| Broadstripe: Head Coach |
| Media-Entertainment | |
| Written by John Zorabedian | |
| Thursday, 31 January 2008 | |
 CEO Bill Shreffler takes leadership lessons from great football coaches to inspire his team to reach for excellence.  Bill Shreffler, CEO With a new management team assembled by Shreffler, a new equity backer, and a rebranded image, Broadstripe recently acquired the 50,000-subscriber James Cable of Michigan, reportedly worth $125 million, and will soon roll out a new phone service in partnership with Sprint. In football terms, Shreffler appears to have recovered a fumble and is coaching his team toward the end zone. “We are a much different company today than what Millenium was,” Shreffler said. “We saw that there was a considerable amount of internal, organic growth left in this business. Our penetration levels have room to move on video, high-speed data, and the promise of phone service.” Brand new The company’s new brand is not just a new name, which Shreffler coined in reference to the “broad stripes and bright stars” line of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The new brand comes with a company slogan: We’re on a mission. “We thought it would be a great opportunity for all of us to embrace the new day with a new name,” Shreffler said. “When we say that we’re on a mission, the goal is to help our customers understand what our internal mission means to them, by providing them with great customer services and great technologies.” The new mission statement of the company has four key points: taking care of customers, taking care of each other as teammates, doing what the company says it will do, and celebrating successes along the way. To be able to quickly compete at the highest level, Shreffler built on the existing management group and added several industry veterans as key position players culled from his experience in the cable industry, including his time at Suddenlink, Charter Communications, and Continental Cablevision. “We’ve been very successful growing revenue and cash flow following this formula in the past,” he said. “The key is getting the new team to embrace the vision, learn the playbook, get comfortable with each other and model an ‘I can’ attitude.” Shreffler and his management team hold frequent informal meetings, eschewing as much as possible the Blackberry. “We try to communicate as much as we possibly can, and we’re constantly huddling,” he said. “We huddle up on an issue, we talk about what we need to fix a problem, we reach a quick consensus, we break the huddle, and we go out and do it.” Motivational master The great motivational leader Vince Lombardi, the storied coach of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers that dominated the league in the late 1950s and early 1960s, epitomizes excellence. Shreffler looks to Lombardi’s dedication to excellence to motivate his team. “Lombardi had a phrase, ‘the quality of a person’s life is directly proportional to their commitment to excellence,’” Shreffler said. “I always speak to that with my teammates. I tell them to be committed to excellence in everything they do, and the quality of their entire life will be better.” Broadstripe has a motivational program in place called the Broadstripe Champions, in which each regional unit of the company competes every month to beat goals in key performance indicators, such as revenue and cash flow. The contest extends over a three-year period, culminating in the Super Bowl in 2010. “It’s an overriding motivational program,” Shreffler said. “It’s a lot more than just going to work every day. It gives people a chance to have something to cheer about and have fun with.” Last August, Shreffler rented the football stadium at Michigan State University and hired football Hall-of-Fame tight end Jackie Smith, who played for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1963 to 1977, to speak to employees. “I ran everybody through the tunnel out into the stadium,” Shreffler said. Each employee wore a football jersey with the company logo on the front and their name on the back. Afterward, the company gathered for a meeting and then a party at the stadium. “I try to inject motivation as much as possible. I like to get people fired up. I’ve found if you get people fired up, they’re ready to run through walls with you,” he said. Shreffler also points to the example of the New England Patriots, who this season completed the first undefeated regular season in 35 years. Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick motivates his team to achieve excellence on every play. “Being committed to that level of excellence, suddenly those guys are at 18-0,” Shreffler said in the week before the Super Bowl. “We call it winning one transaction at a time. If as a company we try to be excellent in every transaction we do, we’ll be undefeated.” |
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© 2008 American Executive - RedCoat Publishing. All rights reserved.
American Executive is a RedCoat Publishing publication.
American Executive is a RedCoat Publishing publication.
