Great Minds reviews

The maxim is that a coherent, thriving organizational culture is a direct result of great leadership (i.e., the CEO and compatible C-suite), which results in an engaged, productive workforce. In these environments of strong culture employees believe in the company's mission as well as how the company operates. Herein lies the gulf to "greatness" at Great Minds - the essential "great leadership" part of this equation. Ten years ago, the founder started something that was ahead of its time, and she took leaps and did things against the odds. Those times have passed, and the organization is quite behind the curve in many regards. However, top brass arrogance impedes progress to the detriment of the organization. Now, understandably, senior leadership should sing from the same song sheet, not having fractious arguments at every turn. But this top group barely entertains ideas that are different from their old-school way of thinking, despite courting professionals with recent proven successes. There are quite a few standard ways of operating in 2018 that Great Minds has started and then disassembled, which hurts progress. Firstly, by stopping and starting, and secondly, by not operating with current business procedures and practices in place. Overall, Great Minds is not soundly aware of competitors, where it stands in the marketplace, nor its strengths and weaknesses. There have been recent efforts to get better market intel, but many of these efforts were quite biased and weren't deeply interested in a honest assessment. In many ways, some of these efforts were an attempt to pat the organization on the back on where they are currently. Other companies do a better job of marketplace analysis and internalization of that information. In this vein, the top execs are immensely proud of being a curriculum that is created "by teachers for teachers," and there seems to be little awareness of how many products make that same claim. This is in fact not a differentiator - even if it's true. Potential customers hear this from everyone. Great Minds is technologically behind in two significant ways. The organization does not have a road map that keeps pace with society's wants and expectations of a digital classroom. Great Minds' offering is exactly where today's classrooms are today, but the product isn't evolving to the next generation of leaders' expectations. In this regard, they will have their lunch eaten by competitors. Secondly, internally, the company has a number of technological systems that are disparate or barely duct-taped together. Executives have wanted something done "quickly," and as a result thoroughness, thoughtfulness, care and consideration have not been part of the implementation. Great Minds' technical debt will catch up to it, and the company will falter by failing to meet market demands as well as failing customers. The organization moves at a glacial pace. Decision-making and even execution get mired down by all the cooks invited to the kitchen in addition to the constant rotation of employees and consultants weighing in and dropping out. Unfortunately, because quite a few people have come and gone in fairly short stints, the organization doesn't have the benefit of long-term vision and execution on all roads. Decisions are made about a particular direction. Employees come in, then leave, and new people join, and the road being paved is questioned, halted, abandoned. This leads to another matter -- there are a lot of people at this organization currently looking for another job. Sure, it's currently a good economy with lots of opportunities out there, but these searches are due to frustrations, not purely opportunistic. Great Minds is NOT customer-centric. Individual employees care a lot about individual customers, because the employees are good-hearted, caring people. But don't mistake good people for organizational DNA. Great Minds is not set up to help and enable customers. Successful customers help themselves and rely on help and enablement from other customers -- not Great Minds. HR reps are incredibly nice, but do not do much for employees are not wholly trusted by employees. A top exec in leadership said to me, "We are just not a metrics-driven company." Many at Great Minds might balk at this statement, like I did. (It is 2018 after all, who is not metrics-driven?) However, taking a moment to pause, this exec was, in fact, calling it as it is. When numbers and metrics support the way the very top sees things, then the numbers are used as support. But if the numbers and metrics do not support the vision and direction, then they are slanted, faddish or irrelevant and are ignored. What employees say and whisper in the halls is that revenue is coming in and at record numbers, but there is quiet concern about margin and making smart business decisions that are actually growing the business. It was alarming to be in an environment where compensation is not at all competitive, and yet there are areas where budgets were ignored, lots of consultants were hired (sometimes of overlapping requirements with disregard for leveraging agreements already in place). As stated at the beginning, the head of any organization steers the ship, and that steering trickles down to even the most junior employee trying to swim up-stream through the approvals of their managers and against the tumultuous waters.