Leadership Council

A QUICK NOTE We recommend you revisit the 2025 Strategic Plan as we close out the year. Our recent meeting highlighted strong momentum across several key initiatives that are shaping our future and reinforcing our commitment to operational excellence and community impact. View the Strategic Plan

CHARITY DONATIONS We're thrilled to share some incredible news: CG has been awarded $10,000 from West Bend! This generous contribution is divided into two impactful allocations. The first $5,000 comes from the Spirit of the Silver Lining program in support of our CG nomination of You're Not Alone. Thank you to all employees who participated in voting for which charity we nominated for the Spirit of the Silver Lining-your voices made this happen. This award will be formally announced in the Spring at the Silver Lining Agency Management program. You're Not Alone is committed to supporting whole-person health and well-being, with a focus on mental health. Through a community-based network of peer leaders who share their lived experiences, they create a compassionate space where individuals facing mental health crises can find acceptance and support without judgment. By fostering peer-to-peer connections, they empower individuals and their loved ones to navigate challenges together, building resilience through compassion, empathy, and understanding. The Charity Committee will be guiding where the next $5,000 in additional dollars from West Bend charitable contributions will go. We're grateful to West Bend-a great carrier partner of ours-for their continued support of the causes that matter to our team and community. Spotlight on a 10-Year Vision: Be invaluable to the Communities We Serve

OUR STRATEGIC OFFSITE Planning is underway for our Strategic Offsite, where our department leaders will come together to build the upcoming year's annual initiatives. While not everyone can be present at this meeting, expect to be involved in the process. You should be hearing from your leaders-asking you: What problems could we solve with AI? Where do you spend time on workflows that you think we could make faster? Don't wait for someone to ask you either. If you think of something, bring it up. We want all ideas raised up-that's the spirit of our employee-ownership model. If we do this right, we're going to positively impact all our key stakeholders: clients, carriers, and co-workers.

E&O - TOP 20 ACCOUNTS REVIEW We're refining our process to audit and verify coverages on our Top 20 accounts agency-wide, and we want to clearly outline how we're approaching this critical initiative. We're going to be discussing this primarily in P&C to start, and it will be a topic of conversation for each Segment as we land in this new structure. This is a major and important effort that requires the expertise of our most experienced employees to thoroughly review coverages and ensure we're providing the highest level of protection and service to our largest clients. By continuously improving our E&O protocols and leveraging our team's deep experience, we're strengthening our risk management practices and reinforcing our commitment to excellence. Spotlight on a 10-Year Vision: Products & Services - Define, or evolve, our service model by revenue size

FANS FIRST LEADERSHIP A few members of our team recently attended a leadership chat with Jesse Cole, CEO of the Savannah Bananas-the wildly popular baseball entertainment team that's reimagining America's pastime with sold-out stadiums and millions of social media fans (check out what they're all about!). Jesse spoke about the Fans First mentality and how you need to understand the friction points in the Fan (client) experience to truly build an experience they fall in love with. His insights on creating memorable moments and eliminating obstacles resonated deeply with our own mission to deliver exceptional client experiences. We highly recommend the Fans First book to anyone who is curious about transforming how we think about client service and engagement. Spotlight on a 10-Year Vision: Best in Class Client Experience

A QUICK NOTE We recommend you revisit the 2025 Strategic Plan. The discussion during our recent meeting highlighted that many initiatives are on track and already making an impact on our growth and operational excellence. View the Strategic Plan

AI We discussed the importance of AI and encouraged everyone to stay curious and keep learning in this space. Thank you to everyone who participated in the recent IT Survey on AI—your insights were instrumental in guiding where we’re headed next. A small group is currently piloting a new AI tool, Hatz AI, and we look forward to sharing more as we explore its capabilities. Spotlight on a 10-Year Vision 1-Year People & Culture Goal: Raise the collective TQ (Technology Quotient)

MINNESOTA PAID FAMILY & MEDICAL LEAVE We also reviewed Minnesota Paid Family & Medical Leave at a high level—including the impacts it’s already having on our clients, the ways our Employee Benefits team is advising through the change, and where we are in designing our own program at CG to align with these new requirements. For anyone who hasn’t yet heard of the updated Paid Leave law, you can learn more on the official Minnesota state portal: Minnesota Paid Leave – MN DEED. The site includes details on eligibility, timelines, employer responsibilities, and more. Spotlight on a 10-Year Vision 1-Year Operations Goal: Trial Private MN PFML Policies

ASSUREX OPERATIONS & COMPLIANCE MEETING RECAPS Meghan Brown shared insights from the recent Assurex Global Operations Meeting. The conversation centered around how other agencies are approaching their Total Rewards philosophy, supporting tenured employees who are transitioning into retirement, and hybrid workplaces. We were glad to hear similar offerings within People & Culture, and were most appreciate to have connected to some really great folks in HR roles at similar size agencies.   Sarah Kaster also shared an update from her Compliance Meeting held in July. She noted the increasing number of in-house compliance roles at other agencies—and we’re not an anomaly by having this as a fractional role. She also shared that Benefit Comply has merged with other companies and is now called Lumelight. This gives us even more opportunities to streamline our compliance support through one centralized vendor. The great news is that Benefit Comply was already a strong partner, and the additional resources available through Lumelight will only enhance our client experience.

BEST PLACE TO WORK Meghan Brown also shared highlights from our Best Places to Work – Business Insurance survey. While we’re still awaiting the formal ranking, we’ve received the internal results to review.   The headline: we maintained a 96% engagement score. That’s not only impressive on its own—the market benchmark is 90%—but it’s especially noteworthy considering we achieved this together during a year of major system change.   We can't thank you enough for your kind words and honest ideas as we read through the survey feedback. We’ll continue to lean into themes by department and work toward keeping your trust and support in the year to come.   Department leaders will soon receive more detailed results for their teams. These will highlight what’s working, what you’d like more of, and where you’d like additional information or support. This will also serve as our launching point for refreshing our own internal Pulse survey. Don’t worry—we’re thinking less frequent (definitely not monthly) and fewer questions. But we do want to stay connected to how things are going in real time, so we don’t need to rely solely on outside surveys once a year.   Spotlight on a 10-Year Vision 1-Year People & Culture Goal: Revamp employee engagement surveys

We recommend you revisit the 2025 Strategic Plan. The discussion during our recent meeting highlighted that many initiatives are on track and already making an impact on our growth and operational excellence.

View the Strategic Plan

ASSUREX OPERATIONS MEETING

Kyle Simmons and Hal Balfour shared insights from the recent Assurex Global Operations Meeting. The conversation centered around how other agencies are navigating change management to help users adopt new tools and adapt to evolving technology.

A key takeaway was the growing use of Product Owner roles—individuals who take ownership of the end-to-end client experience for a specific segment or “product,” such as Small Business – Commercial Lines. A Product Owner deeply understands the full lifecycle of the client experience: intake, onboarding, day-to-day service, renewal, and beyond. Their role is to enhance that journey, create efficiencies, and ensure consistent service delivery.

It’s an approach worth considering as we continue to evolve how we serve and support our clients. We do not plan to add Product Owners, but rather it’s an idea to keep on our mind as we continue to grow our business.

DATA & DASHBOARDS

We reviewed gaps in current workflows, with a specific focus on how accounts are entered into EPIC. There’s an opportunity to improve consistency and retrain producers on expectations within the system, particularly their role in accurate and complete data entry for prospects and accounts won.

This work is foundational to future dashboard reporting and will help ensure we can rely on clean, consistent data to make better business decisions.

Spotlight on a 10-Year Vision

1-Year Goal: Utilize/Create EPIC Dashboard Reporting

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A QUICK NOTE

It’s been a month since we hosted our Annual ESOP Meeting. Things continue to move in the right direction. As you read this month’s Leadership Update, we recommend you revisit the 2025 Strategic Plan. The discussion during our meeting highlighted that many initiatives are on track and already making an impact on our growth and operational excellence.

View the Strategic Plan

EPIC TEAM & TRAINING UPDATES

We discussed the current pulse of the team as we continue to stabilize in our new EPIC environment. A major highlight has been the addition of two CLD trainers—a critical investment to support onboarding, drive consistency, and equip our teams more effectively. Their efforts are helping to create consistency in new hire training and providing valuable reinforcement for existing team members adapting to EPIC.

Spotlight on a 10-Year Vision

3-Year Goal: Move to a single system company-wide.

1-Year Goal: Migrate to a single system and begin optimizing workflows to gain efficiencies.

CLD 1 year goals:

• Hire full-time trainers/auditors
• Expand the trainee program from 3 people per year to 6 people per year.

DATA & DASHBOARDS

We’re beginning to roll out baseline expectations for CA and CM activities, focused on understanding the work outstanding across client books. We emphasized that this initiative is not about penalizing individuals—it’s about gaining better visibility into our current book of business, managing workloads, and using data to make smarter, predictive hiring decisions while ensuring we meet client expectations. It also helps us proactively identify where additional training and support may be needed.

Spotlight on a 10-Year Vision

CLD 1-Year Goal: Utilize/Create EPIC Dashboard Reporting

ARDELLE NOMINATIONS

We are thrilled to share that we received over 75 Ardelle Award nominations this year—up from 47 last year! This incredible response speaks to the pride and recognition our people have for their peers. In an upcoming Leadership Council special session, we will work through the nomination pool and select the 2025 Ardelle Award winners. Be sure to join us at the State of CG event on July 24, where the winners will be announced!

Spotlight on a 10-Year Vision

3-Year Goal: Invest time and resources to professionalize our approach to people.

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NEW HIRE SUMMIT

Meghan Brown shared updates on our first-ever New Hire Summit, happening May 6, the day before the ESOP Meeting. We’ll be welcoming 35 new hires for a day of re-immersion—refreshing their understanding of CG’s culture, values, and ways of working. The day will include general sessions for all attendees, along with department-specific breakouts to cover team-level processes and practices. If you have ideas to enhance the experience, please reach out to Mady Sheets or Meghan Brown, who are leading the charge on this exciting initiative.

Spotlight on a 10-Year Vision 3-Year Goal: Invest time and resources to professionalize our approach to people 1-Year Goal: Host two New Hire Summits annually

ASSUREX NORTH AMERICA CONFERENCE

Charlie Christensen attended the Assurex North America Conference on behalf of CG and shared several key insights. A major industry theme continues to be automation—specifically how technology can offload administrative tasks and free up capacity for more impactful work.

This reinforced our confidence in the decision to move to a single system. Consolidating onto one platform opens doors to features and capabilities that would have been far more difficult to implement across multiple systems.

Spotlight on a 10-Year Vision 3-Year Goal: Move to a single, company-wide system

REMINDER

If you haven’t yet, please take a moment to review our 2025 Strategic Plan to see how your daily work, check-ins, and team actions align with where we're headed: View the Strategic Plan