Some leadership development providers are still selling you resources from their library. DDI, a frequent Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence Award winner, understands that what you actually need is the entire library — and someone who knows which resource to pull when your strategy changes next Tuesday.
I sat down recently with Verity Creedy, SVP of Product, and Kevin Tamanini, VP of Professional Services at DDI, and what struck me wasn’t the usual parade of features and functions. Instead, they described something I’ve been hearing from HR leaders everywhere: the gap between when you identify a leadership need and when you can actually address it has become too costly. Three months to design and deploy a new program? In today’s environment, that timeline might as well be three years.
This conversation came right after DDI’s customer summit, where they unveiled LeaderLab, their new platform that represents exactly the kind of strategic shift we explore in our advisory services with corporate clients: helping organizations evaluate when a provider’s approach truly aligns with how their business actually operates versus how they wish it operated.
Leadership Development that Addresses Continual Evolution
Here’s what I keep hearing from talent leaders: “We just had our strategy shift. Again. And now our leadership team needs completely different capabilities than what we planned for six months ago.”
The traditional model of leadership development was built for a world that moved slower. Now? I watched one client adjust their leadership development approach three times in the month before I presented to them. Through our Brandon Hall Group Institute membership, we work with HR and learning leaders navigating exactly this challenge: how to build leadership capability when the target keeps moving.
How the Market Is Responding (And Where Most Providers Fall Short)
The leadership development space has fractured into distinct camps, each with their own approach and limitations:
Franklin Covey brings decades of brand recognition and their famous content library, including The 7 Habits and The 4 Disciplines of Execution. Their All Access Pass subscription model provides broad content access across leadership, culture transformation, and execution. But content breadth doesn’t solve for real-time application or individualized development paths.
Korn Ferry delivers sophisticated assessment tools and executive services, particularly strong in succession planning and C-suite evaluation. Their Four Dimensions of Leadership framework provides deep insight into leadership potential. Their solutions tend toward the high end, more suitable for executive assessment and selection than everyday leadership development at scale.
LinkedIn Learning offers massive content volume and convenient access through a familiar platform. Leaders can search thousands of courses on any leadership topic, often with strong production quality. Search-and-discover models place the burden on learners to diagnose their own development needs and find the right content.
What Makes DDI’s Approach Different (And Why It Matters Now)
DDI made a pivotal shift to a subscription model a few years ago — one I called transformational at the time because it fundamentally changed how organizations could access their expertise. But their new LeaderLab platform takes that concept to the next level. Here’s what caught my attention:
- Assessment and development connected in real-time. LeaderLab integrates behavioral assessments (the quick ones that take under 10 minutes) directly into development paths. Complete a simulation, get immediate insight into where you stand, and have relevant content automatically recommended. The profile updates continuously, so leaders and their organizations can see progress over time rather than waiting for the next annual assessment cycle.
- AI that reinforces rather than confuses your approach. Most AI coaching tools operate as search engines. They’ll give you five different coaching models depending on how you phrase your question. DDI’s chatbot uses a closed-source approach, meaning it only draws from DDI’s leadership content. Ask about coaching, and you’ll get their ACE model. Ask about engagement, and you’ll get their Everyday Engagement framework. The consistency matters because leaders aren’t trying to remember which of the fifteen models from different sources they’re supposed to use this week.
- Configurable assessments that don’t require months of custom work. Organizations can now build their own behavioral simulation assessments based on the competencies they care about most. Scored by AI, but using DDI’s proprietary model rather than generic language models.
The practical application shows up in their continuous leadership intelligence approach — this idea that you’re constantly taking the pulse of your leadership population rather than doing annual check-ins. When strategy shifts (and it will), you already know where your leadership gaps are and can immediately deploy relevant development.
Where This Model Makes the Most Sense
There are specific organization types where DDI’s approach addresses real pain:
Manufacturing organizations scaling globally. You’re dealing with multiple shifts, distributed locations, and frontline leaders who need practical, just-in-time support. The AI tools for practical scenarios, like writing feedback using the STAR model or preparing for difficult conversations, give leaders immediate help when they need it most. The ability to deliver consistent development across multiple facilities in different regions while still customizing to local needs creates the standardization-with-flexibility balance these organizations struggle with.
Healthcare systems managing complex succession needs. You’re constantly identifying and developing leaders for clinical and operational roles with very different competency requirements. The combination of assessment and development means you can continuously evaluate readiness, not just once a year when it’s too late to close gaps. The faster assessment options make it feasible to check in regularly without pulling clinical leaders away from patient care for hours.
Financial services firms navigating constant regulatory and strategic change. Your leadership needs shift with every regulatory update or market condition change. The subscription model means you’re not locked into last year’s leadership priorities, and the continuous intelligence approach helps you see where new capability gaps are emerging before they become crises. The professional services team acts as strategic partners who understand your business context rather than just content vendors.
Retail and hospitality companies with high frontline leadership turnover. You’re constantly developing new store managers and site leaders, often promoting from within and needing to assess readiness quickly. The integrated assessment-to-development pipeline creates clear career pathways, and the just-in-time coaching support helps new leaders succeed faster. The subscription model makes economic sense when you’re developing large cohorts continuously rather than in periodic waves.
Where Leadership Development Is Heading
Sitting in that briefing, I kept thinking about the broader pattern I’m seeing: the line between assessment and development is disappearing. Organizations don’t want to assess and then six months later develop. They want to assess, develop, measure progress, reassess, and adjust, all in a continuous cycle.
This matters because most business strategies are now failing not because they’re bad strategies, but because organizations lack the leadership agility to execute them. DDI’s research shows over 90% of business strategies fail, and while there are always external factors, the internal one they can control is leadership readiness.
What I find compelling about their approach isn’t that they’re building for the actual pace of business rather than the pace we wish business moved at. DDI’s bet, and I think it’s the right one, is that leadership development needs to become more like other business capabilities: continuous, data-informed and responsive to changing conditions. LeaderLab represents their platform play to make that possible at scale.
How Providers Can Navigate This Shift
Brandon Hall Group™ works with providers through our Solutions Provider services to help them understand and articulate their market positioning as buyer expectations shift.
DDI’s advantage is their 55 years of leadership data and expertise, which creates a significant moat. You can’t replicate that with better technology alone. But they’re not resting on their heritage. The LeaderLab platform shows they understand that expertise without the right delivery mechanism isn’t enough.
The provider landscape is consolidating around two models: discrete programs for specific needs, and continuous development infrastructure for ongoing capability building. Both will survive, but the buyers for each are becoming more clearly defined. If your ideal customer operates in a rapidly changing environment with complex leadership needs across multiple levels, you’ll need to demonstrate continuous development capability, not just great content.
Where This Goes Next
The leadership development market is splitting into two camps: providers selling discrete programs and providers building continuous development infrastructure. Both have their place, but I expect to see more consolidation toward the continuous model as organizations realize that episodic development can’t keep pace with episodic strategic change.
For talent leaders evaluating options, the question isn’t whether you need better leadership development (you do). It’s whether you need leadership development that can keep up with how fast your organization is moving. If the answer is yes, DDI’s approach deserves a serious look — particularly if you’re in one of those industries where strategic agility has become a competitive requirement.
The market reality is becoming clear: organizations are still building leadership development programs for the world as it used to be, not as it is now. DDI has figured out that the future is about having the best system for matching the right development to the right leaders at the right moment, and then proving it actually worked.
That shift in thinking might be more valuable than any specific feature on their roadmap.
