Advisor Development Service

Northwestern Mission

‍Northwestern Mutual aims to be the pre-eminent financial security firm by consistently focusing on one ambition: to make a meaningful impact on their financial professionals and staff, their clients and their communities.

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Northwestern Vision

We exist to free Americans from financial anxiety so that they can live the life they want both today and tomorrow by enabling household to move to higher levels of financial security through an optimized mix of investment and insurance solutions.

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Current Experience

In the current NM landscape, early advisors traverse dispersed content & tools to accomplish required lessons, product qualifications, language practice sessions and continued education. Their lives are extremely busy hitting granum targets and sometimes struggling to make ends meet. Focused on developing their markets and understanding their revenue,  often learning is seen as a distraction that keeps them from their sales responsibilities.

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Problems, Principles, Outcomes 

• User Problems
  • Continued learning remains low
  • NM struggles to reach and engage advisors when behind or stagnant with development
  • Dispersed Content & Tools
  • Lack of career guidance and business benchmarks
  • Lack of insights showing learning impact
• Guiding Principles
  • Automation - Learning approached in a modular way across FX Hub as cross-selling opportunities
  • Integration - Unified methods of assigning learning and notifying advisors through advisor development page and FX Hub
  • Ease of use - Consolidate learning in a dynamic way by surfacing curated advisor learning based on their preferences and what we know about them
  • Personalization - Dynamic tailored content surfacing categories and content types based on preferences. Value drivers that surface impact of learning material
  • Practice Excellence - Value drivers that inform advisors with real data about the impact learning can have on their career and abilities

Approach

We utilized a double diamond approach to design thinking.

In the Understand phase, we created a shared knowledge base across all participants. Using preexisting research efforts, vendor exploration and data, we framed problems as opportunities and grouped themes.

In the Define phase, our team evaluated everything they learned in the Understand phase to establish focus. We defined desired outcomes of potential solutions and chose a specific focus for the effort, as well as goals, success metrics, and signals.

In the Sketch phase, we generated and shared individual ideas. From there, the team narrowed down ideas as group to a single, well-articulated Solution Sketch per person.

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Diverge - Understand, Define, Sketch

In the Understand phase, we created a shared knowledge base across all participants. Using preexisting research efforts, vendor exploration and data, we framed problems as opportunities and grouped themes.

In the Define phase, our team evaluated everything they learned in the Understand phase to establish focus. We defined desired outcomes of potential solutions and chose a specific focus for the effort, as well as goals, success metrics, and signals.

In the Sketch phase, we generated and shared individual ideas. From there, the team narrowed down ideas as group to a single, well-articulated Solution Sketch per person.

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Converge Approach

Proof of Concept

During our cross-functional workshop with Design, Engineering, Product, and Content Strategy, we generated ideas that Design incorporated into the first iteration of the landing page:

• Drive engagement in learning and practice
• Consolidate learning in one place
• Provide a clear path for learning because advisors are busy
• Surface contextual learning based on advisor preferences and what we know about them
• Correlate learning to better outcomes for their clients and business

Personalized Interests During Onboarding

We also created some onboarding screens so we could find out how advisors expected to tailor their learning experience.

‍Results:

Participants saw value in a personalized learning experience that considered their interests, learning preferences, production data, role, tenure, markets, and goals to suggest learnings.

High-level Findings

• A personalized learning experience that considers their interests, learning preferences, production data, role, tenure, markets, and goals
• Audio and video learning especially, due to the convenience of these formats, particularly on mobile devices
• Structured learning that provides guidance on what to focus on, rather than a large catalogue of unorganized learning options
• A “What to Learn Now” section that provides urgency and relevance to help them choose a learning item
• Recommendations based on personalized data, providing relevant and actionable learnings

Recommendations:

• Continue development of Advisor Development page to allow Learning Leaders to track Advisor performance and assign learnings accordingly.
• Consider if/how learning and development can continue to be relevant even for mid-late career advisors and ensure that NM Learn can provide learnings that are relevant for this demographic in addition to early career advisors.
• As Advisor Development continues to develop, ensure that users are provided a personalized and structured experience that can provide them with relevant and actionable learnings based on their interests, learning preferences, role, tenure, markets, and goals.

Results:

Various aspects of the designs were highly valued – particularly those that showed guidance, impact and flexibility

High-level Findings

• Early career advisors prioritize learnings that focus on identify and obtain clients, understand products, and run their business. Additionally, Learning Leaders highlight the significance of soft skills, including communication and resilience.
• Participants highly valued features that provide guidance on urgent and goal-aligned learnings, and have impact metrics of learnings on other advisors.

• It is important to strike a balance between:
  • Provides experience that helps them understand areas they should focus on
  • Guides them to most valuable and impactful learnings
  • Provides them with the flexibility to browse and search for learnings in specific topics

Recommendations:

• Continue with development of features to demonstrate both the relevance of a learning to individual advisors as well as the impact of learnings on other learners.
• Provide Advisors with a learning experience that
  • helps them understand what is most  important for them, and how they should  prioritize their learning, and
  • allows them to browse and search to find additional learnings in areas they are interested in

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Final Design