A VC in Vacationland

You cannot just be a CEO, focused on executing your business plan and keeping your investors happy.  You must also be a coach for your team.

Think about it.  Coaches motivate their teams before, during and after games.  You are now the coach of your team and you need to be sure your team is correctly motivated through both the good and bad times.  To do this, you, like any other coach will need a game plan–most likely your business plan, plus a well thought out plan to deal with contingencies as they arise–and you will need to execute against your plans, not keep changing details at the last minute, which will only serve to frustrate and confuse your team.

Sports teams lose games for numerous reasons, with poor game and/or contingency plans high on the list.  Companies fail for many reasons, but the inability of a CEO to rally a team around executing a well-designed business plan is high on the list of factors.

Did you watch the US play the Czech soccer team in the 2006 World Cup?  The US players lost interest after about five minutes and a few Czech goals.  They knew that they were getting a bad beating , and the coach had no contingency plan to help them get beyond their short term adversities.

Don’t let this happen to your players.  Her are a few suggestions on how to prep your players:

Frequent team meetings–people want to know what is going on. They work better when they feel part of the team.  Have more all-team meetings where you discuss the key aspects of the business–what’s working and what’s not.  Do some collective brainstorming at the meetings to work on the problem areas. Solicit input from your people in between meetings via informal lunch sessions.

Mini-teams–Startups are usually short of people and tend to assign one person to one area, like sales. Wrong.  With sales in particular, all senior professionals should have a hand in selling. Similarly, don’t let the new product guys go off on their own to define product road maps. Set up cross-functional mini teams for your most important priorities, such as getting customer support involved with the upcoming product release to make sure you meet or exceed client expectations. Such teams dramatically improve the likelihood of successful outcomes in a resource constrained environment.

One-on One Coaching–CEO’s often treat the startup world as a collective "sink or swim" environment.  They do not make the time (or have the desire) to coach a fellow founder or senior employee who may not be performing.  Either coach them , or part ways.  Letting them hang around and reduce team moral is a lot worse then working out an amicable settlement.

So, be a CEO and a coach. You will find that your people will be more productive and successful if they are "on the team".