Nationwide Insurance and Mark Pizzi unleash new ideas for customers of today and tomorrow

 
Looking for opportunities
It’s also important to remember that new ideas need room to grow, and opportunities are everywhere.
Pizzi says when somebody throws out a new idea, what he calls “white corpuscles” immediately surround it like it’s a disease or infection.
“As soon as you start applying your business logic — well, how much is that going to cost, and does that fit within what we do? — you start coming up with reasons not to do something,” he says. “And the best advice I can give people is to look through the consumers’ eyes first before you allow anybody to start shooting at an idea.”
It’s a continual challenge to keep that mindset.
“We’ve got 33,000 employees. There’s a whole lot of good ideas in 33,000 employees. And how do you unleash that? How do you give permission for them not to talk themselves out of bringing up a new idea?” Pizzi says.
Part of the solution is to try to teach employees to find the positive even when things are negative, because that allows you to be more innovative.
For example, insurance is heavily regulated by each state, which can make it hard to experiment, Pizzi says.
“We used to look at that as a negative,” he says. “Now we say, it’s a matter of turning it around.
“OK, there are 50 states; we are regulated by 50 states. Instead of complaining about it, why not look at it and say ‘There are 50 opportunities to try to find someone who will listen to your new idea.’ Right? If we were controlled by one organization, as an example, and they said, ‘No, you can’t try this’ — you’re done.”

You just have to convince one insurance department to allow you to try a new coverage or policy, Pizzi says, and once you get one under your belt, others can look and follow.

 

Takeaways:

  • Innovation starts by looking through the eyes of your customer first.
  • Minimize organizational layers to generate new ideas from all your employees.
  • Ideas need room to grow before business logic shoots them down.

 

The Pizzi File:

Name: Mark Pizzi
Title: President and COO
Company: Nationwide Insurance
Born: Kent, Ohio
Education: Bachelor’s in criminal justice from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania.
What was your first job, and what did you learn from it? I worked for Ingersoll Rand, a manufacturer of equipment, road-making equipment, etc. I walked behind — I can even remember the name — SP40, a man-driven machine that was basically like a steamroller. They had mechanical problems with it, so I put hours on that machine — literally in the back of their manufacturing plant for eight hours a day, walking behind this machine. And whenever it broke, my job was to get with engineers and they would figure out what the problem was.
It was the coolest job ever, and the most boring job ever. But I started to understand the issue of customers and the concept of fixing a problem. It actually had a pretty big impact, even though I would never want to do it again.
What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received? My dad said, ‘Mark, don’t be a victim, even if you are one.’ And I’ve tried to live that. Things happen to you that you don’t want to have happen. And sometimes you really are victimized, if you want to use that term in business. But if you start thinking like a victim, even if you are one, you’ve lost.
So, I’ve focused on a phrase that my dad also said. He kept telling me, ‘When you’re in trouble, when you’re having a challenge, focus on what you can do rather than on what you can’t do.’
If you weren’t working in business, what is something you have always wanted to do? I would love to be a working history professor. I would want to be able to teach history, but I also would want to have some research aspect, so that I could be out helping research history — being out at an archaeological dig or sitting in a library or museum somewhere figuring something out.
You’ve been with Nationwide since 1978, is there anything you’ve learned that you wish you could tell that your self? As a new manager what I wish I’d known then that I know now is don’t be driven by trying to be liked.
It doesn’t mean that you don’t want to be liked, but if that drives you, you wind up not challenging people — and people always step up when you challenge them.