Ruth Fattori All of our shareholders should keep in mind that Conseco used to behave as a Merchant Bank, growing through acquisition. The NEW Conseco is going to build shareholder value through operations. 2000 was a year to survive. 2001 will be a year to start to thrive. Hand in hand with those structural changes, the NEW Conseco is also formalizing the process for improving productivity and quality.
Every healthy business grows by adding new products and new markets.
But an equally important way to sustain earnings growth is to do business more productively. And because the organized pursuit of this objective requires rigorous measurement of inputs and outputs, my experience is that quality improvement occurs in lock-step with productivity gains. To lead the charge on productivity and quality, we have recruited Ruth Fattori to our senior management team as Executive Vice President for Process and Productivity. Recruiting Ruth is a great coup. She worked with me at GE Capital running the Six Sigma program, and, in that role, pioneered the application of Six Sigma to the financial services industry.