Ingram's May 2024

Harry Herington Some entrepreneurs and chief executives are born with empathy and people skills; some have to learn those the hard way. Harry Herington’s innate connections to his charges were honed in a uniquely different venue: policing the streets of Midland, Texas, and his native Wichita. Before he founded NIC, Inc., a government website specialist that later sold for $2.3 billion, Herington was a police officer. “During this time, I developed a better understanding of how every life is different and fragile,” he says. “It helped me to become more empathetic and, at the same time, developed a stronger sense of leadership within me. In many of the circumstances, if I did not take the lead, a bad situation could become worse, or someone could be hurt.” He was raised on a farm outside Rosalia, Kan., where he says he learned the value of “looking out for your neighbors and that the character or integrity of a person is defined by how others think of you, not how you might try to portray yourself.” Switching career gears, Herington jumped at the chance to wield tech as a force for more efficient, customer-friendly government services. Over the course of 25 years in that field, he says, “There were several times that leadership was presented with decisions that could make or break the company. NIC was a technology company focused on providing easy access to complex govern ment services. Our mission was to continuously convince a “risk-adverse” government partner to embrace new technologies that were unproven in their industry. Our reputation and the credibility of government agencies relied on us making the right choice as we attempted to push the technology envelope.” Criti cal to the firm’s success back in 1996 were his efforts to convince peers and government partners that Web-based services were in evitable. “We modified our contracts and began reprogramming all the services,” he says. “Unfortunately, it was not immediately apparent that our existing revenue model would not work with the new technology, and I realized I had effectively eliminated our primary revenue stream. Once I realized the magnitude of the error, I had to own it and lean on our employees and government partners to develop an appropriate alternative.” As a leader, philanthropy was also a valued trait, and Herington combined a personal passion for motorcycle riding with support for law enforcement through Ride4Cops, an organization he founded in 2009 to raise awareness of the dangers police face and to support families of fallen officers. To date, it has donated more than $1 million to the cause.

David Lockton The history of Lockton Companies starts with Jack Lockton’s one-man insurance show operating from a home office and con tinued with his brother’s leadership to help create the world’s largest private, independent insurance brokerage and benefits consultancy. Viewed from that perspective, you’d be missing an important piece of the foundation by precisely one genera tion. “My parents raised our family in a modest home in Prairie Village where we had great schools and a stable neighborhood,” David Lockton said in an interview with Ingram’s . “Not everyone in Kansas City starts with that as a foundation for their lives.” Lockton earned a degree in finance from K-State and joined the company his brother had founded. The younger Lockton served as president of the firm starting in 1981 and assumed the CEO’s duties in 1998. Family ownership and the firm’s carefully crafted culture, he says, have produced a remarkable stretch of annual revenue growth, now at 58 consecutive years. Inside that culture, he writes, “Associates are empowered to make decisions that create value for our clients; leadership takes a personal in terest in helping our clients’ businesses become more successful; our constituencies—clients, associates, and communities—come first and ahead of short-term shareholder returns, and you get the best from people when you demonstrate consistent values.” So what are they? Simple, he says: Sustainability and promot ing a worthy cause, aligning associate and corporate interests to drive behavior, creating a decentralized and entrepreneurial environment, and building an organization around identifying and recruiting excellence. On his watch, the firm went from a small local brokerage to a $3 billion global power, with more than 10,000 associates working in 50 countries. It also leveraged technology to create new consumer and corporate client services to expand the client base and seize emerging opportunities and new market segments. “I’ve been lucky to have my career and my family go hand-in-hand throughout my life, and we have made it a priority to give back to the communities that gave us so much,” Lockton says. “Outside of my work with Lockton Com panies, I enjoy mentoring the next generation of leaders, cheer ing on Kansas City’s world champion sports teams, and traveling with my family.” A lifelong fan of Ewing Kauffman’s brand of entrepreneurship, Lockton was quick to respond in 2019, when energy executive John Sherman was putting together a local in vestor group that would buy the Kansas City Royals—one of Mr. K’s legacies here—from the Glass family for $1 billion.

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Kansas City’s Business Media

May 2024