JEFF MARPLE

Full Transcript



Douglas:

Good afternoon. It's good to be here. I'm with Karen and Jeff.



Jeff:

Hello.



Douglas:

Jeff Marple. Welcome, Jeff. Jeff Marple is the Director of Innovation with Liberty Mutual and a collaborator and good friend and a reader of Start Within. Happy to have him here today to talk about some of the topics and the issues that people face when driving ideas within big companies.



Jeff:

So great to be here at Douglas, thanks so much for inviting me.



Douglas:

Absolutely. And as you all know, we host this every week in a pursuit of connecting with readers and doers across the globe, and I'm just really excited to have Jeff here with us today. And before we kick things off, just wanted to mention that we are aware of the situation we are in politically and socially right now in the US and more broadly, globally. I think as we've connected with peers across the earth, we've seen that everyone's watching and everyone's experiencing this through different lenses and different experiences. And Karen and I spoke about this earlier and just wanted to make sure to send the message that we're watching, observing and doing what we can to play our role in this transformation the nation is experiencing. And just wanted to speak to this for a moment and hold space for it. And so Jeff I know that you must be experiencing stuff up there in the Northeast as well.



Jeff:

Yeah. So I live in Maine, which hasn't had near the amount of unrest at other parts of the country have had for many reasons. So I guess my take on all of this is I've been embarrassingly reminded that I'm pretty ignorant to what a lot of people are going through and I'm really not exposed to, and many people in New England are not exposed to. I won't say everyone because that's definitely not the case, but at least in my life, not something that I really have to deal with every day. And it makes you step back for a second and think about how much you don't know, which is always a humiliating place to be. So I'm trying to learn, listen and learn more about what, what I don't know, which is always a lot.



Douglas:

And I think that's really sincere and echoes a lot of what I've been going through as well. And I heard that's Maya Angelou quote. I don't know when I first ran into it, but I've definitely been reminded of it lately. And it goes along the lines of, "Do the best you can until you know better, then when you better, do better." And I think that's the mode we all need to be in right now. And I've just been showered with amazing resources. And I'm just so thankful of my friends who are have gone before me and done more research. And there's an amazing reading list that's been circulating around with white fragility at the top of that list. And then, and then blog posts that are like explaining why there's elements of white fragility that are racist.



Douglas:

And there's an amazing book called, How To Be an Anti-racist, that I've already started kind of poking through a bit. And there's some phenomenal stuff in there that I know is going to change my behavior going forward. And it makes me realize how, even though I conceived myself an ally, there are moments where I can definitely do better. And so I'm really excited to seize this opportunity to do those things. So we'll share those resources in the notes for people who watch and connect in later.



Karen:

I just added in the comments, also a unconscious bias course that LinkedIn has. I believe it's free even if you don't have a premium account. It's a worthy course to take, and there's a lot more in diversity inclusion within the catalog.



Douglas:

Awesome, thanks, I'm looking forward to that. So Jeff, thinking about resources and how are you kind of leveling up your game as far as staying focused on the work that needs to be done? And because I find it a bit hard to even focus on the important work that the company's expecting of me and then supporting the community and just balancing those things. So any tools or things that you found in this kind of COVID time? Because we have multiple things going on, right? We've got this need to shift to more virtual work, we have this supporting our friends that are out there fighting the good fight. And so I'm just kind of curious what other things you're finding in this kind of virtual collaboration space or just being able to get work done.



Jeff:

Yeah, boy, there's a lot to unpack there. Yeah, it's been quite a lot of distraction and if you have like a touch of ADHD, like maybe I do, that can be challenging. And then if you're an extrovert and love to talk to people, also can be challenging you. A lot of times I would go to coffee shops just to work in a louder environment and that's obviously not happening. So so yeah, I definitely dipped a little bit in productivity and it was incredibly hard to focus. I'm starting to find my groove. I actually paid a little bit of attention to Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut, who did a lot of... he published some work on how to sort of be productive when you're pretty alone, which is what he was for quite a bit of time in the ISS.



Jeff:

And so I've really been working on trying to develop a routine that's been helpful. I've been using the Pomodoro Technique a lot. That's helping me sort of a bunch of my work into small amounts of it to stay on target and knock things out. But then additionally, I'm really noticing that webinars and Zoom calls and video calls is just requiring a tremendous amount of listening and there's not a lot of interactivity going on. So I've been thinking about different ways to make things more interactive. I know you know MURAL, we've been taking a hard look at them as a tool to use, to help be interactive, or we're trying that out and that's working pretty well for us so far, I've been doing more one-on-one phone calls, as opposed to maybe text messages, just to try to connect that way a little bit as opposed to group phone calls, which can be so awkward.



Jeff:

And other than that, I'm open to ideas. I did a lot of work with planned, unplanned drive-bys and drop-bys, and I would get a lot of ideas just by being around a lot of different people. And I'm having to shift that up and try to figure out how to do a virtual drop by in order to move something through somebody's decision process whatever it is. So yeah, that's kind of how I've been navigating, which I wouldn't say is, I've got miles to go, Douglas.



Douglas:

Man, that serendipity is tough, and when we think about translating online experiences, or let's say in person experiences, into virtual environments, it's the hallway time or the whisper and so hard to replicate. And these drive-bys you talk about is the in-office equivalent of those conference or big event type of moments that are really hard to translate. Karen and I were on a panel for a virtual summit, I guess it was a couple of weeks ago now, and one gentleman was sharing a technique they'd been using, and I'd heard of teams doing this before, where it's like, you just have the meeting open in the background, almost like you got the radio on in the background and it's not meant to be your focal point. But if someone has a quick question, they could shout it out.



Douglas:

So it's almost like Slack being in there that you can ping anyone, but someone could verbally jump out. And I think part of the problem is you're trying to replicate people being in a cube near each other or whatever, but the technology is like being in the cube next to each other is not the same as having four microphones, all feeding in and picking up background noises and all this stuff, right?



Jeff:

My daughter does that. Her and her friends will FaceTime, but they're really sort of not talking to each other, but they're like coloring while they're FaceTiming, and all of a sudden they start talking to each other and then we'll stop and it'll just be silent for 10 minutes and then they'll start again, so that's compelling. I've heard of other teams using Red Dead Redemption as a meeting place, and they'll hang around the campfire as a way to do that. The serendipity and the missing piece of an idea, Steven Johnson wrote a book called, Where Do Good Ideas Come From? And he talks about his work at Bell Labs, literally trying to figure out where a lot of the good ideas occurred in most of them that occurred in the cafeteria when you're not engineers trading ideas. So diversity of thought and experience bringing the missing piece to an idea that they couldn't crack.



Douglas:

That reminds me of one of my favorite innovation stories. And 3M came up with this genius idea and what it was, it was to install whiteboards outside the bathrooms. Because the bathrooms, the coming and going from the bathrooms, this is where scientists that were working in different labs would encounter each other, so the cafeteria is no different. But if you bump into each other and start that conversation, having a place to record it and to go deeper, because if you're working on something, even if you're not making traction on it, it can open up huge possibilities for someone else doing something little different. And I know Karen, you were trying to jump in there.



Karen:

Well, I was just going to share that one tip that I've been trying is, there's inertia and energy around ideas that you get when you're in person, right? You're in the room and you're leaning in and then you're going to go out and do, and so getting that from a call or a Zoom call or audio call, you get those moments where you can pick up on excitements, there's discipline and ending that and saying, "All right, what are we going to go do about it right now? Versus what you would have done in person which is, you kind of naturally would have gone off in your corners and done some research and then met back in the cafeteria or the coffee spot, whatever, to talk about it again, you don't have those moments. So it's capitalizing on that inertia and creating the next time we're going to talk it and the next thing you're going to do, rather than waiting for it to evolve naturally.



Jeff:

So being really mindful about like documenting and grabbing those next steps and sort of nailing down that idea, turning it from an idea to a plan, Karen, is that kind of what you're...



Karen:

Yeah, it's instead of letting it happen naturally in person and evolve, it's putting milestones, it's okay that it falls apart and doesn't come through, but it's not losing that inertia and energy in that moment to dissipate because of the next meeting that you jump into as a drag.



Jeff:

Yeah. Cool.



Karen:

So in thinking about the work that you're doing, tell me more about what your very specific innovation role and what you do and how legal tech plays into all of that at Liberty Mutual. Like what does that entail?



Jeff:

Sure. So I'm the Director of Innovation for Legal at Liberty Mutual. There's other innovation activities that occur at different parts of the business around Liberty that don't have anything to do with legal, so that's the first part. PNC Insurers have a pretty significant legal spend compared to other industries. So technology verticals tend to run about the highest besides PNC and they run at about half a percentage point of their revenues. So if you look at any large tech company, they'll spend about half a percentage of their revenue on legal spend. PNC Insurers run at about 4%. So it's a different... but the reason for that is because it's kind of our cost of goods sold. So we sell two things, we sell indemnification, you hit somebody's car, we're going to indemnify you and them and fix their car and if they sue you, we're going to send a lawyer to defend you.



Jeff:

So those are the two things we sell, so it's kind of part of our business. So that means we have to have an inordinately large legal department compared to other types of businesses, which means that they have a luxury of having someone that looks at innovation for legal. So that's why there's an opportunity for me. What I do there is twofold. I explore, design, investigate, test, and even implement new technology processes or business models that help our legal professionals do a better job, better being qualified in multiple different ways. So quicker, faster, happier, higher quality, you name it, whatever the situation might be. But I also have a responsibility to advance a culture of innovation within legal. I can't find every everything for everybody and I'm not that good, nor are there... you're looking at the whole innovation department, this is it.



Jeff:

So I try to help our attorneys and paras and business analysts try to figure out ways to help themselves as well. So thinking about things in new ways. So I get to play with a lot of new toys and try them out, see if they work, educate the group on it, and then help other folks sort of think about designing new solutions for themselves as well.



Douglas:

So, Jeff, I think we're kind of coming up on the end of our live stream here. I want it to just get some feedback from you, or just get some insights from you here because one thing I've been fascinated by since we first met is, you seem to always have your finger on some kind of cool new tool or some kind of cool new tech that you're like, you're just tracking it. And so what's your latest obsession?



Jeff:

Latest obsession. Well, I mean, right now I've really fell into the whole sourdough bread baking thing, but that doesn't really qualify, so that's just me being a cliche.



Douglas:

I had a friend that was tired of... he's really into cooking with his family and really into baking and then he got tired of the rationing, so he ordered a...



Jeff:

50 pound black bag of flour? Because I ordered a 50 pound bag of flour.

Douglas:

In a big bucket. I guess there's like a food...



Jeff:

Yes, because you have to have a storage. So it was an incredibly expensive event because I had to buy a ton of flour and then I realized, "Oh no, I don't have any place to put the flour," so I had to buy all this restaurant supply stuff. Yeah, that's probably not what you want to hear, but yeah, I went down a rabbit hole on baking and all the craziness around, but I love to cook, but I was never a great baker and I've tried to brush up on that skill.



Douglas:

I think it's beautiful that you brought that up because in the book, we don't really judge what kind of ideas you might have and so if you want to bake more sourdough, these techniques could still apply, right? It's like planning and taking action on anything that you want to be passionate about it and institute change is cool, so sourdough bread,



Jeff:

Sourdough bread. Now, other emerging technology, a lot of it is very legal focused, but I guess the thing that I've been thinking about a lot lately is digital transactions. For years I've heard consultants talk to, I've been at various roles at Liberty across the organization, about digital transformation, which just sounded like, I didn't know what it meant and it just sounded like consultancy talk. And I think I finally understand what that means at least in one aspect, from a legal perspective, I've been thinking about data first, document second. That we're very document focused, especially in legal, but across the board. And yeah, we're paperless, but we everything's in a document. It's like I have all this data trapped in these tiny jails called PDFs and .DOCs. And so how do I change the paradigm?



Jeff:

We moved to computers and the best model that we had was folders and documents and desktops, which was great, and it allowed us to move into computers and we've done so much with that. But now I need people to think about things a little bit differently and think about, that document isn't king, but the content of the document is king, and that the document is just literally a way that you can consume it. So if I say, have a contract, I want to generate that contract digitally, meaning I want to store all the contents of that contract in a database. What are the terms? What's the language? Who are the parties? When was it signed, et cetera.



Jeff:

Now, if I'm going to negotiate that I want the negotiation to be digital, as well, as opposed to red lines in on a word document, I want that to happen in a digital space so that I can understand that we started here and we finished here and I want to see every iteration in between, right? I want a history of those negotiations, and I want that all in one spot. And then when it's signed, I want to pick up that digital signature. And then I have all that information and nobody ever has to go and read a document, again, I can just query a database to understand what our contractual obligations are. And if I can do that, I can do a lot of things. So I can start to execute that document digitally, which means I could perhaps transfer money, move assets around, transfer liability, you name it, all sorts of stuff. So it's not one particular tech Douglas, but that is something that I'm thinking a lot about right now from a Liberty legal perspective.

Douglas:

Makes total sense given your purview and the needs of the organization. And it strikes me, as you were describing this data being kind of prisoners of these constructs or these structures, it makes me think that this is discipline of data liberation.



Jeff:

Yes. It's data liberation, that's right. What's interesting is there's a huge industry that's being built up right now that to do extraction of those documents and to turn it into structured data. That's great and there's a runway there, but there's an end to that runway. Because if you're able to create digitally and never have to go to analog, you don't need those tools anymore. So I'm interested to see how that plays out over the next, like three to five years.

Douglas:

Yeah, for sure. Excellent. Well, Jeff has been a pleasure speaking with you today, thanks for joining us.



Jeff:

My pleasure guys, it was really nice to talk to both of you.



Karen:

Yep. So again, this is Karen Holst and Douglas Ferguson were authors of Start Within. If you're interested in checking the book out, you can find it on Amazon. We also do this weekly on Fridays, where we talk to people that are trying to launch ideas within their organizations. So you're in a big corporation, that you're within a nonprofit, government agency, we talk to people like you, and if you have something that you're feeling stuck and want to be a person that we talked to, reach out to Douglas or I. Thank you again for your time, Jeff.



Jeff:

Thank you. Thank you so much guys, have a great weekend.



Karen:

Bye.



Jeff:

Bye-bye.