The following Insights is a case study of our work with the James E. Moore Insurance Agency, which used our Performance Culture System to achieve its growth goals. – Dallas Romanowski, Managing Partner, Cornerstone Business Advisors
                                                                                                                              
As with most companies, the James E. Moore Insurance Agency experienced slower growth during the 2008 to 2009 recession. Faced with a post-2009 economy, the company needed and wanted to grow more. To accomplish this goal, the company knew it had to maximize the talent of its team and began looking for a new performance management system to motivate and recognize high performers.

Melissa Phillippi, a Cornerstone Partner, presented the Performance Culture System (PCS) to the agency owners, Jim and Adrienne Moore, and helped them understand how PCS drives performance and improves the company culture through the three PCS steps: Align, Coach and Manage. Melissa also explained how the agency could implement the cloud-based system itself or with the help of a Performance Culture Coach.

Jim decided to implement the system with the help of Melissa because his current staff was already stretched. He also knew the coaching would develop his team. The coaching was important because Jim had tried several different employee motivational systems in the past, but none seemed to achieve the results expected.

The first step, Align, focused on defining the agency’s mission, vision, core values and company goals, including the expectations for each employee. This helped the employees understand how their performance and workplace behaviors contribute to the agency’s goals and support the company’s culture.

The second step, Coach, included monthly sales training and quarterly coaching sessions for every employee. The frequency allowed managers to give timely feedback and provide professional development goals. The coaching used the PCS cloud-based software to help each employee understand how he or she was performing using a 2 x 2 matrix that measured performance and workplace behaviors (company fit).

The third step, Manage, used the PCS app report to plot the entire team onto the four quadrants of the 2 x 2 matrix. These quadrants are defined as:

• Stars – Employees who support the company culture and are meeting performance expectations;
• Potential – Employees who were not yet meeting performance expectations but are displaying the right behaviors;
• Misaligned – Employees who were achieving performance objectives but were not quite exhibiting the desired behaviors;
• Right Fit? – Employees who were not achieving their objectives nor supporting the company culture.

After reviewing the report, Melissa helped the leadership team communicate the results with the full James E. Moore team and developed key action plans for the upcoming coaching sessions. These action plans were designed to:

• Find ways to reward and leverage star employees more effectively and ask them to mentor others;
• Provide more training and coaching to employees with potential to help them become stars;
• Help employees who were misaligned with the company culture recognize how their behaviors were potentially damaging thee team’s chemistry;
• Quickly address employees who were potentially not the right fit for the organization.

The subsequent coaching sessions produced the results the leadership team was looking for, which included higher workplace satisfaction, improved employee performance, and an increase in sales. During our last debrief meeting, Jim Moore said, “By implementing the Performance Culture System into our daily business life, the James E. Moore Insurance Agency has experienced a compound organic growth rate of 16 percent for the past two years.”

When I developed the Performance Culture System I wanted to provide a simplified way for managers to build and manage a high-performance team. The app is intuitive and it helps managers coach their employees. It’s a feature that is really important because recent Gallup research shows that 70 percent of employees are not engaged in the workplace because of ineffective managers.  

If you’re interested in learning more about Performance Culture, we created an animated video that walks you through the process. You can view the video here. 

About the James E Moore Insurance Agency:

The James E. Moore Insurance Agency offers commercial and personal insurance for property, liability and bond exposures plus employee benefits and individual life, health, disability, and long-term care insurance. The company, founded in 1954 by Ann and James Moore Sr. and now owned and managed by James Moore Jr. (second generation) and Adrienne Moore (third generation), now insures more than 8,000 people and businesses in southeastern North Carolina and employees 21 insurance professionals.

The Cornerstone team includes former C-Level executives, successful entrepreneurs and advisors who offer unmatched experience in delivering advanced, custom-tailored, results-oriented solutions for business leaders. Cornerstone has worked with hundreds of companies that range from fast-growth start-ups to Fortune 500 corporations. It developed the Performance Culture System™ to help clients implement best practices and drive high performance throughout their organization. For more information, visit www.launchgrowexit.com, call 910-681-1420, or email [email protected].