Client Spotlight: Todd Lacher, Lacher Insurance

Every day, we at heavy are honored to work with amazing people innovating within industries that from the outside might not seem so innovative. One of those people is Todd Lacher, Director of People at Lacher Insurance, the Philadelphia region’s oldest family owned insurance companies. Rather than taking a traditional approach to insurance as a commodity, Lacher has positioned themselves as a best place to work in Philadelphia for the past five years. That people first philosophy is one we love to appreciate here at heavy.

There are a lot of dynamics that go into running a family business. What has been your family’s secret for being so successful for so many decades?

 

The first rule of family business is we don’t talk about family business (wink to those who get the reference). I’m not sure if you’re asking how we’ve been successful as a family or successful as a business. But I think that that distinction actually gets to the heart of the matter when it comes to having success in a family business. It’s important to remember that family and business aren’t the same thing. So, if you’re in a family business – when you’re working on the business, work on the business. When you’re working on the family, work on the family. That’s oversimplifying things, but I think that that ethos has definitely been an important part of our family’s success in being in business together.

I’d take up too much ink if I tried to sum up what has made this firm successful as a business over the years. So maybe we leave that for the 6-part Ken Burns documentary.

 

Insurance isn’t necessarily the most innovative industry yet Lacher continues to find ways to push things forward internally with your own culture, your products with healthcare and cannabis, etc. How do you foster a culture of innovation amongst your staff?

You’re right that insurance doesn’t have the best brand when it comes to innovation – but to us that just means there is always opportunity to innovate! Right now, some of the biggest disruptions of our time – cyber and digital security, climate change, runaway costs in healthcare – are forcing more change and innovation in our industry. So, it’s more important than ever that we keep building our team’s ability to be part of the change and to adapt and evolve.

To answer the question more directly, the root of innovation in our culture probably goes back to my dad Greg Lacher who started the business. He was your quintessential one-man-band entrepreneur of that era who built a team around his natural tendency to charge ahead of the pack. It’s been Chad and Mark Lacher, who bought the business in 2007, who really established innovation as the cultural value in the business that it is today. In fact, “take risks and innovate” is one of the eight principles that we use to define our culture. And that’s not just something we throw up on the wall. When any of our team members try something new, think about something differently – big or small – we call it out, we celebrate it, we see how we can use it in other parts of the business. That’s one of the simple, but powerful ways we work every day to make innovation a norm in our culture.

 

Building teams is a huge component of what you do with your clients. What are some of the most important pieces of advice that you could give to managers out there?

Let’s start with a good cliché. Teams ought to be more than the sum of their parts. People who lead teams should be focused on bringing out that “more” in the cliché. If you are just focusing your teams on getting the tasks that need to be done, done – then that’s the limit to what will happen. But if you focus on learning who your people are, what their strengths are, and what motivates them to take ownership of the work – then they will push well beyond getting things done. That’s the space where creativity, innovation, and growth happens – beyond the sum.

I used a cliché, now how about an analogy? People and teams are like jazz. Jazz has structure and pattern for sure, but the real magic comes in the interaction between players. Managers need to provide the right structure, maybe set the tempo and the arrangement, but then you’ve got to step back and let your people play. For us, one of our principles is to “challenge and empower” our people. That’s the work for managers and leaders – set the challenge and get out of the way.

 

Post COVID has changed how teams are built, companies hire and employees are retained, what are some of the takeaways you’ve had as your clients are navigating these challenges?

Ask me in a few years. I joke, but I do think the shifts we are going through are going to take a good dose of hindsight to truly understand. I guess I’d start by saying that I don’t think it’s COVID that has changed these things – I think these changes were already happening – COVID has just been a potent accelerant and clarifier. Philosophically, we tend to take a “get back to the basics” tact when it comes to building teams and keeping your people engaged. Work hard at your culture – the norms, patterns, and expectations of what it means to be part of the team. And work hard at making people feel connected to the common cause you’re all working towards. Sure, the mediums/tools you use (Zoom, Slack, Teams, etc.) and dynamics (remote work, staggered schedules, different time zones, etc.) may be in flux. But the basic human needs to be connected to one another and part of something greater than ourselves remain just as powerful today. If you can build a workplace that is able to meet those needs, then you’ll find amazing people, and my bet is that they will want to stay for a good long time.

The urgency to hire and retain people ought to make us all look good and hard at what we’ve been doing all this time and find the opportunities to make it better. Answering “why” people are leaving jobs or reconsidering their careers in such significant numbers is the tough (but essential) question we all need to be grappling with.  Our hope is that it leads a lot of businesses to make meaningful and lasting changes that will make them stronger in the long run.

 

Again, ask me in a few years and I’ll pontificate with perfect clarity. But for now, get back to the basics and use this time to figure out how you can make your business a place where people feel connected to one another and the cause.

 

Giving back has always been a huge part of the culture at Lacher. Why is that so important to you?

As a business, that ethos certainly started with Greg Lacher and has been continued by Chad and Mark. But the amplifier to that ethos has been our good fortune to attract some pretty amazing people, with huge hearts, and a real sense of connectedness to the communities around us. We are all products of our communities and we are thankful to have team members who really live that out by giving of their time, energy, and resources.

In fact (again), it’s one of our principles and a good one to end on: at Lacher, you will experience deep care and community. When we live up to that, we are at our best.