Development Dimensions International Reviews

I wish I could write more positively about my employment at DDI, but I can’t. When a company’s mission is to elevate leadership talent, and your personal passion is to do the same, it seems realistic to expect that your OWN talent will be elevated and valued as well. Unfortunately, this is not the case at DDI. What I saw is that DDI provided learning and development solutions to other organizations but missed so many opportunities to create a learning and development environment for its own employees. It should have had a world-class leadership development program inside the doors but fell far short. Beyond development opportunities, the picture remains dim. As a matter of fact, most things that DDI says it believes are contradicted by the actions of its leaders. Here are just a few examples in a long list: • They say: We welcome your ideas and insights from your experience. We want innovation and creativity. The reality: When you offer innovative ideas and insights, they are discounted and not valued. The standard of high conformity (we don’t do it that way here) prevents this from occurring. • They say: Everyone has a fair opportunity for promotion and advancement. The reality: When leadership positions open, in most cases they are awarded to white men. Women account for a large part of the DDI workforce yet hold very few leadership positions and are likely the lowest paid. DDI proudly publicizes that it is woman-owned and has a female CEO, but unfortunately, those facts don’t translate into female workers enjoying a supportive, empowering culture. There exists an internal ‘favorites club’ and for members, work life is very satisfying. They name the job they want and get it. It is a highly exclusive environment, and HR leadership does nothing about it.

Good lord, where to start? The current CEO appears to be only concerned with her personal brand and shows absolutely zero empathy for employees. Case in point: after major layoffs, she waltzed around cheerfully saying "Happy New Year!" (meaning new fiscal year) as though the company hadn't just dramatically changed the lives of dozens of people. Not to be outdone, the former CEO, who is "retired," co-opted the space of an entire department to create an unnecessarily large office for himself. Did I mention he's retired? The guy just. can't. let. go. But the company desperately needs him to. Upper management consistently makes poor, backward, slow decisions and the processes and products are SO outdated. SMEs are regularly ignored, and managers go around throwing bad money after good based on "gut feeling" rather than on data of any kind. Also, if you've ever been to a DDI training, you know that you receive an entire tree's worth of paper in a giant, three-ring binder. It's 2017, folks...there should be an app for that! If you want to get anything done, be prepared to go through miles of red tape: That vendor has to fill out six forms before we can pay them! / You can only use your corporate credit card for these oddly specific expenses! / The VP of your department has to sign off on ALL contracts, no matter how minuscule! Forget about career advancement. No one, including your manager, will know what you need to do to get promoted, and it's not a priority because people have been complaining about this for years. And watch out for "stretch assignments." This is just their way of getting additional work and giving you zero additional compensation.