WKT Publishing Growth Engine

Functional Structure & Strategic Rationale

EOS Accountability Chart — March 2026

Current State: The Problem

The root cause: We asked one person to manage a $1.2M+ ad budget across 8 SKUs without the strategic framework, execution discipline, or automation infrastructure to succeed.

Manifesto Foundation: The "Sell" Context

From Manifesto: A Reflection on Leadership and Clarity (December 2025):

"Sell governs how the company competes in open markets: environments with customer choice, alternatives, price fluidity, and a focus on efficiency. Its defining characteristic is optionality; customers can walk away, competitors can undercut, and demand can shift. This reality shapes all work within this context."

The core question Sell must answer: "Should we compete here — and if so, how do we win efficiently?"

This structure embodies those principles:

From the Org Blueprint (February 2026), the Publishing leadership profile requires:

• Commercial instinct — sees opportunity and acts on it
• Data-driven decision-making — lives in dashboards
• Portfolio management — comfortable killing underperformers
• Speed over perfection — ships and iterates
• AI-forward — leverages automation as competitive advantage

This accountability chart is designed to find and enable leaders with exactly those traits.

The Solution: Three Functions, Not One

The current role is actually three distinct functions that require different skill sets, working together as an integrated team:

This structure solves the Devesh problem: He was one person trying to do three jobs. We're building the team that should have existed from the start.

Proposed Accountability Chart

How This Structure Solves the Current Problems

1. Allocation Discipline & Portfolio Management

The Problem: No SKU-level guardrails. Danatec overspent $170K in 2025. High-revenue SKUs under-supported, low performers over-funded.

The Solution:

• GM owns capital allocation framework (18% of revenue per SKU guideline)
• Head of Growth recommends which SKUs to invest, harvest, or kill based on performance
• Performance Manager executes weekly budget pacing, escalates variances >5%
• Marketing Ops builds real-time dashboard so allocation decisions are data-driven

2. Testing & Messaging Framework

The Problem: No structured A/B testing. Campaigns running without validation. Cross-brand learnings not captured.

The Solution:

• Head of Growth owns testing roadmap (messaging, offers, audiences) across all SKUs
• Performance Manager executes tests in-platform, reports results weekly
• Marketing Ops captures learnings in centralized system, applies winners across lanes

3. Structural Campaign Fixes

The Problem: 80% Search Lost IS on Danatec. Junk conversion signals. 25% traffic misrouted. Performance Max structure broken.

The Solution:

• Performance Manager is hired specifically for hands-on platform mastery — this is their full-time focus
• First 30 days: fix Danatec structure, clean conversion tracking, optimize bid strategies
• Head of Growth provides strategic air cover (approves pauses, budget shifts, priority calls)

4. Owned Channel Activation

The Problem: 250K RAPID database records generating ~0% of revenue. Email, SEO, social underutilized. Over-reliant on paid demand capture.

The Solution:

• Marketing Ops owns RAPID activation: segmentation, lifecycle campaigns, recertification reminders, upsell sequences
• Marketing Services (Content team) creates organic content strategy, blog posts, thought leadership
• Goal: Email contributes 15-20% of revenue by EOY (vs. 0% today)
• AI generates content at scale (email copy, blog drafts, nurture sequences) — Content team reviews and polishes
• Reduces dependency on paid ads, improves margin, diversifies revenue channels

6. Creative & Web Production

The Problem: Campaign creative and web builds were outsourced ($80K Brandish contract for WKT.ca alone). Slow turnaround, expensive, dependency risk.

The Solution:

• Marketing Manager owns brand, creative, and web strategy internally
• Content & Production creates copy, case studies, blog posts (AI-assisted drafting)
• Front-End Dev & Web builds sites (WKT.ca, storefronts, landing pages), deploys campaigns
• Serves both engines: Publishing (95% — campaign creative, SKU messaging) + Institutional (5% — WKT.ca, event collateral)
• Faster turnaround, full control, no external dependencies, lower cost long-term

5. Governance & Visibility

The Problem: Blended ROAS masks SKU-level failures. No weekly pacing discipline. No clear accountability for spend variances.

The Solution:

• Marketing Ops builds executive dashboard: SKU scorecards, ROAS by channel, budget pacing, attribution
• Performance Manager reports weekly pacing to Head of Growth (variance <5% = green light, >10% = escalation)
• Head of Growth runs monthly performance reviews with GM (what's working, what to kill, where to reallocate)
• GM has real-time visibility into portfolio performance — can make fast, confident decisions

The AI Layer: How 3 People Do the Work of 15

This isn't just about adding headcount. It's about building a force-multiplier infrastructure that allows a small team to operate at massive scale.

What Marketing Ops & AI Orchestrator Builds:

Result: Traditional marketing team = 10-15 people (strategist, media buyers, email marketer, analysts, content writers, automation specialist). This team = 3 people + AI doing equivalent work.

Team Composition: Two Arms of Marketing

The Publishing marketing function operates as two complementary arms:

How they work together:

• Head of Growth requests creative from Marketing Services (ad variants, landing pages, email assets)
• Marketing Services provides performance insights to Growth Marketing (what messaging is resonating)
• Both teams collaborate on launches (CIRO, LLQP — Growth handles strategy/media, Services handles creative/web)
• Marketing Ops provides AI content drafts → Content & Production reviews and polishes

Key Roles Defined

Implementation Timeline

Why This Beats the Alternative (External Agency Model)

3-year savings: ~$1M+ while building permanent, scalable capability.

Strategic Alignment: Manifesto → Blueprint → This Structure

From the Manifesto (December 2025):

"Sell governs how the company competes in open markets... Its defining characteristic is optionality: customers can walk away, competitors can undercut, and demand can shift. This reality shapes all work within this context."

This structure embodies that principle:

• GM makes portfolio decisions with commercial discipline (kill underperformers, invest in winners)
• Head of Growth applies competitive strategy across 8 SKUs
• Performance Manager optimizes for efficiency (ROAS, CAC, conversion)
• Marketing Ops diversifies channels (reduces reliance on paid ads, activates owned assets)

From the Org Blueprint (February 2026):

"Publishing's core competency isn't any single vertical — it's the ability to commercialize training content at scale. The playbook is repeatable: take a SKU, open a lane, apply marketing/sales/support across retail, SCORM, and channel."

This structure enables that scalability:

• Lanes, not divisions: R&D ships new SKUs → Head of Growth opens new lane → Performance Manager applies proven playbook
• No organizational restructuring required: Same 3-person team can manage 8 SKUs today, 12 SKUs next year (AI does the scaling)
• Revenue-aligned: Marketing + Sales report to one GM with one P&L (no silos)

Next Steps

1. Leadership Alignment: Review this structure with Glenn/Sue/Nicole — confirm the accountability model fits EOS framework
2. Role Prioritization: Which role to hire first? (Recommendation: Head of Growth, then Performance Manager, then Marketing Ops)
3. Job Descriptions: Draft detailed JDs for each role (responsibilities, metrics, interview tests)
4. Hiring Timeline: Target April start for first two roles, May for third
5. Emergency Measures: What do we do in March while hiring? (Budget caps, pause underperformers, document current state)
6. Budget Approval: Confirm revised $2.29M budget vs. original $2.48M Brandish model

This is the Template

Publishing is Engine 1 of 4. This document establishes the pattern that will be replicated for:

Each engine will receive the same rigor:

1. Connect to Manifesto principles (what context governs this work)
2. Align with Org Blueprint leadership profile (what kind of leader this requires)
3. Analyze current state (what's broken, what's the cost)
4. Design accountability structure (roles, seats, responsibilities)
5. Build implementation roadmap (hiring, timeline, quick wins)
6. Define cross-engine coordination (governance, handoffs, escalation rules)

Sofia Aziz's engagement will complete this work, building Institutional, Enterprise, and Labs structures using this Publishing document as the template.

Document Library

For Sofia's kickoff: Read all four documents in order (Manifesto → Blueprint → Publishing → Throughline) to understand the full context before beginning the accountability chart exercise.

Prepared by Kay — WKT Publishing Growth Structure — March 2026

Part 1 of 4: The Template for Sofia Aziz's EOS Accountability Chart Engagement