The Strategy. What is Cengage and what do we do? One voice one approach. and this guy JE he is so full of himself after 53 weeks being employed.
JE - Biggest challenges - how do we show up? Challenges what do we have in common what is our purpose. blah blah blah.... damn he talks so fast its like he's just trying to get through this stupid call.
Definitely not here to defend JE, but unfortunately, marketing also kept a lot of leaders with very old-school knowledge and mindsets. I don't mean that they don't understand their customers (although I’d dare to say that about some of them), but their knowledge is incredibly outdated, and they actively refuse to learn anything new while being egocentric enough to insist that they do.
God forbid someone points out a gap in their outdated processes or tries to make things better. They feel threatened by it and would rather let the so-called “fresh new eyes” go. I’ve seen it happen several times.
Marketing is used to only doing their jobs right before the fall and spring semesters, and they tend to slack off for the rest of the year. That’s part of why they have to resort to initiatives like “website consolidation” instead of actually addressing the bigger problems.
And with all that said, JE basically only kept his cheerleaders. Unfortunately, we all have to play the game and pretend we love his ideals, but let's not pretend marketing directors are super talented just because they've worked there for many years. They all pretend to understand AI and other systems beyond whatever they've been doing for the past 10 years, while still acting like working at Apple 10 years ago gives you groundbreaking ideas for a completely different company. I guess they’re all just as outdated as the mindset they’re defending; just look at the Slack channels.
I also wonder who are the 2 people giving thumbs down to every post here lol
@12g Ha ha. Yep, you got it.NK knows he is in over his head, and he has resorted to one of the oldest management tactics in the book: micromanagement.When leaders don't trust the strategy, they start tracking the people. Monitor every activity. Measure every interaction. Create more reports. Add more oversight. Use every tool possible to watch what the sales force is doing.The problem is that micromanagement has never been a substitute for leadership. It doesn't create more sales. It doesn't build stronger customer relationships. It doesn't improve morale. More often than not, it just pushes talented people out the door.And from what I'm hearing, there are more changes coming that will only accelerate that process.Then you have the symbolic stuff. "Let's all show up to campus wearing the same shirts." "Let's show our Cengage pride." As if matching shirts somehow solves the underlying business problems.That's the disconnect people are frustrated by. Employees aren't asking for slogans, campaigns, or staged displays of enthusiasm. They're asking for direction, transparency, and a strategy that actually makes sense.Too often it feels like management is focused on appearances while the field is dealing with the reality.The truth is pretty simple. If you hire talented sales professionals, give them the right tools, trust them to do their jobs, and remove obstacles from their path, they'll usually perform.But when you replace trust with surveillance and leadership with micromanagement, don't be surprised when your best people decide they've had enough.Great sales organizations are built by empowering professionals, not by managing every move they make. That's a lesson too many leaders learn far too late
I work with a competitor now, my team keeps reporting that they're seeing packs of Cengage people running around campus, all wearing matching, Cengage-branded clothing, lol. One bookstore managers said, "they've lost a ton of business here over the last year, they are probably trying to win some of it back", lol. It's kind of hilarious. Is this part of this whole "One Cengage" deal? Who are these pods of people in branded clothing?
@10a There is only 1 personality that MH and NK want and it has to be the same personality they both exhibit.... and that's Passive-Aggressive! Trust me JE passed that Test with flying colors.
But, the time for honouring yourself will soon be at an end..."Highness"
@zc Very well-said and accurate. Did anyone give JE any kind of personality evaluation before hiring him? Being ex-Apple is about it.
LOL. Of course somebody had to bring up Apple. That's always the fallback defense whenever JE gets criticized. As if putting "former Apple employee" on a résumé automatically makes every decision brilliant.
Let's be honest. Cengage is not Apple. It was never Apple. It will never be Apple. And JE is not SJ. Full stop.
What I find amusing is that some people act as if JE possesses some sort of magical leadership ability simply because he once worked there. Plenty of people have worked at great companies. That doesn't make them visionaries. It certainly doesn't make them experts in educational publishing, and it definitely doesn't excuse poor execution.
The reality is that JE has spent much of his first year eliminating people he believed didn't add value. In the process, a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge walked out the door. The irony is that many of those people understood the customers, products, sales cycle, and market dynamics far better than the executives replacing them.
We're constantly told that fresh perspectives are needed because long-time employees are somehow the problem. Yet every few months we discover another example of why institutional knowledge mattered in the first place.
Take a look at the new cengage.com.
Leadership wants everyone to applaud it because everything now lives on one website. Great. That's not innovation. That's consolidation.
The real question is whether the site is actually better. Is it easier for customers to navigate? Is the product information accurate? Does it reflect a deep understanding of the portfolio?
From what I've seen, the answer is no.
The site feels less like a carefully designed customer experience and more like a giant dumping ground where everything was thrown together because somebody had a "one company, one website" slogan they wanted to check off their strategic plan.
Here's the part that should concern everyone.
I found multiple errors almost immediately. Not minor formatting issues. Actual product and content problems.
One of the most glaring examples is that Cengage Infuse, a product that was discontinued more than a year ago, still appears on the website.
Think about that.
We're supposed to believe the people running this transformation understand the future of educational technology, yet they don't even know which products currently exist.
How does that happen?
How do you stand on a stage in Dallas and talk about delivering revolutionary content, transforming learning, and reinventing the company when your own website contains products that were retired over a year ago?
That's not visionary leadership. That's a lack of attention to detail.
And that's what concerns me most about JE's approach. He strikes me as the type of executive who believes his job is to manage people rather than master the business. The type who thinks strategy is more important than product knowledge. The type who assumes he is the smartest person in the room because of where he used to work.
Unfortunately, customers don't care where you used to work.
They care whether you understand their needs. They care whether your products are accurate. They care whether the company can execute.
That's the problem. After 53 weeks, we shouldn't still be talking about Apple's reputation. We should be talking about JE's results.
And when I look at the website, the product mistakes, the loss of institutional knowledge, and the ongoing confusion across the business, I don't see evidence of a genius at work.
I see a company being led by people who think confidence can replace competence. Eventually, reality catches up to that kind of thinking.
RELEASE THE NUMBERS!!!
@xk not only do they not know how to make the brand visible but selling into the library, ELT, etc are all completely different sales models than a textbook. What dolts.
But did he compare Cengage again with Apple? lol
I mean, from a branding perspective, it's not a bad idea to consolidate all the brands into one. What is wrong with the strategy is that they just don't have any idea of how to make the brand visible. Ego issues all over again.
@bm Interesting how the bootlickers frequent this site. At least you’ve dropped the IPO fantasy. Are you want of the failed Microsoft imposters I wonder? Or are you a wannabe?
@cv ha, more fake news. Once again, completely useless information and nonsense.
@bm Imagine how d-mb it was to us... we had to sit through it for 45 minutes.
This is exactly what they shared ....
@b7 hehehehehe.d-mbest post on this board yet. Share the real details and stop sharing useless information. What are the numbers telling you? Is revenue up or down?
Speaking of the new website - it’s looking pretty bad on mobile devices.
Devil Wears Prada .... This Sums up the whole call....
"Florals for Spring? Groundbreaking."
Does anyone have anything that MH and the Executive team can use? "Antibacterial wipes perhaps"
Repeating “We are Cengage” will not make it so, no matter if MH thinks the pregnant pause after is powerful. What a waste of time and resources as usual.
Here we go again? Same ol Same ol... Before the May layoff, didn't we just change our signatures, didn't we just rebrand? How many times can you repackage the same ol junk.
MH Cengage is NO McGraw... Cengage is becoming more like Norton or Wiley. It is definitely the Leadership at Cengage ,, You are the Blame for the decrease in Morale, the decrease in sales, the decrease revenue.
MH - knows this is not being sold correctly by JE ... he is trying to hep him , guide the call. Come on MH ,,,, are you wanting us to believe this is why you at the TOP are getting your HUGE paychecks ??? A new website... solidifies our strategy?
We already have done all of this and here we go again... let's do it again.... Our branding has officially become vintage and now we get new swag? A new website and New Swag? This Executive Team have hit an all time low...
can someone please vote them out in the November election. We are officially drowning .... these new fools have No Clue.
They just changed the logo color from black to blue?
That this is what the ET is focusing on is so d-mb. A brand refresh isn’t going to bring new business and ugh “Live the brand.” Gross.
And “think about what’s good for Cengage.” Why should we when they don’t think about their employees and situations at all.
WOW We are getting a New Website. Let's have a www.cengage.com site where everyone will go and then choose :
K-12
HigherEd
Career and Workforce
Ground break "JE" one year ago you told us we were going to have all of this New and improved content that was going to revolutionize cengage? But you gave us a new website. Which would take you hours to demo but you wont for time purposes will just show you a slide or two.
This is a joke a website that links you to webpages we already had....
You are obviously scrambling... just to try and come up with some Smoke and Mirrors.
Lots of cheerleaders in the Slack channel!
JE - he must have told Ai , we are a global company, can you give me as many buzz words as possible for my upcoming call. Terrible call. So d-mb so far.