This project established our basic infrastructure for the year. We wanted to:

• give our core team a sense of security by extending their contracts,
• expand our freelance and intern team,
• join industry bodies,
• cover the cost of accountants,
• pay for important web-app subscriptions, and
• secure rent for the office into 2014.

General report-back

This project was meant to a large extent to make infrastructure invisible to the team members: everything is simply in place so we can get on with work. This is just what happened: our team has been able to get on with things in a well organised, comfortable environment, both physically (in the office) and financially (knowing their salaries are sorted). We’re extremely happy with the outcomes of this project overall.

Objectives achieved

Planned: “…focus on scaling [Paperight’s] use. To do that, we have to have a foundation of infrastructure in place for the year, and greater job security for the team. … This will in turn boost Paperight’s efficiency and effectiveness.”

This overall objective was definitely achieved. We have a superb, close knit team who achieve a great deal and are fully committed to our vision.

See below for more detail on specific targets and measures of success.

Objectives not achieved

None.

Measures of success

 

Planned	Outcome
Has our team and infrastructure provided the base we need to accomplish our specific goals during the year?	As we’ll show below, our goals changed during the year based on some sensible changes we made to strategies. We essentially achieved goals that are more closely aligned to our strategies, see more below.
When we review our progress every three months, do our predictions here about the team size and structure and tools and memberships align with our users’ needs? (E.g. are we providing sufficient support to and content for our outlets to make them use Paperight more profitably?)	We worried that we did not enough outlet support in the team earlier on, but the non-outlet-support team members stepped in to cover for this. For instance, through our each adopting specific outlets, and sharing outlet support calls and emails.
We expect to see:
Our team members enjoying their roles and explicitly happy that they are doing their best work (monitored already by Arthur in monthly one-on-one meetings);	Achieved.
New team members fit in well, and do their best work productively as part of the team;	Achieved.
Our decisions and prioritisation influenced or affirmed positively by what we learn from PASA and SABA participation;	Yes. PASA membership has been especially useful: it’s led to funding to attend Frankfurt and London Book Fairs, and loads of up to date info on the education book sector (including school contact details and publisher leads). So far, SABA membership has been less useful, but had provided bookstore contacts that have been valuable, such as Caxton Books and Juta who are now outlets as a direct result of our attending SABA meetings.
We stay within budget on all line items;	Where we have gone over in some line items, we’ve consciously reduced expenditure elsewhere, and kept these changes small and aligned with current strategic priorities.
A significant increase in rights income from licence sales.	Achieved. Since Dec 2013 revenue has grown over 40% per month.
We would like to see:
Core team members confident that their team output is increasing in quantity and value because their own recruitment and management skills are improving;	Achieved, though always more work to do in this area.
Evidence that our participation in PASA and SABA positively influences these associations’ actions or positions on increasing access to books, especially choosing open rather than closed approaches (e.g. working with photocopy businesses rather than focusing only on restricting them).	Getting Juta and Caxton to sign up was a result of SABA participation. We have not had a noticeable effect on PASA, but Arthur was nominated for the board of DALRO (though this has not gone further), which may have been influenced by visibility at PASA-related events.
We would love to see:
Some of our interns excelling to the point that we hire them for full-time contract positions at Paperight;	Achieved! Oscar Masinyana, Philippa Dewey  and Marie-Louise Rouget are key members of our team that started as interns during this project.
Our efforts on training reflected in the future scoring on BEE certification;	We have not reviewed our BEE scoring yet, but are being careful to record training initiatives (e.g. training sessions for interns), for this and for SDL claims.
A third source of income (after rights fees and Shuttleworth Foundation funding).	Nothing concrete here yet, but we’re exploring options.

 

For Paperight’s company achievements, we set the following goals for ourselves to achieve by August 2013 (using present-tense visualisation):

Goal	Outcome
Unisa is using and paying for Paperight to deliver content to its students.	We have not made progress here. Still trying to get a meeting with the right people (after several meetings with the wrong people).
We have an alternative funding source (a grant or prize) to the value of R1m.	We don’t have this, and have structured our plans and budgets to not need it to get to self-sustainability.
We have won a large award for our work.	We won at Tools of Change in New York and London Book Fair, and were congratulated by Parliament.
Paperight has been covered in the New York Times.	We didn’t get this exactly, but had great coverage in many places, including Forbes and CNN websites.
We have placed 10 success stories that have emotional impact in the press.	When we planned this, we meant success stories about Paperight’s impact on specific individuals. Have did not identify these stories. But we’re still very pleased with the impact of our releases and news in the press (see quarterly reports for media coverage).
We have a Tax Clearance Certificate from SARS.	Achieved!
We have more outlets (active printing businesses) than there are bookstores in South Africa (assuming 500 stores).	We deliberately decided against growing to this size, choosing rather to focus on quality of service in our existing outlet footprint.
We have 5000 valuable documents on Paperight (more once we’ve automated content prep).	We have 1900, but we’re happy that they are good quality. Automated content prep only became live around June 2013, so it has not yet had the impact on content numbers that it might still have.
Internally we may change these goals if our strategy shifts as we learn during the year.	As noted above, many of our goals did shift, but we’re happy that they shifted sensibly.

 

Budget

Original budget: R1004313.00

Actual spend: R912555.25

Returned to pool: R91757.75

Item	Budget	Actual	Return to pool	Comments
Contract extension: Content manager	160000	144124.78	15875.22
Contract extension: Media manager	140000	126124.78	13875.22
Contract extension: Outlet development manager	140000	126124.78	13875.22
Contract extension: Office manager	154000	144882.56	9117.44
New contract: Content wrangler Nov 2012 – Aug 2013	110000	125947.00	-15947	We gave Oscar a raise to match that of the rest of the team. He had been working with us as an intern initially
Interns (outlet, media, content)	44000	47100.00	-3100
Recruitment costs	2000	0	2000	We decided to make use of free advertising
Content-team freelancers	20000	12720.00	7280
Outlet-team freelancers	20000		20000	We decided to focus on content freelancers
Publisher’s Association (PASA) membership	6000	3120.99	2879.01	We saved on our membership by paying pro-rata
Bookseller’s Association (SABA) membership	3500	1150.00	2350	We saved on our membership by paying pro-rata
Rent	105600	60800.00	44800	We have decided to move the budgeted rent from September to April 2014 into a new pitch
BEE certificate	1653	1653.00	0
Online subscriptions	7200	3815.96	3384.04
Accounting fees	12000	23344.60	-11344.6
Bank charges	3600	4169.23	-569.23	Bank charges increased as we made more sales
Mandatory payroll-related taxes	15000	20765.90	-5765.9	On hiring more staff on contract basis, our payroll expenses increased
Domain registrations	1500		1500	We did not spend anything on domain registrations
Web hosting	2160		2160
Consumable stationery	3000	8373.83	-5373.83
Software	8500		8500	We did not purchase another Adobe
Travel	42000	25113.32	16886.68
Data for remote web access	R2600	1977.00	623
Advertising	0	21385.02	-21385.02	We did not budget for marketing for this year initially
Legal fees	0	7362.50	-7362.5	We unexpectedly had to cover ourselves in the event of a court case with New Africa Books
Donations and grants	0	2500.00	-2500
Total	R1 004 313	R912555.25	R91757.75

 

Outputs and deliverables

Planned: “Direct tangible outputs: Team contracts and rental agreements in place. BEE certification. Given that this project underlies all of Paperight’s work, further indirect outputs and IP created include everything we produce over the coming year.”

All achieved.

Learnings

It’s hard to sum up everything we learned in a year of teamwork. Some team-organisation principles that have served us well over the last year:

• We don’t have job descriptions, just clear areas of functional authority which are defined in two to three bullet points each;
• We don’t have reporting lines or bosses/managers. Each team member reports to the rest of the team as a whole (with the CEO having final say where a decision is necessary), and has a guide for one-on-one guidance, idea-bouncing and sharing in confidence. Each team member and guide get out of the office for an open one-on-one chat at least once a month. This is incredibly useful for uncovering anxieties and for celebrating wins.
• We set goals for the company/team for the year, and then each team member sets goals for three to six months (depending on what their role demands). These are written down on our wiki. (See below for next year’s goals.)
• We keep a close eye on training, we want to be sure everyone feels they’re learning something in their jobs.
• Finances are totally transparent to everyone on the team, including salary info. Everyone is expected to understand how we’re doing financially, and where they fit into our financial goals.
• We have had to actively encourage and ensure open discussion about tough issues: each others’ roles, moral/ethical differences regarding Paperight strategies, social impact vs financial priorities.
• We have to put in real effort to creating culture around tools: we’ve worked hard to keep people using the wiki, Trello (for project management), Skype for daily interaction, Google Docs, shared files and their backups, and email properly. This requires constant attention and maintenance but is always worth investing in.
• Shared vocabulary around productivity has been invaluable. In particular, we use the concepts of ‘shipping’ (getting something off your desk) and avoiding ‘thrashing’ and ‘lizard brain’ anxieties and procrastination — borrowed from Seth Godin’s superb talk on ‘Quieting the Lizard Brain’.
• Our shared vision, ‘Every book within walking distance of every home’ continues to be a key compass point for us, but it does need to be consciously raised from time to time, and actively integrated into our plans and metrics so that it doesn’t get treated as lip-service.
• Arthur relies on key members of the team to offer leadership as the team grows. These leaders emerge naturally.
• We’ve been incredibly lucky to have such a great time spirit, and we know that this is something we must nurture, for both our effectiveness and for our enjoyment of what we do.

Team/company goals for Paperight’s next year are much more focused on self-sustainability and impact than last year:

• We are on target (Y)
• 100K over Paperight’s cut of target = bonuses paid out to team members (Y)
• 500-University student survey (at UCT and US): 7/10 students have heard of Paperight (M-L)
• We’ve reached 5000 students in 50 schools for R500 000 (A)
• 2000 copies downloaded outside of CBDs (O)
• R2mil in turnover contributed to South African Businesses (including licenses to publishers and turnover at copyshops) (A)
• 10 outlets are a pleasure to by a book at (customer wants to come back) (Y)

The initials in brackets show who is primarily responsible for monitoring our performance against these goals during the year.

Exit/Sustainability/Viability

We will pitch again for further team infrastructure funding out of project funds, and stay on revenue target to be self-sustaining when that runs out.

Conclusion

This has been an excellent year: despite it being extremely hard work, with a mix of disappointments and frustrations, it had more successes and celebrations. This is only possible with a great team that feels secure.

Next steps

The current team will stay in place covered by future project funding.

This project is to extend two existing contracts, create two new positions based on new needs and priorities, and allow us to bring in more interns. In short, it’s a team refinement.

General report-back

This project set out to extend or create positions on the Paperight team:

• Content Manager (Tarryn’s contract extended)
• Communications Manager (Nick’s contract extended)
• Office manager/bookkeeper (new position)
• Outlet development manager (new position, modified from existing outlet relations manager)
• Interns (new, two per month)

Extending Nick and Tarryn’s contracts has been an unmitigated success. They’ve continued to produce superb work and to lead thinking in the Paperight team.

For our office manager we hired Dezre Little, who within a few months we gave the broader title of financial manager. Dezre is an incredible member of the team, keeping our finances super organised, driving the process of identifying and appying for awards and funding opportunities, and keeping the office ship shape.

The role of outlet development manager went to Yazeed Peters, who’d been on contract as an Outlets Manager for five months previously. Yazeed has gone from strength to strength, leading the development especially of our relationships with the Jetline and Minuteman Press chains, and establishing our model for bulk school purchasing and book sponsorship.

Our internship model has brought us three more amazing team members: Philippa Dewey as a second Content Manager, Oscar Masinyana, now Reading Communities Manager, and Marie-Louise Rouget, now Marketing Coordinator.

Objectives achieved

Our objectives were:

• new team structure more effective and streamlined
• continue building on strengths (such as Tarryn’s impressive content-prep systems, and Nick’s fine design and media work)
• new approaches to outlet development
• office manager frees up staff, especially Arthur, from admin to focus their energies on their core responsibilities

These objectives were all achieved.

Objectives not achieved

None.

Measures of success

Before: “We expect to see faster, more focused strategic decisions being made regarding outlets (growth of outlets and use of Paperight by existing outlets). Paperwork and admin will be up to date (nothing should lie unattended for more than a week).”

After: This has been achieved.

Before: “We would like to also see a twofold increase in outlet rate of growth and rate of conversion to paid use of Paperight from late September.”

After: The stats below show that we more than exceeded our targets, but it took more than four months (we didn’t set a timeframe for our measures of success). Note: two outliers do affect the figures: the registration of forty Jetline stores as a chain in June 2012 skews the outlet registrations in May to August 2012; and a single large bulk sale of books in March 2013 has a large effect on the average revenue for January to April.

May to August 2012 (before):

• Sales per month: $12.83
• Outlet registrations per month: 31.75 (spike when entire Jetline chain registered at once)
• Number of outlets starting to download paid books: 5 (average 1.25 per month)

September to December 2012 (immediately after):

• Sales per month: $22.45
• Outlet registrations per month: 3.25
• Number of outlets starting to download paid books: 3 (average 0.75 per month)

January to April 2013 (longer after):

• Sales per month: $78.23
• Outlet registrations per month: 11
• Number of outlets starting to download paid books: 13 (average 3.1 per month)

Before: “We would love to see, in addition, that this team can handle all customer support queries that come in.”

After: Achieved easily.

Budget

Original budget: R206500

Actual spend: R200681.87

Returned to pool: R5818.13

Item	Budget	Actual	Return to Pool	Comments
Content Manager	48000	48374.34	-374.24	PAYE and UIF
Communications Manager	42000	42374.45	-374.35	PAYE and UIF
Outlet Development Manager	42000	42374.45	-374.35	PAYE and UIF
Office Manager/Bookkeeper	42000	42374.34	-374.24	PAYE and UIF
Job Advertising	1000	0	1000
Laptops for ODM, OMB, Comms Manager	19500	18878.40	621.70
Interns	12000	6306	5694.10
TOTAL	206500	201595.87	5818.13

 

Outputs and deliverables

Pitched	Report
A new team structure and core job descriptions will be formalised.	Done. Areas of functional authority are kept for each team member on the Paperight wiki. Team members have reporting lines, which are intended to define ‘job coach’ relationships rather than task-based managerial relationships.
IP creation is minimal: contracts, job ads.	Done.
Team members will create IP including strategy docs and project plans, internal admin docs, media and PR docs, designs in posters, flyers, website elements, etc.	Ongoing. IP created is stored in our shared Dropbox folders, in Google Docs (paperight.com Google Apps accounts), and on our wiki, blog, and social media accounts.

 

Learnings

Paperight’s tightly knit, hard-working and productive team is the result of a careful choice of purpose-driven young people, and a supportive environment. As CEO, Arthur reads voraciously on management, and brings this learning to the team as constant, open experiments in running a team and building a business around that.

Exit/Sustainability/Viability

The team salaries will continue to be supported largely by Foundation funding while we worked towards self-sustainability in early 2015.

Conclusion

We have an excellent team that is continuing to grow in numbers and strength. This team spirit is self-sustaining in the way that a marriage is: as long as its members are willing to put in the work, every member of the team can contribute and be fulfilled doing do.

Next steps

The team is growing, so this is the first of a series of team-building projects at Paperight.