Character and the Corporation

by William J. O'Brien

Between 1969 and 1991, Bill O'Brien was marketing vice president and then CEO of Hanover Insurance in Worcester, Massachusetts. Over that period Hanover went from the bottom of the US property and liability insurance business to the top quartile. Peter Senge of MIT describes O'Brien's work at Hanover as “the most dramatic, sustained corporate renewal” he ever witnessed. In this book, O'Brien reflects on how he did it.

O'Brien explains what he and his colleagues accomplished at Hanover in terms of how they thought about and worked with Hanover 's people. He didn't put much stock in grand strategies. "At Hanover we beat our competitors," he once said, "because we worked at getting our people to do the basics better, and because we didn't get distracted by as many fads as our competitors did." As a leader and manager, O'Brien focused his attention first and foremost on helping people grow. He thought a lot about how to support and foster the slow processes of individual and organizational maturation upon which personal and business success rest. At Hanover, he placed great emphasis on a set of values that he believed the company needed in order to be successful: localness, merit, openness, and leanness. But he placed even greater emphasis on employees choosing for themselves whether to adopt these values. "A value is only a value," he said, "if it is freely chosen."

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