The Job of a Lifetime, with No Blueprint
By Jon Gorman | Posted: 4/6/2021

Organizations emerged stronger from 2020, tested by adversity and ready to face new challenges and unknowns.  

People with far more recognition than I have said it best. “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” “You miss every shot you don’t take.” And, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

At the end of 2019, I came to my proverbial fork in the road and took a path I never expected to take. A colleague and mentor, someone who had become a friend, had been pushing me toward this decision for years, suggesting I pursue opportunities that develop my leadership skills, including becoming a certified association executive. She saw something in me that I hadn’t seen in myself, and when the chance came to take the shot, to choose the path, I took it.

I could have never predicted what lay ahead when I joined the Network of Vertafore Users, or NetVU, as a first-time executive director in December 2019. Of course, there were a few “knowns.” I was coming on board with a history of leadership roles at other trade associations that serve an engaged membership. Fifteen of my years as an association executive have been in the world of financial services, including both mutual insurance and credit unions. 

NetVU was undergoing a transition to help lead the independent agent channel into the digital future with a heavy emphasis on peer-to-peer education to help agencies more efficiently leverage and maximize the use of their Vertafore solutions. The centerpiece of the organization has historically been its annual conference called Accelerate, held every spring. Then COVID hit in March and derailed literally everything, forcing us to reset priorities and improvise. Tough decisions had to be made, and I was just finishing my first 90 days of listening and learning about the membership and our relationships in the industry. Facing this kind of crisis is a difficult ask of any new leader who hasn’t had time to earn the respect of others, let alone get to know everyone’s names. 

COVID Forces Pivot and More

2020 will be remembered as the year that brought us COVID-19, an economic downturn, and renewed reckoning on social issues. Not only were Americans grappling with all of this on a personal level, the impact on the workplace was profound. As an association that helps independent agencies get the most of their technology, we saw firsthand an unprecedented wave of digital adoption in just a few short months. Businesses were forced to figure out how to work remotely and continue to serve their customers at a time when face-to-face contact was impossible. 

The success stories that continue to emerge are impressive, and I’d like to think NetVU and Vertafore helped foster an environment where agencies could not only survive, but thrive. While it was a bizarre experience, to say the least, there was a silver lining hiding inside the daily chaos and hourly decision-making. 

For starters, our annual conference, Accelerate, was scheduled to take place in Minneapolis in late May. We continually pulsed our board, volunteers and members to get their opinions on alternative formats and the possibility of converting the conference to a virtual format. We monitored the news for public health updates and stayed in close contact with the City of Minneapolis and its convention center. The situation was continually changing, and it was impossible on any given day to know what the outcome would be. Ultimately, a decision was made to cancel Accelerate due to recommendations of the CDC and local health officials for public gatherings.

In hindsight, our board and staff were wise to wait until the city shuttered the convention center in order to mitigate the financial penalties that come with canceling an event. Our event planning team spent countless hours negotiating with vendors and unwinding agreements. 

Meanwhile, a rapidly assembled task force worked in the background to sketch out a virtual agenda, with the goal of maintaining the networking and community-building aspects of Accelerate in addition to rescheduling speakers and educational sessions. The result was the Summer of Accelerate, three months packed with more than 150 webinars, roundtables and tutorials, our first-ever digital annual meeting, and a kickoff week led by Vertafore with product and strategic updates. Across the entire summer, attendance far outpaced that of our normal annual conference.

As it turned out, NetVU members were starving for connection and relished the opportunity to connect with each other during this crazy time of isolation and uncertainty. Whether they were agency principals, producers, or CSRs, to a person they were looking for direction, certainty, something to believe in. As might be expected, we learned a great deal from the experience about our ability to pivot and change course. While the virtual conference was created of necessity, we expect to continue to deliver more digital and virtual content in the future, even after we can resume in-person meetings.

Come November, we faced another deadline to decide whether we could responsibly hold an in-person Accelerate conference in 2021 in Denver. With continued uncertainty about the rollout of vaccinations and new variants of COVID-19 emerging, we made the decision to take our learnings from 2020 and deliver a fully digital Accelerate in 2021. We are committed to taking the successes we discovered and building upon them in 2021 with an online event that will increase the sophistication and impact of what we deliver for NetVU members, our partners, and Vertafore.

Ownership Change, Only for the Best

They say momentous events come in threes, and in hindsight I should have known that the challenge of transforming our annual conference would not be the only surprise in store. 

In August, Vertafore announced it was being acquired by Roper Technologies. The deal was good for everyone involved, and therefore pretty straightforward to explain to our membership. However, Vertafore had been owned by private equity firms and this was the company’s third ownership change in 10 years, so NetVU members were understandably a bit nervous. I had been charged with bringing stability to NetVU, and the acquisition came at an opportune moment because after years of venture capital ownership, Vertafore had found its forever partner. 

What Strategic Plan?

The third unanticipated challenge turned into an advantage. One of my priorities was to lead the development of a strategic plan for the organization; one that would align better with Vertafore as we move forward together. Previous efforts to develop a strategic plan had been sporadic, yet the pandemic turned out to be an advantage in that we were able to slow down, focus, and clearly assess our future. We had the flexibility to do and consider things we could not have otherwise done. It was liberating, in a way, knowing that each day we were operating in uncharted territory and would have to draw heavily on our agility, creativity and common sense. 

So when it came time to sit down and map out the strategic plan that would guide us well into the future, participants came with an informed perspective and a stronger conviction than ever that we can do anything. Also, to expect the unexpected. A comment heard often in meetings was, “If it weren’t for COVID, would we be thinking about this?” And, “This is like looking out a larger window with the blinders off.”

The committee developed a strategic plan with multiple guideposts. Today, we have a five-year blue-sky plan to foster expansive thinking, a three-year plan, and a one-year plan that will help us establish a baseline for performance. The overarching theme is “Modernization of NetVU,” which is an acceptance that much of what we do works, but we will enhance NetVU with new, modern, and emerging tools and thinking to move us forward.

This isn’t to say that NetVU will be an entirely different organization. We will still offer incredible value to our partners and members, but we plan to deliver that value differently. This includes how we train Vertafore users and the systems we train them to use, as well as how we engage and unleash the power of the NetVU community. We’re focused on modernizing NetVU for our membership in the areas of advocacy, community, and education.

Strength in Members

During this period of turbulence, our members asked what NetVU should do as an organization to bring some measure of stability, reassurance and healing to our nation. I have seen other industry leaders state strong positions in areas of social change, but I believe in leading by example rather than taking to social media to share my opinions. 

Rather than calling attention to ourselves, we decided to use our professional skills and human compassion to lift up people in need. We had two social service projects as part of our Day of Caring planned for Accelerate 2020 in Minneapolis, a city that would become the epicenter of the #blacklivesmatter movement. Since we couldn’t hold the planned service projects, we requested that the deposits we made to our partner organization be used to provide blankets to individuals in crisis and job-readiness packs to provide resources, helpful materials, tips, and encouragement to assist with an individual’s employment search.
 
With a diverse membership of 500,000 Vertafore users from 30,000 insurance organizations in all 50 states, NetVU touches many lives — not just those of its members, but their families, coworkers, customers and communities. Our motto is “strength in members,” which means so much more than strength in numbers. It means every member with their unique talents and sensibility makes us stronger, and in turn we help each other through tough times, whether on a professional or personal level.

COVID-19 brought us together, and because of COVID-19 we are more connected than ever. Riding on the momentum of a truly successful virtual conference, members created their own ways to stay in touch – through virtual round tables and happy hours, even a weekly Feel Good Friday to share struggles and best practices and discuss how life will be different when they return to the office. Our leadership and staff didn’t dictate or direct these acts of spontaneity; we just helped facilitate them. I try to practice “servant leadership” and give people the encouragement and tools they need to succeed, and the pandemic created the best opportunity I can imagine to do just that.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this role, it’s that NetVU has emerged stronger from the pandemic. As an organization, we’ve learned many lessons, and perhaps the most important is that connection is about more than technology. Community is about more than just connecting with those who look, feel and act like us. Our members are sharing stories with each other, as well as their frustrations and successes. They’re not only helping themselves but also teaching each other how to meet the needs of their customers in a digital-first world. 

Few things in life turn out as one would expect. While 2020 wasn’t what anyone expected, I’m glad I signed up for this challenge. This has been the job of a lifetime, with no blueprint. I have learned more about leadership and being a leader during these trying times than in the rest of my 25-year career. 

Facing the disruption of 2020 has strengthened us and given us greater clarity, purpose and resolve. Now, we move forward with an incredibly strong and stable foundation, together with Vertafore, our members, and our partners; and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

Jon Gorman is executive director of NetVU, the Network of Vertafore Users, an independent, national member organization committed to providing industry advocacy, world-class education and networking to the more than 30,000 insurance agencies, carriers, MGAs, compliance organizations and over 500,000 users of Vertafore’s solutions.