By Bill Buff
Opening day in Washington is right around the corner. For Nationals fans like me, the start of baseball season carries significant meaning. Hope, possibility and the promise of a fresh start. My dad, a die-hard Yankees fan, gave me the baseball bug, and I’ve been passing it along ever since. My son and I go to lots of Nats games together. He’ll settle in, start watching the field, and before long, he’ll start talking about what’s on his mind. Baseball has a way of doing that.
For the past five years, I’ve also been one of my son’s Little League coaches. The lessons I’ve picked up on the diamond have followed me back to the office. As I step into my new role as CEO of Stratacomm, my coaching experience has become something of a personal playbook. Here are a few lessons I bring back to the agency’s dugout.
1. Know your team before you expect them to play like one.
The first thing I do each season is make sure the kids actually know each other. Knowing your teammates isn’t just about names. Players and coaches need to understand where they are, what they’re good at and how to work with each other. If a kid has trouble catching, you don’t zip a heater to first base. You give them an underhand toss and set them up to succeed. The best work we do at Stratacomm, for our clients and for each other, starts the same way. We put people first, invest in trust and create the conditions for everyone to thrive.
2. Real-time feedback is the kind that changes the game.
Coaching kids has sharpened something I’ve been working on my whole career: the ability to give feedback in the moment.
When a player makes a great play, you praise it right then. When they throw to the wrong base, you don’t wait until the post-game debrief. After nearly 30 years in strategic communications, I’ve learned that sitting on constructive feedback and hoping things improve rarely works. Whether it’s a team dynamic that needs recalibrating or a project that delivers a grand slam, the best time to coach is in the moment.
3. Eventually, you have to get out of the way.
This one hit me hard when my son moved into the kid-pitch league. Suddenly, coaches aren’t allowed on the field. We’re in the dugout. There’s an 8-year-old on the mound throwing actual pitches, and the team has to handle whatever comes. Sometimes it’s a complete disaster! But often, what happens on the field looks like baseball that you’re excited and proud to watch.
Agency leadership is no different. Build the team, set the direction, hold yourself accountable to the outcome and trust your people to deliver it. One of the things I’m most proud of at Stratacomm is what happens when I step back and let our team perform. They exceed expectations and raise them for the future. That’s the kind of result worth celebrating.
One more thing: you’re either winning or you’re learning.
At our recent Little League opening-day ceremonies, a local politician gave the kids a quick pep talk. Her closing line: you’re either going to win, or you’re going to learn. I’ve thought about it a lot since. The communications industry is being disrupted in ways that aren’t fully predictable, and none of us has a roadmap for what comes next. We’re going to experiment. Some things will work and some won’t. But we will be learning.
My favorite end-of-season tradition is naming a Most Improved Player on the team. It almost always goes to a kid who showed up in March having never played before and left in June having figured it out through curiosity, hard work and a willingness to fail in front of people. That kind of growth doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because someone committed to getting better, one at-bat at a time.
That’s the mindset we bring to Stratacomm. Stay curious. Do the work. Trust that improvement compounds. Whether you’re a youngster stepping into the batter’s box for the first time or a communications team navigating an industry that keeps changing the rules… that’s a pretty good playbook.
