Leadership
Clarity of focus
How Gregory Case engaged employees and clients to fine-tune the vision at Aon Corp.
By Mike Cottrill
Smart Business Chicago | June 2008
Page 1 of 4
Gregory C. Case would be the first to tell you he doesn’t make
the cut as a great leader.
“I’m not one, but I’ve seen many over my time,” he says. “Great
leaders help people succeed. The fundamental piece to that is
understanding opportunity, understanding how colleagues can
meet those opportunities and helping them be successful in a
way they never knew they could be. When you do that, you create tremendous energy in an organization.”
Of course, some people inside Aon Corp. — the global provider
of solutions in insurance and risk management, human capital
consulting and insurance underwriting — would argue that, that
is exactly what Case does.
After all, Case became Aon’s president and CEO in April 2005
and has had only one goal since then: to unite the company’s
43,000 employees under a vision for growth that will make them
all more effective. So while you wouldn’t get Case to admit he’s a
success, you can draw your own conclusions: Aon grew to $7.47
billion in 2007 after posting $6.65 billion in 2005.
“If you take a step back and say, what are the ingredients for an
organization to be successful and sustain that success, you come
back to a few things,” he says. “One is a common vision of what
we’re trying to accomplish. The second is alignment around that
view, do we understand it together, and the third is how we’re
going to serve our clients. The more effective we are in creating a
vision across our firm, the more effective we are in having alignment and collaboration. The more effective we are in collaborating, the more effective we are in trusting each other and the more
effective we are as an organization.”
To create that vision, Case created a vision structure for the company that would improve its ability to serve clients. Then, to build
that up, he went on an Aon world tour, talking with clients and
employees from the company’s more than 520 locations in 120
countries to figure out how to sharpen that view, all with the goal
of taking Aon to new levels of success.
