PNC Advisors 

By Eileen Wickett, Vice President, Manager of Training and Organizational Development, PNC Advisors 

PNC Advisors, a member of The PNC Financial Services Group, manages more than $70 billion in client assets.  Chief Executive Thomas Whitford has created a program for his senior managers that combines theory, application, and networking to strengthen their capacity to meet the evolving challenge of providing financial expertise to an affluent market.   

“Retention and development of our leadership team is our number one challenge and priority,” said Whitford.  “Investing in this group of talented people to keep them fresh and motivated is critical to our continued success.”  His investment has taken the form of classroom experience, project work, and personal development.  

For the classroom part, PNC Advisors partnered with the Wharton Executive Education program in 1999 to expose the 25 members of its executive team to leading-edge issues in the financial services industry.  The week-long program helped top executives sharpen their strategic plan and solidified and energized them as a team.  

Subsequently, the executive team divided into four groups to apply the classroom points to key areas of the business.  The groups worked with Wharton faculty to better understand industry drivers, strengthen their team capacities, and bring outside perspective to the issues.  

“I am now comfortable saying that the PNC Advisors executives who participated in this process are a unified team,” said CEO Whitford.  “We all have a better understanding of and stronger commitment to the strategic choices we have made.  There is joint accountability for the results because of the stronger interpersonal relationships and trust that developed over the course of this process.”  

Drawing on the experience of the executive team, PNC Advisors then created a similar learning experience for its mid-level managers.  Responsible for implementing the strategy, some seventy managers attended a 3.5 day session at Wharton focused on strategic planning, financial services, personal development, and collaborative work.   

Divided into eight working groups, the mid-level managers tackled eight unresolved issues critical to the business, ranging from integrating e-commerce into the current delivery models to attracting and retaining top talent.   

The eight mid-level management groups organized themselves to get the task done over the next six months:  Though they possessed their own budget, they had no pre-assigned leaders, the teams were drawn from dispersed operations ranging from Massachusetts to Florida, and all members still had to discharge their existing responsibilities.   

The eight groups hired facilitators, purchased research, tested options, and crafted recommendations.  As an interim measure, they presented their tentative proposals to the executive team and the other seven groups, allowing for a preliminary airing of the ideas and a honing of presentational skills.  The eight groups finally forwarded more than two dozen specific recommendations for action to the executive team for implementation.   

At the annual PNC Advisors Leadership Conference, a gathering of both the executive team and mid-level managers, the informal noise level was definitely higher.  “The investment in executive education has already paid dividends,” observed CEO Whitford.  “As a group we are more committed to the vision, creating a more empowering environment and thinking outside of the box.” 

Note:  Eileen Wickett can be reached at <eileen.wickett@pncbank.com> and information on PNC Advisors can be found at http://www.pncadvisors.com.