Elaine Barker is Chief Executive of Kingsmead Insurance, a broker for small businesses in Nottingham with 180 people in six departments. In Headwater, each department is a team with its own climbs, issues, and weekly huddle, and each head is on Elaine’s leadership team.
- Send every renewal offer 30 days before it is dueMAOn trackCompanyRaise the renewal rate to 88%
- Settle small claims in 10 working daysCDOn track
- 1Claims calls wait eight minutes on a MondayCD11 days
- 2Insurers send renewal terms lateYR6 days
- 3The two renewals teams send different lettersYR2 days
Every department at Kingsmead already has somewhere to do its daily work. Finance keeps the accounts, payroll, and supplier invoices in its accounts system. Operations sets up policies, sends renewals, and handles claims in the policy system, and IT answers requests through its help desk. Each department keeps using these systems as it does now.
Headwater holds the plan for that work. Each department’s climbs for the quarter, the problems in its way, and its weekly huddle are in Headwater. A head reads the figures in their department’s own system, then ticks milestones and sets the status of each climb in their Monday check-in.
Choose a card to see where it goes.
Operations, Sales, and Marketing are Kingsmead’s front line, because they deal with clients every day. Finance, People, and IT spend much of their time helping them, so many of their climbs support a front-line climb.
Mohammed’s Operations climb is to send every renewal offer 30 days before it is due. Gavin’s IT climb, Move renewals to online signing, supports it. Mohammed’s climb supports Elaine’s company climb, Raise the renewal rate to 88%, which belongs to the initiative Rebuild the renewal process under the pillar Keep every client.
A climb counts its own milestones and the milestones on every climb that supports it. Mohammed’s climb has six milestones of its own and counts the four on Gavin’s climb, so six ticked out of ten shows as 60%. The initiative counts across its climbs, and the pillar across its initiatives.
Tick a milestone on any climb to see every level above it move.
- Rebuild the renewal processMA54%
- Speed up claimsCD44%
A climb is an outcome a department will reach within the quarter. It has a done when line, which says how everyone will know it is finished, and a few milestones along the way.
Finance, People, and IT don’t sell anything, so their climbs usually improve the department’s own work or help another department with theirs. Victoria’s climb is to close the month in five working days. The September accounts took nine working days to close. Amara’s climb is to hire and onboard 12 claims handlers, and it supports Clare’s Operations climb to settle small claims in 10 working days.
Each done when line names a result someone can check in the department’s own records, such as the day the accounts close or the share of help desk requests answered on the same day. Dominic Varley, who runs the IT help desk, has marked his climb off track, because letting people reset their own passwords is taking longer than planned.
Choose a climb to see its done when line and milestones.
November’s accounts are closed by 7 December, the fifth working day of the month.
Each department head is on the leadership team with Elaine. On Monday morning, each of them checks in. They set the status of each of their climbs, tick the milestones they have finished, and raise anything in the way. A check-in takes about five minutes.
Elaine opens the overview once the check-ins are in. It shows the progress of each pillar and the climbs that need attention. When Amara ticks First six handlers start, Keep every client moves from 44% to 49%. Her climb supports Clare’s claims climb, which belongs to the initiative Speed up claims under that pillar. At 9:31, Gavin marks Let shops buy cover online off track and raises an issue for Tuesday’s leadership huddle.
Drag through Monday morning, or choose a face to see that head’s check-in.
By 2029, Kingsmead looks after 20,000 small businesses, and nine in ten of them renew each year.
- Win small businesses40%
- Keep every client44%
- Simple to deal with33%
- A great place to work43%
- Answer nine in ten help desk requests the same dayOff trackITDominic
Kingsmead’s salespeople earn commission on the policies they sell. Finance works out commission once the month’s accounts are closed, and the close finishes after the payroll deadline, so commission is paid a month late. Harvey Coles, one of the sales managers, raised it in the Sales huddle on Thursday.
Sales can’t solve it without Finance, so Rebecca moved the issue to the leadership team’s list and made Victoria its owner. An issue that no single department can solve goes on the leadership list, where every head can see it.
In Tuesday’s leadership huddle, the team agrees to work out commission from sales figures that Rebecca signs off by the third working day. The outcome is recorded as a standing rule, and Victoria adds the sign-off as a milestone on her climb.
Move the issue to the leadership list, start the huddle, and solve it.
- Commission is paid a month lateHCToday
- 1New salespeople wait a week for their loginsHC6 days
- 1The office runs out of desks in FebruaryEB5 days
- Agree a close timetable with every head9 Oct
- Reconcile the bank accounts every day23 Oct
- Close October in seven working days10 Nov
- Post accruals on the last working day30 Nov
- Close November in five working days7 Dec
Book a demo and we’ll show you how Headwater would run your week, from the vision down to Monday morning.