April 25, 2012

The first 90 days with Todd Gibby, president of Hobsons Higher Education

Apr. 25, 2012 at 01:07 PM | By Todd Gibby | Comment Count

After the Intelliworks acquisition by Hobsons in December 2011, our collective efforts were centered first on clearly communicating this news to the higher education market and subsequently on effectively working to combine these two businesses. After three months, I am pleased to report that this effort is progressing well on all major fronts, including: people, products/ services, systems, and processes.

But, this is not what I am focused on sharing in this particular post. Rather, my goal is to highlight just a few of the less well-known elements of Hobsons and its culture, which had previously been unknown to me until these last 90 days.

Active Community Service: Hobsons supports numerous community outreach efforts. Hobsons participates in PLAN, which supports education accessibility for every child by building schools each year in developing countries.

Each year employees apply to be selected to travel to a developing country to spend a week laboring to build these schools. Past trips have included: Rwanda, Kenya, Ghana, Guatemala, and others (this year’s upcoming project is in the Dominican Republic). This hands-on approach to community service is clearly an important pillar of the culture, as I have come to appreciate.

Game-for-Anything Mindset: I learned early on that Hobsons leaders are high-energy.

This was well demonstrated by the CEO, Craig Heldman, who eagerly committed to joining me on monthly trips to visit Hobsons and Intelliworks clients. The purpose of these trips is to foster dialogue about our plans and solicit customers’ guidance on do’s and don’ts. Craig particularly impressed me on our last trip, where his positive attitude never flagged, even when my scheduling miscalculation necessitated a 5-hour drive, beginning at 3:30 AM. While this might have otherwise been a “career-limiting move” for me, Craig simply smiled and took it in stride.

Lifecycle Coverage: While at Intelliworks, I was quite familiar with Hobsons’ flagship Connect and AY solutions. I was not aware how broadly the product portfolio reaches beyond enrollment management. I’ll dedicate an entire future blog-post to this topic later, but these solutions fuse institutional effectiveness and student success across a broad swath of the student lifecycle.

Hobsons has popular web properties hat help students find, select, and pay for college, and also offers creative agency services which produce personalized videos and build websites that drive student engagement. Hobsons enables millions of K-12 students to advance their college and career readiness planning (via its Naviance product) and related learning (via the recent acquisition of PrepMe, a leader in adaptive learning technologies and test preparation programs). I am very enthusiastic about the opportunities strategically partner with institutions by fully leveraging this broad array of products and unique coverage of the P-20 student lifecycle.

Team Development: The final thing that has struck me about Hobsons is a firm organizational commitment to investing in the skills and development of the team. The traditional “HR” function has been expanded and elevated into a focus on Organizational Effectiveness, with executive representation on the CEO’s council.

As I write this, I am on a rare break-time during a full week of dedicated executive training. Likewise, a yearlong program is currently being introduced, with the stated purpose of developing the next level of leaders rising through the organization. And finally, a sophisticated assessment / feedback / performance review framework enables all employees to have a clear view into what is expected of them, how they are performing, and specific opportunities for skills growth. These represent for me an organization that is effectively and methodically planning for the long-term.

While this is my first blog posting with Hobsons, I look forward to sharing more higher education information and updates with you in the near future. Please share or comment below. You may always follow me on Twitter @tgibby or for more Hobsons related news @HobsonsInc.