The book publishers

The client: a prominent publisher of picture books

The need: the company had, in about 15 years, grown from a small family enterprise to a major name in its sector, employing nearly 20 staff in its own premises. The founder recognised that recent growth had changed the balance of their role and placed demands upon them that were potentially beyond their expertise. One area of particular concern for the business as a whole was the difficulty experienced in hitting production deadlines which would enable the organisation to represent its full portfolio at the international book fairs twice a year.

The founder wished to be able to step back from the day to day management and concentrate their time upon the parts of the business that most interested and excited them.

What we did: we spent time observing how people went about their work and how the business was run. We spoke with each member of staff to understand what they thought would help to improve things.

We identified a need for greater clarity regarding roles and responsibilities. This was resolved by conducting an end to end process mapping exercise which defined each of the stages involved and critical points… we also produced individual task profiles so that staff understood where they fit into the overall process and what was expected of them.

Finally we recruited an operations manager to take over much of the day to day responsibility for the management of the office, production management and support functions.  Our involvement continued, in a coaching capacity, for a further 3 months to help the operations manager to blend into the business and for the founder to have the confidence in them to relinquish daily control.