At the recent Agency Management Conference hosted by Big I Mississippi, Marit Peters, CEO of Catalyit, delivered a powerful message:
The standards you walk by are the standards you accept.
In a market defined by volatility, talent pressure, softening premiums, and accelerating technology, agency success will not be determined by tools alone. It will be defined by culture, leadership discipline, and continuous improvement.
This blog captures the key insights and how independent insurance agencies can apply them immediately.
When Marit stepped into leadership 11 years ago, she discovered a $7 million organization projected to lose $1 million. The financial issues were symptoms. The root cause was culture.
After 90 days of listening sessions and focus groups, she made a defining decision: reset the culture or accept decline.
Three employees were exited. Every remaining team member signed a culture contract committing to:
Everyone signed. Champagne followed. The organization never looked back.
Culture is not aspirational language. It is behavioral enforcement.
If someone violates a core value, leaders must address it immediately.
A simple framework Marit uses:
On one hand, you signed this agreement. On the other hand, I see behavior that contradicts it. Help me understand.
Clear. Non-accusatory. Accountable.
Many agencies obsess over growth strategy, carrier appointments, and technology. According to Patrick Lencioni, author of The Advantage, organizational health trumps everything else in business.
Healthy organizations:
Unhealthy organizations:
When markets soften and commissions tighten, culture becomes a profit lever.
One of Marit’s guiding principles:
The best part about continuous improvement is you always get better.
The worst part is you never arrive.
Agencies that adopt continuous improvement outperform because they:
An agency added new carrier markets but saw no production lift.
Why?
Account managers kept using familiar carriers. No training. No adoption support. No desk-level clarity.
The issue was not marketing. It was execution alignment.
Continuous improvement requires discipline at the workflow level, not just strategic announcements.
In The Truth About Employee Engagement, Lencioni outlines three causes of miserable jobs:
Agency leaders can solve all three without spending a dollar.
Do you know your employees beyond their job title?
Have you asked about their goals, stressors, or ambitions?
Does your CSR understand how their proposal preparation makes producers look like rock stars?
Does your accounting team understand how clean reporting supports strategic decisions?
Impact fuels engagement.
Producers measure revenue. Easy.
But what about:
Success may be:
Clarity reduces burnout.
Post-COVID, leadership requires nuance.
Marit shared a helpful distinction:
High performers exist in both groups.
The goal is not equal treatment. It’s equitable support.
Flexibility should reflect outcomes and fairness, not identical schedules.
A powerful statistic shared:
Only 15% of financial success is tied to technical skills.
85% is driven by people skills.
In insurance, that means:
Technology can increase efficiency.
Only humans create loyalty.
Agencies often operate from scarcity:
But independent agents gather at conferences, even with competitors, because they understand abundance.
There is enough opportunity for agencies that:
Scarcity thinking leads to risk aversion.
Abundance thinking fuels innovation.
If you implement nothing else from this session, do these three things:
Ask each team member:
Inspired by Atomic Habits: improve 1% daily.
That could mean:
Over time, 1% compounds into transformation.
We are navigating:
Agencies that treat culture as strategy, not HR fluff, will outperform.
At Catalyit, we believe agency success is built on:
The agencies that win the next decade will be the ones that:
Your character is your destiny.
For agencies, culture is character.
The standards you walk by today will determine where your agency stands tomorrow.