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Reading time: 4 minutes

Wednesday Boardroom Briefing:

What do Air Force Thunderbirds flying 18 inches apart at 400 mph, a 1984 Harvard Business Review study that transformed IBM, and a legendary coach with a psychiatrist at Michigan State have to do with your insurance program?

Everything.

They discovered how to make systematic excellence feel like personal dedication. How to handle infinite complexity while maintaining perfect execution.

In four minutes, discover:

• Plan, Brief, Execute, Debrief - The Thunderbirds' four-step process that turns life-or-death precision into everyday excellence (and why your renewal needs it)
• The Engineered Service Blueprint - How mapping invisible processes creates visible magic—and why IBM, the San Francisco Giants, and now we swear by it
• The Seven-Second Secret - What Nick Saban and Dr. Lionel Rosen discovered about eliminating anxiety while maximizing performance under pressure
• The LION Synthesis - How we turned these lessons into $250M+ in recoveries and 92% client retention.

The Thunderbirds Taught Us to Debrief Like Our Lives Depend On It

The Air Force Thunderbirds execute formations at 400 mph with 18 inches between wingtips. One process keeps them alive: Plan, Brief, Execute, Debrief.

Every mission follows this cycle religiously. Planning covers primary objectives plus three contingency scenarios.

Briefing ensures every pilot knows not just their role but everyone else's. Execution allows for "smart audibles" - adapting without adding risk. Then comes the critical phase: the debrief. No rank, no egos, just facts.

This "no rank in the debrief" culture means our junior analyst can critique a managing partner's negotiation strategy. That's not corporate democracy - it's survival engineering where the best idea wins regardless of who presents it.

They reconstruct every second using GPS data, radio recordings, and brutal honesty. "What went right? What went wrong? What do we change?" This isn't feel-good reflection. It's survival engineering.

We stole their system and applied it to insurance.

Every renewal gets the full cycle.

Plan: 150-day timeline with contingency paths for every carrier response.

Brief: alignment meetings where everyone knows their role - from the analyst preparing peer benchmarks to the partner negotiating in Bermuda.

Execute: synchronized market approach with real-time adjustments.

Debrief: forensic analysis of what worked, what didn't, and what we're changing.

Last quarter, an insurer's client's renewal almost imploded when their primary carrier pulled their lead terms in the week leading up to the renewal, following a notice of circumstance.

Our debrief from a similar situation six months prior had created "Playbook 7: Rapid Lead Replacement." We executed, placed coverage with 48 hours to spare, and saved them $85k in premium.

That's what systematic debriefing delivers: future solutions to problems that haven't happened yet.

Bitner Showed Us How to Blueprint the Invisible

Mary Jo Bitner, an Arizona State University professor pioneered service design with a simple insight: you can't improve what you can't see.

Her service blueprint methodology maps every customer touchpoint - visible and invisible.

The waiter taking your order? Visible. The kitchen systems ensuring your meal arrives hot? Invisible but critical. Bitner proved that service excellence comes from orchestrating both layers seamlessly. IBM used her blueprints to reduce service failures by 62%. The San Francisco Giants used them to transform fan experience and fill stadiums.

Insurance is 90% invisible processes that determine 100% visible outcomes.

Your renewal experience seems simple: we meet, discuss needs, receive proposals, negotiate, bind coverage. Behind that visible layer runs our blueprint machine. Key relationships in London prepping markets 90 days before you see proposals. Analytics teams modeling your claims scenarios within days of the submission. Documentation specialists catching exclusions while you sleep. One hundred and twenty-three invisible processes supporting every visible touchpoint.

One regional insurer told us: "You make it look effortless." That's the point. Excellence should feel easy to the client, even when it requires enormous complexity behind the scenes.

Saban's Seven Seconds Changed How We Handle Catastrophes

Nick Saban's teams achieved an 88% win rate (183-25 at Alabama) not by focusing on championships but on seven-second intervals. "Don't think about winning the SEC Championship," Saban taught. "Don't think about the national championship. Think about what you need to do in this drill, on this play, in this moment."

Developed with psychiatrist Dr. Lionel Rosen at Michigan State in 1998, The Process proved that outcome obsession creates anxiety while process focus creates excellence. When Michigan State faced #1 Ohio State as 4-5 underdogs, they didn't think about the upset. They thought about their assignment for seven seconds - the average length of a play. Execute perfectly. Rest. Repeat. No scoreboard watching, no thinking ahead. Pure present-moment execution.

The result: one of college football's greatest upsets, with Michigan State winning 28-24. Saban would go on to seven national championships, attributing his success to "The Process" and Mrs. Terry, his wife.

We apply seven-second thinking to every renewal phase.

At 150 days out, we're not thinking about the final premium. We're executing one perfect task: tear apart your existing program like mechanics inspecting a race car. Every exclusion examined. Every sublimit questioned. Every carrier appetite shift tracked. At 120 days, the single focus: pre-negotiate. Coffee with underwriters. Reserve capacity. Get internal approvals. When others scramble at 30 days thinking about everything at once, we're executing discrete, perfected steps we've rehearsed thousands of times.

Focus on the immediate task. Perfect execution. Move to the next.

First interval: preserve coverage across all policies. Second interval: notify excess carriers. Third interval: activate panel counsel relationships. Each step executed perfectly, without contamination from outcome anxiety.

Our 2-hour rule embodies this philosophy.

CFO emails at 2 PM wanting coverage clarification for a 4 PM board meeting. Seven-second thinking: acknowledge within 2 hours. Not solved. Acknowledgement. "Received your question about sublimits. Researching now. Full response by 4 PM." That simple acknowledgment prevents 90% of client anxiety. Then the next interval: gather the specific information.

Next: craft the response. Each step executed without contamination from the magnitude of the ask.

As one CFO told us: "Other brokers make renewals feel like emergencies. You make them feel like strategy sessions."

Championships and claims are won in seven-second increments, not grand gestures.

The LION Synthesis: Every Client Is Our Only Client

We didn't just study these methodologies. We synthesized them into something our teams can relate to and our clients love to hear about.

The 150-Day Renewal Orchestra

While competitors start renewals at 60 days, we begin at 150, conducting a symphony only you hear as a solo performance.

Silent preparation (Day 150-120) - Analyzing claims, benchmarking peers, mapping markets.

Invisible positioning (Day 120-90) - Briefing carriers, testing appetites, identifying alternatives.

Structured engagement (Day 90-60) - Synchronized marketing, competitive tension, strategic leverage.

Intense negotiation (Day 60-30) - Term battles, coverage enhancements, pricing optimization.

Flawless execution (Day 30-0) - Documentation review, seamless transition, zero gaps.

You experience personalized attention. Behind the curtain, 23 processes are firing in sequence.

The Crisis Response Protocol

Every client believes they have our full attention during a crisis. They're right—because our process creates bandwidth from structure. While we're managing your crisis, seventeen other protocols are managing seventeen other clients. Each experiences complete focus because the process eliminates scrambling.

Systematic response feels like personal dedication.

The Invisible Excellence Engine

You see your relationship manager quarterly. You don't see the Tuesday coverage alerts we review for your industry. The Thursday regulatory updates we analyze for impact. The monthly claims trends we track for patterns. The debrief after every renewal that becomes next year's enhancement. Twenty hours of invisible work for every visible hour. That's why you call us first when something breaks—you unconsciously know the machine is always running.

Making you feel like our only client requires making sure you're never our only focus.
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​Why This Matters More Than Ever

The insurance industry is accelerating. Cyber threats evolve daily. Regulations shift monthly. Litigation strategies advance quarterly.

Your broker's relationship and expertise used to be enough. Now you need systematic excellence that scales. The partner who remembers your daughter's graduation is wonderful. The process that ensures your coverage evolves with emerging risks is essential. Personal attention feels good. Systematic protection keeps you alive.

Making you feel like our only client goes beyond customer service.

It's the risk management process our industry has been refining for hundreds of years. Perfected.

Building Your Own "Only Client" Experience

Three ways to evaluate if your broker has process or just promises:

Test 1: The Substitution Scenario - If your broker got sick tomorrow, would your renewal proceed flawlessly? If the answer involves scrambling, you're dependent on a person, not protected by a process.

Test 2: The Debrief Discipline - Ask about their last service failure and what changed systematically afterward. If they talk about "trying harder" instead of process improvements, you're hope, not a system.

Test 3: The Invisible Infrastructure - Request a blueprint of their renewal process. If they can't show you 100+ documented steps, you're getting attention when available, not excellence by design.

The Bottom Line

Making every client feel like the only client isn't about working harder. It's about building systems that make excellence automatic.

The Thunderbirds can't afford a mid-air collision. Saban couldn't accept random performance from 18-year-olds. Bitner knew service couldn't depend on individual heroics. They built processes that guarantee outcomes. We took their lessons and applied them to insurance, where the stakes are your balance sheet, your reputation, your survival.

When you're our client, you're not competing for attention.

The process already allocated it.

Before your next renewal, experience what systematic dedication delivers.

Schedule Your Process Diagnostic to:

• See our 150-day renewal blueprint (all 147 steps)
• Understand how we maintain 47-minute response times across hundreds of clients
• Learn why 73% of our contested claims recover when industry average is 27%

​>>>Schedule Your Process Diagnostic​

Because you deserve to feel like our only client—and know that feeling is backed by tried and true process, not good intentions.

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Stay Covered,

Natasha & Mark "FLIP"
​ Co-Founders & Managing Partners
LION Specialty