Leadership is about helping a team feel the value of the work they are doing, says Dana Halicki, VP of customer and agent experience and digital strategy for Grange, who leads a team of 15 people at the company.
"I want my team to know their work matters. They're making a difference in improving Grange's digital capabilities — making it easier for agents to do business with us and enhancing how we serve customers," she says.
Halicki joined Grange in 2019, after two separate previous stays at Farmers and a separate prior run at Grange from 2012 to 2016. She began her career at Progressive Insurance as a pricing and product analyst. Most of her roles since then have been developing and managing insurance products. Halicki has worked with both business and technology colleagues. "It's just bridging business needs with what technology can do to enable those things," she says.
That's done by building relationships and talking business needs through with technology partners, according to Halicki. "I've learned the value of not just asking for a specific solution, but trying to educate my technology partners on an outcome that we're trying to drive or problem that I'm trying to address and have them contribute to the solution process," she says. "Often, you ask for a specific solution, and those either are costly or complex. You may be able to get 80% there with a slightly different solution that's a lot less challenging to implement. It's been a learning curve for me to go from contributor to leader and set the vision of where we're going and connecting the work we're doing to the strategy," she says.
Halicki's focus has mostly been on commercial product lines, but in the past 12 to 18 months, she and her team have gained understanding of nuances in those lines, and found elements in personal lines that could be applied on the commercial side, she says.
Her business-oriented approach to developing technology for products leads her to ask tech colleagues whether something is really valuable for the business, agent or end customer. The pandemic only accelerated the desire for more digital capabilities in insurance. Teams may brainstorm and end up with two or more options for a solution. In that case, using pictures, wireframes or other tools can help weigh the options, she says.
The insurance industry is undergoing a great deal of change, so the digital transformation team has to stay engaged without always knowing what the end result may be. "Many insurance carriers are rethinking every aspect of how they operate and deliver business results," she says. "Our team understands how their objectives align with the company's overall business strategy, and we are ready to pivot to focus on strengths and unique opportunities."
