When Warren Buffett praises your strategy—even as the owner of rival Geico—it’s tempting to take a victory lap. Progressive CEO Tricia Griffith resists.
“It doesn’t influence my thinking,” she says, though she concedes the veneration fuels her resolve. “You can fall from grace easily if you get complacent. You have to stay paranoid.” That mix of humility and vigilance, she argues, has defined her rise—from crawling under cars as a claims representative to becoming the first woman to lead the 88-year-old insurance company, now a Fortune 500 powerhouse with more than $75 billion in revenue.
Her ascent was anything but linear. After a decade in claims, Griffith vaulted into Progressive’s top HR job in 1999, despite no formal experience. “I had a marketing degree and claims background—no HR,” she recalls. What she did have were strong views on two neglected priorities: diversity and data. Encouraged by colleagues and emboldened by candor in a meeting with then-CEO Glenn Renwick, she landed the role. The leap recalibrated her leadership identity. “It taught me to see what others saw in me, to stop comparing myself to everyone else, and to be confident in my strengths,” she says. From there came a steady march: president of claims, president of customer operations, COO, and ultimately CEO in 2016.
If her early years in senior roles were about finding her footing, Griffith’s CEO tenure has been defined by what she calls a “surgical focus.” When she took over nine years ago, Progressive was a $20 billion revenue company. Today, it’s nearly quadrupled in size. She credits a disciplined growth construct she borrowed from McKinsey—execute, expand, explore. The first part of her plan involved doubling down on core strengths: commercial auto, where Progressive was already dominating, and personal auto, where it’s pushed from fourth place into second today. Phase two opened up adjacencies, from insuring larger commercial fleets to partnering with ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft on their insurance policies. Horizon three prioritized seeding future bets, from pet insurance to direct-to-consumer life insurance, aimed at bundling more financial products alongside auto and home.
Growth, she insists, has been less about bold strokes than relentless execution. “It’s every single person knowing their role and going deep,” she says. Every three years, her leadership team develops a new strategic plan, combining top-down and bottom-up approaches to map the addressable market and identify underpenetrated demographics. And when conditions change, they move fast, she says. In 2023, with inflation driving up car prices, Progressive pulled back its media spend and retooled its pricing strategy before competitors, she says. The result is what Griffith describes as the largest single-year market share gain by any carrier in over a decade.
“Picture synchronized swimmers without the caps,” she says. “That’s how aligned we are.”
Of course, the CEO role itself has changed dramatically over the last decade. Today’s corner office comes with more political polarization, activist shareholders, and technological upheaval. “There’s always a glitch around the corner,” Griffith says.
With that acknowledgement, is the top job still worth it? “There are tough days,” she admits, “But if you build great teams, follow your plan, and win the right way, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”
Ruth Umoh
ruth.umoh@fortune.com
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