Messy Lives

Abstract

By 1994, our Sengean interventions at the life insurance mutual that employed me appeared to have run their course. But new problems were emerging. Our 150-year old enterprise was facing a crisis of identity. Demand for our core product, life insurance, was steadily declining. To many of our executives the grass looked greener over the other side of the fence, in the banking sector. And mutuality had now become deeply unfashionable. We seemed about to become engulfed by a worldwide tsunami of demutualization. Should this occur, the underlying ethos of the enterprise would be altered, utterly and irreversibly.

This chapter moves the discussion beyond the world of management thinking. It describes a wide-ranging enquiry into people’s life courses and choices, entailing conversational encounters that entirely changed the direction of my working life.