What insurance should you lose?

Earlier this autumn, in the run up to big Atlantic gale, I had the pleasure of meeting Andy Middleton. Andy is founder of activity company TYF, co-founder of The Do Lectures, and co-organiser of BFest (a gathering of B Corps in the UK involving exotic bugs, deep-and-meaningfuls, skill-sharing, adventure and beer – this combination works well).

The brilliant TYF team spent much of the BFest weekend enabling us to get out onto the Pembrokeshire headlands, for coasteering, hiking and surfing. They wrangled the logistics of how many people needed transporting, to where, with what equipment. There seemed to be a lot to co-ordinate, and they’re not a big team.

So it was a surprise when Andy shared a fact with me.

He said he wasn’t insured to drive the company’s minibuses anymore.

If he was, he said, he’d still be driving all the time. To help out, plug a gap, rescue a situation.

Taking it off the table means the company can’t turn to him for that. Freeing him to do the many things that only he can do. And meaning the team works it out a different and more resilient way.

It made me wonder: what skills are there in all our working lives that we carry on using not because we should, but because we can?

What cost does that exact on us, on those around us, and the organisations we build together?

And what might we achieve if we spent more time where we’re truly needed?

Picture credit: Coasteering jump by Simon Hamilton, CC-BY-ND-2.0