Solving Problems/Improving Leadership

Adapting to culture

Due to the structure of Northwestern Mutual, I have found this internship contains very little hands-on direction, but still involves a lot of learning. The full-time financial advisers at Northwestern Mutual are actually independent contractors licensed to sell the company’s products. Each adviser and intern is responsible for building their own client base, so the culture is supportive, competitive, and very individually driven. Most of our learning as interns comes from our own motivations to experience new situations. Outside of one hour of training each week and the occasional water cooler conversation, there is almost no direction from the company. What I’m finding to be most difficult is getting introduced to people in the target markets for financial planning. Successful young professionals and new families are ultimately the best bet to be thinking about their financial future.

With almost no direction, it’s up to me to solve this problem. I have begun reaching out to businesses and organizations that serve or employ young adults. That is my current method of action, but I need to expand the scope of my efforts and get creative. Trial-and-error is a valuable way to learn, but not necessarily what I expected out of a summer internship.  The freedom and lack of structure is both an advantage and a source of stress, because so much emphasis is put on our production.

Adapting to the culture of self-taught networking skills will be difficult, but if I work smart and use my time wisely, I can hopefully improve my chances of success.

One thought on “Adapting to culture

  • Wow, really challenging. I don’t think I realized that the environment was so unstructured, particularly for interns. That seems to definitely be a weakness in regards to leader/follower dynamics, that new hires and interns have less guidance and mentoring as a new member of the organization. So even processes for acquiring new business – beyond perhaps explicit statements/policy about what is not okay/appropriate in searching for clients – are really not defined; they are individually driven. So in regards to organizational culture, seems much of the process of learning is left to the individual (beyond the weekly one hour session). Again, this reflection is short of the required word count.

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