John McHenry has a diverse private and public sector business background, supported by an equally diverse formal education. Excelling as a Subject Matter Expert writer and instructor for an international technology company, he was suddenly promoted to the Director of Content and Services Development (CSD). Creation of the organization’s instructional assets was increasing exponentially but devolving into fragments of conflicting information with diminishing accuracy and value.
In his new assignment, John was given general directives:
1) Create a development process.
2) Fix the quality issues.
3) Make content and services development scalable.
4) Control content development and staffing costs.
John McHenry, DBA Senior Executive Director
The directives applied to two different curricula, 14 existing courses, and multiple language translations, with delivery in virtual and instructor-led modes. The urgency to achieve the goals was driven by the organization’s aggressive growth plan and shift to a SaaS business strategy.
John started the building process with the recruitment of an existing employee. Although she was not enjoying her then assigned role, he knew her background in analytics and planning would be vital. After he successfully recruited her, together they recruited an additional team member. Then, as a leadership group, with each contributing from their own areas of expertise, they designed agile development schemas for project and program focuses.
“My leadership style is not an example of leading by consensus but, regardless of title or position, each team member is asked to accept individual responsibility and accountability, and for that reason every individual will be permitted to invest in the success of the outcome. Absent of that opportunity, the person is simply being blamed when they cannot successfully execute someone else’s plan.”
The foundation for the future resulted in the design and implementation of Component Content Management System (CCMS). Cost control and agility were achieved with the implementation of a development matrix, and by departing from conventional industry practices. Every course was dissected, and existing assets were divided into master-components to achieve single source publishing.
“Through single-source publishing and precise authoring methods, a 38% acceleration in content-development time, and a 60% reduction in duplicate work was realized. The fully documented and diagramed procedures included peer-reviewers to improve the quality. The CCMS design incorporated methods to allow incremental and automated translation updates, supported by human translation for new industry terminology.
“Year-1 reduction in translation costs was 42%, with a further year-over-year reduction. And, due to rapid organic growth and acquisitions, within 24 months the size of the content library nearly tripled, support for two (2) additional service divisions were added, and expansion in the international market increased language translation needs. Moreover, a decision was made by executives to consolidate the Educational Technologies and Certification groups into the CSD team. This allowed the organization to monetize content as a service and permitted the existence of an instructional user-subscription plan for Annual Recurring Revenue.”
The three groups that comprise CSD are staffed by 9 people, supported by Subject Matter Expert contractors as needed. John cites symmetrical leadership, the cross-functionality of team-members, and individual accountability for this success.
Watch full video interview below.
Contact John McHenry via LinkedIn or his Career WebFolio.
Fred Coon, CEO
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