The folks at a Big Apple asset and wealth management industry trade group recently won big in a human capital management awards competition. An education initiatives leader within the 25-year-old trade group attributes the win to their diverse team's willingness to work together for innovative solutions.

Tim Williams Money Management Institute Executive Vice President, Director of Education Initiatives

Earlier this month, the Brandon Hall Group named the Money Management Institute's (MMI) Executive IQ program as a gold-level winners in leadership development and professional development programs, as part of Brandon Hall's global Excellence Awards. The Brandon Hall Group is a professional development company based in Delray Beach, Florida, and MMI is based in New York City.

In a press release, the MMI team writes, "Entries were evaluated by a panel of veteran, independent senior industry experts along with Brandon Hall Group analysts and executives. Five criteria were used: whether a program fit the needs, the design and delivery of the program, the adoption of the program, whether measurable benefits were achieved, and whether the leadership development program had an overall positive impact."

Brandon Hall Group CEO Mike Cooke states, "Our award winners demonstrated the vision, agility and innovation needed to excel in the uncharted hybrid work environment."

The Executive IQ program, now in its second cohort after being created in 2020 in collaboration with the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, is currently composed of 67 participants from 34 firms. 52 percent of the participating cohort are women, and 26 percent come from underrepresented backgrounds. Participants are mostly middle managers with 10 to 20 years of experience, the average being 17 years. Job titles are diverse, with participants coming from sales, legal, and operations, among other work areas.

"It's a very interesting group of people that we've got, which I think is the secret sauce," Tim Williams, executive vice president in education initiatives at MMI, tells MFWire. "It's probably one of the main reasons we received the award, because when you put that much diverse talent ... together, you can't help but get a good outcome."

Williams says of the Excellence Awards themselves, "They call it the Academy Awards of human capital; I think that's a little much, but I'll take it — especially since we got gold!"

Only 20 percent of entrants received an award in either bronze, silver, or gold, according to Williams.

The MMI team submitted a forty-page brief to the Brandon Hall Group about their Executive IQ program, outlining the ways it bolsters middle-management careers in the investment industry, particularly through collaboration and innovation-oriented learning outcomes. The program is fifteen months long.

"[The evaluation] was around the design of the program and technologies, the use of objectives of the program, overall benefits and measurable results, and the whole schematic," says Williams. "It was, 'Let's take a look at the entire learning journey and see how we introduced the best of executive education as well as reinforcing that.'"

The MMI team also put together a capstone project, which Williams cites as a key element in the evaluation.

"They asked all sorts of questions about not only the design of the program, but what lessons you learned and how you adapted," Williams adds. "I think that's a pretty cool concept because ... what you start with is not what you end with."

He explains, "There was a rallying cry within the MMI association about the need to better handle disruption in the industry and drive innovation, which is mostly from a technology perspective."

"We built this program around just that. If you're going to drive innovation, you first need to know your leadership style, and you need to know how to lead. You need frameworks to create and apply the innovation mindset," Williams notes. 

Stay ahead of the news ... Sign up for our email alerts now
CLICK HERE