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The Once and Future C&F - The Go-Go Years
CHAPTER 3 The Go-Go Years
P icking a successor is tricky. You need someone you trust. You are trying to match the person to the company’s current situation, and then make sure they are capable of handling variations on the theme — good and bad — that arise in the future. Do you pick someone you have trained for years to follow exactly in your footsteps, someone who can preserve all that is sacred about what you have built? Does the company need an overhaul? If so, you should find someone who can make the necessary hard changes that you have not made (because they are of your own invention). Or perhaps you feel that you have taken the company to a great place — and now need someone who can take it to the next level. Lester Parsons made an interesting choice in Bill Ridgway. Ridgway was born in New Jersey, graduated from Princeton, was promoted to lieutenant commander in the Navy during World War II, and held a partnership in the Manhattan-based security analysis firm Ridgway, Newsome and Co. While he was not an insurance guy, he had an impressive background. It also helped that he was married to Parsons’s daughter. In 1950, Ridgway joined Crum & Forster as a financial VP. He took to insurance
quickly — and in what might be an all-time land speed record, Ridgway was made President and CEO by 1954. In Ridgway, Parsons found someone he trusted and who could take the company to the next level — but who, as both a company outsider and an industry outsider, would have the ability to see and implement the necessary changes. Additionally, Parsons maintained a seat at the table — even if that seat only ended up being at the family dinner table. When you take on the top job — especially if there is a mandate for change — a key qualification is a willingness to throw out the prior administration. No one who has ever thought about it should want to sit around and watch the new leader make decisions that counteract all they have built — or, in fact, make even small changes they disagree with. But it is difficult to just walk away. This meant that Ridgway had to have a hard conversation with several of the board members, including his father-in-law, the 83-year-old chairman of the board. Then it was time to shake things up — and move C&F beyond its origins in property insurance. There was a whole new world that needed insurance: casualty, surety, inland marine, automobile, workers’ compensation, aviation.
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