The Aging Crisis: Leadership, Responsibility, and the Future of Care

Welcome to Leadership Reimagined, where game changing conversations are reshaping the world of work. I'm Janis Lig, CEO and founder of l a group executive search advisors and pioneers in redefining executive search through our unwaivering commitment to helping organizations hire exceptional leaders and build inclusive environments. Today, on Leadership Reimagined, we are exploring the aging crisis, leadership responsibility, and the future of care. And I am delighted to welcome Tom mcnernie, President, CEO and Director of gen Worth Financial, a company at the forefront of one of the most urgent and misunderstood challenges facing American and families.

Through its family of brands including care Scout, gen Worth, and Anact, the company is addressing the financial and emotional realities of aging in ways that will touch every household in this country at some point in time. So, Tom, I'm excited to have this conversation with you and pleased you were able to make time to be with us. Janna's great to be with you. So before we talk about long term care its implications in your leadership as a CEO and board director, let's begin with how you got to where you are today, and most people don't step into the C suite without somebody in their life having impacted them.

And I've heard your father's work ethic and the belief that luck that his belief that luck only matters when it meets preparation really impacted you. So talk to us a little bit about the impact of your early life growing up in New York and who influenced you, including your dad. Thanks Jannis. I would say both parents were big influences, and just a little bit of my dad.

So he graduated from high school in nineteen forty two. He was the high school basketball player of the year in the state of Connecticut, and so you know, if it was today, he'd go on to some university and hopefully get nil payments and so on. But back then he enlisted in the Navy. His first big assignment was d Day.

He was in the Navy at Omaha Beach and ended up doing fifty six round trips from the South of England to Omaha Beach over the month or so after that. So, you know, he had a very very interesting background. But both of them, and I had four siblings, including three sisters, they really impressed on us. What I would call the universal principles to be successful in life for any endeavor, and that was so work really hard to shoot for excellence.

You always try to get a or a plus's be dedicated. Excellence was a word they would keep using, So if you did well but it wasn't quite excellent, they would say, hey, can you can do better, but in a very encouraging way. And then probably most of all, they said in life, your integrity, the fact that people can trust you, trust what you say, trust that you'll do what you say. And then always trying to do what was right when you faced tough decisions.

And finally to help others that it's it's not just about you and your success, but also to help help others, help the people in organizations that you're with, and ultimately try to do all you can to help help society. And I think in my time, both as an entry level middle manager and now a senior leader, I've always I've always tried to do the right thing and have really tried to spend as much time I could in helping others. And I think I feel very good about how things have worked out so far.

It's interesting. Six children right in the family, five oh five okay, and three sisters. Yes. Wow, So that's why you are so supportive of women.

Thank you. Yeah. Well, in that regard, I have three sisters, three daughters, and six grandchildren in April, five granddaughters and a grandson. So I'm surrounded by women and they treat me very well.

So I'm very very partial to women. You're a lucky man. So talk to us a little bit about your career, because you did some lateral moves right, and you went across industries, property and casualty, anewities, financial services overall, and global operation. So talk to us about that career path for you and how you did do some laterals and how that got you to where you are today.

Yeah. So I started at ATA in nineteen seventy eight, and I'll give full credit to the senior leadership at ATNA. They had a process where the top leaders try to identify early employee potential and I was lucky enough to be recognized in that. And once you were recognized by it, in my case, the chief Investment Officer and the chief financial officer and then eventually the CEO and two CEOs Jim Lin and Ron Compton.

But they found me when I was in my thirties early thirties. They had a strategy with probably five to ten people that they found sort of early thirties to really give them a variety of opportunities to work in all the functional areas. And then they had a very deliberate process of having you start with small businesses so that if you screwed up, you couldn't do any real damage. But then over time, you know, increasing responsibilities.

So you know, when I started, I was in underwriting and risk management, and then I went over to sales and marketing. It doesn't happen very often, but you know, I think I enjoyed it because you really learned all aspects of the business. I spent some time in investments, worked as the CFO and a number of the businesses, and then twice I was asked to lead our corporate strategy and M and A activities. And there was a time in the late eighties and nineteen nineties that ATNA did about fifty billion of acquisitions or divestitures and I led all of that, and so that it really really gave me a very broad perspective.

And then, you know, my time at I was asked to run four or five businesses, different sizes, different areas, and as you said, across the spectrum property, casually, life, annuities, pensions and health insurance and between. And then I ultimately after ATNA, went with ING, but I had responsibility for international businesses in forty countries. And you do learn when you're running very again a variety of businesses, but in forty countries, you realize how very differ the world is, you know.

I'm very pleased that I had the opportunity to have a very broad background. It's common handy as CEO. There's not too much that my team can tell me that I have it in some way over the This is my forty eighth year working. I've really experienced a broad array of activities and challenges and things that go right or wrong regulatory environments obviously in the US, but in many other countries.

So I've tried to bring that same approach in my career. So one of the things I always tried to do, and I've had some success, is find those middle level people that have quite a runway to go, but to focus on them and make sure working with HR in our case Melissa Agraman here at Genworth, to really elevate them and give them a lot of different opportunities and responsibilities. Well, your leadersh bit gen work. Because I've talked to some of your leaders, including Melissa, do you applaud what you have done for individuals in the company, basically some entry level people who have risen to run entire departments.

And so it sounds like what you experienced you're now passing on. And how do you see this developing for the people there because they're loving this, but you're patient enough to make sure that they are given the support to succeed. How are you doing this? That's right.

I pride myself on being a judge of talent early on and tried to find people that I thought really could go all the way to the C suite or CEO role and find them and then move them around. And so that was again, as I said, that was me when I started. You know, I started at the very bottom of the company as an entry level college trainee. I think my seller was eleven five hundred and done well over time.

And I'm very proud, and I'll give a couple examples, and I'm going to give all women examples because in addition to I pride myself on being a good selector of talent within the organizations I've been with and finding people early in their career. So the first one I'll talk about is Kathy Murphy. Kathy and I worked together. We first ran into each other in the late nineteen eighties.

She was doing state government relations and so we had a number of issues in our health insurance business, trying to manage that when like today, when medical cost trends were going up significantly, and so she and I would went out to visit all of these regulators and I said, Wow, this person, Kathy could go all the way. And so when I changed from the health division to the Global Financial Service division, again she was a mid level lawyer, and I said, so, Kathy, what what is your ambition If we were still with that and at the time, if you could paint the story of your future, what would be said?

Well, I like to be general counsel at ATNA. And I said that's interesting because I see you as a much broader person than a lawyer. Nothing wrong with being a lawyer, And if you want to be atna's general counsel, I'll work as hard as I can with you to get you there. But I think you should think about do you want to be, you know, at the end of your career general counsel or do you want to be CEO.

So she went away for like a week or so and came back and said, well, I'd really like to if you think I can do it, to be given a shot. And so we ended up moving over and you know, a small business at first, and then very quickly to a large business. Then our whole division was sold to ING, and she had the opportunity to run the biggest part of the United States business for I G. I G was in big Dutch number one financial service company and the Netherlands and top five in Europe.

I remember debating with all my Dutch colleagues on the executive board. They said, well, a lawyer who's never run a business and a woman. Again, this is in the round two thousand, so Europe was well behind in terms of they're doing better now and women in roles. And they said, why would you give her the biggest not only the biggest job in the US, but the biggest job running a business.

P and L and all of I ANDNG said well, I think she can do it, and you know, I'm not going anywhere. I'll be around. I was then based in Amsterdam, but I'll be around. Of course, the rest is history.

She took the job, she did an amazing job, and then ultimately when Ned Johnson retired or stepped away from Fidelity, Abby Johnson picked Kathy off and Kathy was I think the number two person at Fidelity and did outstanding. Another person I won't go into his longest story, Katherine Smith, like Kathy Murphy, was really good advising businesses and leaders within again, within ATNA, she was in the strategic planning m and a area which I spent quite a bit of time then and again with Catherine.

I said, well, do you want to just be, you know, a planner and helping businesses or do you want to run a business? And so she wanted to do that. So eventually she was on the same paths as Kathy and ended up when she retired from she was running one at a bigger as bigger businesses. And then here at jenn Worth, I would Jamala our land.

Jamala runs our closed block, which is our largest business in terms of employees and challenges and so on. It's the legacy long term care business. But she was a middle level actuary, and I thought she was brilliant, and so moved her up to oversee all of the closed blocks from an actual el perspective, and now she's the CEO. And then Jennifer Jones was our best project manager, and so somewhere four or five years in it seemed like every hard project that anybody had, they always gave it to Jennifer.

And so today Jennifer is now in the C suite. She's the chief Operations officer. So those are four examples of fairly middle level people that normally would have I think been successful, but likely not in C suite level jobs, and they weren't didn't even have on their own personal radar screen that they could be that and had a more narrow view of what career success will be. And I like those for their women, but they're also just probably my best track record of pulling people up, So to me it was very very important, and I think one of the best things I could do for our company was to identify the best talent wherever they were, at whatever level and move them.

They had to perform, just like me, when you're giving those opportunities, you have to perform and deliver. Because if you don't well, you know, then it won't work out. But in those cases it was you know, I have a good track record at least with the four of them, and more in terms of being. Giving people access to opportunities.

So you're changing people's lives as employees within companies, and you're changing people's lives at gen Worth. You stepped into this role in twenty thirteen, and long term care was really not your specialty, although you did work under three US presidents on entitlement condmissions. Correct, yes, So what point did you realize that this issue was more than a business challenge but a societal challenge. I came to jhen Worth on January first, twenty thirteen, and by July I realized that I had never as you said, I've never been associated with long term care insurance, but I had a lot of experience in health insurance, and I do think long term care insurance has a lot of similarities with with health insurance.

And so six months in so at the July board meeting that was our strategy meeting with the board, I had said, well, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is we're tens of billions of dollars short of what we ultimately need to collect in premiums over the next forty or fifty years to pay all the claims. And I also said that I am very surprised that jen Worth the leader in long term care, but none of our top competitors, with John Hancock, Trans America Union, CNA prove met no one had ever created a PPO network in health insurance, and so I had a lot of background in that for my days at ATNA, we had developed PPOs and HMOs in forty years before I came to Genworth.

So I said to the board, whatever the people actually provide the care, whether home care providers, assisted living communities, or nursing homes, we pay. In every long term care company, we pay whatever they charge. That's the way it was in health insurance in the fifties and sixties. It's called indemnity, which is a hospital or doctor cent a bill in the insurance company paid it didn't ever try to negotiate.

And so I had said to me, it's crazy that we pay whatever invoices we get. And these were, you know, very big policies with a lot of benefits. We ought to negotiate given how many policyholders. We have to get better deals with providers because our customer base is very valuable.

And I said in we and everyone in the industry in twenty thirteen, a lot had gotten out by the time I came, and subsequently most of the one hundred and thirty long term care insurance have gotten out. There's about ten left. And so the board at the time said, well, when you fix the problem of the legacy book, we'll let you invest in some of these new businesses. So it's pretty you know, that was six months in and we have now Jamala our Land who runs our closed block and her team have gotten thirty five billion net present value economic benefit in managing the legacy book.

We have one hundred billion of claims that we project will pay over the next forty years, and the thirty five billion is not quite enough. We need more like forty billion. But we've really and what we're really doing there is making sure that we can pay all the claims of over one million policy holders. And I did was not able to convince the board to do the PPO or to do new insurance funding products.

We now call here LTC two point zero. And so we had bought this company Care Scout in two thousand and eight and it was doing assessments on behalf of our LTC insurance business. But I said, you know, that's a better brand care Scout than jen Worth for the long term care space, so let's let's go forward with that brand. But go back to July of twenty thirteen and the same strategy that I had presented to the board that they said, well, let's put that out hold until you you get significant progress on fixing the legacy book.

But in twenty twenty three, and by then we had a lot of new members of the board, they gave us the go ahead to create PPO, so we call it the care Scout, Quality and Autwork. We have one thousand home care providers and two thousand plus assisted living communities and given our million policy holders, we're saying we will refer them to you. We want to credential you to make sure you meet our quality standards. So we've done that and given that we have a million, long term care policy is still the largest book of business in the industry.

They have a lot of benefits, so they'll be very good patients for you to take care of, but we expect discounts, so we've been able to negotiate twenty percent discounts, and that's all about trying to bend the cost cer for long term cares like and health insurance. It's very hard to do that, but I think will be successful. And then the second part of care Scout is to launch new long term care policies that are much much better in terms of how they're structured, much more reasonable assumptions.

These statistics are really alarming when you think seventy percent of Americans turning sixty five will need some form of long term care. Where home care now averages over seventy seven thousand a year, assisted living is seventy thousand, and private nursing home and other assisted living are over one hundred and twenty five thousand. This is an enormous cost. Noither this is covered by Medicare right correcked.

Yeah so, and people don't realize this until you're faced with it and all of a sudden there's a huge outlay which can bankrupt a family. How do families prepare for this time? And what is care Scouts specifically doing along with jen Worth? Yeah, so, our focus is on helping the seventy million baby boomers who are sixty to eighty in twenty twenty six, so the oldest were born in nineteen forty six, so they're now turning eighty.

And the youngest were born in nineteen sixty four, so they're sixty two. And for the US, and this is similar for in Japan and China and Europe, that every day in twenty twenty six until twenty forty four, nine to ten thousand baby boomers will turn eighty every day for eighteen years, and so the baby boomers are not well prepared. Hopefully John Worth and care Scout and hopefully the federal and state governments can can help the children and the grandchildren of the baby boomers.

Because the baby boomers are sixty two to eighty, there's not a lot we can do other than to try to reduce the cost. And so again coming back to care Scout services for their ninety five percent of the seventy million baby boomers did not buy private long term care insurance. So you know, the top twenty percent or so can can sell fund. They have enough assets to cover that, but for most baby boomers.

The median savings for baby boomers is two hundred to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and if you retire at sixty five, you should expect to live on average twenty or twenty five years, And so that two hundred and fifty thousand. You know, when you look at having that cover you just normal retirement is difficult. And then if and you gave the numbers earlier, Janis, you're absolutely right that in home cares about seventy seven thousand a year. In a nursing home, it's one hundred and twenty five thousand, and a lot of larger city where people tend to live, it's more like one hundred and fifty thousand.

So we're trying to reduce the cost through our care Scout Quality network. For the children and grandchildren, We're going to help them assess the needs of their parents and grandparents, come up with a care plan, work with them to manage the costs. And given what baby boomers have done in preparing themselves for retirement, which is not a very good job on average, you know, the children and grandchildren are going to have to help support them. Medicare and you mentioned it does not cover long term care, never has.

That is a misperception on the part of most people. They think Medicare. I read sixty five and every health issue is covered by Medicare, and that's true for medical insurance when you have medical conditions where a doctor or surgeon can fix it. But when it comes to custodial care, so as you get into your eighties, people have trouble with what we call activities a daily living ADLs, which are getting out of bed, being able to cook and plan meals, be mobile, be able to go to the bathroom, those kinds of things that has not covered because it's not a medical condition.

But we all take for granted that will always be able to do those normal activities a daily living. But when people starting around eighty but eighty eighty five is the is the peak years where people people need help and so you know there's a lot of work that needs to be done. The private sector can, including care care Scout in general, can do a lot. I think state and federal governments are really going to have to figure help figure it out.

Medicaid is the payer of last resort. So if you're one of those average Americans with two hundred to two hundred and fifty thousand in savings, that and you know Social Security pays you know, three thousand on average a month, so on that. But because these diseases are so expensive, and we have Alzheimer's cases where people you know, are needing care for eight to ten years, so a lot of those baby boomers that don't have private long term care insurance, those assets will they'll use those assets to pay for care and ultimately go on Medicaid.

And so again, I think that what we're trying to do is work with state governments, local governments, federal government and trying to help the baby boomers who are not prepared. But a big part of our focus, particularly for care scout insurance and the funding products is I think the children and grandchildren of baby boomers when they see these costs of seventy seven thousand a year for home care, one hundred and twenty five thousand for nursing home care, the inflation rate is three to five percent, that's also going to be a challenge, and that ninety five percent of their parents and grandparents don't have long term care insurance.

They're going to see how important is So we do hope where we can really help is the children and the grandchildren of baby boomers as they see their baby boomer parents or grandparents need help that they'll better prepare themselves by saving more and in some cases buying private long term care insurance. There are some good signs that are showing some of the younger generations are saving more, and I think as their baby boomer relatives transition through the aging process in order one of the things you said at the beginning, we're trying to allow older Americans as they age and their families make sure that their parents and grandparents can live through their retirement years with dignity, with confidence that they can manage these these I think for the baby boomers it's going to be tough, but hopefully the next generations will be better prepared than the baby boomers, and then the government's going to have to figure out how to take care of the baby boomers.

So the sweeping reforms though to help the baby boom boomers, that's pasted right. There's really nothing that can be done. I mean, we're into our issues of care at home or elsewhere has to be covered by ourselves, our savings, or our children. But where are government leaders and policymakers going to address this for the children and grandchildren of the baby boomers.

So I would say, Jennie, it's very sad that government leaders for the last twenty or thirty years have not wanted to do the hard things to fix the entitlement programs. And even today in the twenty twenty four election, we had both Vice President Harris and President Trump both saying that security and Medicare are untouchable. That is so wrong, and I'm very, very disappointed with what's going on in Washington and state capitals for the last thirty years. You had mentioned that I worked with three presidents on entitlement reforms, and the first one was in nineteen ninety one.

It was actually the Bipartisan Policy Center working with Congress and then President George H. W. Bush on looking at entire reform and what can be done. And I was asked to be on that commission.

They're about twenty from the private sector, and I think there were four Senators and four House members from each party. And at the end of nineteen ninety one, and then going into the Clinton administration, that whole group, what we came up with would have really helped fix these programs. And the most important thing that I now tell the current administration and members of Congress is in nineteen ninety one, the baby Boomers were twenty seven to forty five years old. You know, that's an eighteen year span.

And if the reforms that we had recommended were implemented in nineteen ninety one, which were raised the retirement age index indexit towards mortality improvement means tasks so that you know, the top fifteen percent even though these were programs for them to pay into and then collect when they're retired. But what we said for the top fifteen percent of America, they really should not receive Social Security because they don't really need it and it's only three thousand to four thousand a year, and let's leave that for the rest of Americans that we know won't be saving enough.

And then we had we did say, for example, in Social Security, I think most people know that you pay payroll attacks up to a certain amount. It's like one hundred ninety thousand I think today versus your whole income. And the reason that it was CAP. People often said, well why was it cap is because it was a strict retirement formula.

So to the extent that you taxed all income, then high income earners would receive a lot under social Security, but we said we should cap the maximum amount you can receive consistent with where it is today, but still tax all income all the way up. All those things that they had been implemented were to work. And after so I was on the Bush and the Clinton I did a little bit of work with George W. Bush, and then Obama had Erskine Bowls and Alan Simpson.

And Alan Simpson was in our nineteen ninety one, he was in the House. Then group same recommendations in two thousand and nine, and just like all the commissions, nothing really was done. And now the problem is the baby boomers are sixty two to eighty. When they were in nineteen ninety one, when they were twenty seven to four, they had a lot of time to pay into the system to increase the amounts that were funded.

We didn't do that. Now there are sixty two to eighties that they're taking out. So that's really there's not a lot we can do. The government has to figure out ultimately some way to benefit boomers, but you know, there's really not time left given their age group.

But the children and the grandchildren. I hope that those recommendations that we made in nineteen ninety one that were the same for all those commissions through two thousand and nine. That was the last one under prison Obama. That those recommendations, which pretty universal, that that's what you have to do.

That the federal and state governments can do that for the children and grandchildren's baby boomers, so at least they won't have the same challenges that the baby boomers are going to have. So we missed the boat thirty five years ago. Yeah, we did. You know.

The funny thing is, I've said this to a few people. So the twenty of us from the from the private sector people. Ned Johnson, who's you know, the top guy at Fideli, was on that. A number of Fortune ten manufacturing companies, Boeing and others were on that.

But we were asked to in I think it was ninety two ninety three, so it's right between President Bush and Clinton. They were you know, that was the changeover. We were asked to do a it was like a fifteen slide presentation at Chambers of Commerce rotary clubs, and the last slide was this isn't again ninety two ninety three if nothing is done to change it and it remains the same as these baby boomers age, and we get to twenty thirty two, so you know, two elections from now, we said, and this we said this in nineteen ninety two, so you know, forty years before twenty thirty two, we said, if nothing is done, and nothing has been done, that the presidents from twenty thirty two will be one term presidents because they'll come in with how do we solve the problem of these baby boomers needing all this care?

And it's so difficult because we've waited so long and they're now in the years where they're having all these regular health expenses and long term care expenses. But they'll be We predict there'll be one term presidents until about twenty fifty when all the baby boomers will have moved on. And I think that that that's likely to be true because I don't want to pick on and I won't name names, but you know, I have good relationships with probably twenty senators on each side and a lot of House members, and they are now aware of these issues.

But as both campaigns in twenty twenty four said, well, we're not going to do anything to touch those because you know, it's the third rail, and so on, but it's really sad because you would have expected that politicians over the last thirty or forty years to stepped up and fix what are these real significant problems for the country, and they didn't do it. You know. It's sort of I've always said, you know, business has to be working to make change and work with Congress. Here you were so many years ago, thirty five as experts in these areas, and they fell on deaf ears.

Nobody wanted to bite the bullet. Nobody wanted to you know, attack what's called a sacred cow. But I've often looked at and I said, why is just Warren Buffett and others in that Why are they getting social security exactly right? And yet we are faced with the huge aging and health issues in this country.

This is just you know, you. Know, and the math is overwhelming. I think most people don't understand what one trillion dollars is worth. It's worth a lot, But the current cumulative deficit is thirty eight trillion.

We're adding two trillion a year. And so I see and the current track and while I make this, and I'm in the Conference Board and the Committee and Economic Development Trustee of those and I know you're involved with that channels. We have been saying these things for a long time. So it's thirty eight trillion growing at two trion a year.

We're going to in twenty years probably have debt to GDP at two hundred percent, which is that is where economies fall apart. And then you know the Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and I'll add Veterans administration to that. Those are pay as you go systems. And the current actuarial cost on an f present value of what's owed to and I think this is people who are living today, it's about one hundred and trillion.

So on top of the thirty eight trillion deficit growing at two trillion a year, there's one hundred trillion that we owe. And there should have been trust funds they but the Congress in nineteen seventy six and the Carter Mistry allowed themselves to go into what was then the surplus as the baby boomers were still paying in. They rated those stress funds for the general budgets. So that hundred trillion that we own, those foreign titlement programs, that's pay as you go system.

And the boomers are retired, you know, the youngest is sixty two. So the cost of that hundred trillion plus the regular deficit that all falls to our children and grandchildren. And I have been very, very disappointed that that's been pretty well known for decades, but still Congress is kicking the can down the road. So I guess what I would say coming back to me and my legacy.

In addition to hope having fixed gen Worth, launch care scout for the future for the children and grandchildren of the baby boomers, but I also hope that we can help as much as we can with government for the baby boomers. It's going to be a big challenge to manage all of that, but so you know, I hope my legacy is that he came in, he found gen Ware in pretty bad shape, and he fixed that with his team. I give all the credits to the team, but he also spent the time he could outside of the day job on with the Conference Board, the Committee on Acomic Development.

I've been involved with the Bipartisan Policy Center. One of our board members, Kent Conrad, is on the Peterson Group. B Peterson had set up a trust to help with fiscal policy, and Kent kind of a center from North Dakota who's on our board is involved with that, and I'm involved with that. So a lot of really smart people are aware of the problem.

It's just it's really it's really hard. Politicians are great at guaranteeing more and more benefits to Americans and it continues. But what they don't do well at all is pay for the promises that they're making. And you know it's going to be in the next twenty or thirty years, it's going to be very challenging for the US.

Japan and China and Europe are in even worse shape than we are, But all of us trying to manage our equivalent of the baby boomers as best we can, knowing that you know, it's late in the game because of their age, but hopefully we will not make the same mistake for the children and the grandchildren of the baby boomers. So I hope my legacy is that he turned John Worth around. But more importantly, he was one of the business voices that made an impact, hopefully at least at some point, and policymakers listened and they made at least not for the baby Boomers because it's too late, but for the next generations.

Well, Tom, I think You're going to have to speak louder with your group of experts in Washington because for sure, you know, because it is so disheartening that there's been nobody's taken responsibility for this. It's a dere election of duties and responsibilities, and the children our nation will suffer. In many ways, you're really making a difference for people in the world. I also did want to mention, do you you do serve as vice chair of United Way Worldwide.

You're part of the US Ski and Snowboards Foundation board. I understand you skied, right, Yes, learned. I raced all my life and was on the top ski team in New York State, and then I raced in college. So yeah, I'm still on avids here.

So just before we passed close here, there's some tomisms about leadership. Give us some of the leadership lessons that you've learned and you try and practice, and you would say those in government and those in business would do well to practice more of such. Yeah. So I think leadership, if I said one, is the closest to that sort of the average person understands is the head coach of a team.

Our responsibility as leaders is to set the vision the high level strategy. What's the mission and purpose of the organization, whether it's you know, Jen Wareth or care Scout or United Way or the US Key team. What's the mission in the organization? And then how do you surround yourself with a very strong team.

You know, as a lot of the best coaches say when they win the national championship, well, it wasn't me, it was the team. And I think that's absolutely true. You know, the head coach gets a lot of credit. They set the vision and sort of the mission and the strategy, but then it's implemented by the assistant coaches, so let's call them the C suite of companies, and then the employees who actually deliver.

I also think leaders have to be optimistic no matter how big the problems. And we've just talked about the huge problems fiscal problems at the US FACES. You've got to just roll up the sleeves and attack those problems very proactively. Things don't go as planned.

Things always change, the companies and the competition changes, the world changes, and we're seeing that today, and so CEOs also have to be very resilient, know that things will go wrong, plans will go awry technology or something. Pandemics from left field come and totally disrupt what you're doing. So you have to be resilient. You have to be able to pick yourself back up and redirect and keep the morale and the confidence of your team so that no matter what you face internal challenges, external challenges, things that you have have no control over, you just deal with them and move forward and move the organization forward.

So you know, to me, it's you know George H. W. Bush, and I remember being on as the Talent Commission. Every once in a while I listened to them and say, I don't have the vision thing or but I think for a leadership, the vision thing is in the end the most important.

And then rally the team, whatever team it is, around what is the mission, What is your organization's purpose? What are you trying to accomplish? And have everybody believe in that mission and believe no matter what you face, that you can you can fix things, make things better. You can't always hit your robust objectives all the time just because of what happens, but you do the best you can.

You perform with excellence, with passion, with energy, and usually if you do those things it turns out okay. You know, Tom, I've talked to many people in your company and they all feel the mission. They all know that they are working to change, doing good and making good at the same time. And the legacy that you have here is far more than a balance sheet, although that's important, but you and your team truly are helping families prepare, helping caregivers feel supported, and helping people age with dignity.

And your people feel that and do it every day. I'm impressed by what I hear from your team. So congratulations on doing what a live CEOs are not able to do. They say they have a mission, but it doesn't really filter down through the entire organization yours does.

Yeah, I'm very proud of that, Jannis. And that's a team effort, you know, the whole team. I believe that Jaaith and care Scott, the whole team believes fashionally in the mission. The purpose.

We're helping all Americans and their families, you know, in the aging journey to lead in their retirement years, to have individuals and families have a higher quality of life, have confidence that they can live well in retirement years. And I think we're dedicated to that, and I think all of our employees know that we really make a dice in the lives of older Americans and their families. Tom mcinnernie, you've given us a lot to think about today and to face problems that are very real and to do something about it.

And I think all of us can do that also by writing to our congressman. So thank you for opening our eyes to what really are some major problems. And thank you and to the gen Worth team for all you're doing to address one of the most important challenges facing our country, and that is changing the paradigm so people can age with dignity. Thank you so very much.

Jennison, thank you for these podcasts and focusing on these big, big issues around leadership. How you elevate a diverse workforce into leader positions. I think that and I know you distributed this to a large group of leaders, and so we appreciate the wisdom that you have and getting leaders together with you so we can do these podcasts and hopefully educate a broader universe of leaaders around the US and all these challenges that we collectively face. Tom, I just might vote you in for one of the offices in DC could be the presidency.

I'm not sure because you've got to do something. I'm not a politician because I can't deal with the team that says, hey, you know, yeah, it's a big problem, but uh not my problem. Yeah no, I know. Tom mcinnernie, thank you so much for joining us today.

Really insightful, and to our audience, thank you for tuning in to another game change in conversation on leadership Reimagine. You can find me on LinkedIn or visit us at elgroup dot com. Thank you all for joining us today.