Organizational Profile Paper

Organization Profile: Structure, Culture, and Leadership

The purpose of this paper is to analyze a significant change within EmbanetCompass Knowledge Group the company I have been working for the last 3 year as a Program Coordinator. In this paper we will review the organizational structure, culture, explore the organization change, and the outcomes. In this analysis I had the opportunity to interview Jaclyn Kleinaitis who works as a Lead instructional Designer within the organization and can provide insight of the organizational structure, culture and management style.

EmbanetCompass Knowledge Group is the leading provider of online learning services for the world’s premier schools, colleges and universities. “Founded in 1995, with locations

in Chicago, Orlando, and Toronto, EmbanetCompass has 580 employees and is headed by Steve Firen”. (2012) Embanet compass mission is to maximize the enrollment of qualified students, fully support the online learning experience and facilitate graduation by providing capital and expertise in program development, marketing, admissions, technical support and student services to our Academic Partners.

At Embanet, they believe that maintaining the integrity and quality of their academic partners is their foremost responsibility. Their program development, student acquisition and student support services follow this belief. Their goal is to build lasting partnerships that enable the academic partners to expand their educational reach through effective, profitable, and fully realized online learning solutionsEmbanet is dedicated to student’s success and the academic institutions they represent. The core values are ownership, performance, innovation and solution. They act and think like owners and take pride in their work and accomplishments. They embody balanced wins, believing that anyone can only truly succeed when coworkers, academic partners and their students succeed. Achieving this balance in performance that leads to a stronger partnership, engaged employees and satisfied students. In addition, they strive to enhance everything. They want to

be innovative and to improve what they do and optimize how they do it. Innovation is the launch pad that enables them to solidify the foundation of Embanet while developing the future of online education. Furthermore, they weight their strengths to find solutions, seeing obstacles as opportunities to achieve better results and anticipate challenges and proactively seek resolutions. The foundation of Embanet is their people. They have a diverse collection of talented individuals. Together they collaborate and share ideas to create a positive, lasting effect on higher education
Embanet is culturally diverse and has talented collection of individuals, who collaborate, and share unique talents and ideas with the goal of helping students find the right educational solution. Jaclyn stated, “Our culture is very collaborative and also, I think that we take ourselves seriously but we still know how to have fun.” (personal communication, September 21, 2015). Embanet wants their staff to work and grow together. Embanet support us to pursue personal educational goals, and to grow. To provide for our families, and building lasting careers that we can be proud of. At our core we are dedicated to the concept of advancement through education. The employees of Embanet are encouraged to stay engaged through ongoing development and training. Jaclyn Stated, “we are doing the learning. We're creating the learning through course developments. I'm a lead instructional designer, I'm doing that work, so I think that we're in direct correlation, and we're always constantly revising our courses and redoing our work and trying to improve what we do from launch to launch, so that's a result of that as well. Embanet is a community of passionate professionals who understand the need for real educational solutions for students and universities alike.
In 2012, Embanet Compass is acquired by Pearson, the world’s leading learning company.

Pearson is the world's largest education company, with 40,000 employees in more than 70 countries helping people of all ages to make measurable progress in their lives. According to Jaclyn, “I joined in May 2012 under Embanet Compass. I think it was October, so almost three years ago now we were purchased by Pearson, so we had this whole we're now part of the Pearson family and undergoing from small things like changing our insurance to changing our email. Those things are big, although it doesn't sound like that big of a deal, it's changing your workflow. Probably is the biggest change that we've undergone”(personal communication, September 21, 2015). Pearson culture is innovation and efficacy. Pearson's culture is one that is centered on the employee, but focused on results. Jaclyn said she looked efficacy up and Person define efficacy “as non measurable impact on improving someone's life through learning. Meaning what we do in our little corner of Pearson is directly related to that. We're developing online programs for students. So I think that's a direct Correlation to that efficacy. (personal communication, September 21,

2015).
They provide a range of education products and services to institutions, governments and direct to individual learners that help people everywhere aim higher and fulfil their true potential. Will Ethridge, CEO of Pearson North America, said, “The acquisition of EmbanetCompass extends Pearson’s investment in two areas where we see great opportunities for growth and impact—online education and educational services. According to Jaclyn, “the leaders that we had at that time in my department were very upfront about what was going on. It was very clear to use that we were purchased for a reason. That Pearson wanted to get into the online market.” (personal communication, September 21, 2015). The combination of Pearson and EmbanetCompass creates the premier provider of online learning and education services and will further enable us to advance the goals of the institutions and students we serve with innovative and proven programs.” (2012). Pearson is organized around three key stages of learning (Schools, Higher Education and Professional) and three geographies (North America, Growth and Core markets).
After Pearson acquisition on EmbanetCompass we have seen many changes and there have been many collaboration. First, they announced a new organization structure and the appointment of a new leadership team. They provided this communication through email, newsletter and town hall meetings. The changes were designed to speed up Pearson’s push into digital learning, education services and emerging markets, which the company views as significant growth opportunities. According to Kotter, Transformation often begin, and begin well when an organization has a new head who is a good leader and who sees the need for a major change” (Kotten). At this point, I think they were forming a “powerful guiding coalition” by appointing enough power to lead the change. The leadership also provided a clear idea why the change was necessary and the actions they were going to take to implementing the change. As Jaclyn stated, “the leadership style is very structured and professional. We have lot of Town Hall meetings, just back and forth of where are and where we’re heading. We always have a weekly team meeting and then we have one on ones with our manager. So we're always getting touch points. The frequency changes depending on who we're meeting with, but we still have communication with all of those leaders.” (personal communication, September 21, 2015). Pearson's culture is centered on the employee, but focused on results. A leadership model that demands collaboration, and invention. The “what” is the purpose - to help people improve their lives through learning. And the “how” is captured in the values from how we work together on a day-to-day basis, to how we take decisions, and how we treat each other.
In conclusion, even though the transition is not yet complete, outcomes are already occurring we see the acquisition as positive. We see recognition in program director meeting, academic partners and the collectively collaboration between each department and the student body. The change has been a new and constant commitment to efficacy every product or service is investing is being judged by the successes of the people who are using them. In other words, demonstrating with evidence that Pearson is helping someone do or achieve something that they couldn't before. The acquisition “has provided a structure for us that we wouldn’t have had we stayed as a smaller company”. (personal communication, September 21, 2015). Therefore, the change with the organization has laid the foundations to strengthen our position as the world's largest education company. The benefits of this restructure are already being felt, as we become more digital and more capable of improving education in the world’s great developing economies.