10 Things Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Needs to Do Next

Last week, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMHC) went public raising nearly $220 million.  As the nation’s largest provider of pre-K–12 education solutions and one of the world’s longest-established publishing houses HMHC is transforming itself from a transactional publishing company to a dynamic learning solution provider for students, teachers, kids, and parents. Over the past year, I served as HMHC’s Senior Director of Strategy for Workforce and Adult Education.

In order to grow to its business to the next billion dollars, HMHC is going to require a solid engine of growth to combat a flat education market, increased migration from paper to electrons, and competitive threats from traditional and disruptive educational start-ups.  Here are my 10 recommendations to pave a more successful path for accelerated growth and success.

1. Live the Mission
John Dragoon, HMHC Chief Marketing Officer, masterfully led the transformation of the brand identity.  The logo used to be a boy holding a telescope (or horn?) riding a dolphin has become an abstract gem.  The way I see it, the triangle turns to reveal a cone, then the cone spins to become a circle pointed at the viewer.  The new design is contemporary, exciting, and action-oriented.

HMHC’s redesigned logo shows energy, movement and transformation

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has a good mission statement, “Changing People’s Lives by Fostering Passionate, Curious Learners.” The mission is noble and easy to connect with.  But, as my designer friends are so quick to remind me, a logo does not a brand transformation make.

HMHC has two choices, they can improve the educational experience at all touchpoints – through increased teacher engagement, skin in the game to drive real education outcomes, increased thought leadership and association with the most-promising educational breakthroughs not only in the US, but around the globe.  Or, they can scale back the mission to something less than it could be.  Obviously, I advocate for the former.  Anything less just doesn’t seem right for the legacy that produced the works of 8 Nobel Prize winners, 47 Pulitzer Prize winners, 13 National Book Award winners, and more than 100 Caldecott, Newbery, Printz and Sibert Medal and Honor recipients.

To get there, HMHC needs to build a brand experience that, as the brilliant designer – Bill Bradbury – often reminds me integrates traditional, online, and real-in-person brand touchpoints.  When presenting to HR professionals, I ask how Google went from being a 1 with 100 zeroes after it to the most desirable company to work for in the US and Canada in less than a decade.  We examine some of the brand elements and realize that it’s not all experiences, but key touchpoint experiences and communications that made it happen.

HMHC needs to get the word out that it is not your grandfather’s publishing company, but the leader in educational innovation and outcomes.  This includes attention and innovation on the paths for all stakeholders including students, teachers, parents, administrators, workforce, colleges, and government officials.  It includes innovation and engagement in all departments, but especially sales, service delivery, customer support, social engagement, and communications.  HMHC would do well to follow the advice of their esteemed poet, Robert Frost:

2. Embrace Innovation
Sometimes it feels like the publishing industry has been unchanged since Gutenberg press was invented around 1436. Although technology has improved printing through quality, speed, colorization, and design, let’s face it – a book is still a book.  To transform from a publisher to a solutions company requires both market-driven products and services.  The acquisition of the Leadership & Learning Center in 2011 by HMHC brought on board a team of leading educational consultants with a zeal for improving teacher and school performance, and aligning schools to Common Core standards. In October 2013, HMHC acquired Choice Solutions, an educational provider of data analytics, integration solutions and professional services. These help HMHC become more of the “Microsoft of Education” by being better able to deliver products and professional services to make real change happen – and transform from a company that puts “a textbook on every desk” to educational revolutionaries delivering metric-driven, proven solutions.

To build a culture of innovation requires pathways to the creation that result in the ideation, incubation, acceleration, and standardization of better solutions to meet new opportunities, unspoken needs, or existing market requirements.  Two simple ways to make this happen follow the Google model:  1. Empower every employee to spend up to 20% of their time every week working on individual or team projects that connect to the mission and vision for the organization, and 2. Change the culture to be one of a campus-style environment rather than a publishing house.

One way to drive innovation is to establish an innovation center that incorporates people, processes, and technologies.  Without glitz, bells and whistles, and sheep-dipping, HMHC should build an innovation center that demonstrates true educational leadership, mastery, and inspires visitors’ eyes to widen and ask, “Tell me more.”

3. Focus on Learning over Content
While earning my Master’s Degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I studied under an extraordinary teacher who changed my life. Eleanor Duckworth, disciple of Jean Piaget and author of The Having of Wonderful Ideas, taught Teaching and Learning at the school, and it was there that I developed the dangerous question, “What if we sidestepped teaching entirely and only focused on learning?  How might that change how we approach things?”  As a result, whenever I designed courses, lectures, seminars, etc, my focus was twofold:  1.  How can we maximize learning outcomes? and 2. How can we make this time together extraordinary?

HMHC can take advantage of this shift in perspective.  It’s not about textbooks.  It’s not about online courseware.  It’s not even about what everyone sees as the bleeding edge – big data, analytics, adaptive learning, Common Core standards, multiple intelligences, etc.  It’s about learning. Period.  We have precious little time to make powerful impressions on learners.  By building solutions that innovate learning, we’re helping break the U.S. out of the standardized assessment malaise that has sapped the energies of our most inspiring teachers and has crushed any hope of not only lifelong love of learning, but even momentary like of learning.  We can do better.  HMHC can lead the revolution.

4. Enter The the Relationship Age
      At Monster, we created an online community for educators formerly known as theApple, but now Teaching.Monster.com.  While the current version of the site is significantly less useful and powerful than previous versions, it served as a robust community for teachers to engage in discussions, share lesson plans, and even find relevant career opportunities.  There’s a great opportunity to build the online community for educators. By building increased relationship capital with educators, HMH is not only demonstrating that they are part of the solution, but also create easy ways to engage with educators to learn, explore, innovate, and test new offerings.

5. Be the Netflix of Education
       Moving from atoms to electrons is so 1980’s, but for education it’s the cutting-edge.  The problem is that  neither digitizing textbooks, nor moving them online, make for better educational outcomes.  HMHC’s acquisition of Tribal Nova in April of 2013 brought online expertise in gamification, web design and development, and capability for edutainment solutions.  Tribal Nova’s experience building powerhouse education sites, including pbskidsplay.org in the U.S. and Bayard in France, bring a powerful set of skills needed for a successful transformation.

Right now, HMHC follows the Apple iTunes sales model – you want to watch a movie/tv show – buy or rent it.  Netflix’ alternative model where subscribers pay a flat fee for unlimited viewing provides a tremendous parallel path for HMHC.  Right now, most sales are done using the former model.  However, by introducing the Netflix of Education model, HMHC provides a true pathway for continuous lifelong learning and curiosity.  Only in a rare and truly extraordinary book can you go back, reread it, and actually learn something new.  Just as Netflix moved from mailed DVDs (atoms) to online streaming (electrons), HMHC has the opportunity to move from books (atoms) to online streaming (eCourseware).

HMHC should adopt a subscription strategy that gets $8.99 every month from every subscriber for online learning.  Parents, students, school systems, workforce, all people can swap out modules as they learn.  This provides pathways for HMH to enter new markets including global, college, and adult channels with a unique value proposition.

6.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – THE Education Company
       I struggled to help Monster Worldwide move from being a transactional job board to THE Career Company.  I truly believed in Monster’s value promise that “there’s a better job out there,” and that our mission was to help job seekers get there and employers find them.  HMHC would be well positioned to define themselves as THE Education Company.  They have the critical mass and are making the right strategic acquisitions – the management team is sharp and focused.  This simple shift in focus empowers them to enter the market from a new perspective and win business in a myriad of new ways that require products, services, and partnerships.

7. Make It Personal:  The Emergence of Personalized Education
The Information Age is over.  Information won.  Information is everywhere, and it wants to be free. This was a critical lesson I learned at Monster, and it’s a critical lesson for HMHC and the rest of the publishing industry.  The cash cow may exist for years to come.  But, just as Polaroid and Xerox discovered, that doesn’t mean it will always exist – and paradigm shifts have a bombastic way of destroying iconic brands.  Adaptive learning with big data analytics provides new opportunities to understand how and where learning takes place.  We are in the age of any time, any place, any means engagement.  Information, communications, and entertainment are the three primary vehicles running over these pathways.  PBS and BBC are the closest to educational empires running through these modes. There is a tremendous opportunity to deliver any time, anywhere, any means education.

At the Education Innovation conference in Napa valley, I learned that they were planning to outfit each student with an RFID tag so they would always know the student’s location (presumably to be sure they got on/off the bus, were in class, or more darkly, in case of a school lockdown). At the conference, we traveled on school buses that are saving the city hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by using natural gas.  I wonder, what would it take to embed iPads in the back of the seats of these buses so we could serve up educational content, video, and gaming to students while they travel to and from school?  If we did, it would have to be radically different from the classroom experience.  Imagine competitions within and between buses, between districts, states, and nations?  Cash Cab (without the money) meets Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader.

The next rise in education will be personalized education.  My friends at 2Revolutions shared with me a vision for the State of New Hampshire where grades were eliminated.  (Grades, not grading).  Using a competency-based system, students could accelerate or move at a slower pace and only advance in subject matter when they demonstrated competency.  Does it make sense to make students who can achieve wait? Or for students who need more time move on without mastery?  Of course not.  But we continue to act as if that’s how it should be done.  HMHC has the opportunity to help drive this education revolution through its unique assets; companies, products, services, and partnerships.

8.  Become the Disney of Edu-tourism
Educators, workforce professionals, parents, government officials, and students want to learn from the U.S. educational system. The past decade saw the rise of eco-tourism – an experience  combining traditional vacations with archeological digs, habitat restoration, conservation, and social impact work.  The same opportunity exists for educational-tourism.  HMHC has major offices in Boston, Denver, and Orlando.  All three are major tourism hubs.  By combining educational conferences, seminars, and summits with tourism HMHC has the opportunity to engage customers with their products, services, and thought leadership.  By partnering with regional educators, tourism offices, and businesses, HMHC has the unique capability to build the Disney model of edu-tourism.

9.  Stand for the Humanization of Education
The digital classroom brings unparalleled opportunities to teaching.  But, as Rumpelstiltskin of Once Upon a Time frequently reminds us, “All magic has its price.” One of the unintended consequences of the digital age is the dehumanization of society.  Walk along any street today and you’ll see people engaging in their shiny tiny devices oblivious to the people around them.  We are becoming a nation of zombies – where human-to-human contact is becoming marginalized.  When employers are clamoring for workers with problem-solving, interpersonal communications, and teamwork skills – at least two of those are directly human-based requirements.

I witnessed a demonstration of the classroom of the future where students were immersed in tablet computers, teachers could take control and even lock down the devices.  But in the entire demonstration, no human ever interacted with another human. Students and teachers were trapped in front of a glass screen.  There’s a great opportunity to bring together technology-supported teaching, but it’s different than a digital classroom.  HMHC has the opportunity to stand for humans teaching humans with technology as an enabler, not as a barrier.

10. Textbook Print-on-Demand

The Espresso Book Machine provides true book print-on-demand.  Individuals can approach a machine and have an entire book printed in minutes for an affordable price.  The Espresso Book Machine can by physically placed in any office space, enabling schools to print textbooks whenever they need. Amazon’s CreateSpace provides a digital model for book print-on demand.  While you can’t get the book in minutes, the costs are lower and the book is created and shipped for a fraction of the cost of traditional publishing.

Each year, HMHC warehouses thousands of textbooks, trade books, workbooks, and more.  HMHC has the opportunity to follow the photocopying revolution and install print-on-demand textbook machines in every school and school district in the country.  By doing so, they will radically reduce warehousing costs, shipping costs, and supply chain delays while enabling schools a better way to control costs and increase customization.  Such a model can revolutionize the existing textbook industry even as the media continues to fan the flames of the imminent (but always premature) death of the publishing industry.

Conclusion
On the HMHC website, they express how their “content meets the needs of lifelong learners, no matter where and how they learn. We combine cutting-edge research, editorial excellence and technological innovation to make learning more dynamic, engaging and effective – for life.”  My 10 recommendations provide a pathways for new revenue streams, financial engines of growth, and increased relevancy in the 21st century world of education and learning.

Last week, I was laid off from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  I’d considered myself a steward of the vision, and works as assertively as I could to create opportunities for the company to advance.  It is my sincerest wish that HMHC achieve its mission.  Anything less would not unworthy of the brand HMHC’s legacy, and the incredible talent that makes up the organization.

Dan DeMaioNewton was the Senior Director of Strategy for Workforce and Education at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt from 2012-2013.  Prior to that he was the Senior Director of Business Development and Strategy at Monster Worldwide.  No matter where he works, Dan is a workforce and education revolutionary committed to helping all people achieve their potential.