Imagine that you have been hired to serve a Wilfred Blackburn’s communication consultant. In this assignment, Blackburn asks you for two deliverables:

In 2016, on an asset basis, Prudential plc was ranked as the largest life insurance company in the UK,

and seventh worldwide. Established in London in 1848, it had been a leader in the insurance sector for decades and had a history of serving the working-class population with its agents (affectionately referred to as the “Man from the Pru”) going door-to-door to collect premiums.

Prudential plc had begun to expand outside the UK in the 1920s, initially following the trade routes to British Commonwealth countries, aiming to provide continuing service to expatriates working overseas. The company established its operations in Singapore, a major port in the East, in 1931. After the devastation that followed World War II, Prudential rebuilt its operations in Malaysia and Singapore, but not elsewhere. In 1964, almost by chance, the business plan and resources initially intended for Dubai were diverted to Hong Kong, and Prudential Hong Kong was launched.

Prudential plc’s dominant market position in the UK caused it to become a target not only for other

competitors but also for increasingly active regulators. By the early 1990s, Prudential plc’s

management recognised that overexposure to its home market could subject its shareholders to

unexpected volatility in its earnings. The Global CEO at the time made it a strategic imperative to

PACS was considered the jewel in the crown of PCA’s business. From its ongoing community investment initiatives, to winning Asia Insurance Review’s Life Insurance Company of the Year award and to forming a 12-year bancassurance relationship in 2010 with United Overseas Bank (one of Singapore’s the top three banks), the company demonstrated how far it had come since it first

began selling insurance policies in Singapore during the pre-World War II era.

Each CEO had his own unique, quite contrasting style of leadership, and this quick succession of changes yielded different business strategies, with many not seen through their full completion.

Back in September 2006, Justin Lim had become CEO after a long career within Prudential Singapore, where he had begun in 1978 as an agent. Ban explained,

Justin was highly personable. He remembered the birthdays of employees and was much liked by employees. His style of leadership was non-confrontational. He preferred to keep status quo and draw on relationships to build business results.

In January 2010, Justin became PCA’s Regional Chief Agency Officer, and Thomas Contri took over the reigns as CEO in Singapore. An American, Contri had worked in the general insurance sector in the US for a dozen years before joining AIA in Malaysia, where he had been for four years. In 2000, he was recruited by PCA as a Regional Agency Director, and then relocated to Indonesia where he held the CEO role for seven years prior to taking on the Singapore CEO role.

Ban added,

Generally, Justin and Contri focussed on steering the ship and focusing on strategies that worked to make sure we accomplished financial numbers.

In January 2013, Lee Johnson was appointed as the CEO of PACS. Also, an American, Lee had worked with a number of general insurance companies in the U.S. before relocating to China to assume a position with AIG for four years. He joined PCA in 2008 to take on regional roles in marketing and distribution. Lee assumed the role of CMO during Contri’s leadership before taking over as CEO. Samuel Gen, a senior executive in Human Resources, recollected,

Lee’s style of leadership was pretty autocratic. He thought my way was the right way. He was very demanding, and his style of leadership was very granular. He personally took on too many tasks.

Netta Maple, Finance Director at PACS, added,

Lee wanted to make this a successful business, but he didn’t have the levers or mandate to do what needed to be done. He did not have the support of the rest of his management team. He was

very detail-oriented and tended to take too much on his own plate. That essentially meant we were trying to run the business on the back of one man’s ideas.

Lee’s autocratic style was not conducive to PACS’ relationships with either its bancassurance partners or its agency force. Prudential lost a few major bancassurance bids, and an existing longstanding bancassurance partner declined to renew their relationship. This was a huge blow to what had been a stable business. Major agency relationships were also under pressure.

In October 2015, Justin Lim was hastily reassigned from his position as Malaysia CEO to assume, once again, the CEO role of PACS. Maple explained,

Justin was brought in to stabilise, and he did exactly that. We were stable and static. We needed to proactively start to invest in the future, and that, unfortunately, didn’t happen.

Ban added,

Justin had seen through the ups and downs in business. In Malaysia, where he went through a sales crisis, he reacted with composure and calmness. When the company lost a big agency in Singapore, again he was not ruffled.

Although the top management team was directly impacted by the continual change in leadership

styles and direction, employees working further down in the hierarchy operated as they had always done. They were still happy working for the top-ranked insurance company in Singapore. That was until bonuses were impacted. Ban further explained,

If we looked at our employee performance bonus, it was at the bottom of the abyss. We had never seen such low points before. When it hit the pocket, people started to realise things were not all that rosy and morale was affected.

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Gen had observed the rising frustration among staff across the organisation. There was discord

between departments, and each unit preferred to work in its own silo. He recalled that when employees were asked to interact with other departments within the organisation, there was a sense

of fear and discomfort amidst them. He added,

Teams would try to protect their own people. Performance was sales driven, and the overall

attitude was very defensive. Targets set were not aligned to expectations, and hierarchy was

pervasive. Many teams were not paying attention to the right issues and were busy trying to untangle themselves from the fire-fighting mode.

Maple recollected,

There was zero tolerance for failure in terms of employee performance. So, there was absolute fear in staff, and hence most major issues that needed discussion and resolution were never delved into. We were busy trying to project the numbers that made us look good, instead of focussing on the real situation. We had lost deals, but we were still in a denial mode. Even though some staff felt strongly that things needed to change, the hierarchical culture was a real

bottleneck. We had been a top performer in the market, and the entire focus then was to try and keep projecting ourselves as a top performer, rather than invest time and energy into gaping issues that needed attention.

PACS had always done well relative to other PCA operations in the region. Management in PACS were used to dealing with their day-to-day problems themselves with minimal interference from the PCA regional office in Hong Kong. Maple, who had worked at PCA before she was transferred to the Singapore subsidiary, recalled,

Prudential Singapore was always this fortress that was difficult to penetrate. They hardly relied on the regional office, and since their performance had always been more or less stellar, the regional office had not interfered much in the organisation’s day to day affairs. However, there was undoubtedly little trust between the regional office and Singapore office, primarily because there was little interaction, and as a result, little warmth shared between the staff of the two offices.

Reflecting sentiments built over a number of years, in mid-2016, a highly productive team of agents

from PACS’ largest agency unit resigned and joined a rival insurer, leaving a gaping hole in sales

production. PCA realised that they had to fix multiple aspects of the business to regain and maintain PACS’ performance in the Singapore market. To begin with, they had to demolish the walls of the fortress itself. But they also had to transform the business to cope with technology disruption and changes in the market that were not just impacting Singapore but the broader insurance industry as a whole. They needed an experienced change agent.

Wilf Blackburn had begun his career in the UK in an actuarial consultancy and then worked in distribution for several years. His initial years in Asia were at Singapore within the Asia regional office of Allianz, global life and general insurance MNC. His career as a CEO had begun in the Philippines at the age of 35. He recollected,

My first experience working as a CEO was for a joint venture of an insurance company, a fifty- year-old family business in the Philippines. I was the fourth CEO in five years in the company, and I quickly realised the pitfalls of a joint venture. Next, I got the role of CEO in Thailand. They were looking for a transformation agent; the role helped me develop my expertise as a change leader. I also got to work in China for a while where I got to handle transformation, innovation and customer centricity which required me to bring in new people with new ideas. I was experimenting with hiring a lot of people from different places. Some industries had way better training for their employees than financial services. Employees from these industries were able to understand the value of new ideas, so we brought in people with different mind-sets. It is hard to copy success without the DNA of the right mind-set. But it is also hard to maintain intellectual potential as people constantly move to different organisations in this competitive world. But again, the benefit in this is if people did not move, new people with fresh ideas could not be brought in, so there are two sides of the coin.

Blackburn was not new to organisational transformation. His multiple postings had made him quite

when there were opposing perspectives, and therefore, staff diversity was a prerequisite to change.

Blackburn also believed in collaboration, an open mind-set, and a willingness to change and adapt

for the better. His years of experience had taught him to observe, listen, understand, and coach staff

to make their own decisions, thereby embracing the accountability they had been entrusted with.

PCA was known to hire talent whenever they noticed it, rather than searching under pressure for

talent when a vacancy occurred. It developed its senior hires by exposing them to various regional

projects and country operations. It was under this programme that Blackburn had joined PCA in 2012. His first assignment was to oversee the launch of PCA's subsidiary in Cambodia and the opening of PCA's representative offices in Myanmar and Laos. In 2014, Blackburn was appointed as CEO of Prudential Vietnam and entrusted with the task of catalysing organisational change. As a symbolic action, as the Vietnam office was restructuring its office space, he insisted on a shared, open space plan situated amongst his employees. It was unheard of for a CEO to share workspace with other employees in a large organisation, particularly in Vietnam, never mind in most of Asia. While PCA would have liked to transfer Blackburn earlier to Singapore, he first had to bring to closure what he started in Vietnam.

When Blackburn took over as CEO of PACS in October 2016, many employees were at a crossroads. The results of a recently conducted Barrett organisational culture survey (refer to Exhibit 5 for 2016 Barrett Study) indicated a level of cultural entropy reflecting ‘significant problems requiring

immediate attention.’ There was a significant mismatch between the actual organisational culture at PACS and the culture desired by the employees and management. The organisation was characterised

as bureaucratic, controlling and focused on short-term results. Competitors were keen to attract some

of the talents of what had been the top-ranked insurance company for so many years.

( PACS had traditionally been a proud and confident organisation . It had experienced year upon year of success over a succession of CEOs. Yet, defections in the market alo ng with a decline in market share and reductions in staff bonuses clearly indicated that change was necessary. )

Ban recalled,

( People were expecting a change in leadership when Wilf came. But we were sceptical and unsure. We did not know what to expect. We hoped the new CEO would be able to turn the business around, improve the work environment and invest in the future. Notably, there was also a huge desire amongst some of the senior staff to change for the better, and evol ve and adapt ourselves to the rapidly changing business environment. But we were deep-rooted in many ways as an organisation , so we had no idea on what would be the strategy for the change , how fast that change would happen, or would it happen at all! )

Everyone wondered, how PACS could transform as an organisation? What would Blackburn do now? How quickly would he act?

EXHIBIT 1: GROWTH OF INSURANCE IN ADVANCED AND EMERGING MARKETS

Source: Company Data