Row Together, Grow Together: Agency Alignment Secrets with Kari Glennon

There's a very popular phrase that says, what really matters is what's on the inside. Well, that's what we're going to talk about on today's Agent Leader podcast. I have a fantastic conversation with our senior consultant, Kerry Glennon, and she has an amazing perspective on agency alignment and internal communication. Kerry and I are going to talk about why this topic is so important. What is the cost of your agency not truly being aligned. And she'll provide some specific strategies and next steps that you can take as an agency leader and your team to build greater alignment, better communication, and, of course, better results. Enjoy the episode. Welcome in to the Agent Leader Podcast. This is the podcast for insurance agency leaders to learn, to grow, to develop, ultimately become their best version possible. It's my pleasure to be with you today, and I have a awesome, extraordinary guest who not only is a great guest and I know will provide a ton of value with the conversation we're going to be having today, but she's also our teammate, Carrie Glennon, the senior consultant at the Sitkins Group. Carrie gave a wave. Carrie, would you like to say hello before we dive deep into conversation today?

Hello. Thanks for joining. Excited to do this.

Awesome. Well, excited because we, you know, every month, and I don't know if you, you know this or not, as a listener, some of you may. We publish an article in RoughNotes magazine. We've been doing a very, very long time. It's been a great relationship and now it's fun. We rotate between Roger Sitkins, the CEO, and myself and Carrie Glennon. We cycle through articles and what I wanted to do and I thought would be fun for this podcast is to take an article and go deep, go a little bit deeper and have a conversation around it. Because obviously it's something that we've thought through and we've talked about. It's great to have it in writing. Carrie and I were actually talking before we went live here that it's sometimes easier just to. To vocalize, verbalize what we want to say than always have it in print. So we're going to have a great conversation and the focus is going to be all around agency alignment. And Carrie, I want to kick this off because you. You've been obviously, you know, part of all of our programs and our coaching calls. In fact, I was looking for 2024, if you count in the. Some of the private things that we did. We did over a hundred different sessions for agencies in 2024. So there's a lot of experience, a lot of conversations, a lot of Learning that we've had. And you know, we've been bullish on this idea of agency alignment and the importance of it for a while. But I would just say this, and I'll start with this, Carrie. The feedback that we got in 2024, certainly for sales and service, but all the programs was this importance of agency alignment and agency internal communication. So I'm going to start with just the lob it up there and you take it wherever you want. Why did you write the article on agency alignment? Why is this thing such a big deal? Why do we care?

Thanks. I appreciate the open big question. I think it's a great place to start the conversation. Well, for everybody who's listening, I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that a big percentage of you have had the lovely experience of driving a car that is out of alignment. And I'll recreate what I think that experience was probably like for you. And that is, that is your driving down the road. There's this very awkward shimmy that's going on. And if you put the heel of your hand up on the top of your steering wheel, your fingers will wobble back and forth very quickly. And we all know that's not good for the car, it's not good for the driver, it's not good for your gas mileage, your tire. It's just bad. Being out of alignment is not good. And that's no different from your car than it is for your agency. And I'll. I'll tell a story about my agency. So prior to our agency perpetuating externally and selling, we had a period of time where we were misaligned. We were definitely out of alignment. And so how did that look? Let's see. We had some tension and conflict between sales and service. And when we looked deeper at it, that tension and conflict stemmed from the fact that sales would often be out in the field acting as a promise maker, as the face of the organization, gathering information to bring back to a team of people who was relying on or who were relying on those producers to bring back information for them to be able to do their job appropriately, effectively, timely. And when the promise makers and those information gatherers came back to the office and there wasn't a true mechanism, a formal mechanism for making sure that that content didn't get back, we were out of alignment. We were completely out of alignment. So there started to be tension and resentment that built between the teams. Then we also started to see a duplication of efforts. We would see account managers who were calling on prospective or new clients to gather information, only to hear, oh well, I gave that information to so and so. And then they would feel silly or they would find out that a producer picked up the phone and already called the underwriter when, wait a minute, I, I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm sending all this information to the underwriter. So at this, these examples may not happen all at once, but over time those are little chinks that happen that create an environment where you see two teams who are not in alignment, where you're not functioning in a very efficient way. And with, with those things going on, it creates a challenge in your, in your agency. So that's an example of misalignment that I truly experience. And I don't think it's unique. I think that there are a lot of agencies who have experienced that in the past and who unfortunately are still experiencing it to this day.

Yeah, Carrie, well said. I mean, thanks for sharing. I mean real life example of that, of what happens. And I think, you know, for an agency leader listening, I mean you can probably think right now of there's an area that we probably aren't really aligned. And I, I think, I mean there's a, there's a spectrum to this and I don't know, is this subjective? But I was writing down Carrie, as you're saying this, like, if you look at like 1 through 10, like 1 is like, I kind of hope you fail. Like, I really don't like you at all. Like there. And I know that sounds crazy, but there's some that goes to that level of resentment and agencies to 10 is how do we win together? How can I help you win? How can we help each other win? Like, I mean there's that, that great divide and probably somewhere in the middle is like, eh, whatever, we're just here, we'll coexist. I don't know if you see that. I mean that's a, again, a great chasm so to speak. But I mean, and I'll give one more, and I want to comment like we, we use oftentimes visually the, the rowboat and people rowing like in the same direction. You've seen that. And even in my example, I feel like you're in a boat with someone like the resentments, like they're actually rowing the opposite direction. And then like the middle is like they just stick their oars in the water and like. Yeah. And the last one was like, okay, let's get there together. And I know that's cheesy. Um, but you think about this, Carrie, and I want going back, maybe go deeper in this. You talked about like I use the word resentment and I don't know, it always is that deep. But frustration, friction, conflict, whatever you want to say. And then the other part is duplication. Now I, I don't know. Again, I don't think this, this is hard to put it tangibly, but like think about how much time and money that costs an agency. I mean, have you seen whether it's an example or just an illustration of that, Carrie?

Absolutely. So first of all, well stated. I really like the 1 to 10 example that created a good picture in my head for yeah, the, the, the span of, of, of how that, how that looks. So as far as duplication, you see it in so many different areas. So I mean I can give examples on the property and casualty side and on the benefit side. I mean you think about writing a narrative before you go to submission for a property and casualty account. So who's responsible for what? Does the, does the account manager rely on the notes from, from the producer to be able to put that together? Is it as descriptive as possible? Are they a solid team when it comes to building that? And let's take a step back even further. Has your agency decided and said this is whose responsibility this function is when we are onboarding a new client? If not again, you have sort of a piecemeal project that's going on without an owner of that particular piece. And then if we're not real efficient at it, if we're not very practiced at it and communicating well inside the agency, what happens is our, our communication outside the agency goes poorly and then we fail at being a top of stack submission agency because we're not representing our new, our new client as well as we could to an underwriter. And by, by way of that, we often will get an underwriter who gives us pricing that includes pricing for the unknown because they didn't know the whole story. And that's just one example. Right? That's just one example. I could give you example on, you know, gathering census information. On the benefit side, it's going to be a very similar out outcome. But those are things that we do on a very regular basis in an agency and without clear expectations, clear guidelines of who does what and how do we come together and make this finished product the best it can be. We are not maximizing our efficiency, we're not maximizing our teamwork and we're not doing the best we can for our clients in the marketplace and, and and we as an agency will suffer for that.

Really, really well said, Carrie. And I. My brain takes you back to the initial analogy of the car. And, you know, I think about this too, and I. I want to get you maybe more to, like, how do you know if you're aligned? And maybe even you. You brought up some of these already, a leader's perspective on this, because there is a role for a leader in this. And I think what hit me back to the car is, you know, you're, you know, I've had a car that's out of alignment, and I think back to, like, I was in my early 20s, and of course, you don't have any money, so you're like, ah. And it's like it's getting worse and worse, and it keeps varying over to one side and it's vibrating and it's uncomfortable and all these things that go on. The bottom line is the problem isn't going to go away just because you want it to go away. You know, it's going to get worse and worse. And ultimately it's more costly, more expensive, more draining. Right down the line we go. So I want to take it to this. Like, how do you know, like, if it's working? How do you know if your agency's aligned? And I know in the article, and you can take this again wherever you want, Carrie. But, like, one of the things that you mentioned, it really caught my ear was, you know, clarity, like, that idea, too. So maybe provide an example or two or an idea of, like, if an agency says, how do I know if I'm aligned or misaligned? Like, how do I know where I'm at? Like, what are some. What are some tell some signals they could look at.

Sure. So I'm a big. I love this statement that I'm about to share. There's a saying that says a problem well stated is a problem half solved. First you have to recognize that you have this challenge. And so what is that problem? And it starts with leadership. Understanding where their teams are performing well, what's working, what's. What's going really well, what's in sync, and. And also understanding what's not. What is not going well. Just like you said, where are those frustrations? Where are those things happening? And it's incumbent upon a leader to check in with their team. And I would even say, let's have a conversation about it. I mean, let's face it, it's just the first week of February, 2024 is fresh in our mind. Is it time to Sit down with your team and say, hey, let's do a look back. Let's do. Let's take a look in the rear view and say, what did we do really well as a team this year, as our department? What did we do really well as a sales and service team combined? What did we do really? And on the flip side, where were the challenges? And believe me, that's the conversation where you will learn from your team. Where the challenges exist.

Yeah.

Once you know what the challenges are, it's very easy then to extrapolate. Oh, if the frustration lies, you know, at this level, the end product that's going to be affected will be Right. And so you, you can just extrapolate that out by knowing what those frustrations are. And you'll find that you have some people who are great communicators. They have a really good system, and you shouldn't just let that go by the wayside as an agency leader, learn from that. If somebody has a great system, my goodness, let's document that system. What does that look like? What are they doing right? And how can we replicate that throughout other teams within our organization? Or if you find that you have a tendency to have some very, very common frustrations but you don't have solutions, then my goodness. That's why you find experts outside of your organization who've experienced it, who've built it, who fixed it, and have been able to create a repeatable process that can be implemented easily and trained over and over again. And that's what we're here for. That's what I experienced, frankly, the example that I gave you is where we were as an agency, and then as an agency member of Sickens, we took our sales and service team through the training to get aligned.

Yeah. And yes, I'll be happy to throw a plug in for us as well. But no, I mean, it is a big part of it. And it's funny because we joke about it, but it's so powerful is that oftentimes it's restating things that they may already know or have ideas around, but they're not sure how to navigate that. And terms I always like to use because I can remember them, is, you know, to help educate. Oh, I didn't know what I didn't know. Help empower. Oh, it's not just me. There's other people that kind of see it too. And equip. Here's some resource. Here's a tool, here's a process to help you navigate that. And they go, oh, thank you. We can make that work. So I think really well said. I want to make sure I got this right because I want to make sure the listeners wrote this down. A problem well stated. Finish this for me, please. Is a problem half solved. A problem well stated is a problem half solved. And what I took from that and, and correct me if I go off on here is that it reminded me of a great phrase I heard about leadership, is that it's a leader's job to define reality.

I like that.

And it's like, right, because there's like, we all kind of, it's, it's okay. It's actually not that bad at some point. It's not that it's like, you know, the world is ending and we're all in trouble, but it's just, hey, listen, here's the reality. We got a problem here. And if we don't address this and come together, then it's going to be a crisis. So I think that's important. I mean, again, what I heard of that, Carrie, is like, maybe expand upon this from your experience and roles like leadership. I mean, you said some of these things, but like where can leaders come in? Or how can leaders help define. And again, these are my terms. Define reality or state the problem without thinking the world's ending.

Sure, I, I know that those many of you are listening, so I'll describe to you what I'm doing. But I often describe a healthy agency and I mesh my two fingers together. Like if you're joining your own hands together and holding hands. And I often say that a healthy agency has a good marriage between sales and service. You are hand in hand. And so it starts at the top and it starts with your, your CSO or your CRO being lock in step with your coo. If sales and service have a common vision and are good communicators at the top. And we understand that we have very different roles, but our teams must be well aligned for us to complete what our collective goal is together. And I think that's where it starts. It starts with the healthy relationship and open communication, respect for each other's teams and roles and being able to come together and share the challenges, but not in a finger pointing kind of way, knowing that we're all in this together. We're all in this to grow and learn and become better and recognize that yes, we will have weak links in our chain along the way, but, but that's why we're leaders. We're here to develop those people, to help them become better and better than we ever Were when we were in their roles is it was really my hope. So I think that's genuine, genuinely where it starts.

Yeah, I 100% agree. And I know we. I think we've had this conversation on the podcast, but it's always interesting. It's not surprising anymore. But, you know, you might get a group of. Whether it's two leaders or 12 leaders, and you ask a similar question, and you get very different answers.

Yes.

And, you know, you're just sitting here going, gosh, if. If these five leaders have vast differences in how they view this situation, can you imagine what they're communicating to their teams and how many different message their team's getting? And, like, why aren't we aligned? Like, well, if we're not aligned at the top, we're sure not going to be aligned right on the chain.

So it's like that game of operator. Right. The message just keeps getting diluted and diluted. But think about if one leader started with a different message at the very top. I mean, the message will be completely different at the bottom. At both. Both ends. Yeah.

Yeah. 100. So I'm gonna ask a general question. This was in your article, but again, take it where you want. And the question is, like, as an agency, and we've talked about some of these maybe, or ideas, but, like, where do you start? You know, if I'm an agency leader, I'm listening to this, I'm like, okay, yeah, I agree. I got some alignment issues. I know that. I don't know the depths of it, but I know it's there. Like, help me, Carrie. Where do I start? So turn it to you.

Sure. Well, I think I mentioned before, first, it's a matter of opening up that communication and determining truly what's going well. Can we duplicate that? Can we replicate the things that are going well and really pinpointing the things that are not going well and defining why those things are happening? And from there saying, okay, leadership, what can we do to overcome the things that aren't going well? And that can include working with an outsourced company that are experts in it. It can include, I know another agency that I have really a lot of respect for. I'm going to call somebody in my center of influence network and find out what they're doing. It can be reading a publication, a book that's written by somebody that's an expert in this. There's a lot of different ways you can go, depending on your style, depending on what you. What you determine. The most important thing is to first determine what's wrong? I mentioned a problem well stated is a problem half solved. Because if you don't know what you're solving, you'll be spinning your wheels. So first, determining what needs fixing what needs defining and helping your team to understand whose role is what. That's really so key. It's at the heart of this is when you don't have clearly defined roles, you have people who duplicate efforts. And eventually somebody's going to feel their toes were stepped on, like, oh, all that effort I put in and all for not. Or. Or you get something that doesn't get done on time and get finger pointing. Well, I thought. He said, she said. I thought they were doing it. I thought they were doing it. And then it's a scramble, right? I mean, it's. It happens. So duplicative efforts are as damaging as are undefined roles because things slip through the cracks.

Yeah, Yeah. I. I have this bad habit. I don't know if it's bad or good, but I have all these mental images, I think, in stories and things, and of course I get personal examples, but I'm just, you know, the duplicate effort. Imagine like, you know, someone in the home goes down and they take the laundry down and they wash it and they dry it, and then they fold it and they have it in the basket. And then I take the basket and take it back downstairs and throw it back in the washer and then dry it. And then I mean, like, like inefficient. Like, well, we both worked really hard, but we're both mad. Like, you know, like, that doesn't work. So I just had that hit me, as you said. I don't know why. Maybe. Maybe it's a personal example.

No, but I think that's a very everyday example. I think it's a good analogy.

Yeah. And all I wrote down here, because I say all, but it's important. I mean, what I took from what you said there, Carrie, as, As a listener, what you said is it's an awareness, and to me, a healthy awareness that you're never going to fix or improve something that you won't own or face. And I think that is. That is a challenge for. For agencies. And I'll be very, very direct here. And I know this is difficult. When we start talking with agencies, initially, there's a hesitation to let your guard down. They say, well, I don't want to tell you all my weaknesses and the fact that we actually have a problem here or talk about the problem. I'd rather just kind of massage it and it's like, well, you're never gonna. If you don't face it or own it, you're not going to be able to address it or fix it. And who are you ultimately letting down your team?

Right.

Of course, your clients. So, you know, there is a responsibility and ownership there. And I think that comes back. And again, this is in my mind. But to face reality and say, hey, this is a real thing, it's not the end of the world, but we're on top of it. We're going to address it, we're going to face it. So I think it's really powerful, what you said there. 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/book book a call, 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. All right, you mentioned, too, this is important. I want to go deeper in this. I made a note of this. You mentioned the different roles.

Yes.

And I'm just. I'll say. I don't know if you agree with this or not. There is a perception and sometimes communication agencies that, yeah, we got different roles. Yeah. Guess what? Mine's more important.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I know we got different roles, Carrie, but, like, I mean, I got my role and, you know, you got your role. I'm being kind of funny here because. But I think agency leaders and you're not on your head, we kind of know what happens there. So you had this. I. This idea in the article, too, about, hey, we're separate, but we're together. It looks right.

Yes.

And we have the same goal, different roles. So expand on. On that.

Yes. So I don't think anybody listening in will disagree that there is a perception in our industry that, you know, it's producer is king. Like, it's. That it's. That's. That's. That's the preferred role and that often the service team is sort of the backseat. Right. They're taking the backseat. However, when I think about the health of an agency while the producers are driving in revenue, if we didn't have a strong service team, that truly is the backbone of the agency. We would be nowhere. Because I can tell you that the majority of producers that I have worked with and managed over time, it is not their unique ability to do the detailed work that is required to make sure that our clients have programs, plans implemented, bound, et cetera. It, I mean, the back office would be a mess if it weren't for, for our service team. So we, we often say, and you know this Brent, we often say same goal, different role. So we have collectively same goals, very similar goals, but we have different roles in how we're going to get there. And without both parties knowing what, what our roles are, we just start getting out of alignment and we start getting our shimmy on and we're shaking our way down the road instead of being in that hov lane, speeding along and passing our competitors and getting to where we need to be for, for our clients and our prospects. So I think that, I think that answered your question to some degree. But it's, it's, it's interesting because I'm a big fan of being a top of stack submission agency and if you're looking for ways to say, gosh, whose role is what, you know, I, I often say if you don't have a sample top of stack submission that somebody can look through in your office, you're, you're, you're missing the boat. You should have one. And each, each page of that, of that submission should actually be tabbed with whose responsibility is what? Where did this information come from? Who gathered it, who put it together? Where did the finished product come from? It's a great roadmap and it's very tangible. Rather than this sort of nebulous idea. You really give somebody something tangible to say, oh, I see it now, I get it. It's very different when you can hold it in your hand and see it and go, oh yeah, right, that makes sense. So I think that that's a, just one example of a tool that a leader can really put together. That's a great example for both sales and service to understand defined roles and what the finished product looks like.

Yeah, really well said. It hits, really hits home with me, Carrie, because I've had a few conversation with carriers and now obviously we work, you know, with independent insurance agencies. That's our, that's our audience, but obviously the importance of the carriers and you know, we do some, some separate things with them on different occasions and I just had that conversation, wrote stuff down. A big part of this, quite frankly, Carrie, outside of things you're saying top of stack submission, that came up for sure. But other things that came up was just relationships with agencies. And this carrier goes, the real relationships we need is with the account managers, because they're the one that make everything go, you know, And I'm just listening, going, interesting. I don't think some producers would say that. Right. And what you said, and I wrote something else down. This is my mind going in pictures and analogies. But you said, you know, the backbone. I've heard you say that before, and it's true. The backbone of the agency are the service professionals. And my mental image is like, it doesn't matter how big and strong your muscles are if your back's broken or hurt because you can't move. Like, right. It doesn't matter. Like, you know, big muscles, no function, That's a problem. And it doesn't matter. And here's the other thing that hit me about the backbone. It's just. I mean, it's a really good analogy because I'm like, you know, you never notice your back until it doesn't work. Right. Or hurts.

Right.

And then it's all you think about.

Very well said.

Yeah. You're like, what? Whatever, I'm great.

I'm great.

And I'll say you're like, oh, my God, if I could just get my back to work. And. And it's, It's. It's very true. In an agency. And again, both roles, sales and service, obviously, extremely important. And the producers role, really challenging. We've got to drive revenue. We've got to drive growth. Not everyone's cut out for that role. But I'll tell you this, not everyone's cut out for the account manager role to handle those relationships and those conversations and the processes. Like, that's. We say, same goal. Appreciation, respect, trust of the different roles.

Yeah. Yes.

Super important. All right, so in your article, you had next, again, take this wherever. Gosh darn it, car. You want to take it. All right, but talk about strategies. And. And you've got a line in here, so maybe jumps out. But like, and we probably hit on a few of these already, so share what you want. But when you think about, like, what are strategies for alignment? Because it's one thing to say, hey, we should be aligned. Everybody, let's be aligned. Okay, great. We got it. Let's go do it. Great. Alignment on three. One, two, three. Alignment.

Right.

But what would be. And obviously we go very deep in our programs and with our members in this. But. But for this conversation, what's. What's an idea or two of strategies sure.

So you know that I am as adamant about what you should do as I am about what you shouldn't do. Because I think both are very important considerations as a leader. So I'm going to start with one thing that I think you should not do as a strategy, and that is do not create silos. Silos perpetuate misalignment. And so I often see agencies who will take one team through a training that ultimately affects both teams, but one team is completely unaware, thereby creating a silo. Oh, look at us, we came out of this training, we have these, this new tool that's really cool. And I have a few new words that I'm going to, I'm pretty excited about using. And now I'm going to communicate those things to a team that has no idea what I just learned. And they're just kind of scratching their head going, huh, what? Wait a minute. And you, you leave one team behind. So you, you've created a silo, you have a trained up team on a topic and a team that's not yet they directly impact one another. So I implore leaders, please don't create silos. I recognize there are some types of training that have to go on that are different for each role. So if it's, you know, your agency management system training, of course that's a tool training. It's more of a technology training that one doesn't need. But when it comes to the functionality of your organization, that's the time to make sure you're not siloing. So let, I'll start with that. Once you recognize that you don't want to do that and you're going to break down the silos. And secondly is determine what your cadence of communication is going to be and what should be included in that communication. I can't tell you how important it is to make sure that your sales and service team have calendared meetings for communication. And we might just take it for granted. We might just say, oh, well, we talk all the time, we work together all the time. It's no big, like we don't need to make anything formal about it. I guarantee if it's not calendared, it will slip through the cracks. Because everybody's busy these days. Producers are busy, service teams are busy, your leaderships, leadership people are busy, your, your underwriters, everybody's busy. And it's easy to say, oh, these external meetings are more important than our internal meeting meetings. Remember what we talked about. If your internal communication isn't happening, and it's not happening well, your external communication is going to suffer, thereby your client's suffering and your effective retention suffering. So it all starts with our internal communication and making sure that we have a cadence and an expectation that we don't just that we don't just send out, but we help. We help our teams get there. We help our teams understand why it's important. We support it and we help hold our teams accountable to it. Because if we don't, we flounder and we shimmy and we get misaligned. So those are my, those are my two biggest things that I would say are places to start.

That's, that's great. I think I've written down a couple times getting the shimmy on. I, I still like that they're getting their shimmy on. Yeah, Carrie, just to. To go a little deeper on that, at least my thoughts. You know, I've shared this, I think, in other podcasts, but the silo thing is so powerful. And you know, listen, I'm very transparent on this. You know, we do a lot of our trainings and, and communications we had. It was and has been, it still is very producer focused in many ways.

Why?

Because it's an important role. But admittedly, you know, and this is not the design of. The intention is that you have a producer that may go to a camp and they're exposed to new ideas, a new way of thinking and some new behaviors. And a couple things can happen is a, they come back and, and they're talking to other producers. And then the producers, like, I don't know what, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what language you're speaking, by the way. And I know there's different circumstances on this, but what does it speak when like, well, how come these two went and these three don't do anything? Like, are they better than me? Are they more important? Like, I don't know if those conversations happen, but they could. And then like you said with the service team, I mean, we joke about this and we're very intentional how we tell producers and speak with producers and their role and having conversation with your service team. But sometimes if we don't help facilitate or the account managers aren't part of that as well, the message gets back to your game of telephone. It changes from here's the respectful dialogue and how you address this and these things to, by the way, I went to a training and I do all the cool stuff and you do all the other stuff and that's the end. So I Just wanted you to know it was a really great training. And obviously I say that joking and kidding, but that can happen and it certainly creates silo. So I wanted to expand upon that. And the other thing you said was, super, thank you for sharing that. The cadence of communication, of having a design just like you would with your client, like, what do we want proactively that cadence of communication look like, yeah, the idea might be. And you said it, Carrie, so well, like, yeah, we have great conversations about what, when, of what importance, how often, you know, do we just talk about the random thing or the most important thing? So that to me is critically important. If you listen as an agency leader, what Carrie just said, like, hope you took a note. What is our cadence of communication? How effective is it? How intentional are we? So really important questions. All right, Carrie, here's where I have. And you know, you know, I do this on agendas which I don't know if it's good or bad, but I have the anything goes. And that's kind of where I'm at. Like, hey, what did I not ask or say about alignment that you're dying to talk about or that I missed? Or maybe you got a great joke, Carrie. I don't know what it is, but, but what did I miss? What are your wrap up thoughts based on this conversation today?

What I would say is if life's too short to go to your agency and be frustrated about being misaligned. It's, it's so common, just like cars that get out of alignment. And it's, there are common fixes. There, there are so many ways that, that we can help fix it. And I, I threw some of them out there. There are, there are books you can read. There are agencies you can check in with. There are experts in the marketplace that can help get your teams aligned. Don't, don't feel that this is just the way it is just because it's been always been this way, it's always going to be that way. Remember that there's a better way to live in that frustration. And is. It's not worth it. It's okay to say, you know what? I have a frustration. My team is struggling. We need to shake off this shimmy. And there are ways to do it. So that's my, that's my, my last message is, you have hired people into your agency because they fit the culture, because they're good people. Remember, the reason that you hired all of them is because they showed great potential. That potential still exists. Sometimes we just fall into a Rut. We get stuck in ways that we've done things, and it's okay to say, you know what? I need to reinvigor myself and them, reinvigorate people, to get back to a situation where we are aligned, we're harmonious, we're efficient, and we're pursuing these goals together. And it makes. It makes your. Your work life, your agency life that much richer. And at the end of the day, the ultimate goal, of course, is to provide the best service we can to our clients, to our community, and to increase the value of your agency while developing your people and ultimately aligning your team will get you there.

Yeah, Car. Really well said. I'm so glad I had you on to bring you on to talk about this. I know we'd have great depth and, you know, I like to have fun, too. So hopefully we had some. Some of you on the way. The.

The.

The thing that hit me, the last thing you said, I just. I want to reinforce this. I think this is so important, is like, maybe you're stuck, maybe you're plateaued, maybe you're frustrated, but you don't have to live there forever.

Right?

You know, and I think sometimes, like, well, that's just the way it is. And you said this a few times in the podcast. Well, that's the way it is today. And this is not a magic fix or a magic solution, but doing little things consistently. You know, we have these conversations, Carrie, and, you know, you coach some great agencies we work with. And what's interesting is that, you know, even day to day, week to week, month on month, you're like, ah, I feel like we're just, you know, we're making progress, but I don't know, it feels like it goes. And then all of a sudden, you look at six months or nine months in a year, and they look back and they go, wow, our agency is a lot different than it was. I'm like, yeah, right. It's not a gimmick, not a quick fix, but it's a commitment that, you know, we will be an agency that'll be working towards alignment. So, Carrie, thanks so much for being on the podcast listeners. Thanks so much for listening or watching. We appreciate you. As I say often, if this episode, other episodes are providing value, please give it a. Like a share, a subscribe, whatever thing you got to do, we want it. We want to share the message and certainly live out our mission to truly impact agencies, to help them become their best version possible. So thanks again for listening, Carrie. Thanks so much for being with me talk to you all very soon. Take care. The Agent Leader Podcast is brought to you by the fine folks of the Rough Notes Company. They are publishers of the insurance industry's leading magazine and technical insurance content, Roughness Magazine Profile successful agencies plus keen insights from respected experts on a host of must know topics. Rough Notes Advantage plus provides the tools to help your agency grow, providing authoritative information on complex coverage issues. Visit them and learn more@roughnotes.com Wait, you're still here? Hey Agent Leader Podcast listeners, Brent Kelly Again, I want to first of all, thank you for listening to the Agent Leader Podcast and your continued support. If you would like to have more content come your way, please help us by sharing the podcast, subscribing to the podcast, telling people about the podcast, and if you as an Agent Leader are truly ready to take that next step in your agency, you're committed and want to be that best version possible. Agency. Don't wait. Go to sitkins.com bookacall sitkins.com bookacall we want to provide the blueprint for your agency to help you create more impact with less effort. And it all starts by going to sitkins.com bookacall all right, now you can actually go. Thanks.