EP39 - Finding Patterns Of Things Not Working With Michael Roberts

So welcome back. I've taken a few months off of my podcast for a whole bunch of reasons. and one of them was really to think about what I wanted the new format to be. And I think you'll see, as I start off with new guests and new conversations, we're gonna focus a little bit more. Quick hits and things that you can actually do to, to change the trajectory of, your business, of your life. Little things, things that everyone can take away and learn from. And my first guest today, I happened to meet over the summer. We had a great conversation. We were talking about marketing and transformation and agility, and something really struck in what he said to me that that said he has to be the. Person that I get back on my podcast when I relaunch in the fall Michael Roberts is with me today. He is the chief marketing officer of MetLife a member of the company's executive leadership team. He's leading global brand and marketing for the organization, really focused on designing. You know, value driven solutions to help MetLife build ultimately, you know, amazing and remarkable and enduring customer relationships. It's a, it's a big role. It's a big task prior to MetLife. Michael was with the Vanguard group as the CMO for the retail investor group. He's also been with bank of America merchant services an amazing career Michael, welcome to the podcast.

Corby. Thanks so much. you know, I, I look back really fondly on our, our conversation, from this summer and so happy to be able to be here to.

Yeah, I, I appreciate it. And you're, I believe in New York today, which is where you're based out of I'm in Toronto. So we've got a nice international conversation going too. Why don't you just describe briefly, so everyone understands your mandate. What are you doing at MetLife and, and maybe a little bit about MetLife for those that aren't totally familiar with the organization.

Yeah. Happy to Corby. So as, as you mentioned, I'm the global chief marketing officer, for MetLife. MetLife is. You know, a 70 plus billion diversified, insurance company that has operations in about 40 markets. It serves in the us 96 of the fortune 185% of the fortune 500 providing group insurance benefits with a largest life insurer in Latin America, we serve over 20 million customers. In Asia with with a big presence in Japan. So we're a, we're a global life insurer with a diversified product set and and businesses that make up you know, kinda an amazing portfolio of opportunities to, to as we say live our purpose, which is helping our customers have a more confident.

Yeah, it's a, it is a great purpose. and I think organizations ultimately, and it's, you know, it's proving out in the metrics and the financial results that actually live their purpose are seeing, seeing the downstream benefits of that. there's an interview question that ask a lot of people when I'm interviewing. So anyone who's listening, who's ever gonna apply for a job just on my team. Anyway, take note of this. I often ask people, you know, there's something in your current job or maybe your previous one that. You just, you don't think is right. You know, you don't think something's operating, right. You don't think there's a meeting cadence, a, a process. and really the question I ask people as the kicker is, you know, so what did you do about it? And it's not so much that you solve every problem, but that you're willing to take the chance to try and raise the issue and find better ways to do things. So, as we talk about making changes that can lead to better outcomes, Can you think back in your career about a particular situation where you said to yourself, there's just something not working. It's not going right. It's a product, it's a process. It's something with the structure and what did you do to try and, make it better, ultimately for everyone involved.

Yeah. So, it's, it's such a first of all, cor that's a great question. I think, I think everybody should should really think about, how they would answer that question. and what are the five, you know, kinda examples that pattern of how to think about improvement, I think is a really, really kinda important. Self examination, reveals a lot about, you know, how we process information and models use in. I'm gonna go back to, a situation I had, where I was running a, you know, a, an organization and I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be purposefully vague in some of the specifics of the, innocence

Of

of, but you know, where I saw, kind of a, an organization that had an amazing amount of talent. But was just positioned and was operating in a way that you know, where the people in the organization, the talented people in the organization weren't happy. The, partners of that, of that organization were not happy. and nothing was really working kind of the right way. It was, it was just a, you know, kinda a situation where, and this is a, an interesting observation, kinda this was, you know, reasonably early in my marketing career where I couldn't find a pattern of things not working. Which, which then tells me that it's completely out control. When you can find a pattern of things not working, then you can start follow the pattern and understand, kinda causes. What I saw was that was, and this organization organization. So I, I realized that I needed to. Changed the whole organization structurally. And so what I did, I started kinda at the, at the top and moving really, really quickly to find new leadership and you know, and mix new leadership in with the old leadership. And so we had this interesting process of, of designing a couple jobs and then we kinda interview. Some people, we found people that we thought we liked, and then we put them in a room together to solve problems together, to see if they could work. And then I hired essentially a block people at the same time in order to the leadership and that team eliminated hundred of the in the organization and had everybody reapply for new jobs in a, in a new organization and while traumatic you know, we you know, for, for a moment, What we found at the end of that process is that the entire system changed. And you know, the, the talented people in the organization, found, you know, better, more appropriate, places to add value the processes we're able to be looked at from a fresh perspective. And in the end, you know, we had much. More engaged group that was delivering outcomes, for the business in a way that, that they, they weren't able to before. And so this was a situation where we had to kind change everything at once. But there was very little loss of resources and jobs and that in that whole situation. And, and we found that people were a lot happier at the end, it's almost like we had, you know, hockey players playing lacrosse. And basketball players playing tennis. And so everybody into the right sport doing, doing the.

See, that's how I know you're a true marketer because you know, I'm a Canadian, you started with hockey. That's very talented of you. Thank, thank you. I, I love it with am when Americans talk hockey. Let me quick follow up on that. You, you mentioned mixing the new leadership with the old leadership. So when you think about hiring and talent acquisition, how important is it for you to think about. Knowledge and expertise in the vertical or technical area versus capability and capacity with fresh or maybe distinct and different backgrounds. How do you mix that?

Yeah. So, you know, in general. And this is maybe a, a little bit of my bias. I find that you know the, the organization that I'm in or the group that I'm, I'm leading, tends to have, the majority of what is needed in order to be successful. And so what I do is I look at. What, what we have that is, is working, maybe even what we have, that's not working and kinda evaluate how to, how to improve that, and then look at what needs to be marginally improved. And it generally marginal, it generally needs to be marginally improved. You know, organizations have, cycles and lives of their own. and in most places that I've been. There's never been or in all the places I've been, there's never been in it's about the S are. The marginal changes that are needed in order to be successful. And I'll go back to the example I used before. I didn't say need a whole new team. I said, let's go out how make this team more successful? And of course we added a few here and there. But overall, what I found is that most organizations have what they need to be successful with just a little bit of, you know, a little bit of marginal.

So that's a perfect segue into my next question, which, you know, often things are actually pretty good. They're working well, you're hitting your goals, your targets, your objectives. But if you actually believe that everything can always be made or done better just as a general philosophy. And, you know, I, I always use the iPod story of the first iPod you held in your hand. It was, a pound and a half of metal and plastic with a gray screen. And it held 1,024 songs. And it was the best thing you ever had, but could you imagine holding that. It doesn't mean that what, what was good then was, was actually not good. It was great for the moment at the time, but engineers and innovators and executives kept saying, you know, what, how do we, how do we just constantly refine and make it that much? Better for the future. and to this day, we're still seeing that improvement. And so if you operate your business that way, it means, you know, as a mentality, you're gonna try and, and tweak and to your point, adjust things or, or find those marginal changes. So maybe. Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you're like, wow, you know, the team, the executives, the board, everybody's happy, but I, I still want to try something different. I, I think there's room for improvement. And how do you identify those areas that

For most executives, as you know, you, and, and for most people in general, just we, we go to where the problem is then we, we, we try to fix things. That's kinda, our nature is as we come in and in business, as I've observed, you know, me and others that I know I'll, I'll tell you. Perspective on this question kind of was, was informed by, you know, a great,

you're not, you're not gonna get a ton of pushback and pressure. It's like, are you, are you, are you nuts? What are you talking about? There's too much risk. Versus the potential of, but look how much more engaged we can make our team look at the customer experience we can improve and, and maybe make better financial gains. Is there, is there a situation where you took the chance and said, I'm gonna try and make something that better that on the surface actually looks like it's pumping along. Great.

Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a really interesting challenge, I think for a great article that I read, you know, probably more than 20 years ago called nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened. Which is a, a great title by an article and you know, of the, the ways to look at systems in order to drive improvement and in some ways it informed my perspective on. On how things are always to be continuously improved. You know, there's always an investment in capabilities that's needed, in order to improve, you know, kinda actual performance and whether there's a performance gap or, or not, improvement is, is something that, that can be, can be constant and, and designed into a system. And so in, in some ways I actually don't accept the idea. That you know, everything's going well. I, I kinda reject to that premise and, and one of the things, you know, that's more recent in terms of, management thinking and, and operating models is, is agile. And agile, you know, kind of has built into it, a continuous iteration on products or, or whatever the actual process is being, being applied to. You know, in some ways I feel like, it's a great question, but it doesn't to my mental model of the works over a of, of I, I think there are some traps though. where, where we can look at. improvements or you can look at the wrong solutions in order to drive, you know, improvement. And so you know, there are, there are, are so many situations where we just kind of either take shortcuts or work harder. Rather than spending the time investment or reinvestment in, in, in capabilities or figuring out smarter ways to work. But I think that's lesson for me has understand the out the, the. The challenge of, or the, the, the trap of working harder or taking shortcuts and focus on reinvestment and, and working smarter overall. And that's, you know, something that I, to, to just about to just about everything that I, you know, kind I I touch or interact with and in life and business, it's understanding the system and, and really figuring out how to reinvest in, capabilities and to work smarter overall.

Yeah, that's, it's great advice. And I I just pulled up the article and I'm gonna I'm gonna share it out with my network as well. Just note caveat. It's like, it's really long everybody, but I'm if, if Michael says it's a good read, it's a good read, but I'm gonna share it out. I found a copy. so I guess, you know, the, the, this, some of that maybe takes me to my, third and final in depth question. You're in an industry. insurance not everybody really understands all of the intricacies and the complexities that go on in the insurance business. They see. Mascots they see, uh, the, the, they it's, it is a good podcast. I just listened to on why every insurance company has a mascot, which we should talk about in another

Yeah.

But, you know, when you think about the trends, the technologies, the products MetLife doesn't bring in someone like you to keep the status quo and per your philosophy that you just expressed. You're always trying to find. Simple and complex things to do better. So where, where is insurance going? What are those trends? Whatever you can tell that isn't secret sauce of the business that might enlighten us to think, Hey, that might apply to my business too.

Yeah. I think, I think a couple thoughts here. Cor so one, I think insurance is way a lot of the rest of financial services in terms of customer experience being, you know, a new, you know, not new, but an emerging kind of priority. for the industry, Insurance overall has lagged in terms of customer experience and even the tech that are creating great customer experiences. Haven't put the same sort pressure on the customer experience that is you know, that happened other parts of financials, the consumer overall. And so I think The consumer is much more powerful and, and demanding in terms of insurers. That's another trend, which is, has a, a Bri of a broader implication for, for lots of different businesses beyond insurance. That you know, our, our environment is becoming more volatile. And individuals are having to manage risk kind of more proactively their own risk as well as risk, you know, for their families. And frankly, you know, post pandemic protection has become. More important to to lots of people. And I think this idea of protection, as you know, core versus ancillary I think will become something that, lots of businesses are going to have to to contend. And you, you see some businesses contending with it, you know, in, in innovative ways, it's rise of insurance, a lot of consumer business where you can you product it's for, but it's more broadly across different ecosystems. You're seeing things. You know, digital wellness and protection solutions that are being, adopted, significantly more. So people see, risks in the, in the digital space, whether it's, you know, identity theft, Or other sort of risks that they're from a social perspective. So I think, I think particularly increase we've that a pandemic. And then I, I think the third thing in insurance that is, part of, what we'll see in the future. Is you know, I think a lot more attention to generational differences in, in perspective on what insurance can and should provide part of this, I think is based on demographics. We're gonna live longer and longer. And so the sorts of things that we think about for protection and retirement are gonna be different. Cause retirement is gonna look different. And so I think longevity is gonna have a big impact, on lots of industries. And and the needs of people, you know, kind of in these longer lives. And I think that's gonna, that's gonna be an, an important shift for, for the insurance business. But I think, if your business is not thinking about what longevity means then you're gonna miss a gigantic demographic trends.

Yeah. The, the term embedded insurance hadn't really crossed my mind until you just said it, but. I just signed up for 122 kilometer bike ride from Vancouver to Whistler next September. And it has two kilometers of as cent. So it's like a big ride and they offered me for$20 and 40 cents insurance on my, on my deposit of a few hundred dollars to do the ride. And it would cover certain other things tied to travel, et cetera. And you know, I, in the sense of a customer experience coming back to your first point, I I'd be, I'd be crazy not to take that, thinking that it's 12 months ahead. I have no idea what my life situation's gonna be. I don't even know if I'll be able to book a flight, get a hotel, find a box to ship my bike, rent a bike. There's so many factors of unknown. And, you know, you guys, as an industry are so great at forecasting, all of those different parameters of potential risk and change, and then offering it to me in a simple high value, low cost offering that if everybody didn't take that, that was signing up, they'd be like insane. And so that whole notion of embedding it, the digital, you know, the digitization of the experience. in the moment decisioning and, and actually providing value really made me feel like, wow, like that's a great customer experience. I, I would absolutely recommend this race or this, you know, an event to all of my network because there's like no risk. And

Right.

about that in other areas, it's, it's a great model.

It it it months. And we have less confidence in looks so reflects the

Exactly. Well, listen explaining it to me was great. I, I completely, you know, see and understand through both our conversations and today's interview, why MetLife wants someone like you running the helm of that, future of marketing, the future of agility, the future of customer experience Michael Roberts, the chief marketing officer of MetLife. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me and, and thanks so much for all of your insight.

Thanks Corby. It's. It's great to speak with.

And enjoy the hockey season this year. take care.

I appreciate it. Take care.