“From day one when I got here I think there was thirst for a vision that did not exist,” Plumeri told me in June when I interviewed him for an NU feature honoring him as one of our “Legends of Insurance.” He recalled the staff as “beaten-down and told it wasn't very good.” To motivate them again, “I simply told them something that they wanted to feel.”

He immediately set about shaking up the corporate culture, and the changes he brought about were both super-sized and enormously successful.

Plumeri took the company public in 2001, and he saw the company's market capitalization double over his first eight years. In 2008, the firm acquired one of the Top 10 insurance-brokerage firms, Hilb, Rogal & Hobbs, in a $2.1 billion deal—firmly establishing its presence in the U.S.

For years, Plumeri was a prominent voice against the practice of insurers' contingent commissions to brokers.

Before Eliot Spitzer, New York's attorney general in 2005, brought the hammer down on Marsh & McLennan Cos. over contingent commissions, Plumeri was already openly critical of the practice. If memory serves me right, his initial criticism was that they were a detriment to a sales culture that should remain hungry for new sales opportunities and commissions.

When Spitzer began questioning Marsh's practices, Plumeri voluntarily gave up contingent commissions, saying that they should be banned throughout the industry. Ironically, years later, Willis reversed course, announcing just this past February that it would begin taking contingents on its Employee Benefits business.

Coverage contracts was another subject about which he was particularly vocal. Plumeri long argued that it was ludicrous for an insurer to issue coverage to an insured and not have a contract in place for an extended period of time.

“Willis has long held the belief that contract certainty is one of the basic principles of service and should be adopted across the industry,” he said in 2008, applauding the efforts of New York State Superintendent of Insurance Eric Dinallo for instituting a rule requiring insurers to have contract certainty in place within a year. “There is absolutely no excuse for policies to be delivered months after their inception, an all too commonplace practice in this business.”

And while Plumeri's outspoken nature may not have always made him a favorite among his peers, being known for raising questions over ethics and industry practices isn't a bad legacy at all. 

Neither is his widely known penchant for having an open-door policy as CEO—to the degree where he actually removed the door from his own office to make the point, in typically over-the-top Plumeri style. It was a gesture that spoke volumes about his management approach.

“The first point you learn about leadership is that it is not about you,” he told me. “Leadership is just the opposite of what people believe. If you are a real leader, you appreciate the fact that the people you have the good fortune to inspire and the people you have the good fortune to motivate are the [ones] who make the success of the company, not you.”

So Joe, we'll miss you. But I wouldn't expect him to disappear. You never know: With his ownership interest in two minor-league teams, maybe his next venture could be helping the Yankees once again win a World Series.