As Holmes Corporation enters an exciting new chapter, we sat down with our new CEO, Josh Slayton, to discuss his vision for the company, his experience, and what excites him most about leading HC into the future.
Q: Josh, what excites you most about leading Holmes Corporation?
A: Foremost, it’s the ability to lead a great team and do some really fun and exciting things. Not that it isn’t going to be hard, or frustrating, or even discouraging at times, but this should be fun! We have an opportunity to build off all the great things we have done in the past and impact the market in new and exciting ways, working with forward-thinking partners, expanding our impact, and accelerating HC’s growth trajectory. I just find that incredibly challenging AND incredibly exciting.
HC is in a unique position. Our 50-year history of working in partnership with leading Associations, and more broadly in the market with education and training partners to serve more than 2 million professionals around the world advance in their careers, is the bedrock for what we can do next. We are proud of what we do, and we appreciate the talented and dedicated team we work with every day. HC has a human-centric culture, and as I look ahead, I see incredible potential for our team to take on new challenges, new roles, and growth opportunities in their careers.
This foundation puts us in a position to expand not only what we do but how we do it. There are so many opportunities in front of us and I’m excited about our ability to find new ways to serve our Association partners, global training partners, learners, and the broader market with impactful solutions.
Q: How has your past experience prepared you for the CEO role?
A: I’ve spent the past 15+ years in various roles in the education and training industry, both as an operator and as an investor. This includes the past two years as Chief Growth Officer at HC. I think I’ve referenced this several times over the past few years. We’ve had to spend time building that growth engine, learning (and failing!) along the way as we chart new territory, but also as we position ourselves in the market in ways we may not have in the past. We’ve built a solid framework that leverages our past successes and will help us chart a bold path forward.
I’ve learned a lot of lessons from past roles, mentors, colleagues, and bosses. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of three core tenets of our approach to growth, and those are alignment, empowerment, and accountability, and in that order. We have to be aligned on not only what we are doing, but how we are doing it and why we are doing it. It starts with that common vision of where we are trying to take HC and where we can make a positive impact for our partners, learners, and broader stakeholders. And that includes the opportunities we see, how to accelerate product discovery, and what we need to prioritize. From there, it’s about ensuring we have the right team empowered to execute. We can’t move fast and grow if we aren’t aligned, but we also can’t move fast and grow if our team isn’t empowered to do what they do best, and then we hold ourselves accountable for achieving those results. I’ve been fortunate to spend the last decade-plus around great leaders, including at HC, where I’ve seen the importance of driving alignment, empowerment, and accountability to help move an organization forward.
Q: What is your vision for the company’s future growth and innovation?
A: Our mission remains the same – helping professionals advance in their careers. But our vision is to be more than just a certification prep company. For 50 years, our core business model has been developing top-of-market certification prep products and providing supporting services to help our partners scale and grow. Don’t get me wrong, I think that there is an incredible opportunity for certifications to be a growth engine for America’s workforce, and HC can and will play a key role in that, alongside our Association partners at the nexus of authority and impact for their respective industries.
But more broadly, our vision is to be a leading technology-enabled and data-driven partner to Associations. We aim to drive certification growth, learning product adoption, and develop products that serve members and corporate partners across a member’s entire career journey. This includes assessment and engagement products and ancillary services that increase member and learner engagement, improve certification and recertification rates, enhance member retention, and bolster enterprise solutions.
I firmly believe that Associations can be a nexus for workforce development, being more than just professional membership organizations. We have a disconnect in the U.S. between our education system and workforce needs. This is evident in high student debt, poor student outcomes, underemployed college grads, and the vast skills gap we see across many industries. Associations should play a pivotal role in helping solve these workforce disconnects, and HC can play a crucial role in defining and managing skill taxonomies, learning products, and engagement products that help individuals along their career pathways.
Q: How do you plan to build upon the foundation laid by former CEO, MaryBeth Anderson?
A: I can’t speak highly enough about MaryBeth’s leadership over the past decade as CEO and 24 years at HC. Her level of service to our partners – not just from a business perspective, but the importance she placed on relationships – has done so much to build and maintain our long-standing partnerships. This also reflects on the culture at HC, where the importance of the human side of who we are has built a unique culture with many strengths.
My plan is to honor and build upon this foundation while also evolving our approach to meet the changing needs of our industry and partners. We’ll continue to prioritize relationships and our human-centric culture while also pushing for innovation and growth.
Q: What specific goals or initiatives do you plan to prioritize in your first year?
A: We’ve spent a lot of time over the past two years defining where HC needs to focus to build our data-enabled growth engine. We have invested considerably in our business and product development.
Over the next 6/12/18 months, we’ll be focused on our broader roadmap of growth and scalability. We will continue to evolve our product and service model to ensure that we are meeting the needs of our existing partners and helping them find new ways to serve their members. We are taking a much more proactive approach to serving market needs by exploring, testing, and building new features, functionality and products.
Achieving this goal means elevating our tech stack, product stack, and data stack. We’ll focus on our products’ operating and tech platforms while continuing to provide a full suite of services and support that sets HC apart.
Fundamentally though, the engine needs to lead to growth. I’m excited about how our evolution will add value to our long-standing partnerships, but we need to execute on our targets of adding new business partners to our portfolio while expanding our offerings and diversifying beyond cert prep through new product and service offerings at scale.
Q: What message would you like to convey to our employees, partners, and clients about the future?
A: I encourage you to be an active participant in HC’s growth journey. Whether you’re an employee, a partner, or a professional using our products to take the next step in your career, you’re a crucial part of our vision. Together, we have the opportunity to make a real difference in millions of careers and reshape professional development for the future.
We should be incredibly proud of the impact we have had to date and the great partnerships we have built. Our evolution and growth journey is in front of us, and I couldn’t be more excited about charting that new path forward together.
