Capstone has evolved and it’s in a strong place heading into 2026 - Sales Capstone Publishers Employee Review

Strong products trusted by educators and parents. Open and honest transparency from leadership. Collaborative teams. Great benefits and conscientious HR team. Strong senior leaders.

Communication flows still need work on department decisions. Resistance to change by some of the long term employees.

Depending on the department, middle management is supportive but lacks the backing of senior/executive leadership to enact beneficial change

1. Perception over performance is the focus. As long as employees play the part and are agreeable, no one pays attention. Once you begin calling out issues that require change, your label as a difficult employee is set. 2. The loudest people are the people listened to. Employees don’t speak up for fear of retaliation. 3. Burnout and overwork is praised. Majority of employees have to take on an unrealistic work capacity, and unless individuals are willing to work outside of the contracted 40 hour work week there is not an opportunity to complete the work and be successful. 4. All work is based on reactivity and chaos. There is an extreme lack of systems in place to establish process, responsibilities, and ownership of tasks. Almost every task or project is considered a “fire” and employees must drop everything to complete. Prioritization does not exist. 5. Fear is the primary driver of business decisions. Loss of potential customers initiates decisions that directly contradict stated company values. 6. Numerous executive leadership changes within a short span of time and little to no initiative to communicate with underlying departments to understand the work each team performs, the capacity to perform the work, and resources required for success. 7. Concerning reliance on AI to develop company wide initiatives without discussing with each team their goals to ensure cohesiveness between expectation and reality of team capacity and resources.