Andrew McMahon on Risk, Impact, and Leading Change

Episode Summary

Andrew McMahon, the chairman and CEO of Guardian Life, one of America’s largest life insurance companies, started his working life on Long Island delivering the PennySaver and then the Daily News. He rode his bike in the dark before school through rain, sleet, and snow, and went door to door each week to collect what customers owed. Those mornings taught him that you can’t control the weather, a lesson he now applies to geopolitical skirmishes, interest rate moves, and market shocks: plan for what you can’t control so you can make better-informed decisions about which risks to take.

What you can control, Andrew tells Adam, includes the customers you serve, the products you build, where you choose to work, and how hard you work. He credits his rise to work ethic, an impact orientation he tracks by writing a list each Monday and checking it off by Friday, and the confidence to ask questions and share ideas even as the most junior person in the room. He studied computer science but grew bored with programming, so he joined a management training program at GE under Jack Welch, where he moved across functions, including finance, business development, and a stint in human resources that still shapes how he thinks about human capital. Drawing on the book “What Color Is Your Parachute?”, he realized that what he loved about entrepreneurship was doing many different things, and when he told mentors and colleagues so, they began steering opportunities his way. One mentor helped him turn a vague ambition into a practical one: aim to become a general manager, not CEO.

Andrew describes the best part of leading a company owned by its policyholders as setting its strategy and culture, and the weight of the promises Guardian has made to them as the hardest. He deliberately separates work from downtime, takes time to reflect before difficult decisions when he can, and consults individual board members and trusted executives. He looks for leaders with strong values, an impact orientation, intellectual curiosity, and a willingness to challenge habits. He explains Guardian’s Journey to 30, a five-year vision launched in 2025, and how he knew it had taken hold when colleagues began calling it “our” Journey to 30. Changing a successful company is harder than changing one in crisis, he says, so leaders need an inspiring vision and clear context for why change matters. He closes with his approach to risk: build a fact base, stress-test the tail scenarios, and distinguish one-way-door decisions that require extreme rigor from two-way-door decisions a culture should feel free to make.

What You’ll Learn

Separate what you can control from what you can’t, Andrew says, then plan for the uncontrollables, because weighing how likely they are leads to better decisions about which risks to take.

Track your impact by writing down what you plan to accomplish each Monday and checking it off by Friday, because a visible record of results is what leads others to hand you bigger problems to solve.

Tell people what you want from your career, Andrew says, because when he shared his ambitions with mentors and colleagues, they brought him opportunities he would never have found on his own.

Take roles you never pictured yourself in, as Andrew did with a stint in human resources at GE that still shapes how he thinks about human capital.

Changing a successful company is harder than changing one in crisis, Andrew says, so leaders need an inspiring vision of the future and clear context for why change is necessary.

Separate one-way-door decisions from two-way-door decisions: be rigorous about choices that can’t be undone, and build a culture that is comfortable making reversible ones.

About Andrew McMahon

Andrew McMahon is the chairman and CEO of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, a mutual company founded in 1860. He joined Guardian in 2017 as executive vice president of strategy and customer development, was named president in 2019, and became CEO on October 1, 2020, succeeding Deanna Mulligan. Earlier, he led strategic transformation initiatives at General Electric, was a partner at McKinsey, and served as president and a board director of AXA US. He chairs the American Council of Life Insurers and serves on the executive committee of the Partnership for New York City. He holds a B.S. in computer science from Fairfield University, where he is a trustee, and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

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