OBJECTIVE

To find out the viability of the head start program being taken over by Acelero learnings and whether it is able to drive an organisation from a culture of effort to a culture of performance.

CASE ANALYSIS
Head Start program, a non-profit initiative of the federal government of US was established by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), which was designed to meet the emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs of pre-school children from low income families. Being a non-profit organisation it was hard pressed for funds for proper enrolment of the children below the poverty line and other mismanagement issues. Seeking an opportunity from the blues of Head Start, Aaron Lieberman, earlier an employee with Head Start founded Acelero Learning, a forprofit firm to provide consulting and technical assistance to the Head Start Programs. He considered going for a for-profit firm instead of the initial non-profit organization mainly for two reasons - firstly, to attract the mission driven people who could make both financial and social returns on the time invested, and secondly, to have a healthy relationship with real investors who could share the financial risk of success or failure. Acelero Learning figured out model in which he payed the teachers more and increased the use of technology. An appreciable step taken by Aaron was the appointment of family advocate to cater to the need of non educational need of the children to provide them an overall developed personality.

STRENGTHS OF ACELEROS MODEL

Shaping the behaviour of the employees through positive reinforcement by establishing effective performance management system (PMS). Major strategies adopted were effective selection process and fine tuning of skill to better match up with the incumbents ability of the employees. Focus on overall development of the poor children, not only on their education but non-educational aspects also. Effective motivation of family advocates becoming technology savvy to implement the childplus plan. Computerised database of all the children enrolled in the program called the management by information system (MBI), facilitated family advocates upgrading the information and feedback about a particular child which saved time and energy of the employees. Real time accurate data management made every single person accountable for his work which helped them maintain interest in their work. The structure was such that it helped to build healthy relationship between the teachers and parents.

SHORTCOMINGS OF ACELERO LEARNING

Excess of everything is bad. Similarly overburden of the work load pressure to meet the target by the employees was increasing day by day that lead to reduction in their efficiency and effectiveness of their work. Employees were taken out of their comfort zone and the difficulty spectrum of their work was increased so much by introducing new and advanced task which made them so anxious that they couldnt focus properly on their target achievement. The student enrolment ratio also started declining due to unwillingness of low performing family advocates to spend long working hours. Acelero started focusing too much on impact, profit and success of its program. Instead of development of every childs need to the fullest, its focus shifted towards more and more enrolment of new children. Even the launch of summer program was not accepted by the employees in good spirit.

Managerial implications
An effective manager should build up an individuals confidence and selfesteem through reinforcement of the results they achieve related to both the abilities and efforts. Specify the behaviours that an individual displays to achieve his/her goals, reinforce the importance of future efforts and let them understand how this effort will prove to be a pillar of success for becoming top performers. The manager should act as a facilitator and motivator to take the employees out of their comfort zones and acquire the competency zone in terms of their difficulty spectrum.

Conclusion
Although Acelero learning transformed Head Start into a for-Profit organisation but profit should not be the only sole motive of a social welfare organisation such as Acelero, rather it should be coupled with an employee centric environment and focus should not be deviated from a childs all round development to over- brimming enrolment .