Do The Opposite

<p>Neil Krauter Sr. currently works as part of the Executive Committee at Risk Strategies, the 11th largest insurance broker in operation. Earlier in his career he worked as Vice Chairman of Aon Risk Services in New York and Global Practice Leader of AMAG, the Aon Merger & Acquisition Group. After a short retirement at age 40, Neil Krauter re-entered the brokerage world with The Krauter Group in 2004.</p><p>Neil Krauter Sr. graduated from Franklin & Marshall College where he earned a BA in economics.</p><p>In this episode….</p><p>Neil Krauter Sr. grew up in Rumson, New Jersey and was the first male Krauter to graduate from college. He was always a competitive person and even in his youth was determined to succeed. During his time in Cub Scouts he won the peanut brittle fundraising sales contest in his first year with a sales total nobody in the country had ever reached. The second year he sold ten times as much. His secret was to sell the brittle two towns away where there were no Cub Scouts.<br />This sense of ambition and of doing things his own way served him well throughout his career. As Neil tells Martin, he found that adopting a strategy of doing the opposite of what was expected was the best way to compete. He explains how he structured his company so he wouldn’t have to manage people. He prefers to work with no org chart so there are no assigned titles or hierarchy.</p><p>In this episode of <i>What CEOs Talk About</i>, host Martin Hunter and Neil Krauter Sr. discuss Neil’s lengthy career and how he leveraged his experience in launching his own brokerage. Neil shares his thoughts on HR, on creating a forum for conversation within an organization, and how success requires both planning and full commitment. Neil gives examples of how he achieved innovative breakthroughs in business by doing the opposite of what might be expected.</p>