Description: Actuarial Speed Cubers in Wonderland

Description: Relationship management is your ability to use your awareness of your own emotions and those of others to manage interactions successfully. Given enough time and quality exchanges, we can form a relationship with any person we encounter. We should strive to develop positive relationships with people we like, and even with those we don’t like as much. Once established, both parties will understand each other better and benefit from the connection. Relationships can be challenging, especially at work or under stress. Skillfully managing them will help you initiate direct and productive conversations to alleviate misunderstandings, solve conflicts and achieve desired goals. This article explores strategies to develop the skill of relationship management.

Description: A dinner speech at the Actuarial Research Conference at Drake University, Des Moines IA summer 2023. A ramble through 50 years of experience with actuarial research.

Description: Chairperson’s Corner

Description: Come check out case studies regarding ethical dilemmas faced by actuaries in their day-to-day practice. You'll participate in an interactive discussion as presenters explore solutions to balancing various ethical considerations and have a better understanding of different ethical issues and how it impacts their practice by the end.

Description: Latest installment in series that applies Buddhist philosophy to the actuary's daily activities. This installment discusses the challenges for actuaries in dealing with the ongoing ups and downs of the COVID-19 pandemic and discusses mindfulness tools to cope with the resulting stresses in a peaceful and effective way.

Description: This article lists the leadership qualities which made U.S. Grant, an under appreciated historical figure, so successful.

Description: Sam dives into how his experience as both a leader and a musician provide insight into how micromanagement disrupts the flow of an organization much like a live musician who overly focuses on one component quickly loses the flow of a performance. What does the symphony of actions sound like at your organization?

Description: The world has shrunk and there is no going back. In today’s post-pandemic business landscape, actuaries are frequently being asked to collaborate or lead within multicultural teams dispersed across the globe. The question is, how should companies go about maintaining a sense of team connection across teams that are geographically and demographically different?

Description: Even in published scientific research, we find fraudulent data. What is an actuary to do? Let's consider our actuarial principles and standards of practice to question our data quality and truthfulness. In specific, the article addresses ASOP 56 on Modeling and considerations of model risk as well as ASOP 23 on Data Quality. Recent examples are given from a Harvard research fraud controversy as well as questionable sumo statistics.