Tomorrow, 7/23, executives are expected to roll out yet another centralization announcement. Translation: another reorg, another org chart, and another round of “strategic alignment.” We’ll see what lies ahead.
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@hq products are behind because of too many years of leaders who came on board and didn't value customer and industry understanding. When DP arrived, he required ridiculous gates and business cases to get any feature approved. It was entirely performative. He was never going to approve anything unless it was his idea or came from one of his sycophants. Some meetings included MH where they didn't even allow table stakes LMS work to get done because they only wanted to leap frog. Well, you can't leap frog anyone if you're not enabling users to perform their routine tasks and for things the competition has had for years that users expect. Now that all product functions are in one place (which is the way it was before and was slowly broken up over the past 5 years) maybe products will be allowed to improve, but only if you have people who understand customers rather than making fun of them for being laggards. True understanding doesn't come from a research team who delivers a PPT. It comes from the individuals making the daily decisions who have observed users do their work, held hundreds of conversations with instructors and learners, and have connections with the sales organization to hear about challenges and struggles first hand.
@ec they are literally years behind the “trends”. A decade at least. The “new features” they keep rolling out other publishers have had for 15 years.
@dm They made big cuts in May and June as well! Same excuse. The worst part is that they think they're being innovative and keeping up with the market. At least in marketing, the new CMO is so obsessed with making Cengage work like Apple that he keeps eliminating roles that are currently opening up within that same company.
Cengage is constantly 3 steps behind the "trends", doing what other companies did a year ago.
That's probably what you get when you hire someone whose career peak was to market iTunes while refusing to keep up with the trends lol
@dy There's a whole lot of "aligning" and "strengthening" mentioned. Good luck with that!
from RvG:
Hi team,
Following Michael's and Ghazal’s announcements today, I wanted to share a bit more context about what it means for Global Content Production, along with a few additional organizational changes within our team.
As shared, Global Content Production (GCP) is now part of the Digital organization, and I'll begin reporting to SVP, Product & Content Ghazal Badiozamani. I'm excited about what this means for our team. Bringing Product, Content, Technology, Data and AI together will help us reduce handoffs, strengthen collaboration and move more quickly from customer needs to execution. While our reporting relationships are changing, our mission remains the same: delivering high-quality content efficiently and helping our businesses succeed.
In parallel, we're making a few updates within GCP that are intended to strengthen our leadership structure, create clearer ownership for product portfolios and position us for the future.
First, I want to share that the Sr. Manager, Content Operations position held by Monica Seebode has been eliminated. Monica will remain with us through the end of August to help ensure a smooth transition. Please join me in thanking Monica for her leadership, dedication and many contributions over the years. Monica's direct reports will transition to Kathleen Benjey.
In addition, Michelle Fappiano has chosen to step away from the leadership team and transition to a part-time role, supporting Gale. We’re grateful she’ll continue to be a part of the organization in this new capacity.
To support that transition, John Magee has been promoted to Senior Director and will lead all Gale Production. John's experience, deep knowledge of the business and thoughtful leadership make him well suited to guide this organization forward. Paul Schummer has been promoted to Sr. Manager for the Gale Archiving team and will report to John.
I’m also pleased to share that Alex Kaplan has been promoted to Director, Global Content Production. Alex will lead our School Production and Content Program Management (CPgM) teams, creating clear ownership for the School portfolio and strong leadership for the CPgM team.
We’ve also made adjustments to the team and our reporting structure to better align responsibilities, strengthen career development opportunities and balance leadership capacity across the organization. These updates are intended to strengthen how we work together. They do not change our core priorities or the work we deliver.
Some of the key changes include:
Kevin O’Brien will continue leading Higher Education Production while expanding his responsibilities to include Content Operations.
Kathleen Benjey has been promoted to Sr. Manager and will lead all of Content Operations, reporting directly to Kevin.
Christina Battista has been promoted to Sr. Manager and all Content Managers will report to her.
All GCP Content Program Managers will be consolidated under Megan Garvey, Sr. Manager, creating one dedicated CPgM organization. We are opening two new CPgM roles today to accommodate the needs of our broader team.
School production will be centralized under Alex Kaplan’s leadership.
Global Content Transformation work will continue under Ralph Zerbonia, as will ELL under Doris Endo Lewis and Content Acquisition Operations under Alex Ricciardi.
Last week, Kevin shared that the Senior Content Manager role held by Phil Lanza and the Content Manager role held by Laura Hampton have been eliminated. The Gale Sr. Production Data role held by Kevin Duffy has also been eliminated. Their last day with Cengage will be July 31, and I want to sincerely thank all three of them for their many contributions to Cengage.
No mention who was let go but there's this:
Team Updates
Please read below for details on teams joining Digital today, to create Product & Content. The strategy and priorities for our customer segments remain unchanged, and work continues for these teams.
Rebecca von Gillern will lead Global Content Production. Rebecca has been working closely with Andrea Kudzia to ensure a smooth transition.
VP, Higher Ed Editorial & Learning Mark Santee will lead all Higher Ed Editorial & Learning. The Humanities, Social Sciences, Careers, International Editorial team, and the K12 ANZ portfolio team will join Mark’s organization, where the rest of our ANZ portfolio already sits.
Heather Bradley Cole will become Vice President, School Portfolio, and will lead the School Portfolio organization. The Gale portfolio team will join Heather’s group to strengthen alignment.
Marissa Larsen is taking on an expanded role as Vice President, Work Portfolio, and will lead the dedicated portfolio and content organization across ed2go, Milady, Infosec and Trades. Laura Stewart, Scott Fredrickson, and Pamela Sherwood will report to Marissa. Her existing organization will also continue to report to her, with the exception of the Student Services team reporting to Kyle Anderson, which will shift reporting to Rya Conrad-Bradshaw.
These leaders will join our Product & Content leadership team, and I look forward to collaborating closely with them as we move forward.
Can you share the BU emails?
@dr yes, more emails to come
Cengage Work just made another announcement about a reorg. No mention of roles eliminated.
No statement about lamenting cuts, so maybe any layoffs news will come down the grapevine...
Are any more emails coming? Didn't say anything about role eliminations.
Cengage has a clear ambition: to reach more learners, create industry-leading customer experiences and build a business that delivers strong, sustainable growth.
Over the past several years, we have strengthened our foundation by simplifying how we operate, becoming leaner, faster, thus creating the financial results to invest in our future.
Now, we’re entering our next chapter. While operational discipline remains essential, our primary focus is revenue growth—accelerating growth across Higher Ed, Work, and School, expanding into attractive markets and using technology, data and AI to increase our impact.
To enable this next phase of growth, we are creating one central product organization as part of Digital, which will encompass all functions critical for successful digital product development.
Strengthening Market Leadership
NK and JS remain Presidents of Higher Education & School and Work, respectively. They are accountable for Cengage’s growth ambition. As Presidents, they are responsible for the overall performance of their businesses, including Profit & Loss accountability, customer outcomes and decisions about where we play, how we win and where we invest.
Accelerating Product and Technology Innovation
DP is now Chief Product & Digital Officer, leading the Digital organization, which brings together product management, content and production, engineering, research, user experience, design, accessibility, AI and IT, data and analytics.
The Enterprise Data & Analytics and Enterprise IT teams will move to Digital (from Global Operations), reporting to DP. He will lead Enterprise Data & Analytics on an interim basis until the SVP, Enterprise Analytics joins.
We’re creating a single team to take products from customer insights through development and production, enabling us to respond more quickly to customer needs and deliver a more connected customer experience. The Global Content Production, Higher Ed Editorial & Learning, School Content & Portfolio and Work Portfolio Management and Content teams will move to Digital (from Global Operations and the business units), reporting to GB.
DP will continue partnering closely with Nhaim and Justin to align market priorities with product and technology investments to achieve business results.
Strategic Partner Management (Procurement) will join Finance (from Global Operations), reporting to CFO Dean Tilsley on an interim basis while we hire a VP of Procurement. Bringing these teams together will help us make better investment decisions, manage spending more effectively and direct resources to the priorities that will have the greatest impact.
What This Enables
This next stage of how we operate is designed to produce clear outcomes: faster time to market, more reliable execution, stronger technology and data foundations, greater investment discipline and increased capacity to grow.
These changes complete Cengage’s matrix structure. We're confident we've put each function where it belongs, with clear business and functional leadership and the right teams aligned to each. With this organization now firmly in place, we'll continue to refine and improve ‘how‘ we work together day-to-day. But going forward, that work should be about optimizing within our teams and making this organization as effective as it can be; not redesigning it.
Together, we will grow our business, continue building the capabilities that will shape Cengage's future and fulfill our promise of providing learning that powers every future.
Thank you for the energy and focus as we turn the (digital) page and open this next chapter.
The announcement email just dropped.
Wow, they already made big cuts back in April. I can't believe they're doing it twice a year.
@df there aren't even enough staff left to make the same cuts as in project horizon, so yeah minor compared to that
@db will these layoffs be minor compared to project horizon? Those cuts were deep and wide.
Man, I wish they'd just let me go with a package. Meanwhile, I'm definitely applying to other places. This place is bananas.
@cr emails should start around 1:30pm est
What time do they usually announce thus stuff? I haven't seen an email yet.
Higher Ed is being slowly decimated into nothing. I guess we will find out.
@a9 Global Content Production for certain--not sure about any others
@OP Which business unit(s) will be affected?