouraged to develop our personal brands, our personal career plans, our perfect jobs, our dream careers, our various and disparate manifestations of individual satisfaction. We're not encouraged to find common causes — to commit to people, entities, purposes, or ideals that might effect the larger world in which we find ourselves the single, self-important aspects. What's in it for me? replaces Utilitarianism. Consequences be damned. And please don't bother us with such banal prosaicisms as helping or making a difference. Do you really not know how important we are?

From Main Street to Wall Street to Washington,
From men to women to men,
It's a nation of noses pressed up against the glass.
They've seen it on the TV,
And they want it pretty fast*

Vision Without Sight

Having learned to view self-interest as synonymous with self-respect — and having no meaningful respect for unity, common causes, or greater goods — we forge on. We work, at least until the next, better opportunity comes along, for companies the websites of which brandish vision statements but no visions, platitudinous pronouncements of their eminence and leadership as reflected, of course, in their own humble estimations. Clear access to our products and services? Are you kidding? Why bother with the good of our prospects? We've written a vision statement for ourselves — a thing of beauty and a joy to behold. [Cue anthemic music.]

Beyond that, if you read our Careers page, you'll learn that we have a world-class onboarding program, designed to attract nothing but the best and brightest. We recruit 'em, hire 'em, promise 'em, and pay 'em like nobody's' business. Retain 'em? Not exactly. Well, yeah. They do read our vision statement before they apply. But what does that have to do with anything?

And so it goes. We all play to short-term gain. We pay no heed to long-term achievement, unless it's our present conception of our own. ("If only I could get ….") Consequently, we struggle with the notion of leadership, to say nothing of the realities of happiness, contentment, and personal fulfillment.

You spend your whole life
Just pilin' it up there.
You got stacks and stacks and stacks.
Then, Gabriel comes and taps you on the shoulder,
But you don't see no hearses with luggage racks.*

The Heart of the Matter

In 1991, while working at The Travelers, I was crossing Main Street in Hartford, CT, at the intersection of Pearl. A homeless man approached me. Bracing for the typical plea for coffee money or train fare, I stopped. He looked me unflinchingly in the eye and said: "I'm trying to find the difference between should and shouldn't. I think it's a matter of letters." Though I was not in the habit of accommodating panhandlers, I gave our philosophical friend a five-dollar bill for his insight. It was my royalty payment for paraphrasing him here, some 21 years later: I'm trying to find the difference between me and we. I think it's a matter of a letter.

What Mr. Rosebush suggests is a dearth of leadership is, in fact, a dearth of followship.

* Don Henley, "Gimme What You Got", from the album, End of the Innocence

Once considered to be a “cutting edge” risk management tool, captive insurance has now found its way into the mainstream of corporate risk planning.  Captive insurance companies (generally defined as “wholly owned subsidiaries created to provide insurance to the parent company”) make up 2% to 3% of the commercial insurance market and have been growing steadily in popularity since the 1960’s when the first captives were being formed in Bermuda.

Today, captives are a fixture among Fortune 1000 companies but, not surprisingly, many smaller companies and even groups of individuals have discovered the effectiveness of captive insurance structures.  The proliferation of competition among both vendors and domicile regulators has fostered structural innovations and driven down captive formation and operational costs to the point where captives have become a realistic option for even relatively small organizations.

While competition has been good for the captive industry and has allowed for widened access to the marketplace, captives are still not for everyone.  Savvy risk managers and C.F.O.’s realize that the decision to form a captive should not be taken lightly.  Captives are relatively easy to form but can be much more difficult to shut down.  For those risk managers and C.F.O.’s who are not intimately familiar with the intricacies of captive insurance, an unbiased captive feasibility analysis is always a prudent first step into this arena.

Companies that meet minimum practical requirements (i.e. pay $750,000 or more in standard market commercial insurance premiums and have a better than average loss history) can realistically entertain the possibility of utilizing a captive insurance structure.  In many cases, the standard insurance market has already forced the insured company into a heavily self-insured position.  Increasing premiums tend to push insureds toward larger SIR’s and high deductible programs. Higher risk assumption may keep short-term insurance costs relatively stable but it increases long-term liabilities and drives up the ultimate cost of risk.

By formalizing its self-insurance program through a captive, a company can begin to regain control of its insurance program. The advantages of a captive include:

• Reduced dependency on commercial insurance – for lines of insurance written through a captive, insureds shortcut the insurance renewal process and reduce exposure to the often unforeseeable whims of the commercial insurance market;
• Direct access to reinsurance markets – captives are able to bypass the conventional insurance market and, as an insurer, directly access reinsurance markets.  By doing so, markup costs from the primary insurance market are avoided;
• Low overhead – captives generally have no employees, no marketing expense, no physical property and minimize necessary administrative overhead through careful outsourcing of needed services to professional captive service providers;
• Stabilization of pricing over time – insurance market fluctuations have considerably less impact when pricing is based on the insured’s individual loss history rather than the loss history of large and in many ways, unrelated, base of insureds;
• Customization of  coverage – where coverage is unavailable or unaffordable, a captive is able to manuscript its own customized policy to cover a specific or unusual exposure;
• Improved cash flow – investment income from unearned premiums can be realized over the full duration of claim exposures;
• Reduced government regulation and interference – proper domicile selection can result in a shift of regulatory authority to a less onerous and restrictive jurisdiction;
• More control over claims handling – a captive establishes and controls it own claims handling policies and procedures and has full access to all claims data;
• Creation of a profit center – if desired, a captive may selectively write unrelated third party business thus creating a new source of revenue for the parent company;
• Potential tax advantages – captives can provide a tax-advantaged vehicle for accumulating underwriting and investment income
• Ability to direct investment options – captive reserves and surplus are invested at the direction of the captive owner (subject to regulatory liquidity guidelines) and can include not only traditional investment vehicles but also certain investments back into the parent company.

Of course, captive structures can present some difficulties as well.  The disadvantages include:

• Capital Commitment – In addition to initial captive formation costs, a parent company will have to meet the mandatory minimum capitalization requirements of the domiciliary jurisdiction.  These costs vary widely depending upon the captive domicile and service providers chosen.
• Administrative Duties – While the day-to-day operations and technical aspects of operating an insurance company are generally contracted out to a captive manager and other professionals, the captive owner does have to dedicate time and effort to oversight responsibilities;
• Mergers and Acquisitions – Ownership of a captive insurance company may complicate merger or acquisition activity;
• Volatility of the Reinsurance Market – while captives escape the volatility of the primary insurance market, to the extent that they have transferred risk to reinsurers, captives remain susceptible to broader market fluctuations in reinsurance pricing;
• Closure and Run-off – Depending upon the nature of the risk insured by a captive, liabilities may remain on its books for years thus making the captive difficult to shut down.  An exit strategy should be developed as the captive is being formed so as to minimize this potential problem.

Developing a captive structure that maximizes the advantages and minimizes the disadvantages as outlined above, is critical to the ultimate success of any program.  The first step in determining whether a captive is appropriate for a given company or group is the production of a Feasibility Study. 

A Feasibility Study should be a combination of (1) an actuarial analysis performed by an accredited actuary and (2) a financial, structural and operational analysis performed by an experienced captive consultant.  Through a review of a potential captive owner’s individual claim exposures and historical loss patterns as well as related industry data, the actuary will apply statistical models to the risk to make an educated prediction as to how future claims will develop.  Working hand-in-hand with the actuary, the captive consultant will then employ financial modeling and industry knowledge to project operational expenses, isolate the most appropriate captive domicile and design a structure that allows the captive to retain the optimal level of risk and related premium. 

Captives most often need some level of protection from catastrophic losses through reinsurance or excess liability coverage.  To avoid potential conflicts of interest, the consultants performing the Feasibility Study should be completely independent of the captive owner’s insurance broker.  It is important to remember that, when risk is insured through a captive, less premium dollars are paid into the traditional insurance market.  Because broker commissions are tied to premiums, there is an inherent tendency for brokers to place as much risk as possible in the traditional insurance market. Meanwhile, the point of the captive is to get out of the traditional insurance market.

Depending upon the parent company or groups’ specific risk profile and needs, the captive consultant may recommend one (or some hybrid) of the following captive legal structures.

• Pure (or “Single Parent”) Captive – is an insurance or reinsurance company formed primarily to insure the risks of its parent company or affiliates.
• Group Captive – is an insurance company, jointly owned by a number of similarly situated companies, created to provide a vehicle to meet a common insurance need.
• Association Captive – is an insurance company owned by a trade, industry or service group for the benefit of its members.
• Segregated Cell Captive – is a captive insurance company that creates legally segregated accounting silos or “cells” within its facility and then rents those cells and the related operational services of the captive to other parties.  The main purpose of a segregated cell captive is to provide ease of entry into the captive market and freedom from administrative burdens for those companies that want to avoid the ownership and maintenance responsibilities that are required of pure captive owners.
• Risk Retention Group – is a liability insurance company that is owned by its members. Pursuant to the Federal Liability Risk Retention Act (LRRA), RRG’s must be domiciled in a U.S. state. Once licensed by its state of domicile, an RRG can insure members in all states. Because the LRRA is a federal law, it preempts state regulation, making it much easier for RRG’s to operate nationally.

Forming a licensed and regulated insurance company is a relatively complicated process but it is one that an experienced captive consultant can help navigate.  To secure licensure, most domiciles will require that the prospective captive owner provide regulators with a formal “application package” that includes background information for the parent company, an actuarial analysis of the risk to be insured by the captive, a formal captive business plan, pro-forma financial statements for the captive, reinsurance arrangements, list of proposed captive service providers, investment strategy, biographical information (both business and personal) for the involved principals, source of funding and other such information.  If properly coordinated, this information can usually be produced and compiled within 60 to 90 days.

In an effort to successfully compete for business, both domestic and international captive domiciles have worked to streamline the captive application approval process in their respective jurisdictions.  While there are still many regulatory hurdles to clear, standardized forms, processes and procedures make it possible for formal captive applications for licensure to gain approval in 30 days or less in many jurisdictions. 

Once formed and licensed, a well-organized captive can produce immediate and quantifiably positive results for the parent company.  Careful selection of captive advisors and service providers is the key to that success. Because most captive owners are not insurance experts (nor do they want to be), they must rely on their team of captive professionals to provide them with sound advice. 

Now that the captive industry has matured, several common features of successful captives have emerged:  (1) They preserve a wide spread of risk either by maintaining a large exposure base within a single line of business or by diversifying risk exposure along multiple lines of business; (2) They are formed for legitimate insurance driven purposes rather than for perceived tax advantages;  (3) They establish and follow strict loss control and risk management protocols; (4) Their financial stability is protected by parent companies that refrain from routinely drawing out any accumulated surplus; (5) They foster long-term fronting and reinsurance relationships since changing these partners can result in costly “collateral stacking” difficulties; (6) They are formed by parent companies with a long-term commitment to operating the captive; (7) They maintain the operational and philosophical flexibility to adapt to the changing needs of the parent company; and finally (8) They recognize that every captive has a natural life cycle and that there should be an exit strategy in place for when the captive no longer serves the purposes of its owner.

After more than 40 years of development, the captive industry enjoys a stable regulatory and service provider structure.  Furthermore, intense competition in this industry has resulted in a wide selection of domicile choices, innovative captive structures, well-tested regulations and lowered captive formation and operational expenses.  Captives are an increasingly viable risk financing alternative for companies of all sizes – particularly as traditional insurance market pricing has begun to harden.

Christopher Ridge is the Manager of Alternative Risk Finance at Perr&Knight. He has specific expertise in the areas of: captive feasibility analysis, domicile selection, program design, legal structuring, formation and licensure, captive management, corporate governance, regulatory compliance, collateral relief strategies, program run-off and captive closure solutions. He has previously practiced law exclusively in the field of alternative risk finance and has headed the captive management and consulting operations for several organizations including: a large Fortune 100 insurer, an insurance broker and a regional captive manager. Chris holds a Law Degree, a Masters Degree in Risk Management and Insurance and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration.

Good Friday, April 14, 1995, may unexpectedly go down in history as the day when the world found a spiritual salve for its war-torn wounds. As Christians solemnly remembered the Crucifixion of Jesus, as Jews reenacted the Passover, and as the world observed the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust, something special transpired at St. Mary's Cathedral, in Glasgow. In the seven homilies he delivered there, author Joel Marcus humbly offered his reflections on the hope of healing the world's aching heart–especially the pain of the Holocaust.

Collected in Jesus and the Holocaust are Dr. Marcus's meditations on the sufferings and death of Jesus, examined under the dark shadow of the Holocaust two thousand years later. Reflecting on Bible passages in light of stories and poems of the Holocaust, the author comes to realize what Jesus has to do with the Holocaust. Through difficult personal reflection, Marcus – a Jew by birth, Christian by choice – discovered that in the shared suffering of Christians and Jews, a common bond exists for healing the hurt all have experienced through the death of Christ and the horror of the Holocaust.

(Exerpted from Jesus and the Holocaust)

It will surprise few who’ve taken note of my name that I grew up in an Irish Catholic family. In all the Easter homilies I’d ever heard, even as a boy – and in all the sermons I’d heard in all the services I’d attended in all the churches of various Christian denominations – it always seemed to me the connective fundament remained unacknowledged, unstated, perhaps unrecognized. That fundament – the point in the Easter story, in the story of his self-sacrifice and crucifixion – is that Jesus was a human being for the express purpose of demonstrating to us the selfless sacrifice of which we are capable as humans.

In Jesus and the Holocaust, Joel Marcus finds that fundament and connects us all to it in a profoundly human way. There is no idealism. There is no romanticism. There is no religious advocacy. There are no references to the rites of our primitive, mythological histories. There is only the existential quest to explain human suffering and sacrifice; persecution and compassion, despair and hope; repentance and redemption; life, death, their connections; and – perhaps – a means of coming to terms, if not peace, with both.

Does this post have any place or purpose in this blog? Did Jesus and the Holocaust have any reason to find its way into my hands? I have no idea. But I urge you to pick it up – and to reflect on its contemplations for yourself.

There are no accidents.

ZEPHYR COVE, Nev. — A 53-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of being naked near a high school on Lake Tahoe’s east shore. The naked man was arrested Monday after three Whittell High School students reported spotting him tied to a rock and lying face down behind the school. When the students asked if he needed to be untied, the man answered no. Douglas County sheriff’s deputies said the man told them he was watching some buzzards flying overhead at the time. The man, who said he was a freelance writer, was arrested on a charge of loitering on school grounds. (Tahoe Daily Tribune)

Okay. Here’s my problem: I’m one of those apparently rare people who could not be suspected of being naked. No. I’m not famous. No. Not many people have even the vaguest inkling of who I might be. As a consequence, everyone who does know me understands, with disarmingly crystal clarity: I’m either clothed, or I’m not. How can I be that transparent? Why me?

My own travails notwithstanding, the story cited above is one that demands to be treated with a healthy skepticism and a full measure of charitable compassion. At the outset, there’s a discrepancy between the grounds for the gentleman’s arrest — suspicion of being naked — and the fact that three students saw that he was, indeed, naked. So, the dude either was suspected of being naked, or he was naked. Which is it? And how difficult could it possibly have been to discern the difference? I’m not saying my own experience is a necessary barometer here; but every time I’ve been suspected of being naked, I have been.

Then there are the circumstances under which the poor guy was found. And, I have to tell you: this is exactly why I’m no longer naked – ever – when I tie myself to a rock. I don’t know precisely when the act came to be so profoundly misunderstood by so many. But you’ll just have to trust me: this is a practice as innocuous as the day is long. There was a time in which I could tie myself to a rock in all manner of public places – school yards, parks, street corners – and no one would bat an eye, let alone call the police. I once tied myself to the Great Tucson Meteorite in the Smithsonian. I’d only meant to be there for a few hours, but the security guards brought me coffee and donuts for three days. We actually grew quite close. Alas, those days are gone.

Finally, there’s this, which likely will go unremarked in most assessments of the case:

Douglas County sheriff’s deputies said the man told them he was watching some buzzards flying overhead at the time.

I really don’t know how many of us hardcore buzzard-watchers there are out there. But all of us who practice the art can tell you it’s a source of dizziness like no other. One need not tie oneself to a rock to maintain balance; however, studies have shown that doing so significantly reduces the incidence of teetering, stumbling, and falling that can result from staring straight up for hours on end, watching the big birds reel and swoop.

And I predict this: much will be made of the fact that the man was discovered facedown. That’s to be expected from a population of media hacks and law-enforcement personnel largely comprising avowed non-buzzard-watchers. Among ornithological specialists, buzzards are notorious for their shyness. Buzzards will go into hiding for weeks, going without food or bio-breaks, if they even suspect someone might be looking. The trick is to pretend you’re actually watching worms. Then, when you hear the flutter of wings and the whoosh of the bird overhead, you turn your head slowly and carefully, opening just the exposed eye ever so slightly. The difficulty of this practice is offset by the fact that buzzards also happen to be extremely gullible. They not only fall for the worm-watching trick every time, they love to listen to politicians and to have quarters pulled from behind their ears.

By the grace of God, I have several large rocks in my yard, each of which provides an opportunity to lash myself to it, without fear of reprisal, retribution, or incarceration. But even there – in the privacy of my own little piece of America – I no longer engage in the practice au naturel. It’s simply not worth the risk that the mailman, or old Mrs. Anderson from next door, might show up, leaving me to end the day in handcuffs, shame, and an orange jumpsuit.

And while the buzzards have stopped coming by since I stepped down from public office and ran out of quarters, I’m learning to adjust.

As our unfortunate friend from Zephyr Cove now knows, it’s just a little harder to live in the world once you know the naked truth.

To belong, or not to belong, that is the question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of travel and registration fees,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of rules,
And by opposing get thyself in hot water:
to vanish, to attend no more; and, by staying home,
To say we end the heart-ache and the thousand
Unnatural incongruities that participants are heir to?
'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Excerpted from Hamlet’s soliloquy to ASAP (the Association Serving Association Professionals)

With the spring conference and tradeshow season upon us, it’s time for the traditional ritual undertaken by all good folks in the insurance industry – deciding if we’re going to continue to belong to myriad associations and attend their sundry events. This is not a logistical question. And it's certainly not an accounting question. If it were, it would be settled rather quickly, indeed, in the deluge of red ink generated by membership fees, registration fees, exhibit fees, travel expenses, accommodations, and — that most obligatory of all socio-professional expenses — the bar tab. No. This is, in fact, a philosophical question. You can tell because it comes packed with all of the quandaries, conundrums, enigmas, dilemmas, and other chimerical vagaries every good philosophical question should have.

The perennial nature of this ritual so defies logic and common sense that The Frontline Center for Habitual Lunacy recently conducted this survey of all insurance professionals in North America in an attempt to glean some insight:

1. Why do you attend conferences and/or tradeshows?
     A. I like to see my established contacts.
     B. I want to network and make new contacts.
     C. I want to generate leads.
     D. I feel like I have to be there.
     E. I collect pens.
     F. I love to fly.
     G. All of the above.

2. What's your favorite part of attending conferences and/or tradeshows?
     A. Seeing my established contacts.
     B. Networking and making new contacts.
     C. Scanning badges and calling them leads.
     D. Being there because I feel like I have to be.
     E. Collecting pens.
     F. Sleeping on the plane.
     G. All of the above.

3. What's your least favorite part of attending conferences and/or tradeshows?
     A. Seeing the same old contacts.
     B. Networking and making new contacts.
     C. Scanning 1,000 badges that yield no sales.
     D. Being there because I feel like I have to be.
     E. Figuring out where to put all my pens.
     F. Sitting next to a talker on the plane.
     G. All of the above.

We don't have the foggiest notion what the survey results might mean or indicate. But as a public service — and in the spirit of humble beneficence, selfless generosity, and unflagging modesty that characterizes the Center — those results can be viewed in their entirety here. (You can view a formal statement of thanks from the Center here.)

The Play's the Thing

We all have good — and, in most instances — constructive and enjoyable reasons for attending industry association conferences and tradeshows. We get to mix, mingle, meet, and meld with folks. We form professional relationships. If we're fortunate, as I am, we even develop close and lasting friendships. We come across business opportunities. We learn about new products and services. We very often visit beautiful places, experiencing refreshing changes of scenery and perspective. We get the opportunity to exercise the better, more social aspects of our human nature — and to be reminded, yet again, that some of the most positive energy is that which we exchange with each other. (Let's not forget that, along with being defined as an interchange of goods or commodities, commerce also is defined as social relations, especially the exchange of views, attitudes, etc.; intellectual or spiritual interchange; communion.)

Besides, without the break from mundanity afforded by conferences and tradeshows, we're likely to become the insurance-industry equivalents of Ted Kaczynski, spending our days stewing in our own juices, making bombs, writing blogs, or surreptitiously engaged in something equally nefarious, dangerous, and subversive. Really. Who needs that? I'd rather buy tax-deductible airline tickets and hotel accommodations now and then, just to keep myself out of trouble — or to at least minimize my chances of being suspected of it.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

On the other hand, there are some association practices that could be amended to make the conducting of conferences and tradeshows a little more enjoyable, to say nothing of practical, logical, and fair. It goes without saying that without members, there is no association. Without vendors and exhibitors, there are no association events. So, how better to suit the ends of both? By administering liberal doses of that sanative salve of all sinuous situations – common sense. Here’s the short list:

• Reward those who invest tens of thousands of exhibiting dollars by providing them a list of attendees at no additional charge.
• Reward those who invest time and intellectual capital by filling the roles of subject-matter purveyors and expert presenters in conference sessions, thereby putting cheeks in the seats, by excusing them from having to pay registration fees for the conferences at which they present.
• Reward those who invest time and money by volunteering for the association and picking up their own expenses to attend regional, planning, and/or phone meetings by giving them authority commensurate with responsibility – and let decisions be made, directions established, and utilitarian ends be met by consensus of the committees on which they serve.
• Reward the association by prohibiting the possibility of small leadership cabals, recognizing that – should such cabals alienate the butterers of the associations’ bread – they’re likely to engender predispositions to feelings of indignation, alienation, and exploitation. Given associations’ reliance on golden eggs, should be among the last organizations to be come indifferent to the goose.

But what do we know? We are, after all, merely meditating on the forever fecund foibles of the human condition. And, lest we forget, we're yet attempting to answer the philosphical question posed at the outset. It is a circuitous and irresolute task on which we set ourselves. As Hamlet admonished his friend:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

What consummation befalls should such sage, sagacious suggestions be disregarded? Since we're talking, ultimately, about business and profitability — about investment and return — there is none of Hamlet's equivocation in the outcomes. Association members become disillusioned, loath to pay membership fees to associations comprising dwindling representation of their peers. Vendors (the perennial deep pockets) vote with their dollars, likewise loath to pay membership fees and refusing to fund activities that attract fewer and fewer fish to the barrel. Leadership cabals (should they exist, in hypothetical terms of course, given the ruminative nature of this missive) find themselves with fewer and fewer followers, legislating themselves out of their incumbencies by default, however inadvertently or unwittingly, wishing they'd been careful what they wished for. And more of us say, ever more wistfully, "Remember when …?"

Former British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (1804 – 1881), once said:

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

If professional associations don’t put their ongoing betterment first and foremost — if they opt to place personal politics above the perpetual prosperity of their members and volunteers — our annual spring predicament will have resolved itself. Perished at their own hands, the associations will have left us the spring season — not to attend conferences and tradeshows — but to appreciate the rebirth of nature; although, perhaps not human nature.

There are only two choices: Spring ahead or fall back.

Editor: To begin, what is liespotting?

Pamela Meyer: Liespotting is an essential deception detection skill that combines facial micro-expression analysis, statement analysis and interrogation/interviewing techniques. These techniques are well known in the law enforcement and intelligence worlds but have not been used until now in the corporate world. When I wrote Liespotting, I went a bit further to survey most of the research on deception, as there is a well funded robust field that has surfaced many myth-busters regarding lying. For example, we think liars won't look you in the eyes…well it turns out the average honest person will only look you in the eye a comfortable 60% of the time. The science of deception is both useful and fascinating.

Editor: What can the insurance industry hope to accomplish with liespotting?

Meyer: Insurance related decision making requires that judgment calls be made regarding risk levels, valuation, fraud prevention and incident reporting. Imagine the enormous cost benefits to being even 5%-15% more accurate in determining which entities should be insured, whether someone is lying about an incident, or what value to place on particular assets. Anyone who is in an interviewing or investigation role, or who is managing teams of executives that must make difficult decisions regarding information they have collected, can be trained to get to the truth 80%-90% of the time, at low cost. It is just a matter of time before the industry moves to include deception detection as a necessary tool in the arsenal of its senior managers and negotiators, as well as its field based executives and investigators.

Editor: How might one quantify the cost of deception?

Meyer: Imagine a bank with $200 million in loans gone bad. Now consider if the loan officers reduced that number by a significant percentage simply by rejecting more outliers who appeared deceptive. The savings would be verifiable. Economists have long known that reduction in transaction costs significantly alter the economic equation.

All aspects of the business negotiation cycle are more costly in the absence of trust:

• R&D
• Due diligence
• Legal negotiations/interrogations
• Hiring and keeping employees

There is an incalculable cost to a business when deals are made with partners it doesn't trust, or people are hired that are not totally trusted….and when you do work with those you really trust, then every aspect of the transaction is lubricated by trust and the overall cost is reduced.

Editor: So are we born liars?

Meyer: Lying is as old as breathing. It starts at 6 months where studies show babies will fake a cry or a smile for attention – they will pause in the middle of a howl to make sure Mommy is coming. In one study, three year olds were left in a room, told not to peek at a toy and then asked if they peeked. Only 38% confessed. By the time the kids were five, none confessed and all lied, saying that they didn’t peek.

Also, researchers have long known that the more intelligent the species, the more deceptive behavior it will display. Koko, the famous gorilla who was taught sign language, once blamed her pet kitten for ripping a sink out of the wall.

Editor: Speaking of Koko, you mention in your book that we are no better than apes at detecting lies, with only a 54% accuracy rate. Why is it difficult to tell when we are being lied to?

Meyer: There are three reasons that we are poor lie detectors:

1. Researchers have found that Americans in particular have a truth bias – as a nation we grow up believing George Washington could never tell a lie, and that we are innocent until proven guilty. We tend to believe someone when they say, “Oh, I sent that report two days ago…I wonder why you didn’t get it”.  A truth bias is a good thing for civilization, but it does get in the way of detecting deception.
2. We have a learning curve problem: the best, most convincing lies go undetected, or we don’t uncover them until long afterward. So we don’t learn the distinguishing features of a lie such as the nuances of speech or tone in real time. Its not like tennis where you can instantly adjust your serve each time you see its fallen out of bounds.
3. There is an arms race phenomenon with deceivers. The better we get at detecting them, the better they get at finding new ways to deceive us. We see this with spammers for example who continually find new ways around our firewalls.

Editor: Why do people lie?

Meyer: There are nine strong motives, classified as offensive or defensive. Here they are, the four offensive ones first:

1. To obtain a reward that’s not otherwise easily attainable
2. To gain advantage over another person or situation
3. To create a positive impression and win the admiration of others
4. To exercise powers over others by controlling information

Now the defensive ones:

5. To avoid being punished or to avoid embarrassment
6. To protect another person from being punished
7. To protect yourself from the threat of physical or emotional harm
8. To get out of an awkward social situation
9. To maintain privacy

Editor: In what types of business settings might one encounter an offensive lie as opposed to a defensive lie?

Meyer: We know that unrealistic "stretch goals" encourage deception, so managers should think about the goals they set for their employees carefully. Though there are many types of offensive and defensive lies, the most common lies are to present a good impression, whether in a negotiation, an interview or a meeting.

Editor: Are some people more likely than others to lie?

Meyer: Studies show that extroverts lie more frequently than introverts, and that we lie more to strangers than we lie to co-workers. Studies also show that liars tend to be "high self monitors" who manage and keep their own emotions in check and are able to think strategically about others. Research has also surfaced that indicates rich people and people who are powerful are better liars, and that women are far more uncomfortable being on the receiving end of lies than men.

Editor: In what types of situations are people more likely to lie?

Meyer: The most common lies are lies of omission. This is why information retrieval specialists or any professional that interviews people on the phone or in person for a living needs to learn how to get to the truth and how to recognize signs of deception.

Editor: Are people more likely to lie during phone calls, via e-mail or during face-to-face meetings?

Meyer: The frequency of lying in phone calls is twice that of email. One study conducted over a weeklong period discovered that lies were detected in:

• 37% of phone calls
• 27% of face-to-face meetings
• 21% of IM chats
• 14% of emails

Notice that only the last two forms of communication leave a paper trail. That probably explains their higher incidence of honesty.

Editor: What about white lies and fibs?

Meyer: I make it a point to downplay the effects of white lies – telling your boss her new hairdo is gorgeous when its clearly a hair-don’t is kind. The people who answer “fine” to the “how are you” question when in fact they are miserable at the loss of their job or the acrimony of their divorce are not liars…they are soldiering on, keeping a stiff upper lip, resisting the urge to lapse into a narcissistic rant and tell you ad nauseam just how they are. White lies are part of our social structure. What I am concerned with is deception that harms its recipient – think about Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen or Bernie Madoff – deception  can cost businesses billions. Its dangerous to our country, it can cause the deaths of those that try to defend us and it’s not very helpful to family harmony either.

Editor: In your book, you write about self-deception being a primary form of deception. Can you elaborate on this?

Meyer: Deception is a cooperative act. No one can lie to you without your approval. A lie does not have power by its utterance. Its power lies in someone agreeing to believe it – If you can’t keep your greed or your fantasy of getting rich quick at bay, you are much more likely to buy that can of worms known as a bad investment when someone touts it as the next big thing. Self -deception is where it starts. Despite what many people say, most of us wish we were smarter, richer, better looking, taller, shorter, thinner, more powerful, younger, better executives, golfers, cooks, wives, husbands, parents…and of course the list goes on. Lying – whether to others or to ourselves – is an attempt to bridge that gap, to connect wishes and fantasies of how we wish our world and ourselves should be with how they really are. So know that you are a lot less likely to be duped if you understand your own blind spots. Know yourself well, first and foremost.

Editor: What steps can insurers take to protect themselves?

Meyer: Smart managers arm their employees with interviewing skills, and with deception detection techniques. By doing so they also send a message throughout the organization that integrity is a prime corporate value. Being a Liespotter doesn’t mean being the nitpicky kid in the back saying "your eyebrow twitched…I gotcha!" It means you are someone who has learned a critical modern skill. Managers ultimately need to pay attention to what I call the three T’s:

1. Transparency: being committed to openly communicating goals, concerns, disappointments and expectations.
2. Trust: managers at every level can learn to recognize the signs of deception, weed out the bad apples from the garden and build a much smaller and more significant circle of trust around them that simply won’t let them fail.
3. Tenacity to communicate during uncomfortable times: this is critical – most of us sabotage deceptive situations by going behind someone’s back, acting passive aggressively toward deceitful people via email, or by avoiding conflict altogether. The tenacity to have that uncomfortable conversation is a necessary social skill that mature leaders must develop. And when they do, they infuse an entire organization with trust. Difficult news well delivered still breeds trust. Great news delivered by gossip and hearsay is actually more damaging to morale and organizational culture in the long run.

Editor: Can you explain a few of the basic techniques that insurance companies can use to spot lies?

Meyer: Here are a few tips for starters:

Watch for the fleeting micro-expression in the facial muscles immediately after asking a question in search of an honest answer. That nanosecond of facial reaction – of truth disclosure, actually – is of paramount importance in determining whether the answer you’re about to receive is honest or not.

During the three years I studied lying and deceit I undertook the training in Paul Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System, or FACS, as it’s called. Recently Time magazine voted Ekman one of the hundred most influential Americans for his groundbreaking research that discovered every combination of the fleeting voluntary and involuntary facial expressions that reveal emotion on the human face. You may be an intuitive freak, a kind of genius, and know how to do this naturally, but that capability is very rare, to the point of being nearly nonexistent. The training in liespotting such as I underwent teaches you how to capture and interpret the facial micro-movement under questioning that is uncontrollable even by a sociopath or psychopath. Even a world-class pathological liar can’t control it. Microexpressions of contempt, sadness or anger are easy to learn to recognize.

Also, when someone is over-determined and too emphatic in denying something, that person will often resort to non-contracted language, instead of relaxed language using contractions: e.g., Exhibit A from recent history: Clinton: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Instead of “I didn’t.”

Also, practiced liars under questioning repeat the entire question in order to buy time to formulate their dishonest answer. “What time did I lock the safe and leave the office on the night in question? Let me think. As far as I can recall, it must have been slightly after nine o’clock.” Two more indicators in this statement that should put you the questioner on Red Alert:  In addition to the question repeated in its entirety, the first giveaway is the additional interjection, buying still more time, “Let me think.” The second red flag is the qualifying phrase, “As far as I can recall,” which renders the answer perceptual rather than factual, another form of covering yourself when you’re about to lie. An honest person seeking clarification of a question will invariably repeat only the part of the question not understood fully, as opposed to the whole question.

Watch also for the subject’s upper body going stiff and rigid. It often precedes a lie.

Editor: How accurate is this methodology?

Meyer: Studies show that with beginner level training the average person can increase their accuracy at spotting deception from 54% accuracy to 90% accuracy.

Editor: What can humans accomplish in lie detection that machines can’t?

Meyer: The technology is still quite raw, but it is advancing especially quickly in the area of statement analysis of large amounts of data. The science of spotting facial micro-expressions may well someday be automated. The art of interviewing and getting to the truth is another matter altogether and a good liespotter has both skills.

Editor: Are there any other thoughts that you would like to leave us with?

Meyer: Insurance industry professionals could benefit greatly from deception detection training for their employees. The commercial availability of custom programs enhances the probability of immediate results, something I’m quite passionate about.

Deception Detection expert Pamela Meyer can tell when you’re lying. If it’s not your words that give you away, it’s your posture, eyes, breathing rate, fidgets, and a host of other indicators. Worse, we are all lied to up to 200 times a day, she says, from the white lies that allow society to function smoothly to the devastating duplicities that bring down corporations and break up families.

Working with a team of researchers over several years, Meyer collected and reviewed most of the research on deception that has been published, from such fields as law-enforcement, military, psychology and espionage. She then became an expert herself, receiving advanced training in deception detection, including multiple courses of advanced training in interrogation, microexpression analysis, statement analysis, behavior and body language interpretation, and emotion recognition. Synthesizing this knowledge in her best-selling book Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception, Meyer offers the general public easy to master tools that help us recognize truth from fiction, friend from foe. She blogs regularly and can be contacted at www.LieSpotting.com.

Ms. Meyer holds an MBA from Harvard, a Masters in Public Policy and is a Certified Fraud Examiner.

Arthur C. Clarke published 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. Stanley Kubrick’s landmark film adaptation of that story was released the same year, the year in which Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. I was still 14 years away from my first job in insurance. Neil Armstrong was just one year away from taking the first lunar stroll. In hindsight, it’s amazing how much we’ve learned in 44 years.

At the 1968 Joint Computer Conference, held in San Francisco’s Civic Center, Douglas C. Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute demonstrated a communication system comprising a keyboard, a keypad, a mouse, and windows. He used a word processor and a hypertext system to perform remote, collaborative work with colleagues. In hindsight — and given the extent to which the insurance industry continues to rely on, and be preoccupied with, the very same kinds of communication systems and their digital and mobile progeny — it’s amazing how little we’ve learned in 44 years.

Mouse prototype, circa 1968

Needless to say, the insurance industry continues to encounter many challenges in optimizing the remote, collaborative work of streamlining processes and automating transactions. Some of these challenges are attributable to the fact that we seem forever determined to impose new technologies on old ways of doing business. Some are attributable to the fact that, for reasons both proprietary and superstitious (“Oh, no. We’re not giving up OUR data!”), we seem forever determined to miss the opportunities before us. Others are attributable to the fact that – because of our efforts to impose new technologies on old ways of doing business, even as we miss opportunities for profound, constructive change – insurance and its attendant processes, procedures, and regulations remain highly regulated but stubbornly non-standard. Still more are attributable to the fact that we are, after all, human. We don’t change because we want to. We change because we have to, typically at the point at which our fear of not changing finally exceeds our fear of and aversion to change. All of these challenges, regardless of attribution, are compounded by the fact that the old ways of doing business need to be fixed before they can be improved. Aye, there’s the rub.

Rabbit Food
The old ways of doing business typically are ignored in discussion and promotion of technology. Ironically – and granting the line that must be walked here between old, new, and their respective merits – we might make more of the opportunities we end up missing if we were looking to maximize or optimize present realities, rather than betting the farm on future possibilities. Alas, bigger, better, faster, and more dazzling are always the irresistible carrots.

And speaking of carrots, one of the joys of my line of work is that I have the privilege of witnessing situations as consistently entertaining as they are abidingly instructional. They almost always have to do with the allure of carrots. And they almost always feature characters caught between past ways of doing business, present realities, future possibilities, and the entrancing enticement of making more sales with bigger promises. Here are three such situations, all true. You’ll be able to roughly approximate the time at which each occurred by the matters under discussion:

Situation #1: A company that had already developed a policy administration system was in the process of a developing a claims system. To whet the market’s appetite, as well as to conduct some G2 on the needs of the market, the company invited a group of claims executives to a breakfast meeting, conducted on-site at an industry conference the claims executives were attending anyway. The company dispatched a representative to speak to the esteemed group.

During the meeting, the representative enthusiastically extolled the world-beating functionality of this work-in-progress. His audience was rapt – fully engaged, asking questions, and giving tacit endorsement to every feature and nuance of the proposed system. Shifting gears, pacing across the front of the room like an evangelist at a revival, the representative breathlessly exclaimed that said system would employ wireless technology. Then he paused, dramatically, to let the sun break through the clouds and the seas part. The room went silent, save for footsteps suddenly and awkwardly padding toward the coffee urn.

Sensing his moment and his audience slipping away, the instantly hapless rep asked, “Don’t you think wireless technology is a good idea?” Between pours of steaming joe, many of the executives exchanged sidelong glances. One finally spoke for the group: “Yeah. But all of our adjusters still use dial-up modems.” The representative’s final, sheepish question was: “Would anyone like more orange juice?”

Situation #2: Another policy administration vendor was having a meeting in its president’s office to discuss its product roadmap. (I love that kind of talk.) Let the record show that it didn’t then, nor did it ever thereafter, have a product roadmap. But such matters are mere trivialities in the context of discussions of such gravity and import. The Vice President of Sales and Marketing (yep, a sales guy) was showing the hyperbolic effects of having read one too many articles about the Microsoft .Net platform, a shark sensing blood in the water of his company’s impending transition to the platform. He said, “We have to issue a press announcement about our conversion to .Net.”

With an audible snap, the CIO unfurled his wet blanket, which he wielded as proficiently as a toreador wields his cape. He pointed out to the VP that they were about five years behind the .Net curve and might want to exercise caution in proclaiming – however unwittingly – their technological tardiness. A heated argument ensued between the VP and the CIO, during which the president of the company sat quietly checking the stock ticker on his computer screen. After the two combatants had achieved a level of hyperventilation sufficient to render them temporarily mute, the president turned from his monitor to intone dryly, “I don’t know what you two are getting so worked-up about. Sixty-five percent of our client base is still running DOS.”

Situation #3: Yet a third policy administration vendor was given the opportunity to present at yet another session at yet another industry conference. This writer was given the opportunity to moderate the 60-minute session. The presenter, the company’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing (yep, a sales guy) was magnificent. He expounded on all of the technological minutiae and high-level hypotheticals the ultimate policy administration system would incorporate, taking pains to ensure the system he was describing couldn’t have been more inclusive if it had been delivered from the hand of God.

The audience listened intently for 55 uninterrupted minutes. Yours truly, however, noticed a gentleman in the back of the room becoming increasingly agitated. Fearing the poor man was suffering some acute sort of gastrointestinal disorder, your intrepid scribe watched warily, hoping the gentleman would be able to make a clean getaway, if necessary (no pun intended). His discomposure continued to escalate until – at the 56^th minute – he could contain himself no more. Leaping from his chair he implored, flushed and spluttering, “All we care about is the policy. Does your system print the f@#$ing thing?!”

Why Do We Do This?
How to explain, then, this phenomenon, our predilection for sprinting, without nets, out on technological tightropes? The American historian, Henry Brooks Adams (1838 – 1918), may have come close to proffering a reason when he said:

Man has mounted science, and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of men.

His case could plausibly be made here. But it would be too cynical, even for me. Man is not so much run away with science as he is enamored of it. If sensationalism sells newspapers, science sells promise and hope: “We will be able to do it better, faster, and cheaper, by gum. And if we can’t, hoping we’ll be able to someday will at least keep us happily in the game.”

The French socialist and philosopher, Jean Baudrillard (1929 – 2007), came closer to explaining our infatuation with the technological highwire – and the consequences of the infatuation – when he said:

Computer science only indicates the retrospective omnipotence of our technologies. In other words, an infinite capacity to process data (but only data; i.e. the already given) and in no sense a new vision. With that science, we are entering an era of exhaustivity, which is also an era of exhaustion.

That’s it. The already given. Baudrillard’s phrase exposes the futility of looking at what is in the hope of finding what might be. It juxtaposes the existential promise of what-is-not in the non-phenomenal reality of the bird in the hand. And it explains why we’re all a little pooped. Why wouldn’t we be? The pursuit of Scientific Nirvana is as exhausting as any other chase of the ephemeral. It just might be a little less so if the scientific Holy Grail weren’t a moving bucket of steam.

Full Circle
Looking back to Professors Clarke and Engelbart – and 1968 – it’s amazing to note how much of the fantasy written that year involved computers. Martin Caidin wrote The God Machine, a novel about the development of computer consciousness. Philip K. Dick wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a novel that blurred distinctions between life and mechanism (and was made into the Ridley Scott film, Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford). Michael Frayn wrote A Very Private Life, a novel that presented a dystopian vision of automation. Robert Silverberg wrote “Going Down Smooth”, a short story about a robotic psychiatrist. And John Sladek wrote The Reproductive System, a novel about machines that self-reproduce.

But despite that year’s literary preoccupation with computers, the computer-aided communication and workflow first demonstrated by Professor Engelbart is not the stuff of science fiction. It’s quite real. It’s begotten an industry called insurance technology. And we’re still trying to realize its potential now.

After 44 years of experience, it’s amazing how much we can learn from ourselves.

P.S. Also in 1968, Richard Brautigan wrote the wonderful poem, “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.” This article would seem incomplete without including it:

ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Editor's note: Yesterday's post, "Mirror, Mirror", in which an email was cited anonymously and the names of the protagonists were completely fabricated, was taken down in respectful response to a request from one of those make-believe protagonists. While we were prepared to make a principled defense of our First Amendment rights, the counselors at The Front Line Center for Litigious Inanity noted it was better to be safe than to run the risk of being sued by a fictitious character. We offer this in its stead.

In a recent print edition, BusinessWeek ran a blurb about the evolution of computer keyboards. It turns out fundamental keyboard design and composition have remained largely unchanged since Enrico Royal brought the first typewriter to the United States aboard Christopher Columbus' flagship, Santa Maria. Considering the fact that Enrico was Chris's personal secretary, this revelation goes a long way toward explaining why Chris was able to publish The Pilgrims of Cuba in August of 1492, even though he didn't land there until October. So, while Enrico's keyboard has been perfectly serviceable for more than 800 years, now, according to BusinessWeek, it's about to go the way of the rotary-dial telephone, the Furby, and drive-in movies:

Computer makers have been tinkering with the keyboard. Apple ditched the number pad on its iMac desktop keyboard. Hewlett-Packard unveiled its 5101 netbook with smaller F1-to-F12 function keys — “relics from DOS-era computing,” says Stacy Wolff, HP’s director of notebook product design. (HP researchers found just 10% of consumers use the keys.) And Lenovo doubled the size of the Delete and Escape keys on its T400s ThinkPad. After a year of using key-tracking software to study how its sales and marketing staffers pound their laptops (and after polling 1,000 customers), Lenovo found that people hit “Del” and “Esc” 700 times a week each, more than any other key—often with force. “Hitting these keys represents big, sometimes emotional decisions, like getting rid of a note from your boss,” says David Hill, Lenovo’s head of design.

On the heels of this revelation, The Frontline Center for Typographic Expediency put its own design team to work, creating keyboard shortcuts for the lexicography most commonly used in business and industry. The concept is this: rather than having to type complete words, phrases, or sentences, keyboard shortcuts could be employed to spit out entire items of syntax. While a prototype is not likely to be available until after December 21, 2012, here is a partial list of the linguistic alternatives possible with our re-engineered keyboard:

• CTL+Y = “Yes.” This is the word most commonly used in business settings by subordinates when asked by superiors if a bad idea is good.
• CTL+N = “No.” This is the word most commonly used in business settings by superiors when asked by subordinates if a good idea is good — but only if the superiors are certain the subordinates will get the credit for the good idea.
• CTL+BS = “Everything will be completed on time and under budget.” This sentence is most frequently used when the sender has done absolutely nothing — but already has accepted a better job offer from another firm.
• CTL+PJB = “I’ll have the proposal for you in a jiffy, Boss.” This reassurance is employed if (a) the sender has done nothing but has a template he can adapt in a short time; (b) the sender already has stolen the proposal from a co-worker who’s about to be pretty miffed; or (c) “a jiffy” refers to the next morning, and the sender has a stash of crank for the all-nighter he’s about to pull.
• CTL+MTLB = “Make the logo bigger.” This phrase is a favorite of corporate marketing types who have no idea what’s going on, no objectives they can derive or articulate, and no meaningful input to provide to advertising agencies, marketing firms, and/or internal marketing resources.
• CTL+ITIHTIMB = “I thought I had that in my briefcase.” This gem is a particular favorite of functionaries who print and delete e-mails in the belief that it’s better to “file a hard copy”. Since their filing systems are as finely honed as their computer skills, they promptly misplace the paper.
• CTL+IWHHTPDOTBMHDCATMBSC = “I would have had the proposal done on time, but my hard drive crashed; and the mother board short-circuited.” This sentence is an example of the refined bureaucratic stratagem, klepto vocabularius. It typically is used by corporate non-performers who have the keen ability to listen astutely in meetings with IT personnel, who, for their own parts, use arcane techno-speak to cover for their own non-performance.
• CTL+IWABAASAILHATSTDWTWPTORP = “I was abducted by aliens as soon as I left home, and they stole the document while they were performing the obligatory rectal probe.” While considerably more scatological than the rest of our keyboard shortcuts, this one is not a smokescreen for bureaucratic malingering. It is, however, germane only to environmentally and psychologically kindred spirits of Gary “Area 51″ McKinnon.

With the design team finalizing the features of our new keyboard — and with cloud computing becoming an ever-more popular term among people who have no business using it — the technicians at The Frontline Center for Typograhic Expediency also are putting the finishing touches on the prototype depicted to the right, which will render keyboards obsolete. Rather than typing — or having a telekinetic chip implanted in one’s noggin — one simply thinks into the cloud formed within this baby. The thoughts are captured by micro-computer technology within the the rounded hinge-covers on either side of the shroud and electronically transmitted to the word-processing program of one's choice for transcription.

The jury, of course, is out. But we like to think our new keyboard and our Cloud Shroud (patent pending) are just two instances of the myriad ways in which The Frontline is doing its part to ensure, for all of us, less work through technology.

The results of a five-year study on suicide trends, which the don't-worry-be-happy crowd surely ignored, were published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology more than two years ago. They indicate people are more likely to commit suicide on Wednesdays than on any other day of the week. The reasons for the popularity of mid-week take-outs remain the subject of speculation. But what really remains to be formulated is a remedy for the rising tide of mid-week suicides. At The Frontline Center for Attitudinal Attenuation, we don't think happy articles and lists of Happiness Best Practices are going to get it done. Rather, we believe a number of common-sensible things can be instituted to get life and limb over Hump Day. And we strongly encourage all work environments to adopt them:

1. Try using a different calendar. Most of the world uses the Gregorian Calendar. So, while it does have some advantages for keeping things relatively organized and in synch with the folks with whom we interact, it doesn’t present much opportunity for variety, to say nothing of avoiding Wednesdays. The workweek always is preceded by the Sunday Night Dreads. It always begins on Monday. Wednesday always follows Tuesday and precedes Thursday. The routine becomes existentially numbing. And before you can say, “Honey, do I need a permit for this thing?” people are … well … you know. At the Center, each of us uses a different calendar. Because we all use the same clocks, we’re able to maintain some semblance of a daily schedule. But some of us might be celebrating Ground Hog Day the same day others are celebrating Arbor Day or Our Lady of Guadalupe Day. So, we never quite fall into predictable routines. We have an endless variety of things to discuss around the water cooler. And no one has any idea what day of the week it is. As a result, no one’s taken himself out of the gene pool here since Albert Murfwhiffle stuck his head in our new stapler. And he was only trying to demonstrate that was easy.

2. Dress differently from the standard dress code. Before we adopted the multi-calendar approach, some of our folks used to adopt all manner of attire on Wednesdays. Merlene Grimbutz used to dress like a tyrolean barmaid, which certainly made suicide the last thing on the men’s minds. Fred Steubing would typically show up dressed as a hot dog or a can of lunch meat. And Albert Murfwhiffle would arrive in a straitjacket, making Wednesday the one day of the week his wife drove him to work.

3. Swap job responsibilities. This is a never-ending source of mirth and frivolity for us. Perhaps our most successful instance was the day Steve Mildew from IT Operations swapped jobs with Mildred Blitz in Payroll. Somewhere around 10:30 that morning, our entire computer network went down for the day, and everyone received a $5,000 bonus. What a blast. There were some mixed results, however. The good news: after backtracking through the math, we were able to determine that at least twelve babies were conceived that day. The bad news: the paternity-test results were quite disconcerting to many of the pregnant parties’ spouses. Albert Murfwhiffle’s wife gave him the Big Sayonara when he was ordered to pay child support for Myrtle Lilywhite’s twins.

4. Wear boxing gloves. Manual dexterity is like electricity, cell service, and underwear: you never know how much you rely on it until you have to get by without it. Since everyone will be sharing the disadvantage, wearing boxing gloves can be an endless test of resourcefulness, a wonderful team-building exercise, and a welcome source of amusement. There is collective distress: users of computers, smart phones, and PDAs probably suffer most, followed by chronic nose-pickers. And there are individual losses: Albert Murfwhiffle was knocked out by Gladys Peabody in the third round.

5. Communicate with each other using only hand gestures. We tried this just once because we agreed those of Italian descent were at a distinct advantage. The hearing-impaired – or those who’d mastered sign language for other reasons – came in a distant second. Albert Murfwhiffle mistakenly wore boxing gloves that day. But we’re not aware that anyone noted a discernible difference in his ability to make himself understood.

As a last resort – since we share just one human condition, since no problem is unique – maybe we can try talking to each other a bit more. Even if it’s just on Wednesdays, maybe we can try caring about each other a bit more, looking out for each other a bit more, making each other feel a bit less alone in our suffering.

If not, take the day off. Take your personal brand with you.

Figure 1: The Rise and Fall of Personal Computing, Asymco.com (January 17th, 2012)

The data suggest profound disruption. Smartphones are the most quickly adopted technology in history. We now spend more time in mobile apps than on the PC Web. But has mobile adoption turned industries upside down? In the last decade, the internet has upended the music industry, advertising industry, media, among others. It has created new entrants into the insurance industry and transformed how traditional insurance companies acquire and retain customers.

But if one looks at the impact of mobile, the opposite appears true—only 2% of online commerce came through mobile in 2011^[1]. And when one looks at the impact of mobile on the insurance industry, it’s only to the extent that it extends those trends already started by the Web. Mobile technologies in and of themselves have not had meaningful impact.

How can adoption of mobile technology be so dramatic yet its impact almost negligible? The answer to this question has direct implications on an insurance company’s mobile strategy.

Some historical context may help answer the question.

We sit at the precipice of a golden era in which technology will transform society…again. In a few years, Web and mobile development trends will merge to create an experience far more profound than either alone. Many services will be accessed primarily by mobile users; Facebook saw 33% of its updates from mobile in 2011. More importantly, we will see the profound effect that having a computer, the internet, and a dozen always-on sensors in your pocket has on the Web itself. It will be an era of living our lives on the Web and the Web permeating our physical space.

When the Web first entered the mainstream, it was described as the “Information Superhighway”, an electronic, always up-to-date encyclopedia of knowledge (Web 1.0 in the table above). Even the terminology we use today reflects the notion of electronic books—we visit web pages and create bookmarks. It was up to established authorities to create that content, whether food recipes or goods available for purchase online.

A decade later, far more web content was being created by individuals than by organizations—we dubbed this evolution Web 2.0. While Web 1.0 was about explosive growth in readers of the Web, Web 2.0 was an explosion in the number of writers of the Web through blogging, social networking, user-generated content, and enterprise collaboration applications.

In the last two decades, the Web has disrupted countless industries. It’s difficult to imagine life in the modern world without the Web. It is certainly the most significant technological invention since at least the semiconductor.

Mobile technologies, on the other hand, have not yet made this type of impact, despite rapid adoption by users. To understand why, mobile adoption must be understood in the context of the larger trend of Web adoption.

Mobile 2.0 born of the Web: 2007 to 2012
In the last five years, nearly everything of importance in mobile to the mainstream has been about enabling access to – and providing richer interactions with – services also available on the Web.

Mobile 2.0 started with the release of Apple’s iPhone in 2007 and revolutionized the mobile industry by:

• Making the end-user experience paramount
• Enabling the real Web through Mobile Safari
• Creating developer frenzy through the App Store
• Extracting unprecedented economics from a wireless carrier (AT&T)^[2]

The open-source Google Android platform subsequently allowed the leaders of Mobile 1.0 to compete with Apple; and today it is the fastest-growing personal computing platform, mobile or otherwise.

But why is Mobile 2.0 about the Web when so much of the conversation around iPhone and Android devices is about native applications?

First, we need to examine the types of activity that native mobile applications enable for insurance customers today, which are largely the same ones already possible through the company’s desktop website. The experience has been vastly improved, so investment in native applications is clearly important, but it’s still about access to services already available on the Web.

Second, hybrid apps—native apps with embedded web technologies—are becoming the standard  as newer apps are being developed  by market leaders using the hybrid pattern. Apple’s iBooks and the Apple Store app are hybrid applications and Facebook has announced that they are converting their pure native iPhone application to a hybrid version. Thus, the oft-heard debate about using HTML5 vs. native app technologies is short-lived. Most companies will have an HTML5 experience for the browser and a similar experience in an app that adds features only available on the native platform.

The combination of these two factors suggests that Mobile 2.0 is really about the Web and enabling better access to it from all devices. It has been more about evolution than disruption in its own right.

In this light, two recommendations should guide insurers for the next couple of years:

Build One Web. Insurers need to make users happy no matter how they connect with your business. Users require a single set of functionality no matter how they connect, yet the user-experience of that functionality needs to be tailored for the specific screen size (tablet vs. mobile), input method (touch vs. mouse), and use case (kiosk user making purchase vs. PC Web user browsing for information). The same user is utilizing different touchpoints and will expect largely the same functionality. Users expect One Web, whether accessing from a PC, a mobile phone (via native app or browser), tablet, television, kiosk, or whatever else may come.

At the level of IT/implementation, One Web can have many forms: Responsive Web, web services (often enabled by services-oriented architectures^[3]), and web transformation technologies. And given the growing trend of building hybrid applications, One Web also includes native applications.

Focus on learning. Many insurers have started creating One Web, and as they begin delivering better experiences to mobile users, their primary focus should be about learning what users want to do while mobile. Learn by watching the behavior of mobile users and by experimenting with internally generated ideas, independent of what customers are actually doing. Learning should be the primary focus. If the focus is solely on generating an ROI, you may find yourself unprepared for the radical impact of mobile usage in the years to come.

Web+Mobile 3.0 will disrupt the insurance industry: 2013 and beyond
Mobile 2.0 allow us to express ourselves on the Web. But Web+Mobile 3.0 will be about living our lives while constantly connected to the Web. It’s the truly disruptive impact of what it means to have a computer, the internet, and smart sensors in your pocket at all times. It might be called the Analog Web. It’s a world in which the smartphone’s sensors are bringing the Web deeper into our lives. Early examples are apps that utilize a mobile device’s camera (Instagram, Red Lazer, or Atol^[4], an augmented reality commerce app that allows you to try on new glasses), microphone (Shazam), or location sensors (Highlight). But increasingly, these sensory nodes will be always-on, passively capturing data in real-time and alerting us proactively about ourselves and our surroundings. For example, the music app Spotify passively posts to Facebook the tracks to which you are listening.

Mobile technology will be the key enabler of this third evolution of the Web. So much so that later this decade it will be difficult to tell the difference between web channels that are separate today: PC web, mobile web, and native applications. By then, it will be almost impossible to fathom the Web of today, one that needs to be “visited”. The Analog Web is always-on, always-listening, embedded everywhere and interacting with us naturally as we move about.

This type of mobile technology will be even more disruptive than the Web has been in the last two decades.

Retail will be transformed. Mobile will blur the distinction between online and in-store retail.

Figure 2: Apple Store App

Apple’s “Apple Store” app, used for buying MacBooks and other Apple products, is a small pointer to our retail experience in the future. Most of the time, the app acts as a standard commerce app, allowing users to purchase items available on apple.com. But when a customer walks into a store, the online commerce app animates away and the screen in Figure 2 appears allowing the customer to scan physical items and pay using his credit card on file at apple.com. The app also displays the number of customers in line at the Genius Bar and wait times for getting support or attending a workshop. Similar features would be useful to AAA customers as they enter a branch office.

With Amazon’s PriceCheck and Prime shipping, the company hopes to turn the retail stores of the world into showrooms for its millions of products. Checking prices on smartphone is already starting to have an effect on retail pricing as shoppers are empowered with information. Customers are bringing the Web into stores.

To combat this trend, offline retailers are bringing the Web to its customers. Retailers are arming their store associates with tablets that allow customers to browse items that complement those they are currently holding.

As mobile payments become popular, insurers have the ability to add truly unique capabilities. For instance, a personal auto carrier may allow customers to pay for authorized car repairs directly with their iPhone app.

Health and well-being will be transformed. Mobile health tracking devices that sync with smartphones will bring about a revolution in how Americans think about being healthy. Today, early-adopters are using devices such as Fitbit, Basis Band, Nike+ Fuelband, and Zio to better understand their activity levels, food intake, sleep quality, stress levels, and moods. In a few years, when the devices become more convenient, ingestible, more capable, and we better understand how to use the data to improve well-being, it will become normal for people to wear trackers. The technology will provide new levels of awareness: “I consume more sugar when I don’t sleep enough” and “I get stressed out whenever I meet with John at work.” And it can enable smart reminders:  “Eat Item #7, Ahi Tuna, at the restaurant in which you are currently seated; it’s the best balance to your meals earlier today.”

We will transform from a society that fixes illnesses to one that prevents them through lifestyle changes.

And health insurers have the power to fundamentally improve the American public’s health by promoting healthy habits. Imagine giving customers a discount on premiums for demonstrating healthy activities such as walking five miles a week.

Your organization will be transformed. The transformation of the Web being always-on and always aware will create profound opportunities for insurers. Agents will be more closely linked to policy holders, provide better service, be more informed and make decisions quicker.

Insurance products are complex. While consumers are far more informed about insurance products than they were a decade ago, agents will for many years continue to play a crucial role in helping customers make decisions.

Imagine a visitor to your website expressing interest in a policy. He has questions and asks to call an agent. Instead of being routed to a national call center, he’s routed to a local agent who happens to be on the road nearby. The agent, via font-facing camera, is able to have a video conversation and answer the prospective customer’s questions. The customer enjoys the service, and the agent offers to stop by to meet face-to-face minutes later to close the transaction.

Insurers should prepare for these profound transformations by creating One Web. Many insurance companies are not ready for this kind of change, nor should they be. User behavior is not there yet. Companies should focus their limited resources on ensuring that they deliver One Web to their users, no matter how they connect. One Web is a prerequisite to understanding how to participate in the truly disruptive business models and technologies enabled by mobile in 2013 and beyond.

Conclusion
Despite the unprecedented adoption of smartphones, mobile technologies are not yet disruptive to the insurance industry and have not changed the dynamics of business in their own right. Today, mobile impact is solely an extension of the impact caused by the Web. This is because Mobile 2.0 (2007—2012) is a period in which companies are attempting to extend what has worked for them on the Web to mobile devices. It’s been about reacting to the tremendous growth in mobile usage by extending access to services already possible on the Web.

Insurers should embrace this growth in mobile usage by ensuring that their web infrastructure is equipped to create a consistent experience for customers no matter how the customers choose to connect with their insurance company. Insurers should work to deliver One Web, focusing resources on core offerings such as customer acquisition, billing and account management, policy management and claims support. Once insurers have started this effort and begin delivering better experiences to mobile users, their primary focus should then be on learning what users want to do while mobile.

Those insurers that work to build One Web and focus on learning will be best prepared for the radical impact of mobile usage in the years to come.

Ajay Kapur has been involved with mobile since 2002, when he left his job investing in startups on Sand Hill Road to write apps for the first smartphones. The mobile companies he founded have created apps downloaded by tens of millions of users and have generated billions of page views. Ajay is currently CEO of Moovweb, creator of the Moovweb Experience Layer, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that unifies web development across the desktop Web and all emerging touchpoints, allowing businesses to easily keep pace with the Post-PC Era. Customers of the PaaS include Walmart, Kroger, Macy’s, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Redbox, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, and dozens of others. He grew up in SF Bay Area and earned an MBA from Stanford and bachelor’s degrees in Physics and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.

I have to trust our subject matter experts/technical folks to ensure product details, technical specs, etc. are properly represented in collateral and campaigns. However, the trust seldom seems to extend back my way in terms of accomplishing what I need to do from a branding/marketing angle. In my mind, it is a fairly straightforward conflict resulting from the fact that us creative marketing types focus on abstractions, whereas the technical folks focus on endless exceptions. As a result, marketing copy gets chewed up and rewritten to the point that it might make absolute perfect sense – but loses meaning. As another example, I choose artwork for brochures that is visually compelling and conforms to a common theme. On the other hand, the technical folks want photos that are literal representations of their services. So, whereas we focus on engagement, the technical folks focus on right/wrong, up/down, zero/one.

In general terms, our friend’s predicament is the result of his subject-matter experts (SME) ignoring Immutable Rules 1 – 3. If you ignore those, you also have the luxury of ignoring the fact that your marketing materials and messages – along with everything else you do and say – are reflections of your brand. That, in turn, gives you the luxury of converting your materials and messages – which should be audience-serving – into some combination of a popularity contest and a fashion show – which are self-serving. In more specific terms, the wicket gets even stickier.

Immutable Rule #4: If technical people could communicate with non-technical people, God wouldn’t have invented marketing.

Left to their own devices, technical people will employ terms and taxonomies, the nature of which they know and love – and by which they’re comforted and reassured of their status as SMEs; that is, technical. And the more arcane the better. According to The Front Line Center for Genetic Anomalies, that's because technical people experience congenitally limited functionality of informatio sententia, the gene that enables the experience and expression of conceptual thought. This is why technical people are highly capable of recognizing, eating, and writing manuals about the construction of a sandwich — even a dagwood — without being able to conjure, communicate, or depict the delectable essence of the sandwich or care what it tastes like.

Immutable Rule #5: If technical people could communicate with non-technical people, God wouldn’t have invented marketing.

As our friend’s note indicates, it’s not just terminological and syntactical impairment from which our technical teammates suffer. They seem to be visually challenged, as well. While no specific diagnosis has yet been made for this condition, its symptoms include difficulty simplifying; a preference for mazes, rather than straight lines; and penchants for screen shots and arcane diagrams in lieu of evocative illustrations or engaging photographs. This is why, when employed as car salesmen, technical people will show prospects the diagram on the left, instead of pointing the prospect to the item in the manufacturer’s brochure that says, “Anti-Lock Braking System.”

Immutable Rule #6: If technical people could communicate with non-technical people, God wouldn’t have invented marketing.

Our friend’s allusion to his technical cohorts being concerned about right/wrong is close but not completely accurate. The fact is they’re more concerned about right/left because, as indicated by the predominance of their left-brain thinking, the left sides of the cerebella of technical people are highly enlarged. That’s why all technical people eat, bat, throw, write, and draw diagrams with their left hands. It’s why their left eyes are significantly larger than their right eyes. It’s why so many of them prefer to drive in the United Kindom, rather than in the United States. And because of the added weight in the left sides of their crania, it’s why they list to the left when they ambulate, causing them to walk in counter-clockwise circles.

Epidemiology

As it pertains to marketing and communication, all of these terminological, visual, and left-brain matters precipitate a phenomenon called B.C. Syndrome (BCS). BCS derives its name from one particular episode in the B.C. comic strip (created by the late Johnny Hart). In the pertinent episode, B.C. and Peter are out for a stroll. As they walk, they have the following exchange:

Peter: Der shnickety blim za milfer blat.

B.C.: What?

Peter: I invented a new language so no one will know what I’m talking about.

B.C.: What for? You were batting a thousand with the old one.

The technical folks who plague our friend – and who similarly haunt marketing types across the universe – don’t create new languages. But they precipitate BCS by draining the languages we already have of suggestive meaning, of nuance and style, of voice and personality, of conceptual abstraction, of the abillity to engage the imagination, of the power to persuade and convince. They denote, rather than connote. As a result, trying to digest their prose is like trying to eat sawdust.

They Know Not What They Do

But let’s not be unduly harsh to our technical tormentors. While their brains may be a little off kilter, their hearts are just fine; and those hearts are definitely in the right place. Technical folks just need not to be put in charge of marketing or marketing decisions. Then, with a little guidance, a little patience, a few kind words, constant reminders of Immutable Rules 1 – 6, mined hallways, and armed sentries posted at the door of the Marketing Department, people like our friend can go about their work in peace and conceptual harmony. And our abstruse antagonists can while away their minutiae as it suits their own punctilious predilections. With any luck, they may even heed the words of George Eliot, from her novel, Middlemarch:

He said he should prefer not to know the sources of the Nile, and that there should be some unknown regions preserved as hunting-grounds for the poetic imagination.

Author's note: Off topic and off schedule, I publish this today to commemorate the passing of a writer whose like we'll never see again. He found his tone, his style, and his persona in Hell's Angels. He established them in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He honed them in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72. He spent his life trying to sustain the tone and style. He lost his life trying to maintain the persona: Gonzo Journalist. It was too big, even for him.

Hunter Thompson died by his own hand seven years ago today. I found out at about 10:00 the next morning. Despite my brute incomprehension of what I was reading, it struck me as a rather Thompsonesque moment: It was snowing – bleak, cold. I'd gone to my home page to check the local weather forecast, and HST's death was one of the AP headlines.

My first thought was of reading Thompson’s work, of all the reverent conversations I’d had with friends and colleagues about Thompson’s incisive intellect and his ruthless honesty. Those memories stay with me always. The fact that we often idealized his work – that it made us wish to be possessed of the same kind of apocalyptic voice, to be the same kind of incendiary conscience – sometimes haunts me.

My second thought was of the price that always seems to be exacted from those endowed with such prophetic voices, visions, or propensities. In our conversations, my friends and I had talked about the likelihood that Thompson would have been killed had he lived in another place or time. We never extended that topic to the likelihood that it becomes impossible to live – like Jesus, Socrates, Chet Baker, Frederick Exley, and Jerzy Kosinski, or those minced by the celebrity machine like Jimi Hendrix, Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston, et al. – when one is possessed of such voices, visions, or propensities.

It's not the possession that undoes the possessed. It's the things neglected, sacrificed, or disdained in deference to the possession that conspire to take them from lives so singularly unbalanced. It's easier to withdraw than it is to reach out. It's easier to scorn than it is to accept or to be accepted. It's easier to wrap oneself in work, ideology, and compulsion than it is to be vulnerable and to belong. What appears to be courage reveals itself to be a frequently fatal fear.

The possessed represent for us many things – ideals, extremes, taboos, single-mindedness we can't afford, personal asceticism we can't abide, a lack of courage and self-awareness we can't tolerate. That's why we marry, have children, form friendships, compromise, trust, and say 'yes' to the whole ride, regardless of our inability to like or control every dip and turn. Drugs, alcohol, and myriad other self-abuses are not the prices of imbalanced lives: they're the band-aids and the crutches. They're not the coping: they're the obliteration.

Thompson chose to obliterate himself. I miss his voice. His death taught me the lesson of his life.

We are not going to get any traction unless we have the following in operation:

1. Monthly newsletters going out to all our clients and prospects about our products and successes
2. Advertising in an insurance publication
3. Website that is “high tech” (after all we are a high tech company, right?)
4. White papers on PanaceaOne and SilverBulletOne
5. Drip marketing campaign
6. Product branding and positioning statement.

We need HELP!

The situation evoked in the email is as common as it is unnecessary – common because it reflects consistent misconceptions about brand, its relation to marketing communication, strategic hierarchy, and marketplace positioning; unnecessary because a simple inversion of the order in which tactical elements and strategic activities were perceived and presented would have put the gentleman, his intentions, his company, and the program he seeks on the right track.

By the Numbers

Given the order of the items presented in the email, it would not be illogical to presume the company already was thriving, at least judging by its lead-off item. Here’s why:

Newsletters: If the company has achieved enough successes to generate adequate content for monthly newsletters – to provide a meaningfully and persuasively engaging read every 30 days – why does it need help? If the company has achieved so much success with its clients, don’t those clients know? Aren't they the source of that success? Why tell them again? Is it necessary to preach to the converted? If the newsletter intends to create constructive account-management and new upselling opportunities then, by all means, send a newsletter to clients. Routine, ongoing communication with clients is necessary to communicating the work the company is doing to deliver continually increasing value, to maintaining and contributing to client relationships. But the messages delivered to clients (on the books) must be different from those delivered to prospects (in the pipeline). Otherwise, neither audience will consider itself satisfactorally served.

Advertising: If any tactic is a combination of a red herring and a hot potato, it's advertising. Gastronomy aside, it can’t be judged to be good or bad in the absence of context. What are the objectives the advertising is intended to serve? Brand awareness? Product/service promotion? Special offers? Once those things are determined, what is the nature of the audience? Technical? Business? Operations? Finance? Especially with advertising, expectations without objectives can be as disappointing as they are costly.

Website: In relation to websites, high tech can be used interchangeably with cool stuff. They translate to precisely the same thing: form over substance. In the absence of the objectives that would have precipitated meaningful content, companies often hold the mistaken conviction that their websites must contain two things. First, they positively must contain gimmicks, be they Flash animation, news tickers, video testimonials, flashing banners, and/or anything else the companies can think of. While these things are intended to attract attention, they don’t. They won't. They do, on the contrary, distract attention because the first things visitors want to know are these: Am I in the right place? Can I get what I want? High bounce rates on home pages indicate the cool stuff trumped the right stuff at the expense of new prospects and new entrants into the sales pipeline.

Second, high-tech websites must contain everything the companies they serve can think to say, in response to every question they have ever been asked, in any context or conversation, in no particular order, In no coherent and/or consistent design, and in every conceivable place it can be shoehorned in. Core messages? Nope. Contemplation of accessibility, navigability, sensibility, or readability? Not right now, thanks. Any regard for the user, or what he might want or need? No. That's not what we want. Bolt it on, stuff it in, stitch it up, and let's go. The result is the Frankensite, a monstrous and repulsive thing, indeed.

White Papers: Perhaps nothing is so misunderstood as the white paper. White papers are intended to be technical documents, written in technical terms, for technical audiences. Because they’re so misunderstood, one can never be sure if those asking for whitepapers actually want a brochure, a sell sheet, an advertorial, or simply some sort of narrative explication of how and why fire, wheels, sliced bread, bottled beer, the hammock, the Flowbee, and flush toilets can’t hold candles to whatever they're selling. Like websites, white papers all too frequently exist regardless of their raisons d'être.

Worse, companies asking for white papers typically assume the non-technical visitors to their marketing websites (as supposed to some sort of technical portals or other access media) will want to download the paper from there. When website analytics indicate no such downloads are taking place, the companies who asked for the white papers typically blame the white paper (which no one has read), the website (which no one can navigate), or the subject matter (which no one cares about). They typically don't acknowledge that the white paper's whiff was attributable to the fact that it was the wrong message, in the wrong medium, for the wrong audience.

Drip Marketing Campaign: This typically means a particular form of direct marketing, in which a story is told to a target audience, in narrative increments, over a pre-determined period of time. It’s by no means a bad idea or an ineffective tactic. In fact, traditional direct mail is likely to make a comeback as the response rates for direct email continue to decline. But, as it has been here, direct mail frequently becomes a horse-leading cart, rolling out ahead of any strategic purpose, cohesively constructed story, or definitive direction.

Product Branding and Position Statement: This one’s the heartbreaker because it comes so close and misses so narrowly. Had this been #1, rather than #6 – and had it omitted Product – it would have teed up the strategic hierarchy under which the five remaining tactics could have been prioritized, created, executed, and implemented in objective-achieving order.

Go Fetch the Cavalry, Tonto!

Perhaps the gentleman who sent the email, and his company, can be helped. We won't know till the horse soldiers reach him. And I don’t mean to hedge my bet. But a surprising number of companies realize they need help, ask for it, pay for it – then won’t take it. ("But that's not the way we've done it before.") All we can do is be the faithful companion, riding across the lonesome prairie to summon the necessary reinforcements, hoping we get there in time. In the meantime, that solitary seeker of assistance is The Lone Ranger. Hi, Yo, Silver!