Humana Makes a Confident, Unified Pivot That Helped Double Its Stock Value in Just Four Years

Individually, the CEO and senior leaders at Humana each had a proven track record of successfully driving results. But when massive shifts in the U.S. insurance industry disrupted how the company generated profit, serious disagreements arose about how to make the changes needed to ensure continued market success.

Challenge

It was clear that bold changes were needed – but no one could agree on how to proceed, and the resulting strategic misalignment was starting to confuse rank-and-file employees. The CEO observed at the time, “I’ve got 35,000 people coming to work every day and we can’t even tell them where we’re going.” As another member of the ELT later put it, “The transformation we needed was literally too big to fail, yet we were at risk for exactly that.”

Application

Performance experts from The Achieve Institute™ recognized a familiar roadblock to alignment: expecting the future to be a continuation of the past. The Achieve System™ Point B Process was an ideal tool for shifting their approach to a future orientation. “They didn’t give us advice on strategy or what to do to run the company. They gave us a different way to work,” the CEO explained.

The Achieve System also elevated the ELT’s commitment to successful transformation operationally, leveraging the methodology’s broad set of concepts and tools to impact all 35,000 employees. Soon everyone was pulling in the same direction.

Impact 

While the Achieve System engagement was strictly limited to Humana’s senior leadership, the impact was felt throughout the enterprise.As the ELT aligned on the organization’s most critical initiatives, the tension between siloed divisions was resolved, differences were ironed out and employees were galvanized to embrace change. As the ELT began working in sync again, the CEO wryly called the Achieve System “the best cat-herding tool ever.”

The company’s overall business performance remained strong throughout the operational change; in fact, the stock value of the company doubled during the four-year Achieve System engagement.