You Won! Now What?
Startups, like baseballs teams,
can expect to experience victories and defeats along the road to success.
Responding strategically to your company's triumphs can be more important than
bouncing back from defeats.
There's an old Haitian
expression that translates roughly to: "beyond the mountains, more
mountains," which I think should be the everyday motto of all good
entrepreneurs because it's a spot-on description of the basic fact of life in a
startup. The battle never really ends, iteration and constant forward motion
are critical to any real success, momentary "success" is just a way
station in the struggle and there's absolutely no finish line. My experience is
that every time you think you can take a break, catch your breath, or that
you've reached the top, is actually the time when the real climbing begins.
This is not exactly a Sisyphean exercise because it's neither pointless,
eternally frustrating, or free of any real progress-- that's just the way it
can feel sometimes.
Every once in a while, though, you actually do pull off a huge
win, a game-changing triumph, or the sale to end all sales. But then the
question of how you and your people handle those highs will be just as critical
as your ability to handle bumps in the road and hard times that also come with
the territory. What you do after you win a big one is important to moving the
business ahead and keeping the team together and focused on the next few
hurdles. It's even more important than how good you are at picking yourself up
off the floor and getting back in the game after getting punched a few times by
a client or a competitor-- or one of your own folks. Especially when, as Steely
Dan sung, you've got to Do It Again.
In Chicago, no one's had a bigger recent victory than the Cubs
in winning the World Series after a mere 108 years. I had the chance to sit
down recently with several senior members of the Cubs organization to ask them
how they've tried to handle being champions. Some of the basic ideas and
approaches we discussed are certainly worth sharing. I've noted that the Cubs'
turnaround journey is like the trials and tribulations of a startup in many
ways and the resemblance remains clear even in the new season. (See How the Cubs, a 140-Year Old
Baseball Team, Operate Like a Startup.)
Here are a few of the
most salient ideas to keep in mind:
1 Take Some Time to Celebrate
and Say Thanks
Entrepreneurs generally enjoy the process and the journey more
than the celebration and the hoopla at the end of the path. This is due at
least in part because they always retain the knowledge (and stomach-churning
fear) that any success is fleeting and can disappear or be overtaken just as
quickly as it is sometimes secured. As a result, they run scared. They also
don't understand that not everyone in the place is like them. So, they focus on
getting right back to work. (See Why Entrepreneurs are
Really Terrible at Saying Thank You.) However far you've come, the trip has been tough on everyone,
with sacrifices being made in varying degrees all around. So it's important to
acknowledge the win, the effort that it took to get there, and to give everyone
and their families time to bask in the spotlight before getting back to business
and starting to climb the next mountain.
2 Don't Move the Goal Posts Too
Far Too Fast
In the heat and excitement of success it's easy to get too full
of yourself, too aggressive in your plans, and too far out over your skis.
Aiming high never hurts because feasibility will compromise you soon enough,
but no one gets to heaven in a heartbeat these days. Everything takes longer
than you think--although the long run is often shorter than we expect given the
accelerating rate at which technologies are changing our lives. Good things
simply don't happen overnight. A baseball season, especially at the start, can
look like it's gonna last forever. So setting some early, modest hurdles is not
a bad idea, before everyone starts talking about going for the gold. A little
caution and some patience and maybe jogging a bit before racing headlong ahead
into the mists makes a lot of sense and leads consistently to better outcomes.
(See Slow Down, It Might Save Your
Business.) "Does it
better" always beats "does it first." The last thing you want is
a disaster on your way to building your dynasty.
3 New Numbers Are Not Enough--
People Need a New Vision
The right metrics always matter, but no one ever invested
financially or emotionally in a set of numbers. If you want them to sign up for
the ride they need to believe and buy into a story about the next journey and
be shown a realistic path to get there. Pie in the sky doesn't win pennants.
The path doesn't have to be certain or easy. You can talk as much about the
players' contributions and commitments as about what the team is going to
achieve, but the message has to come through loud and clear. One thought that
crosses the plate is better than three left on base. True motivation comes from
inspiration, which comes from within. (See Trying to Motivate Your
Employees? Forget It.) And while the
message is gonna vary in every case, the fundamental content is almost always
the same: it always has a lot less to do with more and much more to do with better. Because better beats more every time.
It's not enough to be good if you could be better and it's not enough to be
very good if you could be great.
4 Don't Play It Safe-- Failure
is a Fundamental Part of the Process
I've discussed every
aspect of failure in this blog and how it bears on startups. In baseball, even
the best hitters fail 7 out of 10 times. So, failure is a given and a necessary
evil that everyone needs to get comfortable with. The key is to build a
resilient culture that gives your team permission to fail without accepting
failure as a given. Playing it safe-- trying to avoid mistakes or being
embarrassed-- isn't a formula that works for anyone these days. In many young
businesses and in businesses with young players and employees, too many folks
start out depending on talent alone. You can do that in the minors, but as you
"grow up" in sports or in any other line of work, the mental game is
every bit as important as the physical skills and talents. Only the players who
master both sides of the equation become all-stars in the long run. Failing
early and figuring out how to handle it is a much better approach than risk
avoidance, which basically limits your upside opportunities without really
providing any downside protection. Playing it safe today is risky.