The former chief executive officer of XL Group, Mike McGavick, admits that frequently during his career he has taken on leadership roles that some of his contemporaries considered too hot to handle—such as the turnarounds he led at XL Group and Safeco.
“I’ve consistently gotten jobs that no one else wanted. I’ve always walked into situations where there was a pretty dire need to rethink the business,” he recalled.
Indeed, after the successful turnarounds at Safeco and XL, he subsequently discovered that “much, much better names than me” had turned down offers to run the companies.
He feels lucky that these roles fell to him, even if by default.
So, how did McGavick develop the dogged determination—some would say courage—to run troubled companies and help return them to strong financial health?
McGavick sat down with Carrier Management to discuss his career and early life lessons that led him to help with insurer turnarounds and ultimately to his current role as special adviser to AXA Group CEO Thomas Buberl, to which he was appointed after AXA’s purchase of XL Group in September 2018. (See related story: AXA XL’s McGavick Looks Ahead to ‘The Golden Age of Insurance‘).
Secrets to Success
At the tender age of 20, McGavick took on a job where he was paid $100 per week to be a driver for Slade Gorton, who was running as a U.S. senator from Washington state. “It was the first job where I had to wear a tie, and all I did was drive him around the state. Back then you didn’t fly to campaign events; you drove. And our state’s a huge state, so I spent lots of hours in the car with this guy.”
Gorton, who is now 91 and continues to work as an attorney in Washington state, was a U.S. senator from 1981 to 1987 and then again from 1989 to 2001.
Previously, he had been Washington state attorney general and had argued 14 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, said McGavick. “He is a remarkably achieved human being, and I knew when driving around with him I was going to be able to ask for some advice.”
McGavick recalled one night when he was driving Gorton, who had been napping in the back of the car. He suddenly woke up and wanted to talk.
“I thought, ‘OK, this is my chance.’ So, I asked him the question I’d been saving for a moment like this, which was: ‘What do you think is the difference between the most successful people you’ve seen and super smart people that just don’t create that kind of success?'”
McGavick said Gorton paused for a bit, thinking, and finally said: “No. 1, you have to be willing to think very deeply about any problem you are presented. Most people aren’t able to do this or don’t have the discipline to do this. What I mean is any time you see a new problem, the reason it’s a problem is there’s something that makes old solutions not work. What most people do when confronting a problem is they just try to pigeonhole it into some prior successful solution.”