Case Study
How Clear Deadlines Gave Co-founders Freedom to Build What's Next
For ten years, this curriculum publisher ran on talented people and founders who held it all together. To grow, they had a choice: keep running everything through their co-founders or build a way of working the team could own. They chose Guided, and the co-founder is now free to focus on growth.
95%
of leader time focused on growth
6 months
of work visible at a glance
440
projects tracked
"This does require a time commitment, but I can tell that the systems we are putting in place are already giving me better insight into the business and will help our team to be more independent, productive, and clear in their work.
I am already seeing the benefit of getting out of the weeds to focus on what only I can do."
— Noelle Pickering, Co-Founder
ABOUT THE COMPANY
Maneuvering the Middle creates student-centered math resources and curriculum for teachers and students, from grades 6 through Algebra 1. The resources are aligned and rigorous, so teachers have one less thing on their to-do list and more time to teach. The team believes a teacher who cares alongside engaging materials can't be beat in the classroom.
Maneuvering the Middle is part of MTM Education, which is now building a second business line, Forge Math. Forge Math is a direct-to-consumer homeschool math curriculum for grades 5 through Pre-Algebra, with video lessons taught by real math teachers, a student workbook, and online grading.
INDUSTRY
Education & eCommerce
TEAM SIZE
10 employees
LOCATION
Arlington, Texas
Noelle Pickering
Co-Founder
Michael Pickering
Co-Founder
THE CHALLENGE
Noelle Pickering started out as a classroom teacher. She loved creating math resources for her students. The resources made her job easier, and her students felt more successful. So she began sharing them online to help other teachers do the same. Over time, that grew into Maneuvering the Middle, a platform that serves schools and districts. Noelle and her co-founder, Michael, now run it together.
As the business grew, so did the team. People took on different responsibilities. The company was then getting ready to launch Forge Math, a new direct to consumer business line with a physical product and an online component. Maneuvering the Middle was ready to scale.
Information was there, but finding it was difficult
But there was no shared system. There was not even a shared word for what a task was!
Day to day, requests arrived as Slack messages, often with a "when you're free" in place of a deadline. One team member called it "an avalanche of Slack messages all day long."
Information was everywhere. Comments piled up in Google Docs. Curriculum data lived in Airtable. Customer support used yet another tool, Help Scout.
The business was relying on one person's brain to operate
The system that kept everything together wasn't a system at all, it was the co-founder, Noelle's, brain. Michael put it best when he said the curriculum process was "being held together by the details in Noelle's head." Noelle was the go-between for everyone, and the questions all came to her.
The team itself was never the problem. They were driven and did great work. As Noelle put it, "Everyone was efficient in their own way, but as an organization, we were inefficient."
Two things made fixing it urgent. The company had just made two new hires, and Michael explained the problem: "It's very hard to bring people into an organization if there are no systems or processes to onboard them with." Noelle was also planning Forge Math, and she knew the way they worked would not survive the new business line and growth to follow.
"A lot of my day-to-day was being the person who connected everyone in our business. I was the go-between, and a lot of people were asking questions of me. Our team is really driven. I feel very fortunate to have such phenomenal people. […]
I knew the systems we currently had would not survive the new business line. We have to do something now, or else this whole project will fail. I can't hold it together anymore."
— Noelle Pickering, Co-Founder
THE APPROACH
The co-founders knew operations was a weak spot for about six months before they decided to enroll in ProcessDriven's Guided program. After calls with a lot of consultants and past experience hiring a prior ClickUp consultant that was less-than-stellar, Noelle realized the company needed a system to build on, not just a new tool.
Noelle wanted an expert who specialized in operations for small teams. Then she came across Layla at ProcessDriven’s YouTube videos on content organization. After watching about 20 videos, she was confident she’d found one. Michael, her co-founder, wanted someone who “knows how to ask the right questions that we’re not asking right now.”
No time for trial-and-error; this had to work
The timing left little room for error. Summer is the company's busiest season, so the new system had to be running before June 1st. They needed this intervention to work, there wasn't time for trial-and-error or mishires.
Noelle and Michael began the program alongside two team leaders.
Defining team-wide rules for better collaboration
In Guided, the project did not start with software adjustments. It started with a shared language. Everyone learned what a task was, and that every task needs a deadline. That mattered more than it sounds. Before, asking a teammate for a date felt like imposing, so requests came with no real timing. Now, nothing moved forward without a clear due date.
Their coach rolled their task system out in stages and gave homework between sessions. When the coach jokingly asked if the work felt like being thrown to the wolves, one team member said it was the first real chance to learn by doing: “This is like the first real learning curve of, okay, now get in there and use it, which I think is the most helpful. I think it’s exciting. I think we’re seeing a lot of benefits.”
Process mapping their signature business function
During the second call, the team worked through process mapping their new curriculum development process. They went step-by-step, from spotting a market opportunity to sending files to the printer. Along the way, they covered the kickoff meeting, vendor contracts, lesson revisions, video production, and the handoff to the publisher.
Before Guided, much of that had never been written down. For the first time, the whole scope sat on one page. About a week later, their coach had turned the complex map into a tailored ClickUp structure. This would have taken the team hours (if not weeks!) to DIY. They installed it in just a few clicks into their existing workspace.
Making it stick
Their coach set up a shared Toolbox for the team's processes and how-to guides, so what people knew stopped living in their heads. The team also picked up a habit that mattered more than any tool. When something goes wrong, write it down before fixing it, then decide how to prevent it next time.
The week Noelle and Michael were away showed why. Michael had assumed someone else already had enough access to their key tools. So when an outside party reported something was broken, only the co-founders could fix it. Michael had to step in, even without internet! He was glad the gap surfaced. “We need somebody besides the two of us,” he said. The team then set out to give someone else access to key tools and to check what else only the co-founders could reach. Now, the business keeps running when the co-founders are away.
The final call put that to the test. Their coach tested the team with real scenarios, like a typo on a published lesson, a new hire, and a time-off request. The team decided where each one belonged. By the end, they had shown they were a team prepared for whatever came next.
Simple changes made such a huge difference
When the project first began, their coach said everything they would learn was “rather simple.” Noelle is honest that changing the way a team works is difficult, but the team had “support, training, and someone to encourage us along the way.”
Looking back "she was right [about it being simple]," Noelle said. The team now relies on "a tried and true system," and that gives her "confidence to continue."
"Through working with [ProcessDriven Guided], we mapped a custom process. We were doing product development, with an online side and a physical workbook, so it required a lot of content creation. We're talking probably 2,000 pages across all the grade levels…
When we mapped the process, that was super helpful for us to see the whole scope of the project. [Now that we have the software template based on our process map]
I look at that every day. I don't have to ask for an update. I don't have to wonder."
— Noelle Pickering, Co-Founder
OUTCOMES
The real test was whether the new habits would hold once the program ended. Months later, they have! The impact Guided had on them was clear. At first, the team followed the new routines because Noelle asked. Now, they can see why the routines matter. Simply by adding new systems, the team had been transformed! It now feels like a different team than the one that used to lean on Noelle's memory to fill the gaps. Over time, the systems only became more powerful.
Here are some of the key results of the project:
Co-founder can now focus on growth — After years of spending the majority of her time caught in the weeds of project management, Noelle now shares that she spends about 95% of her time on new growth initiatives, while team leaders run the existing business.
Shared rules for work — Every task now has a deadline. Teammates no longer feel like they are imposing when they ask for one. How work happens was clearly defined.
Leaders overview in one tab — Requests now reach leaders in a single spot instead of arriving at different times in different places. Co-founders no longer worry about forgetting or missing something.
Clear picture of the workload — The work assigned to each person is now visible every day. If work piles up, it's easy to see that happen and adjust for each team member.
Year-long product build, tracked end-to-end — The project covers about 2,000 pages and 440 lessons. One workspace shows where each piece stands, and the team can see about six months ahead.
Team time off is no longer a scramble — There is now a policy for how to handle vacations and out-of-office. Work is reviewed in advance and adjusted so it's not piling up.
Team improves processes automatically — Months after the program, team members started building new tools and noticing processes nobody had named. They're making things better each day, without prompting.
"Everyone feels more clear in their role," Noelle said. "So it just allows everyone to work together better."
"As a founder, I had one source of truth to go see what I needed to take care of, and one way for people to request help from me. I didn't have to check Slack messages. Things would come in at different times, but now it was all captured in one place.
I felt a big sigh of relief. I'm not going to forget anything, because it's all there."
— Noelle Pickering, Co-Founder
LASTING IMPACT
The clearest shift wasn't a tool. It was the team learning to trust a shared system instead of one person's memory. Before, requests could get buried in a Slack thread, and a lot of questions went to the co-founders. Now the answer lives in one place, and team members have started spotting processes on their own. "You go to do something," Noelle said, "and you realize, oh, actually, that is a process."
The real test came after the program ended. The company took on its biggest project yet, a year-long product build with about 2,000 pages of content, all while the existing business kept running! It is more complex than anything the old way of working could have handled. As Noelle put it, "The operational foundation [ProcessDriven] helped us develop made it possible to launch a second brand without slowing down the first."
This time, the work keeps moving, and the co-founders are not the only ones holding it together. Michael is not worried about the team slipping back. "Once a process is given," he said, "our team does a really good job of keeping that in place." That is the difference a real system makes. It does not stop hard stretches from happening. It lets the team see what is coming, about six months ahead, and handle it together.
Noelle feels the difference in her own role. Not long ago, she said, "I can't hold it together anymore." Now her team can see the work, own it, and keep it moving, so she has room for the work only she can do. The tools may change someday. But the shared language, the clear deadlines, and the habit of writing processes down will stay.
"Forge Math is a new business line with new marketing and a new technology platform. There are so many things that are new.
I have been able to spend 95% of my time on this new business line.
Before, I was in the nitty-gritty of the other business line. Now our team leaders are managing it well, which allows me to step out. Before, things were coming to me, or it was unclear who was responsible for what."
— Noelle Pickering, Co-Founder
To wrap our discussion, we asked the team what advice they'd give to other small businesses in their former position.
"As a founder, it is very hard to feel like you're stopping to take the time to improve your internal operations. Personally, that felt really hard. I don't know that we would have done it if we didn't see it as an obstacle to new growth.
You have to stop and clean up your organization so that you can grow.
Think of it differently. You're not losing focus on the other parts of the business. At the end of the program, your business is in such a better place that it feels crazy to think you wouldn't have done this. I do recognize it's a lot of time. But it allows you to grow and scale as an organization, to be more effective, to serve your customers better, to lead better."
— Noelle Pickering, Co-Founder
