By Shawn Michael Walker, PGI President, Personal Lines
At my son’s high school, graduating seniors are required to write a 20-page argumentative thesis and then defend their position before a panel of professors. It is a classical education school, so the topics tend to reach beyond the typical high school paper.
His thesis was as follows:
It is necessary to cultivate habits of moderation and prudence in order to achieve lasting happiness.
As he worked through Aristotle’s ideas on virtue and the Golden Mean, I could not help but think about how deeply those principles apply to leadership and business—especially within the insurance industry.
So just as my son argued that moderation and prudence are necessary for lasting happiness, I would argue that best-in-class agencies cultivate moderation and prudence in order to achieve long-term excellence.
Too often, agency owners and leaders are celebrated for operating at the extremes: extreme hustle, extreme growth, extreme availability, extreme hours, even extreme language. Somewhere along the way, exhaustion became a status symbol and imbalance became confused with ambition.
But Aristotle would argue that excellence is not found in the extremes. It is found in balance, discipline, and calibrated leadership.
According to Aristotle, virtue does not exist in “too much” or “too little,” but in the properly ordered middle. Both deficiency and excess pull us away from excellence.
My son’s argument centered around prudence—the ability to think rightly and evaluate honestly where imbalance exists. Through prudence, a person can identify unhealthy extremes and build habits that move them toward virtue. How often do you make time to evaluate honestly where imbalance exists in your agency?
Aristotle’s classic example was cowardice and recklessness. One avoids action altogether. The other rushes into action without wisdom. The virtuous position between them is courage: measured, disciplined, intelligent action in the face of difficulty.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized how often our industry struggles with the same imbalance.
Some leaders drift toward passivity and avoid difficult conversations. Others operate with such intensity that they burn out their teams, damage culture, and strain carrier relationships. Some agencies become so obsessed with growth that they sacrifice development, retention, and operational discipline. Others become so cautious they never scale at all.
The issue is rarely effort alone. More often, it is proportion. The right amount, at the right time, for the right reason.
Most agencies do not fail because of a lack of effort. They fail because of a lack of calibration. Most entrepreneurs do not have an effort problem. They have a calibration problem.
Let me give a few examples.
Agency Leadership
On one end of the spectrum is micromanagement. On the other is chaos. The virtuous middle is structured autonomy.
Elite agencies scale because leaders empower their teams within systems. We have all seen the agency owner who appears to scale with remarkable ease and stability. Rarely is it because they control everything personally. More often, it is because they have learned the discipline of empowering others without abandoning accountability.
Other examples under leadership include:
- Growth vs. Culture
- Hustle vs. Sustainability
- Autonomy vs. Accountability
Producer Development
On one end of the spectrum is insecurity—producers afraid to prospect, afraid to ask for the business, afraid to grow. On the other end is unchecked ego—producers chasing accounts they have little expertise handling simply because they are attracted to the commission opportunity.
The virtuous middle is grounded confidence.
The best producers remain competitive while staying coachable. They understand what the agency has chosen to specialize in (and why) and develop mastery within those lanes.
We have all met the producer who “drummed up” a piece of business they had little understanding of, only to spend two months chasing it unsuccessfully. And in the rare instance they win it, an E&O exposure is quietly waiting in the background.
Confidence without prudence is rarely sustainable.
Another example I see frequently is carrier advocacy.
Some agents accept every carrier answer as absolute truth and never advocate for their clients. Others burn bridges with underwriters, claims professionals, and carrier representatives through unnecessary hostility and emotional reactions.
The virtuous middle is strong advocacy paired with strong relationships.
The healthiest agencies understand how to fight for clients without destroying partnerships.
Work Ethic
On one side is laziness. On the other is burnout. The virtuous middle is sustainable intensity.
Success is not built by destroying yourself temporarily. It is built through disciplined consistency over time.
I have met agency owners simply riding renewals until the agency slowly dies. I have also met owners who refuse to leave their desk until they reach a certain revenue number, only to sacrifice health, relationships, and long-term sustainability in the process.
I have met top-performing owners who continue working 12-hour days because they cannot relinquish control long enough to hire, delegate, and scale properly. Many burn out before they ever learn the leadership skills necessary for true growth.
The same principle applies everywhere:
- The proper amount of technology in the office
- The proper amount of client communication
- Relationship-building vs. hiding behind screens
- The art of the agency vs. the science of the agency
- Automation vs. human touch
- Education vs. overconsumption of information without execution
And this is where prudence becomes essential. Every leader eventually has to ask:
- Where am I too passive?
- Where am I too extreme?
- What does balance actually look like here?
The best agencies are not built by the people who simply push the hardest. They are built by leaders who know when to push and when to pull back. Leaders who cultivate habits of prudence, moderation, discipline, and balance over time.
That—not extremism—is what creates enduring excellence.
