WIP Stephen Bailey

Using technology to democratize how employers find leaders and grow careers

A conversation with Stephen Bailey, co-founder & CEO, ExecOnline
-

Last month, I attended the annual Consumer Electronics Show, CES in Las Vegas, and there I met innovators with tech solutions for workforce challenges, including Stephen Bailey. He’s the co-founder and CEO of ExecOnline and my guest on this week’s Work in Progress podcast.

ExecOnline is a leadership development platform that uses technology to democratize how companies build their talent and grow careers. Forbes magazine named the company as “a tech company to watch.”

Bailey starts by explaining how clients use their technology to broaden the talent pool when it comes to recruiting talent for leadership roles.

“We work with large organizations that have typically thought about leadership development as something that is metered resource. It’s a limited number of folks. It has to be done in person. And, therefore we have to figure out who are the privileged few that get access to this really valuable resource.”

Bailey says the ExecOnline platform allows the companies to connect with candidates that might not normally have access to the leadership development tract. Once chosen, those candidates get tailored coaching from many of the world’s top coaches for the needs that they have in the organization.

Here is some of what he tells me.

“Our mission is to connect all leaders to their future potential. When we started the company, what we were really focused on is providing much more inclusive and representative leadership in organizations, those mobility pathways. ExecOnline has democratized that access and says you can provide that to everyone and if you provide it to everyone, it’s not only the right thing to do in terms of providing much more equitable leadership, to your point around mobility, but it’s also good for business because it significantly increases the pool of talent that organizations are tapping into.”

“The way I like to frame it to other CEOs is to say, ‘Look, it used to be okay to only tap into 30% of the leadership potential in an organization. But, now that we’re in a world where organizations are starting to recognize the value of diversity, those organizations are tapping into 100% – women, underrepresented minorities represent 70% of the population. If you’re not doing that, you can’t compete in this new economy.'”

“I think it’s partly culture. It’s also partly where you invest and the access you provide. Organizations are now saying we need much more diversity in our leadership and in our organizations more broadly. They’re also saying we need to think about virtual work in different ways and be able to engage employees globally in ways that maybe didn’t exist before COVID. The convergence of those two things is really why ExecOnline is helping organizations fundamentally rethink how they provide development to their leaders.”

Bailey and I also delve into how technology is helping the classroom intersect even further with workforce development.

You can listen to the podcast here, or look for it wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 263: Stephen Bailey, co-founder & CEO, ExecOnline
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch and Melissa Panzer
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0
Download the transcript for this podcast here.
You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.