People.
Figure out how to get people to want to show up on Monday morning. It’s not pizza, it’s not t-shirts, it’s not going out for drinks after work. It’s contributing to things that matter and make a difference. People will be more engaged and for longer periods of time if they know they’ll be able to look back and say “I did that.”
Figure out how to give them an environment that provides that for them.
The strongest teams I’ve ever worked with are the one’s that have been deep in the crap and have learned to count on each other. If you’re leading a team like that, or built a team like that, never let them descend into pointing fingers at each other. That depends on you – stay away from questions or statements that make people feel as though they need to defend themselves and blame someone else to do it.
Values.
Culture: be ruthless about it. It’s not the drinks we do together, the parties we throw nor the celebrations we have when we overcome a major challenge. It’s the lines we draw that we absolutely will not cross, even in the toughest times when it would be easier to look the other way. It’s what we do everyday without fail because if we cross these lines or fail to follow through, our clients, our co-workers, our family, immediately see the incongruity and lose trust in us.
Maximize shareholder value in the long term by maximizing customer value in the short term. Keeping this at the forefront of discussions enables us to make solid, long-term discussions. It allows us to consider not just immediate issues, but follow-on issues as well. It’s long-term thinking vs short-term thinking.
Other Stuff.
I was the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of ChannelLauncher. Started in mid-2011, we provided a-la-carte subscription video streaming services to verticals such as home fitness, education, MMA, indie music, and more. ChannelLauncher was like a SaaS Netflix. We were funded by a great team at Gazelle Lab, part of the TechStars Network. We launched at CES in 2012 with our first content partner and brought some great content to market.
Before that I was the Digital Innovation Strategist with Cox Target Media where I worked on digital strategy and new products. I also consulted with companies to assist them with developing new product concepts, new business models and the people and teams to make it all happen.
I was also the Co-Founder and President of Information Technology & Operations for iThinkWorks, WISEOZ.com and BusinessHelpingBusiness.com. With good reviews from KillerStartups.com, Mashable and others, we came close to finding our niche. As the cost of customer acquisition spiked, we had to kill the products. I’ve spent sixteen years in Information Technology as a Developer, DBA and Project Manager before moving to the New Media Group where I worked on digital strategy and new product development for Cox Target Media.
I briefly joined IBM’s Global Services in the late 90’s, and worked with PepsiCo to improve business continuity and operating efficiencies by leveraging the latest technologies available from HP, Sun, Oracle and SQLServer.
In 1994, I began one of the first on-line support systems reaching over eighty front line technical support analysts. Incorporating both text and video, the system was instrumental in the rollout of a new nationwide point-of-sale solution for PepsiCo. During my tenure with Pepsi I was involved with several projects aimed at system consolidation and resource optimization. The experiences and knowledge gained from these projects would be used years later in leveraging faster, cheaper equipment, while providing business critical functionality at greatly reduced costs.
