Control the Controllables: How Elite Agencies Create Predictable Performance

Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. This is the podcast for independent insurance agency leaders to raise the bar, to challenge traditional thinking, and ultimately become your best version possible. My name is Brent Kelly. I am your host, and today I'm absolutely gonna challenge your thinking. I'm going to talk about a concept that you may have heard before in some way, but I really want to take this from an operational and organizational level in terms of leadership. In fact, I did a podcast episode a couple years ago that I talked about this story and this concept around controlling the controllables. In fact, maybe you've heard that concept before, and I'm not gonna share the entire story, but my high school basketball coach many years ago during a very close and important game and during a time when things seemed to be getting away from us as a team, said this, gentlemen, you've got to control the controllables. You can't control the outside things, the refs, the fans, the other team, but all you can control is yourself. Now, at that time, and as I've introduced the story, in fact, told the story in particular to production teams, I really used that story as a method to share things around effort, attitude, Hustle, focus. And that is 100% true. But over time, I've realized that most agency leaders still haven't fully recognized or learned this lesson. Because when you think about controlling the controllables, yes, the attitude, the effort, the hustle, the focus, that is all part of it. But when you think about agency operations and organizations, sometimes we run into things like staffing issues. Market disruption, carrier pressure, economic uncertainty, AI or technology changes, increasing complexity, external conditions. They absolutely matter, but leadership responsibility still exists. So here's a phrase I want you to consider as I dive into today's podcast. Elite organizations stop obsessing over external chaos and they start building internal systems that create predictable performance. I'll say that one more time. Elite organizations stop obsessing over external chaos and they start building internal systems that create predictable performance. Now, this isn't true for every leader, but from what I've noticed in conversations and communication with leaders, many leaders spend too much emotional energy on things like the market. Competitors, staffing shortages, industry conditions. Yeah, those are all true. And they definitely have impact on agency performance, agency growth, revenue, profit. Yes. But elite leaders focus in different ways. Understanding those other things that I mentioned are part of the equation. Their focus of elite agency leaders is this. Standards, accountability, development, alignment, communication, execution. That's the idea of controlling the controllables. Leadership is the management of focus. Leadership is the management of focus. So what I wanna do is I wanna go through some different areas of leadership in terms of controlling The controllables. Now you as an agency leader, you might hit some of these right on. We're doing a great job. Awesome. You might find one or two that maybe you've got some weak areas. So take this for food for thought. And again, have notes ready to go. And as I go through this, what jumps out at you from an agency leadership perspective? What are the areas that maybe you're not controlling the controllables? So let's start with the first part, controlling your team development. Too often agencies complain about people while they have no intentional development system. In fact, a question I've asked on this podcast, I, I ask for agency leaders during initial conversation is, what is the growth and development plan for your number one asset? Which by the way, is your people. See, hiring is not development. Hope is not a strategy. And most agencies, they lack coaching cadence. They lack scorecards. They lack role play or low-risk practice as we talk about at the Sitkins Group, where we're actually doing things in the agency to get better at skills. They lack accountability structure. And development must become operational. It's part of the agency culture because see, strong employees get frustrated when weak employees and weak standards are tolerated. You want to find, you want to keep, you want to develop the best people. Well, who are you coaching to? What's your standards? Because culture is reinforced through repetition. So now in each of these sections, I want to ask you a few questions to consider. The power of this podcast. Is there certain areas that we could get better in? So here's some questions for you to consider as the agency leader. What is our actual development plan? How well and how often are our sales leadership or team leadership or managers coaching? Which coaching is helping people get from this place to a higher place, wherever they are today, to whatever they want to go. Here's a question to consider: are expectations clear? It's very hard to be accountable when you don't know exactly the accountability standards or metrics. And here's a big one: what behaviors are reinforced consistently? Now, we believe at the Sitkins Group that you've got to know your numbers, of course, but you manage Behavior. So what behaviors are reinforced consistently? See, when development is weak, your strongest employees begin to subsidize your weakest employees. One of the things that we believe in at the highest level, there are subsidy issues in agencies. And one of those is we often have high-performing team members that subsidize low-performing team members. See, most organizations do not have a talent problem. They have a development problem. That's a different question and a different solution to that. Does our agency, oh, we have a talent problem. We have a talent problem. Maybe, or maybe, maybe you have a development problem. You know, leaders often say, and I've heard this all the time, I've done podcasts around this, we need better people. It's a fair question, but many organizations have never fully developed the people they already have. So questions to consider in terms of controlling the controllables. Let's go to another topic, controlling producer productivity. Producer productivity. This is one of the key areas that we believe in and we teach around is getting producers in the green zone. That's the performance zone. That's being in the game. Leadership cannot improve what it refuses to measure Honestly, see, awareness creates accountability. Often what we find in agencies when we begin to work with agencies and we go through our coaching and training development programs is that the first problem is they weren't even aware of key things that they realized they should be aware of. I didn't even think about that our team isn't in the game. So producers need greater visibility into key things. Now, maybe you're doing some of these, maybe not. But they need visibility into pipeline, pipeline development. They need visibility into are they doing things that generate results or are they just busy being busy? They need to understand how many appointments is required for them to hit their goal. In fact, we just did this exercise on one of our training programs last week. Oh my gosh, I didn't even realize how many appointments I needed. Well, that's really important in terms of awareness, which also includes closing ratio, conversion ratio. Green zone activity. Because here's the deal. Personality often hides poor production. And maybe you've had this. I love people. I really do. I love people. I want to see the best in people. But oftentimes, and maybe you've had this, whether it's a sales meeting or a conversation with a producer in particular, is that because they have such a good, dynamic, strong, fun personality, it can often cover or hide poor performance. Here's another note: activity without intentionality just simply creates busyness. And as far as controlling the controllables, coaching is different than rescuing. Your job as an agency leader— again, whatever your specific role is— is not to rescue people. Your job is to coach them. And there is a difference because elite organizations standardize performance Expectations. There are certain standards or expectations that are normal in our agency. It's not some people do this and some people do this. Now, don't get me wrong, right? You can earn as you grow some more flexibility and freedom, as you should, but elite organizations have standards that are non-optional. So here's some questions to consider in terms of producer productivity. Do producers truly know their numbers? Is there accountability or simply encouragement? Are producers spending enough time in green zone activity, simply being in the game? Is that looked at? Is that understood? Are leaders tolerating inconsistency because someone is likable. In many agencies, 2 or 3 producers quietly carry the economics of the entire organization. In fact, one of our common things that we talk about is we cannot allow profitable producers to subsidize unprofitable producers. That is not a production model when we have a few producers that subsidize the rest of the organization. That's a subsidy model, and that's where agencies get in trouble. So in many agencies, we often see 2 or 3 producers that are quietly carrying the economics of the entire organization. Now see, that's not a production model. That's not a success model. In fact, I've seen agencies go, well, we hit our numbers this year, which is great, but realize it's 2 or 3 producers that really wrote all the business and we have 7 or 8 or 9 or whatever the number is that didn't hit their goal. Because the bottom line is this, that's where the subsidy model comes in. And we talk about this all the time in our programs is that we cannot allow profitable producers to subsidize The unprofitable producers, and you cannot improve what leadership refuses to measure honestly. All right. And that all comes back down to standards and accountability. All right. Next section, I wanna talk about controlling the controllables is also about controlling client segmentation. See, not all revenue creates capacity. And if we're not controlling this controllable, our agency may be growing, but we're actually getting busier and busier and less efficient and maybe even less profitable. See, some clients strengthen the organization, the agency. Some clients create operational chaos. Now we talk about this. In fact, for people that are members of the Sitkins Network, one of the first things that we do is we run a Sitkins Principle Analysis. We look at all the clients. And we've categorized them into 4 tiers. And then we also talk about how the team works with those tiers, what it looks like, where the focus and where we can free up capacity, because remember, time is your only diminishing asset. So when we look at tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, tier 4, tier 3 and tier 4 being typically very unprofitable business, we understand that these 2 bottom tiers often fragment service teams. It creates a ton of reactive work. It overwhelms communication. It often destroys capacity. I don't have any time. We're too busy. Maybe you've heard that in your agency. Leaders must intentionally define a few things. Who is our ideal client? What are our minimum standards? That can be terms of type of client or revenue. What are our profitability expectations? Because if we don't define those, well, who will? Because growth without alignment creates exhaustion. So some questions to consider in terms of controlling the controllables in terms of client segmentation and maximizing client profitability. What business, and it could be more than one, but what business are we intentionally trying to write? Have we really defined that? Are we subsidizing the low-value relationships? Just like I said, producers subsidizing nonprofit producers. We often have clients or profitable clients that are subsidizing our unprofitable clients. Here's a question to consider. How much service time is consumed by the wrong accounts? What about E&O issues? What percentage of revenue comes from your tier 1 clients? Do you know? I'll give you a hint. It's probably greater than 80% of your revenue. Right? So here's the bottom line. Some revenue creates capacity, but some revenue actually destroys it. Many agencies, in fact, a lot of the agencies that I initially talked to, they really don't have a staffing problem, although they will say that we need more people, we don't have enough people, whatever it is, they actually have a client selection problem. They're not addressing the right issue. They're putting Band-Aids on things versus really solving the key issue. Because elite agencies, they protect capacity by protecting standards. Now, if you're listening to this right now and you're realizing, you know, our agency may have some hidden subsidies, maybe we have some alignment gaps or productivity leaks. This is exactly why we built our Agency Performance Scorecard. Just go to sitkins.com/getmyscore, and there'll be some links here in the show notes. It's a quick assessment designed to help agency leaders identify where operational drag, accountability, ability issues and capacity constraints may be limiting your growth. And honestly, most agencies are surprised by what they uncover once they begin to measure these areas objectively, because you can't improve what you refuse to measure honestly. All right, let's get to section 4 or part 4. Number 4 is controlling organizational alignment. Now here's the key area I want to address. Misalignment silently destroys organizational capacity. You want to control the controllable. Ask yourself, what can I control or we control from an agency leadership perspective around alignment? Now, misalignment, again, silently destroys this, but we want to talk about the right people, right roles, right expectations, Right communication, right compensation structures, right behaviors rewarded, because misalignment does all these things: confusion, frustration, inefficiency, burnout. And that's the issues that we see with agencies. See, leaders, they don't mean to do this. Typically, if you're a leader listening to go, okay, I can relate to this a little bit. You don't do this intentionally. It's unintentionally. It happens over a period of time. It's just I lost focus or wasn't aware of it or got busy, whatever term it is that you want to use. So some things for you to think about as a leader. Again, take some time, take some notes, write this down. Be honest with yourself. Are people operating in the right seats? You've heard this forever from Jim Collins, Good from Great. Get the right people on your team, get them in the right seats on the bus. But ask yourself, are people operating in the right seats? Do we have our best team members working with our best clients? Is there a growth path around that? Are incentives aligned with desired outcomes? Are the expectations clear? Here's what your role entails. Here's what we expect. Here's what the outcome looks like. Here's how you win. By the way, people wanna be part of winning. Does your organization reinforce the behaviors it claims to value? Maybe you've got this great mission statement or this core values, which is fine, But do the behaviors align with those core values or mission? Because misalignment creates exhaustion, but it often masquerades as growth. All right, let's get to the final section I want to talk about on this podcast. This is about controlling leadership energy. This is a little more of a feeling than maybe a specific operational process, but it is absolutely important. And dynamic because your team absorbs leadership energy before they absorb leadership strategy. People feel your energy as a leader and a leadership team. You can talk strategy all you want, and that is important, but they're gonna see, they're watching you, and your emotional energy is real. See, emotional inconsistency spreads quickly. Well, if they're inconsistent, I guess I'll be inconsistent too. Panic or uncertainty in leadership creates unstable culture. No different than a home. If mom and dad are panicking or uncertain, what are the kids going to think? Oh my gosh. Right? So you've got to have stable cultures. And leaders who constantly complain, this isn't working, this isn't happening, this isn't good enough, whatever, it creates anxiety, distraction, confusion. Whereas teams want clarity, teams want consistency, key teams want direction, teams want confidence, but leadership pressure reveals your discipline. So as I've done in the past of this podcast, here's a few more questions that I jotted down for you to consider. What emotional environment am I creating? You're the catalyst. You get to set the tone for your agency. What emotional environment am I creating? Do I, or we as a team, reinforce fear or direction? Am I, or we, reacting emotionally, or are we leading intentionally? Now, life is full of emotion, but we can't lead emotionally. We've got clarity. We've got direction. We've got consistency. We have standards. That's leading intentionally. Your team experiences your emotional patterns before they experience your strategy. Elite leaders become more disciplined under pressure, not more reactive. In fact, the pressure shows more who you are as an organization and as a leadership team that, hey, we can count on them even when things get hard or weird. Or disruptive. They're steady. They're calm. See, external conditions will always fluctuate. That's controlling the controllables. Another very cliché analogy, but it's true, is are you the thermostat or are you the thermometer? Thermometers go up and down depending on what it is outside. Cold, hot, medium, you name it. Thermostat says, this is how we regulate. This is the temperature. Period. We control the temperature. Elite organizations refuse to become emotionally reactive. Great leadership is disciplined leadership because the future of your agency depends on a few things. Depends on the standards you set. It depends on the accountability that you have throughout the agency. Remember, accountability isn't a negative or bad thing. Accountability shows that you care, that you're willing to challenge and encourage them to grow and your team to grow. To standards you've designed, because it depends also on alignment, how well you communicate together. You can't have alignment if you don't have clarity in how you communicate. It results around your development and your intentional focus. What are the few things that are most important to your agency? See, the future of your agency, the future of your business is not built by reacting emotionally to external conditions. It's built by intentionally controlling the system, the standards, the accountabilities, the alignment, and the behaviors. That create predictable performance over time. So that's the premise of what I wanted to bring to you today, the agency leader. You know, I've talked about controlling the controllables from so many different perspectives, and it is about your attitude, but it's also about systems and standards, alignment and accountability. My final ask of you is this: if you want to evaluate where your agency stands in some of these key areas that I talked about today. You can go to sitkins.com/getmyscore. Super simple. Only takes a few minutes, but allows you to see where your agency stands. Our agency performance scorecard is designed to help agency leaders just like you identify a few things: hidden subsidies, accountability gaps, operational drag, alignment issues, and opportunities to increase productivity capacity. Where can you be more productive? Because elite organizations, they don't drift into greatness. They set the tone. Remember, control the controllables, lead intentionally, and build the organization you want to become. Thanks for being a listener of the Agent Leader Podcast. If this resonated with you, if you want to share it to people, well, Do it, like it, subscribe, do all that stuff that kids say. We appreciate you. And I wish you and your agency all the best in your success. Thanks for listening. Hey there, agent leader, Brent Kelly here. Want to take just a few seconds to remind you that now is the time to create your true best version possible agency. If you go to sitkins.com/bookacall, sitkins.com/bookacall, we'll get to know more about your agency. Conduct an agency assessment, and provide your agency with a customized plan to help you avoid some of the pitfalls, frustrations, challenges, and roadblocks to get your agency to true ultimate freedom and become its best version possible. It all starts by going to sitkins.com/bookacall.