Julie Burnett
President/CEO, Liberty Northwest

Beth Montag-Schmaltz
Founding Partner, PeopleFirm

Presentation:

"A Recipe for Managing Rapid and Disruptive Change Successfully"

Imagine being called in to manage a rapid and disruptive change where you could not communicate with many of the impacted stakeholders until just hours before a significant change to the business would occur and just days before some employees would have new employers. Here's the situation...a Regional Company of a Fortune 100 company sold the policy expirations of a $150M book of business to 4 selected independent agents. This transaction represented a departure from the business model on which the company was originally founded and ultimately would result in the displacement of approximately 30 employees. As you can imagine, a deal of this size required a substantial amount of legal negotiations and took four months to complete. Due to the sensitive nature of this project, team members were required to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements, meaning they could not discuss this outside of the project team. What do you do when you cannot communicate to all impacted stakeholders? How do you lead ~30 people through the ADKAR stages within a matter of hours ? And how do you manage those who remain with the company, who may view the transaction with suspicion and who considered many of the displaced employees as family members? And, importantly, how do you accomplish all these goals and at the same time minimize or eliminate disruption to your business? At the heart of this story is how all employees were treated with dignity and respect through the process and the goodwill generated within the organization. This presentation will demonstrate how leveraging the ADKAR methodology and by applying change techniques to manage stakeholders through every stage is a true recipe for success.

Biographies:

Julie Burnett
Julie Burnett is President and Chief Executive Officer for Liberty Northwest, a $690 million commercial property & casualty insurer based in the Northwest. Julie is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the company, including direct leadership and management of underwriting, sales, financial, actuarial, marketing and human resources operations.

Julie joined Liberty Northwest from Safeco Insurance where her tenure spanned more than 20 years. While at Safeco, she held numerous executive positions including Vice President of Safeco's Midwest Commercial Lines Division. Julie's experience in the insurance business spans across all areas of the industry, as she's held positions in Marketing, Sales, Commercial Underwriting, Commercial Product, and Field Operations. Prior to her current position, Julie served as Vice President of Offshore Operations for Safeco and established the company's first outsourcing operations in India.

Julie has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Davis and attained her CIC designation in 1991, her AIM designation in 1994, her CPCU designation in 1997, and her CRM designation in 2007.


Beth Montag-Schmaltz
Beth is a Principal and founding partner of PeopleFirm LLC. As a thought leader and industry expert in Adoption and Change Execution, Beth is frequently sought after to architect and manage complex change management programs for strategic and high-risk corporate initiatives.

Beth is a recognized researcher, practitioner, and innovator of Adoption and Change Execution methodologies and tools. Her knowledge and experience allows her to guide organizations and their leaders through a structured yet uniquely tailored process that produces concrete returns on their investments. As an author of leading-edge articles and white papers, Beth provides companies with the unconventional wisdom to not only reach their business goals, but also exceed them through a practical approach to leading people through change.

Prior to co-founding PeopleFirm, Beth was Vice President in charge of Hitachi Consulting's Organizational Change Management (OCM) Practice. In this role Beth led the Global Organizational Change Management practice for Hitachi Consulting, where she built a comprehensive and industry- recognized best practice approach to implementing change.

Beth's education background includes an Executive Master of Business Administration from the University of Washington and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and a minor in Psychology from Baldwin-Wallace College.
 

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