As Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett is preparing to retire, the long -time CEO of Aflac, Dan Amos Aflac For 35 years and more than five decades in the company that his family founded.
In an era of Executive ChurnWhere the average term of office of a 500 CEO is approximately seven yearsAmos not only stands out because of its durability, but also how he maintained it. After its leadership, the supplementary life insurance company developed into a 55.7 billion dollar company with an annual turnover of almost 19 billion US dollars. “I enjoy what I do,” says Amos Assets. “If you don’t enjoy it, you can’t do it for long.”
This passion seems to have fueled a rare and remarkable run. But despite his names, Amos’ climb is not defined beforehand, he says. Paul Amos’s son, One of three brothers Anyone who came along the American Family Life Assurance Company in Columbus in 1955 came in 1973 as a sales employee only as a commission to prove themselves as earnings. After graduating from the University of Georgia, he only entered the company as a sales employee in 1973 in order to prove himself solely in terms of performance.
“I made a total commission base for the company because I felt that everyone would say:” He gave the opportunity “what is right. I don’t deny that,” admits Amos. “But when I went on sale, they couldn’t say much because they looked at my track record and saw what happened.”
In his first year he inherited a sales area that generated annual premiums of $ 600,000. This number had grown to 11 million US dollars within a decade. He became president in 1983, COO in 1987 and CEO in 1990. These early years shaped his leadership philosophy: set clear goals, pursue the results and lead with an account.
“You have achieved these goals, and when you have done it, you can think and say:” It was a great year, “he says.
While many of his colleagues pursued an aggressive global expansion, Amos made a contrary call and returned Aflac’s operations to only two countries: the USA and Japan.
“We found that more life insurance companies were in force in the USA and Japan than the rest of the world,” he recalls. “So I asked: ‘Why do we have to be somewhere else?'”
This clarity of the focus served the company well. Today Aflac is a well -known name, supported by the now-IConic duck masking and consistent returns.
Amos says that his endurance does just as much to do with it as he leads behind the scenes. His days begin at 7 a.m. with a meeting with the Japan team, include a lunch break for training and often end with check-in Sunday evening. He surrounds himself with a trustworthy management team – his General Counsel among them – and expects directness.
“I spend my all the time to hire the right people,” added Amos. “I have set guardrails and in these they are authorized to lead.”
This trust was not always there. In his early years, Amos admits that he has micromanized everything until he stopped for a moment. But one day he realized: “If I have to do that, why do I need you? And I just stopped.”
Today this philosophy goes beyond its direct reports. Amos says he diversified the AFLAC board to better reflect the customers who use it.
“I don’t want it to be a few 60-year-old white guys. I know how you think,” he explains. “I want to make sure I know how African -American women think in the thirty because they are potential policyholder.”
In short, his guiding principle is to develop or risk, risk irrelevance. “If you don’t adapt, you will run away. The death kiss is not changing,” he says.
Technology and long -distance work have only reinforced this way of thinking, he adds. “You can now work from anywhere, and people believe that they actually work,” says Amos. “That wasn’t the case before.”
Although Amos has no immediate plans to resign, he is open about the tribute of the leadership. “I don’t think people realize that they are never switched off,” he says. “I could be on Mount Everest with a phone and someone could reach me.” According to Amos, the additional challenge is to constantly call that CEOs do not have the luxury of saying their teams and shareholders that they do not want to be reached.
Nevertheless, Amos says that he learned when he should draw borders. He has never missed one of his son’s high school football games and he encourages the employees to prioritize family. He attributes to his wife to be an earth power. “If you are together as a team, it works pretty well,” he says.
After more than three decades at the top, the advice from Amos is simple, but pointed out: “Do it.” But it applies that it is not the daily limit that defines great guides. So they appear when things go sideways.
