Executive Coaching for Start Up Company undergoing Rapid

Growth, Family Education Network (US)

Client Issue: In the late 1990s Learning Network (an Internet educational source) was a dot com start, with its principal offices in San Francisco, NYC, Boston & Paramus (NJ). Their initial focus was on K-12 students, parents & teachers, but the organisation had ambitious plans for growth. Over a few years they continued to add sites for Higher Education, Professional Development & Lifelong Learning, each serviced by a reference source & its own online store. With Pearson Plc as their parent company they had access to high quality publishers, authors, teachers, parent groups, incentive programs, resources & customised tools & their site rapidly became the most popular source for many schools. At a time when the Internet was just becoming established, they innovatively assembled some of the most complete reference sources for historical facts, figures & databases. They were enthusiastic, bright & creative - seeing the potential for e-commerce using their network stores filled with books, software, games, videos, music & activities, along with online programs to make teacher & parent roles easier. It succeeded in improving the home-to-school connection with FamilyEducation, TeacherVision, FunBrain, myschoolonline & Infoplease. In 2000 it grew rapidly, causing financial pressure on it’s parent company, so Pearson asked Synergy to do some executive coaching with the CEO, based in their Californian office. There appeared to be a strategy problem is moving from growing the business on a broad front to focusing on a few high potential areas so that the firm could raise $ in the short term as well as grow. The company also had some issues with its strategic alignment around which businesses were the best bets for producing revenue.

Solution: The focus of our coaching discussions were therefore about trying to align the firm around the
1 to 3 opportunities that the Board believed would make the fastest $ difference to help cash flow.
Issues became clearer as we talked to various people inside the company, that many believed that they should focus on successful businesses vs. those that were still in development. We suggested an external focus group project, particularly exploring customer’s decisions about products with an eye towards looking for the following: bottlenecks in the decision process that could be eliminated by changes in delivery; new opportunities adjacent to the current offerings; & weaknesses in products/services that were currently substitutes for those from the Network. Another suggestion was to synthesise the customer decision process learnings & identify a prioritised list of business initiatives with the potential actions.
Finally, we discussed presenting the potential initiatives to the Board – not asking for a decision at that point, but to inform them about what we had learned, linked to implications for the business & possible action that might be taken in response. We were not suggesting market research, which would simply give an answer to questions with no link to implications & without a prioritised list of possible actions that could move the situation forward. We advised that the alignment between cross-functional team members & management would be critical for fast, effective action to take place, as we felt that their HR manager was strong, but lacked management support.

Outcome: This dot com start-up grew into the successful Family Education Network, an online consumer network of the world's best learning & information resources, personalised to help parents, teachers & students of all ages take control of their learning & make it part of their everyday lives. Governments are putting personalised education at the centre of their plans for improving their students' performance. Students & teachers - especially the new generation that grew up with technology - are embracing it as a way to enliven learning & to help everyone be more productive. Pearson Education sales were up 4% in 2006 to £2.9bn with operating profit up 12% to a record £405m, propelled by their pioneering online services that have proven over time that they really help learning.

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