GLOBAL: LEADERSHIP LUNCH
Double act Josh O’Neill breaks bread with Harry Hortyn and Robert Phipps, co-founders of Oxford Summer Courses, the UK’s fastest-growing education organisation, who argue that two heads are better than one when it comes to running their business
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hey’re a blood-chilling sight, polycephalic creatures. “The key change in recent years has been Rob and I Ancient history books fable two-headed beasts transitioning from having our sleeves rolled up, working at of varying forms – snakes, dogs, lions, goats – the front of the business, to taking a step back and giving depending on the country in which their existence was people autonomy,” says Hortyn. “We’re clear with staff conjured up. But common threads run through such about the strategy, and try as hard as we can to allow them figments: they usually represent evil forces, are unruly to deliver their parts without micro-managing.” and can be cannibalistic. Because of these traits, they can It wasn’t always like this, though. He and Phipps launched OSC while holding down full-time jobs in impact offer an apt metaphor for business co-leaders who, it is investing and management consulting, respectively. “It often said, clash heads rather than come together as one. was scrappy,” he says. In the early days, Hortyn’s and David Martin & Company, a leadership consulting firm, Phipps’ roles and responsibilities were sprawling; their says that placing two people in a role in which there is typically one decision-maker “almost work ethics accordingly vigorous. They never works”. found themselves mucking in at all Still, there are anomalies. Harry Hortyn levels, taking a “hands-on” approach and Robert Phipps have been business to joint leadership that, with hindsight, We’re clear with partners and serial entrepreneurs since sometimes led to conflicting instructions and a cloudy vision of where the company school, where they co-founded a GSCE staff about the revision guide. They later launched a was heading. Staff delivered a dose of strategy, and try five-a-side football business before reality during a candid feedback session as hard as we securing undergraduate places at Oxford in 2016. can to allow them University. “We were both trying to co-manage to deliver their everyone,” recalls Hortyn, “occasionally While still at university in 2010, the duo, now 34, co-founded Oxford Summer giving them contradictory advice and parts without Courses (OSC), an educational travel instructions. We didn’t have a structured micro-managing business that each year places some 2,500 approach to targets. It worked out in the students from more than 100 countries end, but it meant heart palpitations for on short residential tuition courses in the team at the time. Oxford and Cambridge. The firm, which “We weren’t necessarily doing the is split 50/50 between Hortyn and Phipps, turned over management part very well. It was definitely a wake-up £9.3 million in 2019 after growing annual sales by 62% over call.” the three years leading up to last – and it has been profitable On Hortyn’s suggestion, I meet with him and Phipps one each year since inception. OSC’s enviable performance has early January afternoon at a Greek restaurant in London’s landed it on The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 list two years St James’s, just around the corner from my office on running; in 2019, the firm was ranked 50, by measure of Haymarket. The eatery’s à la carte menu is eye-wateringly expensive, but its three-course business lunch is more fastest-growing revenues. It is the UK’s quickest-growing than reasonable. I breathe a sigh of relief on behalf of my education firm, according to the index. finance director. As joint chief executives, Hortyn and Phipps are on a Hortyn and I are first to arrive. The stocky chief par with one another – and too many cooks don’t appear executive’s forehead is beaded in sweat – a byproduct of to have spoilt the broth. Indeed, they’ve developed a dish a jazz dance class he had attended with his wife just prior, so delicious that customers are queuing up for seconds. What are the main ingredients in the lifelong friends’ he tells me. We had met for the first time before Christmas recipe for success? at a co-working space in North London that OSC inhabits.
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EducationInvestor Global • March 2020
