Human Flourishing-Influenced Decision Making
Humana is sacrificing revenue to foster flourishing – and what it can mean for your company
The President and CEO of health insurer and provider Humana, Jim Rechtin, just made a decision that favored human flourishing over revenue.
As Healthcare Innovation reports:
Speaking to analysts and investors on Nov. 5 after the Louisville-based insurer and healthcare services provider reported its third-quarter results, President and CEO Jim Rechtin said his team is prepared to tap the brakes on Medicare sales during the current annual enrollment period. Outlining Humana’s focus on customers’ lifetime value over simply pumping enrollment numbers, Rechtin said he’s also adamant that Humana’s operations not be stretched by the addition of new plan members.
“We will take as much growth as possible from improved retention. This is unquestionably desirable growth and we welcome new sales,” Rechtin said. “However, we are prepared to take targeted actions to slow new sales if we reach the point where the volume risk is negatively impacting member experience.”
First, I applaud Rechtin’s focus on customer lifetime value, something that Don Peppers and Martha Rogers brought to the world in The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time – on my list of the top ten business books of all time – and that the three of us discussed further in the Harvard Business Review article “Do you want to keep your customers forever?”. At its height, it means turning around (dare I say repenting from?) a product focus that pushes offerings out to customers and instead embracing a customer focus, meaning to pull the desires, needs, and aspirations of individual customers in order to mass customize to them. As we wrote in the HBR, this lets you cultivate learning relationships that do enable you to keep customers forever – at the very least yield “as much growth as possible from improved retention”.
Does your company need to shift from pushing products to pulling customers’ desires, needs, and aspirations and then mass customizing to them?
Second, even higher kudos for recognizing – and making clear to analysts and investors! – that business isn’t a short-term, quarter-by-quarter game but a long-term effort to do what’s right for customers, and that by extension yields what’s best for the business over time. As Rechtin indicates, it makes business sense to give up sales this quarter (and the next, and the one after that) if it is going to negatively impact your customers.
Does your company take a short-term view that sacrifices creating value for customers or a long-term view that sacrifices revenue to foster flourishing?
Of course, if every business understood that the raison d’être of business is to foster human flourishing, then there would be no need for such applause or kudos – these sort of decisions would be the norm! But that decidedly is not the case. I do think that part of Rechtin’s understanding comes from the fact that he and the company view those who buy Humana’s offerings as members – an experience term (right up there with “guests”) – and not as customers or clients.
It also doesn’t hurt that “human” is right there in the company’s name! And that it alludes to flourishing in its purpose, as stated on Humana’s About page:
Since 1961, Humana has been committed to helping people live healthy and happy.
Our approach is simple – offer personalized care from people who care. We do this by listening to our members and creating solutions to help them reach the best version of themselves.
We’re also deeply invested in towns and cities across the country, and we strive to support and improve communities at a local level.
And note how Humana even commits to collective flourishing in the last sentence – beautiful!
Of course, I can’t vouch for how well Humana does all of this, and as with any insurance company there are no doubt horror stories galore. But it’s hard to see how it would improve, including reducing or eliminating such stories, without its meaningful purpose, without its long-term view, and without its customer focus that all contributed to the CEO’s decision to sacrifice revenue for the member experience.
Does your company recognize that the true purpose of business is to foster human flourishing?
Fourth, when Rechtin uses that phrase, “member experience”, I suspect that at least in part he means “member outcomes”. That of course is what really matters in healthcare, with experiences being the means for which health outcomes are the ends. Even if that’s not any part of the Humana CEO’s calculus, research has long shown that the better the patient experience the greater the patient outcome, and so his reasoning will necessarily result in superior outcomes over other insurance and health providers that continue to focus on inputs. That’s why healthcare – and more broadly health & wellbeing – is one of the industries that needs to view itself as in the transformation business, not the service business.
Does your company view itself as in the transformation business and thus focus on outcomes, not inputs?
Finally, in recognition of the fact that the company is not where it needs to be – it must tighten its focus on members, improve its experience, enhance its outcomes, and better fulfill its purpose – the CEO says that Humana itself must transform:
“These changes are a small sample of our multiyear transformation, which will include near-term tactical cost programs, but also longer-term efforts that change how we operate,” Rechtin said.
Transformations are not only about what your customers aspire to become. Enterprise transformation so often proves necessary in order to become a transformation guider. So as you and your company ascend to the proposition that fostering human flourishing is the true purpose of your business – and from it flows everything else discussed in this post and so much more! – embrace this imperative (to paraphrase the ancient proverb): Company, transform thyself.
How can your company transform itself to become a transformation guider that fosters human flourishing?
If you do so, you and your enterprise will greatly contribute to the world, with profits not longer your end goal but the measure of how well you foster human flourishing.
Joe
© 2025 B. Joseph Pine II