5WTI x Prudential collaborate on a transformational workshop

Amer Iqbal, CEO of 5 Ways to Innovate, delivers the opening presentation at Prudential’s 2024 strategy offsite workshop

5 Ways to Innovate continue their successful run of delivering transformational work for financial services firms with their recent engagement with Prudential Insurance.

Last month, we led a strategy workshop with 40 of Prudential’s top sales leaders to reassess and redefine their strategic direction. At the core of the workshop was a human-centric approach, redefining and solidifying the role of their 68,000 strong agent sales force. The challenge statement at the core of the workshop was to embrace AI as a transformative technology that would assist agents to elevate their work to more strategic tasks, ultimately delivering a better customer experience.

Participants were led through a systematic approach combining design thinking and lean startup methods to rapidly prototype AI solutions to solve a specific pain point in the current agent journey. In just 3 rounds of facilitated exercises, attendees managed to develop 8 lo-fi prototypes for potential solutions.

5 Ways to Innovate will continue to support the development of the most viable solutions via remote coaching sessions to keep the relevant teams engaged and focused on strategic outcomes.

Amer summarised his thoughts on the workshop in a LinkedIn post:

Are 15 minutes enough to reset the course of an entire organization? ⏰


Last month I ran a strategy workshop for a global insurance company. I had 40 of their top sales leaders in the room, and led them through 3x 5 minute exercises.

In just 15 minutes of teamwork, they developed 8 lo-fi prototypes for an AI solution that would immediately help to solve a very real and current pain point for their thousands of agents.

I just gave them some very simple ingredients:
⚠️ A problem worth solving
🛠️ A tried and tested system to develop solutions (combination of design thinking + lean startup methods)
💡 An environment away from their desk, away from email, away from the daily pressures, giving permission to work collaboratively on a bigger problem

We live in an era obsessed with efficiency, optimizing every minute of people's time towards very specific and very narrow goals.

╰┈➤ Moving straight ahead can be a great tactic, unless you’re heading in the wrong direction.

Sometimes it pays to spend just 15 minutes thinking divergently to take stock of the options available before converging on a plan of action.