Financial services company Edward Jones launched a pilot program in 2013 that focused on needs identified in its talent review process—personal leadership, strategy execution, and leading change. The pilot was successful, but the company made significant changes in audience, content, and participant learning exercises before introducing the virtual instructor-led training (VILT) series as ongoing development in July 2014.
The invitation-only Leadership Direct course was targeted primarily at newer department leaders, with a secondary audience of more tenured department leaders. These included participants with diverse perspectives and backgrounds.
Program Details
Leadership Direct consists of three modules of four weeks each, with reading, case studies, and weekly VILT sessions led by a Harvard University moderator and a firm principal. Participants pair up for learning exercises and discussions, tackle an individual business challenge, and engage in online discussion-board conversations during and between sessions.
Forty-one department leaders gathered in home-office locations in Missouri, Arizona, and Canada for the weekly VILT sessions, or viewed recorded sessions when work required missing live sessions. The organization leveraged the talents of Harvard professors and busy firm leaders who appeared via video at all locations and related topics to the real world of Edward Jones. Discussion-board participation by moderators and participants kept the VILT sessions engaging.
A few years ago, Edward Jones would have designed a course similar to another executive-education offering where it flew participants to Boston for a Harvard-affiliated classroom experience that costs $7,000 per participant. Using VILT, Leadership Direct costs $2,700 per person, a savings of about $190,000 annually.
Results
After introducing this approach to developing department leaders scattered in various locations, Edward Jones observed readiness improvements, promotions, and statistical evidence that internal promotions and successor depth are moving in the right direction:
- Pilot surveys that encouraged the organization to proceed with a revised VILT series included behavior change reported by both participants and their leaders—76 percent of participants and 87 percent of participants’ leaders cited specific ways in which course teachings were applied post-course.
- In 2015, Edward Jones reviewed the 46 pilot participants’ career progressions. Almost half had improved readiness assessments or were newly placed on three-deep succession lists. And 13 percent had been promoted.
- Although the non-pilot Leadership Direct series only ended in late 2014, 15 percent of participants now are on more three-deep lists or have increased readiness, and 10 percent have been promoted.
- For years, more than 70 percent of people leader positions were filled from within, but in 2014, that rate hit 97 percent. Leader retention remains at a very high 96 percent.
- Three-quarters of Edward Jones principals—a step above department leaders and directors—have a ready-now or ready-soon successor. An improved percentage have minority or female successors identified, an increase of 2 percent for females and 5 percent for minorities since 2014.
