stuff/stevebanfield

Winning

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Evening (when you attach the photo)

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Evening

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End of #digitalhollywood day one

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Orange

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59-0

I’m really surprised when people complain about the New England
Patriots beating the Tennessee Titans 59-0 on Sunday. These guys are
supposed to be professionals. If you don’t want to lose 59-0 then
don’t let yourself lose 59-0. Nobody gives you any breaks. Go big or go home. Run with the big dogs or stay on the porch. Put up
or shut up. If you don’t want to lose 59-0 then stop them from scoring
or get your own team in the end zone. This isn’t pee-wee football
where everybody gets to carry the ball and the teams get milkshakes
after the game.

And if you think this post is only about football, you’re already
behind and the clock is ticking. The same thing is true with business.
If you don’t want to get blown out, then make something happen. There
are no guarantees you will win but how you lose says just as much
about you.

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Are You Playing to Win, Or Just Not to Lose?

Sitting here watching football has me thinking of the “prevent
defense”. John Madden once described it as only preventing the team
that deploys it from winning, though lots of teams still use it. There’s a startup version of the prevent defense: “playing not to
lose.” Second guessing your thinking, constantly waiting for more
feedback, another customer input, the next build, the next release.
You’re trying not to burn through your venture capital too quickly.
You’re trying to bring in the right folks, but not hire too soon. You
want to avoid the PR spotlight until after you’ve got all your
messaging and customer testimonials all locked down. It’s the “prevent
defense” of building a company.

I’m not suggesting a return to the spend like a drunken sailor models
of earlier startup eras I’m saying playing not to lose is a strategy
that will kill a company. Everyone — the team, the investors and the
customers — need to be energized and excited and playing not to lose
doesn’t do that. It’s an easy trap to fall into as you try to find the
right, best, unique plan for your company. So if playing not to lose is bad, what’s playing to win? It’s shipping
quickly and often, even if releases aren’t perfect. It’s hiring the
right team instead of trying to keep staff you have that aren’t the
best fit. It’s finding ways to rise above the PR noise and be talked
about despite a story that may be changing as you adapt to the market.
It’s believing that you’re working every day to win a customer, not
placate investors.

Screw the prevent defense. Do what works. Play to win. And if you
lose, you lose. If you are afraid of losing then don’t play in the
first place.

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Starting fresh & Finding the balance

This is the first “real” blog post I’ve made in a long time. One of
the things I’ve realized since taking over as CEO at Mixercast is that
not only do I need to communicate even more than before, but I’ve got
to over-communicate in new ways. Somebody may be reading this now saying “Over-communicate? You’re
about 4,000 tweets too late for that. You’re already there!” Maybe,
but is talking the same thing as saying something? Is hearing the same
thing as listening?

If you know me well, or even know me at all, you know communication
isn’t a weakness. I’m big, loud, outgoing, talkative. I’ve had to
learn over the years to try and not overpower conversations, to not
suck all the oxygen out of the room. Unfortunately when I took over I overcompensated and struggled to find
the balance in communicating with the team. Sometimes I’d try to
divert complex or controversial topics behind closed doors where it
just seemed like I was trying to over-manage the conversation. Other
times I stayed out of the way probably too much when stepping in with
clear communication might have saved a lot of time and confusion. I
was good one on one, and I was good with the whole team but in that
middle ground I struggled between trying to add valuable input and
stepping on the toes of my executives.

Right now at Mixercast we’re a little short handed as we’ve dealt with
the transition out of a few of our team members (silver lining —
we’re hiring so send me your resumes to steve.banfield@mixercast.com).
Combine that with the perfect storm of a bunch of vacations and it
meant I had to step in today to help project manage the last builds of
a key customer deliverable (more on that early next week!). It was
truly eye opening. I knew that as a team we weren’t communicating well but until today I
didn’t really get to experience that up close and in a personal way.
Deadline pressure and poor communication will eat up a team from the
inside faster than anything. Even in a small team the breakdowns in
communication were tripping us up. However it meant I got to see some
of our key folks in action more directly than I’d ever had a chance
to, and some team members finally felt comfortable enough to share
some of their feelings and feedback with me directly.

That feedback was so deeply appreciated and it sparked me starting to
write this post. Lots of things are going to change within and
without. This is the first real blog post I’ve made in a very long
time (tweets and reposts of viral videos don’t count in my mind), but
it won’t be the last. I used to think it didn’t make sense to write
because “who was going to read it anyway”? Between my 1,000s of
Facebook friends, Linkedin contacts, 2,000+ Twitter followers and the
employees, investors and customers at Mixercast I imagine someone will
read this and find something useful it in.

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The Cloud Consultant Spares No One - ReadWriteEnterprise

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