Deanna M. Mulligan, CEO of Guardian Life Insurance Company of America

Deanna M. Mulligan, CEO of Guardian Life Insurance Company of America

Introduction

This paper focuses on Deanna M. Mulligan, who is the current CEO of Guardian Life Insurance Company of America. She is a great leader with a rich professional background. She has served in several leadership positions in different organizations and associations. Before being appointed to the position of CEO, she served as the president and the Chief Operations Officer (COO). Deanna joined the company as the executive vice-president, where she was responsible for formulating and guiding business strategy aimed at business growth and competitiveness in the insurance markets (Guardian, 2020). Before joining Guardian Life Insurance Company, Deanna was the principal at McKinsey and Company as well as holding an executive position at both AXA Financials and the New York Life Insurance Company. Deanna Mulligan is an influential leader who has made the company a market leader in the insurance industry.

Accomplishments of the CEO

She is a member of the Board of directors for companies in the industry and also in the community. Deanna is a member of the Board of directors at Guardian Life, Vanguard, American Council of Insurers, New York Department of Financial Services State Insurance Advisory Board, and the Economic Club of New York. She also serves the community where she is appointed as a member of the Board of trustees for several community-based organizations.

She is a professional in strategy consulting and operations management. In 2011, Dianna was awarded the Israel Bonds Neil Lavin Memorial Award for “professional accomplishments in support of Israel” (Guardian, 2020). Deanna Mulligan was recognized in 2019 by Fortune Magazine as among the “The 50 Most Powerful Women in Business” (Guardian, 2020). In other news, Deanna was recognized by Crain’s New York Business as one of “The 50 Most Powerful Women in Business in New York 2019” (Gueardian, 2020). That was the fifth consecutive time being on the list since the year 2011.  Given the abovementioned experiences, achievements, and contributions, Deanna Mulligan can be marked as a very influential leader across the insurance industry and also in society.

Summary of company

Guardian Life Insurance Company is one of the greatest companies in America listed in the Fortune 500 list. In 2018, the company was listed position 239 of Fortune 500 lists. The company’s philosophy is “Helping people to protect what they love most- since day one” (Guardian, 2020). Guardian Life Insurance is a leader in the insurance industry, specializing in life insurance services. The company has been protecting people’s lives, health, and wealth for over 150 years by offering such products and services around these there core product lines.

For protecting life, the company offers several life insurance plans and disability insurance. For protecting health, the company has dental insurance, vision insurance, accident insurance cancer insurance, critical illness insurance, and hospital indemnity insurance. For wealth, the company offers annuities, IRAs, and investments. Life insurance plans offered by Guardian Life Insurance Company include term-life insurance policy, whole life, and universal life insurance policies. The latter two are called permanent life insurance policies and have a maturity value, unlike the first one.

The company has a large client base of over 27 million people who have bought insurance cover. It was founded 150 years ago by Hugo Wasendonk (Guardian, 2020). The company has achieved several awards and accolades, some under the leadership of Deanna Mulligan. The company has received several awards of honor, including the Decision Support Award. It was recognized by the Training Magazine as among the Top 125 Training Organizations. In 20818, Guardian Life Insurance was ranked number 235 in the Fortune 500 companies. In 2020, the company has been recognized as The Best Place to Work by the Human Rights Campaign 202 Equality Index (Guardian, 202). The company is now headquartered in New York City. In 2018, the company recorded a good financial performance with $73B in assets and $8.5B as capital.  The company is in a stable financial condition reporting over $6.1B in operating income in the first quarter of 2019 (Guardian, 2020).

Deanna Mulligan’s influence on the company’s products and/or services

Deanna has been a very influential figure at Guardian Life Insurance Company since she joined the management team in 2008. She has since then been serving different capacities in the organization, where she has played various roles in providing and excelling in the company’s products and services. When she joined the company, she served as the executive vice president. In her role of developing a product and business strategy for the company’s life insurance and disability insurance product lines, Deanna made remarkable progress that saw him promoted as the CEO. As the CEO of the company, she has played a vital role in ensuring business growth.

Deanna’s leadership has ensured that the company’s products and services suit the financial and social needs of the company by revising insurance policies to suit client needs. The CEO has reformed service delivery to over 27 million clients, where the claim and compensation process is easy and fast (Guardian, 2020). Before her leadership, there were several claims that the claim process was bureaucratic, and compensation was not being reasonably offered. To address the need of every American, Deanna has added some products and services as retirement advisory and management. This new product has added a new group of customers to the company hence increasing revenues and market share.

As the CEO, Deanna has revived some of the company’s products that had low purchases and were almost becoming inactive (Guardian, 2020). The disability insurance policy is one of the products that Deanna has revived, and the clients-base for this product has been rising since she became the CEO. She has achieved this by demonstrating the product and the problem it solves in human life. By showing people the need for this product, whether working in a high-risk work environment or not, Deanna attracted so many clients. Apart from the core insurance business, Deanna has seen an opportunity in extra business. The CEO has invested efforts in advisory and guidance services to both small businesses and people. Before she joined this company, there was little attention to these services, which to Deanna, presented a significant business opportunity (Guardina, 2020). The CEO has added a few products to this business product line, such as financial advisory and health living.

The CEO has also influenced the company’s product and service delivery by adopting and shifting much of the business online. Before she took over as the CEO, the company product and service delivery was very different from today. First of all, Deanna realized the competition in the insurance industry was stiff and required strategies that would give Guardian Insurance an upper hand in the market. Her focus on service delivery was an appropriate move towards this direction. Though a website existed for the company, it had not been fully leveraged with respect to customer relationships and product delivery (Guardina, 2020). It is now easy and possible to purchase an insurance plan online through the company’s website, unlike in the past, where the website was only being used to communicate with clients (Guardian, 2020). In addition to the online purchase of insurance plans, customers can make a claim and follow up compensation online through a strong customer relationship management system/team.

Throughout the twelve years of her leadership, Deanna has been improving the organization’s network to enhance the performance of the company’s products and services. One of the major challenges in life and insurance service delivery has been a lack of strong working partners who can guarantee financial and healthcare services as the need arises (Guardian, 2020). As the CEO, Deanna has partnered with several healthcare providers and financial institutions who are always ready to offer services for Guardian insurance. This has strengthened trust from clients, and many people have purchased the company’s insurance policies. The large pool of funds has allowed the company to lower insurance premiums and deliver to the expectations of the customers. She has also improved such insurance policies as the life insurance plan by increasing the number of people who can be covered under specific life insurance plans. Regarding disability insurance, the eligibility and inclusion criteria have also been revised to increase the number of subscribers to the insurance policy (Guardian, 2020). Deanna still continues to adopt strategies aimed at improving and enhancing the company’s products and services.

Deanna Mulligan’s influence on the strategic direction of the company

Guardian Insurance is a firm that strives to lead the insurance industry through strategic management (Guardian, 2020). Deanna has been playing a key figure in moving the company towards sustainable business growth. Upon her appointment as the CEO, Deanna worked collaboratively with the executive management and other low-level employees to devise a strategic plan that would help the company attain a sustainable growth for the next decade. As a strategic leader, Deanna had first to conduct an assessment of the organization’s preparedness for a strategic plan.

The assessment identified that the organization could support a strategic plan, but had to address certain issues regarding the company’s culture that could affect implementation (Guardian, 2020). There was high employee turnover that affected the employee commitment to strategic objectives and company goals (Goleman, 2000). To address this issue, Deanna carried out a survey to identify the reason behind high employee turnover in the organization. The research identified that poor remuneration was the major factor the lead to a lack of job satisfaction.

The strategic plan, therefore, had to focus on building a long-term relationship between the workers and the company. Equity was applied in remuneration, and the employee turnover in the company went down. This move, however, created another problem of inadequate funds to run the organization since much was used for salaries (Guardian, 2020). As a result, Deanna and the executive team were faced with the challenge of raising more revenue to support operations. An opportunity was identified in increasing the sales of the company’s products and services. The CEO, together with the sales and marketing team through a consultative meeting, came up with strategies to reform the marketing team ad, increase sales. The team was even able to come up with suggestions of augmenting some of the company’s core products in order to make them more attractive.

Deanna has also influenced change in the organization. She has changed the organization’s culture, which is a crucial factor in supporting a strategic move (Goleman, 2000). She has also empowered the organization’s ethics, building a more positive public image of the company. To achieve this, Deanna documented the accepted code of conduct for employees through a written code of ethics. The ethical code was well communicated throughout the organization and revisited during a board meeting to ensure that everyone was aware of it. In addition, Deanna developed an incentive program to reward employees who complied with the organization’s values. Through the incentives, employee motivation and commitment to the organization was improved (Guardian, 2020). In exchange, the employee fully supports the organization’s strategic objectives and are always committed to achieving the objectives.

Deanna is a well-connected leader, and she has used her network to grow the company’s network through partnerships and strategic alliances. She has been focusing on partnering with more financial services providers and healthcare providers. Since 2008, Deanna has partnered with over ten healthcare providers and financial providers. Through this strategic move, the company has grown its client base and increased revenue. She has been an influential figure acting as a role-model for many employees in the organization. Through her influence line managers have also adopted strategies at the tactical levels that support the overall company goals and objective.

The vision and mission of the company have been a strength for Deanna’s strategic objectives. The vision has acted as a framework for directing operations. The strong vision also acts as a benchmark for strategic planning (Nothhouse, 2019). It is an operational model for directing business growth and implementing strategic plans. Through the strong corporate mission and vision, coupled with a supportive organizational culture, Deanna has successfully implemented strategies geared towards sustainable growth. The results of strategic planning are seen in the company’s financial performance. Guardian Life Insurance has also employed many people, and the retention rate of employees is high (Guardian, 2020). The customer service level has also improved, and the company’s corporate image is also improving. It has been recognized and ranked in the Fortune 500 twice (Guardian, 2020).

Leadership style/personality qualities/ personality traits

From the analysis of her experiences and accomplishments, Deanna is a transformational leader. Her leadership style is participative or democratic leadership style. This leadership style involves every member of the team in making decisions regarding the institution. As a participative leader, democracy is the basis of decision making (Northouse, 2019). As a CEO, Deanna usually encourages her team members to participate in achieving the set objectives of any task at hand within the set deadlines. Emotional competencies for this leadership style include collaboration, team leadership, and communication. The key pillars for participative leadership include inclusivity, transparency, trust, responsibility, and high emotional intelligence.

Trusting. In this kind of leadership style, trust is paramount to successful leadership (Goleman, 2000). Deanna trusts her team members and gives them the freedom to practice their skills and motivations without strict supervision. For highly motivated and skilled members, Deanna usually encourages them to share their innovative ideas in meetings, which help to improve the company’s management strategies.

Problem Solver. Working with team members is not error-free. Some members do a bad job. As a democratic leader, Deanna does not punish them. She usually sits them in a table and talks through it so that they can learn from their mistakes. In the event of a conflict, she reminds team members that they have to remain united, and the set goals must be achieved anyway.

Collaborative. When developing a new strategy to improve business operations, Deanna will personally draw the plan and hand it over to the executive managers to discuss it. Through the discussion, they are able to point out areas that need improvement and areas they think are not appropriate. Upon receiving the feedback, the CEO is able to align the plan with the suggestions appropriately. Occasionally, there are new employees joining the organization. When a fresh member of the staff is registered, Deanna invites the member into a collaborative team meeting, where he can learn the best way of doing things in the team.

Emotional Stability. Dianna leads with passion and is aware of personal and team emotional intelligence. She takes time to familiarize with every member of the team and note their weaknesses so that she can help them out. She proudly serves the organization and always ready to solve conflicts among team members. If a member of the team feels demotivated, she has to employ emotional intelligence to make sure that the member is involved in the team discussions. Most importantly, humility in serving the organization is her priority, and teamwork is power.

Social boldness. Deanna is a spontaneous risk-taker in that she is usually socially aggressive and responsive to others and also tend to have high emotional stamina.

Tough-mindedness. Deanna is known to be practical, logical, and straight-to-the-point. She also tends to be low in sentimental attachments and is comfortable with criticism. She is known to be insensitive to hardships and generally, very poised.

Education of the Leader

Deanna Mulligan has a professional background in operations and strategic management. She has a distinction from the University of Nebraska and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (Guardian, 2020). This education has helped her to assume job positions that prepared her to be a CEO. For example, she was the former COO of the same company before she became the CEO. The education is relevant to her current position since much of the CEO’s work pertains to operations.

Prior Jobs at Different Companies

Before joining Guardian Life insurance in 2008, Deanna was the principal at McKinsey and Company. She was a senior executive manager at AXA financials before then. Deanna also served a senior position at the New York Life Insurance Company. She served as a Director in the Board of Arch Capital. She currently serves in Vanguard’s board of Directors since 2017 (Guardian, 2020).

Conclusion

Deanna Mulligan has been and continues to be an influential figure not only in the insurance industry but also across the community. Through her leadership style, the company has grown its products and modified some to meet client needs. She also has influence strategy formulation and implementation, including partnerships and strategic alliances. She has created a supportive culture that enables the implementation of marketing and business strategies. Through her strong leadership personalities, Deanna has driven the company to success, and it has been ranked in the Fortune 500 companies twice under her leadership. She has also been recognized as a powerful woman in business by prominent business magazines. Under the leadership of Deanna Mulligan, Guardian Insurance will continue to excel and adopt more strategies that will influence its growth in the next decade.

References

Goleman, D. (2000). Leadership that gets results. Harvard business review, 78(2), 4-17.

Guardian. (2020). About Deanna M. Mulligan. Retrieved from.https://www.guardianlife.com/leadership/deanna-m-mulligan

Guardian. (2020). Delivering On Our Promises for 150 Years. Retrieved 14 March 2020, from https://www.guardianlife.com/about-guardian

Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.