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Tutor focus - Kay Symons

August 2008   

The PTC is very excited about a brand new course we have added to our portfolio called Competitive Product Development. This one day programme will be run by Kay Symons and will be launching on 13 October 2008.

Kay is a publishing consultant with 30 years' experience at some of the foremost educational publishers in the UK. She worked at Harcourt for 20 years, initially as humanities publishing director and finally as MD of Heinemann Secondary and Vocational during a period of huge success from 1997-2004. She was then selected for an international executive MBA programme at Henley Management College. Since then she has worked on a number of strategic projects, as Marketing Director and as Harcourt's first Customer Focus Director. Kay currently teaches on Managing Publishing Strategy, the PTC’s most senior course, and also teaches the finance part of the Commissioning and List Management programme.

How did you first get into publishing?

I managed to get a job at Longman in Harlow as a Publishing Assistant to the English Publisher. The pay was £2107 a year and the role involved doing the filing, fixing meetings, photocopying and answering the phone (not even anything as skilled as typing). After I’d done that for six months, I was offered a temporary cover as the desk editor for English, which then lasted 4 years before I moved on for my first commissioning job.

How long have you been involved with the PTC?

I’ve been teaching on PTC courses for about 15 years. Around 600 delegates must have been through the finance course I do as part of Commissioning and List Management. I’ve also taught market research and list-building. 2007 saw my first Competitive Publishing Strategy session which was well received as part of the new Managing Publishing Strategy course.

How did the Competitive Product Development course come about?

Competitive Product Development takes the publishing strategy techniques to the level of individual lists.

Why is it so relevant right now?

Publishing has become much more competitive over the years. In most markets, publishers need to work harder than ever to differentiate their products from their competitors. This course gives you ways of thinking about how best to compete in whatever your own circumstances are.

Who is the course aimed at?

The course is aimed at product developers – commissioning people at any level who need to think about how to create books and/or digital products which will meet their customers’ needs better than anything else they could use.

How did you get together the course content and programme?

Much of it has come from my own experience overseeing what turned out to be an enormously successful publishing programme for Heinemann from 1988-2004. My recent MBA at Henley Management College and subsequent work on strategy and customer focus at Harcourt have given me some underpinning theory and some useful models which frame that experience and to identify the transferable truths about how to compete successfully.

How will you ensure that the delegates get the best they can out of the one day course?

My style of teaching is very interactive. Delegates identify their own objectives at the beginning of the day and complete tasks throughout the course, individually and in groups, which ensure that they can put the theory into practice and see for themselves the insights they can get into their own competitive potential.

What of your own experience can you bring to the course?

Over the years of overseeing the Heinemann secondary school publishing programme, I saw a lot of publishing strategies succeed and also a few that failed. It became clear to me that it is possible to predict success to a large degree and it is the principles that underlie these predictive patterns than I can now share.

What do you think the overall benefit of this course will be to the delegates?

Delegates should come away from the course absolutely clear that they will never succeed by simply doing what everyone else does and hoping that their offering will be a bit better. It will give them some practical tools for thinking about their own list, sparking innovative competitive ideas which will actually work.

What has been your greatest achievement in your career to date?

It has to be the broadly-based success that the Heinemann team achieved during the introduction of the National Curriculum and Curriculum 2000, driving a huge margin of market share between us and our nearest competitor. It was great to work so hard with the teams on how to compete successfully and then hear teachers’ enthusiastic feedback and see the sales rolling in!

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