Yesterday Learning Pool hosted a visit from Northern Ireland Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, Arlene Foster.  In case you missed it, at the end of 2011, Learning Pool was announced by Deloitte as the fastest growing technology company in Northern Ireland (as well as 6^th in Ireland, 26^th in the UK & 139^th in EMEA) based on revenue growth over the past 5 years.  They confirmed our growth to be a whopping 1,100% (gasp!).  The Minister expressed an interest in finding out more about the company so we invited her to call in.

We were a little apprehensive about her visit I guess.  As entrepreneurs we don’t have an awful lot to do with politicians (although maybe that needs fixing).  We didn’t really know what to expect from our allotted hour.

We needn’t have worried.  The Minister was friendly, personable, engaged & knowledgeable.  She spent the first half hour circulating around “Pool Heights” (our Derry HQ), chatting to our team and asking plenty of questions, her PA at her elbow jotting down a few notes.  The Learning Pool team are always keen to perform in front of an audience so they were in their element and there was a good bit of laughing and joking going on – especially when the Minister realised that we have two Americans on board (she asked them how come they live in the North West – you can guess the answer yourselves).  As we climbed through the floors of our building we watched members of the team showcase our new online finance training for government, demo some bespoke content and show the Minister a new set of graphics that are still work in progress.

Paul & I spent the last half hour in private conversation with the Minister while we all had a nice cup of tea (see photo).  Some of what we discussed was – the issues SMEs like us have in winning work with government, how we think procurement processes could be improved, some of the work we both do with Young Enterprise and our various digital interests (Paul with Digital Derry, me with Digital Circle), the role start ups play in creating a vibrant Northern Ireland economy and the work we both do with micro businesses, ideas around addressing the skills shortages we as a region are facing (we were glad the Minister brought that up and was well informed about the situation).

Thanks for coming by Minister, your new friends at Learning Pool are all fans!

I’m getting ready to move to London in the New Year.  There, I’ve said it.  Learning Pool started life in London in a rented loft in Crawford’s Passage in Farringdon before shifting our HQ back to Derry.  We used to call our London base Crawford’s Pass amongst ourselves because it made it sound more Irish.  In our early days we were paranoid about customers knowing we were a Northern Ireland company in case it was a barrier to us doing business.  As the last 5 years have progressed, we became less coy about our origins as we cemented our customer relationships although we hung onto our London phone number.  These days, our customers love the fact that we’re an Irish company and some of them have even been to visit us at our office in Derry.  Others have even been brave enough to join our team.

Our fabulous Head of Content, Deborah Limb, joined us from another more famous e-learning company.  Deborah had never been to Northern Ireland before her first day at Learning Pool.  She arrived at our office on a cold, wet, Monday morning in November 2007, clutching the remnants of a sopping wet map in her hand.  She still claims she never saw daylight during that first winter.

Now it’s my turn to go back the other way and it’s a bittersweet feeling that I have.  I lived in London for 17 years before moving home to County Tyrone at the start of the new millennium.  I left the pushiness of the city behind & moved right into the middle of rural Ulster.  I’ll never forget waking up that first morning & hearing no sounds.  Nothing at all.  I remember the relief I felt & ever since that day, I’ve half felt as though I’m on holiday – a sort of working holiday where you work harder than you’ve ever worked before but your colleagues & neighbours are so friendly that it somehow compensates you.

I quickly learned to be less brusque & more chatty in my interactions.  More talk about the weather & people you know & less focus on the agenda is the Northern Irish way.  Gradually the sharp edges from all those years spent living in the city were worn down a little.  Of course I’ve been back in London pretty much every week since 2000 – sometimes twice a week – but always as a visitor, staying in a hotel room, running for a plane home as soon as the meetings are finished.  I’m wondering how I’ll slot back into the hurly-burly of London life after the deep, deep peace of country living (quoted with a nod to Mrs Patrick Campbell).

So why am I as a person and why are we as a business doing this?  I guess we’re fed up with fighting for what’s right (that it should be just as easy to do business from Northern Ireland as it is from any part of the UK or indeed Europe) & accepting what’s reality.  Like it or not, London is indeed where UK government’s beating heart lies.  It’s also where a large number of our customers, a huge number of potential customers and some of the people we’d like to work more closely with are based.  On top of that, our Northern Ireland location is stifling Learning Pool’s growth as there just aren’t the skills here that we need to recruit in to grow our business.  We’ve raised this point many times with Invest Northern Ireland.  We’re further hampered by having an ornament of an airport 5 miles from us in Derry that we never use as the flight times aren’t conducive to being anywhere on time to do business – and the government agencies and politicians seem more interested in in-fighting & scoring points off each other than looking outwards & making Northern Ireland an easier place from which to operate internationally.  In summary, we’ve concluded we’re missing out on opportunities and holding ourselves back by not having a London presence.  And I think that’s a very sad state of affairs.  Learning Pool was recently confirmed by Deloitte to be Northern Ireland’s fastest growing tech company & the 6^th fastest growing on the island of Ireland, but we have to look to London in order to continue our expansion.

Of course there’s plenty of upside.  I’m looking forward to being back in the heart of the capital for a six month period and I’m intending throwing myself into the whole London work/social scene and spending plenty of time with friends & colleagues, old & new.  I’m looking for somewhere to base Learning Pool London right now so watch this space & all will be revealed.

I know this is an emotive topic, especially for other Northern Ireland businesses – so I’m looking forward to your views & a lively discussion in the comments below.  Keep ‘em coming!

 

On 1 August Learning Pool turned 5 years old.  5 years is a significant milestone for any company and certainly time to take stock and work out what happens next.  We decided to spend 3 days together as a team in order to celebrate, have some informal time together (although Learning Pool is far from formal at the best of times) but also to revisit our plans and discuss our options as a group.

This photo of Paul & me with our team was taken on Derry’s new Peace Bridge last week – just before we split into 6 teams and scrambled all over the City on a fun treasure hunt.  We’re very proud of our team.  I doubt it’s possible to grow a sizeable team any quicker than 5 years, no matter how many management books you read or how impatient you are.  It’s like growing a harmonious flower bed or baking good bread.  There’s a method & stages to go through but at the end of the day, it takes a certain amount of time.

People have to form relationships & become comfortable with each other before they can perform well at anything.  It’s difficult to do this when the organisation is growing fast as there are new people joining the team all the time & “upsetting” the dynamic.  Everyone knows the Tuckman model of team formation and the 4 stages – forming, storming, norming, performing.  It can be hard to get onto those later stages when there is a constant influx of new team members.

When I look at the photo, 18 people or about one third of our team have been with us less than 12 months; 16 have been with us for over 3 years and the remaining 23 have been at Learning Pool between one & three years.  I often think about the Belbin exercise our team completed at our first team building event on Lusty Beg island in December 2008 when the company was just over 2 years old.  We had no co-ordinators & no implementers.  We had 2 completer finishers (fortunately!), one team worker, 2 plants and a solitary monitor-evaluator.  The remaining 24 people were crammed onto the resource investigator & shaper spaces – 12 apiece.  Things have changed since then, although some days I miss that early chaos.

My question to you all in this blog is how do other companies build on the success of team building days & keep the momentum going once your dispersed teams have dispersed again.  How do you keep that energy & focus going once everyone has waved goodbye and gone back to their day jobs?

I’m sitting here this Saturday afternoon wondering why we are struggling so hard to find good business development resource to join our Learning Pool dream team?  Sam Barbee is Learning Pool’s Head of Sales.  That’s him in the photo.  He hails originally from Orange County in California but like so many of his countrymen, he fell under the spell of an Irish colleen and now lives in Derry in the sunny NW of Ireland – California’s loss but Learning Pool’s gain as Sam is a 100% excellent Head of Sales.  He’s easy going but hard working, straight talking but fair.  He makes his targets and doesn’t destroy any of his colleagues getting there.  He’s honest & trustworthy and he’s never let me down.  You can check out what he says about working at Learning Pool here http://www.learningpool.com/jobcasts/

Learning Pool is a company that’s really going places.  Nearly 5 years old we’ve won the Deloitte Rising Star in both 2009 & 2010 (this award really counts as it’s all about achieving your numbers and has nothing to do with how much you’ve spent that year on sponsorship or advertising like many other awards).  Our fantastic team has grown to just over 50 people, all of us focused on success, providing customer delight, building a fabulous business and having a lot of fun on the way through.

Sam and I have been interviewing prospective business development executives now for about 9 months.  We must have interviewed 50 people in person and telephone interviewed a whole lot more.  We haven’t found anyone yet that we’ve wanted to bring into our team.  Admittedly we’re quite fussy.  Over the years at Learning Pool we’ve learned that it really is better to have a hole than an asshole when it comes to building your team.  Bringing the wrong people in satisfies a short term need but the long term fallout is painful to repair and recover from.  We’re in a fortunate position where we have a very engaged customer base and an active online community that’s taken a lot of time and hard work to build.  Our team has very personal relationships with our public sector customers and we want to protect those to the exclusion of pretty much everything else.

So what are we looking for:

·         Someone who’s confident but not arrogant, persistent but not pushy, a person who believes in themselves & their own ability and who is motivated to get up early in the morning & go out & get ‘em

·         A completer finisher who demonstrates the necessary attention to detail but never takes their eye off the big picture

·         People who love working in sales and the challenges that brings; we want a career sales exec who has a successful track record – not someone that wants to be in sales while they wait for something “better” to come along

·         Someone who cares about their colleagues, their customers and the company – not someone that tramples on the post on their way out

·         Someone that understands the UK public sector and its unique challenges – or is prepared to learn

·         A person that thinks and has ideas

·         Someone who isn’t afraid to discuss money with customers or be responsible for delivering a target

·         A person who really wants to be part of something great and who isn’t fazed by having the world as their oyster – at Learning Pool we talk a lot about being at Opportunity Central.

So – if you’re interested or know someone else that might be – there’s a job spec at this link here http://www.learningpool.com/files/2010/10/business-development-exec-Oct2010.pdf

Comments welcome as always.

#teamlovely has been celebrating Learning Pool’s 4^th birthday for the past week or so – just look at that cake in the photo.  There’ve been many times in the last 4 years that the achievement of this milestone seemed like a tall order – but resilience has always been the order of the day round here so we’ve just kept our heads down and carried on plugging away.  A rather frightening statistic is that 75% of new start ups have crashed & burned by the end of Year 3 - so it’s good to be in a successful minority, especially during the current global economic recession.  As we reach the end of our celebrations, this has got me thinking about the highlights of the last 4 years for Paul & me (this blog is a bit selfish for which I apologise now).  Here they are in no particular order:

1.       Getting to see Bill Clinton in Derry this week – that was cool & so was he (disappointed you didn’t mention “digital” Bill – ah well)

2.       In the early days, making a snap decision to go ahead & build Modern Councillor whilst crossing the West End of London in a taxi – it’s been a roaring success ever since

3.       Also in the early days, receiving a Letter of Offer from one of the Belfast VCs and turning it down – twice!

4.       Blagging our way in to spending 45 minutes with a Director of Education in Capitol Hill & listening to his sage advice

5.       Reaching the final of the 2008 All Ireland Seedcorn competition and having a great night out with our team

6.       Following on from No 5, our team meeting Jerry Kennelly (founder of Stockbyte that was sold to Getty Images in 2006 for $135m) at the Seedcorn awards party and having him tell us we have a great company, to keep doing what we’re doing & not to take any investment (thanks Jerry!)

7.       Holding a launch party in Johannesburg in Nov 2009 at the UK Trade Commissioner’s residence and having lovely Baroness Glenys Kinnock, Minister for Africa, as our keynote speaker

8.       Being overjoyed when Donald Clark approached us and subsequently offered to join our board as a non exec director (great to have you on board Donald - #teamlovely loves you to bits)

9.       Welcoming 200 people to our annual conference at London’s Royal Mint on 12 May 2010 and receiving their fabulous feedback

10.   Being one of Deloitte’s Rising Stars at the end of 2009

11.   Knowing that we’re well on our way to building the biggest & best public sector online learning community in the world

OK – so there were 11...here’s to the next batch!

The photo above was taken at Friday’s City of Culture celebratory gathering in Derry’s Millennium Forum.  The guys gathered around me need no introduction but just in case they are Phil Redmond, creator of Grange Hill etc, Ed Vaizey, Tory Culture minister and the fabulous Mark Durkan, our local Derry MP, thoroughly good egg & supporter of small, local business.

I know you’re all wondering what on earth I’m saying to them.

There are 3 things that I’ve been wondering about since the City of Culture 2013 announcement was made.

The first is a hope that the City receives a new name.  Derry/Londonderry – leading to the plain daft Stroke City – is just too controversial.  My suggestion – and I’d love to hear yours – is St Columcille-ville.  It builds on the city’s heritage & has a vaguely Europop vibe.

The second is how much easier our lives would be if our local airport operated within the usual parameters common to airports and had flights to places we need to go to – e.g. London – so that we could get there & back in a day.  Novel idea I realise.

Third is how much we in Derry love the Giant’s Causeway but what a pain it is to get to – we’re hoping that can be simplified as part of the 2013 preparations – indeed if it could be relocated to the mouth of the River Foyle so that we could visit in our lunch breaks that would be perfect.

So – take your pick from any of the topics above.  Of course, I could have just been pontificating about how marvellous it is to be part of a tiny little company based in Clarendon Street, Derry that manages to deliver cost-effective & comprehensive online services to most of local government and increasingly central government right across the whole of the UK.

Snapped this pic of my friend & colleague Siobhain tonight seconds after the UK City of Culture result was announced in Derry’s Guildhall.  Her face says it all.

Everyone was screaming & cheering, I was shaking & crying, the atmosphere was incredible.  I know every city probably thinks they need something like this, but believe me - our city really needs a break like this.

Derry’s a great place and we’re proud that it’s our city and the place we’ve chosen to locate our business, Learning Pool.

I work a few streets away from Pump Street where my grandmother worked in one of the infamous shirt factories in the early years of the 20^th century.  I can see the River Foyle, where so many ancestors & others left Ireland for America, out of our office window.  I serve the Millennium Forum as a non exec director and there we strive to provide accessible culture & entertainment to everyone and anyone that wants it.

Tonight we are overcome with emotion and excited about what this may mean for us – and we’re proud to be part of Legenderry.