An agency is like any business organization, it has a unique culture. A culture suggests the underlying assumptions and values that drive primary attitudes and behaviors in an organization and specifically, in your agency’s culture? As agency principals, what are your underlying assumptions and values?

At my agency, we had a culture committed to:

• Profitability
• Excellence
• Exceptional Customer Service
• Teamwork and Team Support
• Continuous Learning
• Technological Innovation
• Product and Service Diversification

There are two basic core values that all our people share. It is how I work. It is how I live. It is how I run my agency. Those values are honesty and integrity. I will discuss how these values play out in a New Agency paradigm. Can you short-cut the process? Sure you can. Will you compromise yourself, your clients, your employees, and our industry? Will you compromise you own family? Yes you will, if you shortcut the process!

My example concerning the reimbursement for the copies illustrates the difference between my agency culture, values, ethics, and business practices, and other lesser responses. My New Agency paradigm is a commitment to honest and integrity. My agency’s growth culture supports these core values. As a result of this, my staff and I have a commitment to standardization around what we call “best practices.” That was illustrated in my response to my client which exceeded his expectation. Just meeting expectation i.e. reimbursing him 50%, would have been an example of standard practices. Withholding the information, or lying, would have been example of substandard practices. For our purposes in the following paradigm (see chart) these different agency practices will be understood under “The Old Agency,” “Today’s Agency,” and “The New Agency.” In “The New Agency,” honesty and integrity permeate the organization from the top down and the bottom up. My staff’s organizational consistency mirrors our commitment to a common culture, common values, and common “best practices” business standards.

How far do people short-cut? As far as they can rationalize, equivocate, and like to themselves. A few years ago, I interviewed and ambitious collector who was smart, and had good persuasion skills on the phone. He talked about “flexibility.” Flexibility meant that during a 15 day pre-commission phase, monies coming in between the 13^th and 15^th day could be “held” (if the dollar amount  warranted it), until the account converted to a commission basis. At this point, it was clear our version of flexibility was different. I physically escorted this man to a mirror in our office and asked, “Whose money was that: yours or the client’s?” He answered, “I get the point” So did I. He was excused on the spot.
 
Attorney Ron Sargis, respected advocate of our industry, tells us to exercise caution! “Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered” Ron Sargis’ counsel in positioning ourselves in debtor negotiation is excellent advice. When it comes to business practices and ethics, we are again reminded to set our sights high. We simply cannot afford the alternative. Pigs get slaughtered, too!. We do not grow animals for slaughter. We grow, people and we grow the numbers the right way: with honesty and integrity.

Today’s business climate, our clients, our employees and our best competition in the industry, except this, and deliver on this level.

How well do you deliver? Which agency model best describes your agency? How committed are you to a New Agency model? All of us are accountable to ourselves, our business, to CAC, and to our industry at large. In Closing, I ask you to look in the mirror…

Collector’s Inc/April 1997

| To Top | Back |