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Fortune’s "No. 1 Best Company to Work For" Chooses Advantage to Develop Leaders
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When Edward Jones Managing Partner John Bachmann says that the firm "is organized like a symphony," he is reflecting a culture that has provided leaders with a new language and structure for success. He’s also reflecting a firm that ranked No. 1 on Fortune Magazine’s 2002 list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, and No. 10 on Training Magazine’s 2002 list of companies that excel at human capital development (the "Training Top 100"). Advantage Performance partnered with Edward Jones to bring Real Learning Company’s Symphony and Conductor programs to leaders across the organization. The initiative supported specific values and competencies, and aligned participants around a key leadership philosophy. This has had an impact on associates at every level of the firm. As Bachmann explains, "You have leaders in the symphony, and the leaders select the music and set the tempo. Each member of the orchestra is playing a solo…because they each have a part to play. The symphony is not complete without each member making a contribution."
Goal: Develop Future Leaders
Edward Jones is a $2.2 billion brokerage firm that specializes in serving the individual investor. The innovative, entrepreneurial firm has nearly 26,000 highly committed associates throughout its St. Louis headquarters, home offices in Canada and the United Kingdom, and more than 8,000 branches.Dr. Debbie Brady, Director of Learning and Organizational Effectiveness, contacted Advantage for help creating a leadership development process. "The need to grow our leaders internally was the strong driving force," she says. "We also believe that education is an investment for the future, not an expense. So giving our people development tools is always a high priority." Brady also wanted the process to reflect the responsibility-based management concepts of business leader Peter Drucker, an Edward Jones friend whose philosophies the firm had long embraced. "We have a spirit of entrepreneurialism, innovation, and growth. The process also needed to reflect that," she says.
Advantage partners Joe Beilein and Jim LaVictoire recommended a curriculum comprising two programs from Real Learning that were inspired by Peter Drucker’s principles.
Philosophy: Responsibility-Based Management
Symphony: Orchestrating Peak Performance is the core of a learning system that applies Drucker’s metaphor, "The leader as Symphony Conductor." The one-day group discovery experience is an alignment tool that helps participants explore a common language for the leadership of teams and individuals, apply the process to performance gaps, and create a set of aligned goals.
Conductor, Symphony’s coaching component, creates the awareness and skill to build strong coaching relationships that bring out the best from performers. Both programs use Real Learning’s learning map and team participation processes to get leaders engaged and bring concepts to life.
Brady recognized immediately that a curriculum comprising both Symphony and Conductor would be a perfect fit with the Edward Jones culture. First, the two programs support and reinforce Edward Jones’s 10 leadership competencies "Our leadership competencies were developed based on the belief that without creating leaders today, the firm cannot be successful tomorrow," she says. "Symphony and Conductor supported many of our competencies very nicely, such as Leads by Example, Works in Partnership to Achieve Results, and Gets the Job Done."
Secondly, both programs intuitively support the entrepreneurial aspects of responsibility-based management. "Symphony and Conductor explore a way of managing that allows people a lot of freedom as they move through their leadership careers at Jones," says Joe Beilein. "What Symphony calls the ‘Influences around Expectations and Feedback,’ for example, is a critical aspect of the Drucker concept of responsibility-based management."
Jim LaVictoire adds, "Responsibility-based management says that you must take responsibility for the outcomes of your position and your own development. You’re responsible for certain individuals, and to certain individuals. You don’t report to people; you’re responsible to them. That subtle distinction means that you are responsible for your own performance. When people feel that way, it’s a powerful driver that serves to align them around common values and goals."
Emphasis: Consistency and Alignment
For three years, the curriculum has been offered to headquarters and home-office leaders — anyone who is responsible for others — so that they can, in turn, lead and support other associates more effectively. Nearly 3,000 associates are expected to complete both programs. The implementation is assisted by Edward Jones leaders Paula Huelsman, Doug Lang, and John Malinak, who serve as table facilitators for the Symphony program.
As associates move through Symphony, they learn a consistent language and an overall structure around which they can begin leading. Self-discovery is a big part of the process. Brady explains, "Rather than saying someone is not performing, this encourages you to look inward and then look to the performer. Before, it was very easy to start by saying to someone, ‘you didn’t do the job,’ and lay the fault there."
What participants learn in Symphony, they build on 90 days later with Conductor. Not simply a coaching experience, Conductor also teaches the techniques of handling feedback and leading on a day-to-day basis. Brady says, "Conductor has been critical. Part of our philosophy is volunteerism, giving back, coaching and mentoring junior people. Conductor provides that foundation and allows people to do it."
"The power comes with the two programs combined," she continues. "What these programs bring to the table is a different way of learning that leverages people’s experience and prior knowledge, and allows them to come to their own answers. The whole Real Learning concept and premise truly promotes understanding. In a very short time, these programs take very complicated topics and break them down into elementary concepts. With fast growth and young leaders, you’ve got to come up to speed very quickly in order to sustain this entrepreneurial type of culture. The methodology of Symphony and Conductor allows leaders to quickly learn these types of things."
It’s clear that the process is working. "Associates who have leaders who have participated in the programs tell us that their leaders are more effective and able to communicate to them on a different level," says Brady. Beilein adds, "Edward Jones leaders who participate as table facilitators often give us examples of how people are using the Symphony process. Seeing people use the process successfully throughout the organization motivates everyone."
Brady also appreciated the Advantage partnership. "The nice thing about working with Joe and Jim is that they ask me what’s going on, raise the questions that assess my needs, and we work together to come up with options. They have never come to me with an answer before we’ve talked, trying to force a round peg in a square hole like many vendors would. I appreciate their kind of partnership, and it gets results."
Outcome: A Symphony of Contributors
It’s no surprise that Edward Jones head John Bachmann uses the "symphony" metaphor. "Top leadership endorsed the Symphony and Conductor concept from the beginning, and gave it full support," says LaVictoire. "Every top executive went through the programs and rave reviews percolated down through the firm."
"This leadership curriculum is not mandatory," says Brady, "But our top executives said, ‘everyone should be participating in this.’ The executive in charge of all the investment representatives and most of the home office associates was so enthusiastic that he said all regional leaders should go through the programs."
As for being named top U.S. company to work for, a number of values-driven management decisions (such as reducing bonuses instead of instituting layoffs) contributed to the Fortune Magazine ranking, but two-thirds of the scoring was based on a survey of actual Edward Jones associates. Bachmann says, "One of the keys to being an attractive workplace is the fact that everyone is organized around a single customer and a single mission."
"Being ranked as the best company to work for demonstrates how successful the firm’s culture and values are to its own associates as well as to its customers," explains Beilein. "And to have the top man in the organization use the ‘symphony’ metaphor to describe his leaders reflects a lot of what’s happening at Edward Jones. The commitment to developing leaders is part of this alignment with culture, values, and organization spirit." LaVictoire adds, "The leadership curriculum is a classic example of training supporting what senior people see as the culture. Many leaders say, ‘This is what we want to be,’ but they don’t support it with tools. Edward Jones is a firm that says, ‘We need to do these things, and here are the tools we need to sustain that driving force.’ Symphony and Conductor are two of those tools. That kind of commitment is what continues to make this firm so outstanding."
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created a system for developing leaders internally