Article taken from the Dayton Daily News: http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/business/beavercreek-it-firm-taps-espn-basketball-analyst/nTBqg/

By Dave Larsen, Staff Writer, Dayton Daily News

Posted: 12:01 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012

Lighthouse Technologies Inc. is employing the strategy of a former championship college basketball coach to grow its business.

The Beavercreek-based software quality management firm earlier this year hired Mark Adams as executive vice president of sales and marketing. Adams, of Springboro, also works as an ESPN college basketball analyst and a motivational speaker.

Adams is “dynamic and energetic,” according to Jeff Van Fleet, Lighthouse’s president and chief executive. Van Fleet credits Adams for helping the company expand its customer base.

For example, Adams was able to close new deals in recent months with two companies that Van Fleet had been trying to land for several years without any success.

“He is high integrity and he gets to the point,” Van Fleet said.

Lighthouse is an Inc. 5000 company with revenues of $4.6 million in 2011, according to the magazine’s annual list of the country’s fastest-growing private companies.

Founded in 2000, Lighthouse provides software testing, vendor quality management and Oracle enterprise resource planning services. The company’s clients include NCR Corp., 7-Eleven Inc., Reynolds and Reynolds Co., the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Timberland Boot Co.

Lighthouse has more than 60 employees, including about 12 who were added in the last year, Van Fleet said.

Adams joined Lighthouse in August. He previously was a sales professional and trainer at the former Dayton Technologies company in Monroe.

Adams spent 17 years as a college basketball coach, including stints at Central Connecticut State, Washington State and Western Oregon State universities. His teams won two championships and he earned Coach of the Year honors in 1989.

Since 1999, Adams has been a national college basketball analyst for ESPN Networks. He launched his broadcast career in 1997 as host of the “Flyer Feedback” show on WHIO Radio.

Last season, Adams broadcast 40 games in 17 different conferences for ESPN Networks. However, this season he is reducing his schedule to 25 games to be more available to Lighthouse, where his duties include executing the company’s sales strategy and developing new long-term clients.

“One thing I learned in coaching is to play to your strengths,” Adams said. “I’m pretty good at listening, I’m pretty good at understanding what your challenges are, and I’m pretty good at surrounding myself with other people that can give you the solutions.”

Information technology professionals, particularly project managers and chief information officers, are very much like coaches, according to Adams. While it is important to understand the functionality part of the business, “it is still about putting the right people in the right place at the right time, based upon their talents,” he said.

Adams this month was a keynote speaker at the sixth annual “Taste of IT” conference presented by Technology First, a Dayton region IT trade association. He speaks regularly to businesses and organizations in the U.S. and Canada about leadership and strategy.

Locally, Adams addressed his “Wolf Pack” strategy for building a business team. The strategy was inspired by both his 1989 championship Western Oregon State team and his experience observing a wolf pack at Yellowstone National Park, he said.

Adams said a wolf pack not only survives but thrives through teamwork, leadership, communication, patience, and playing and having fun together.

“They do it by understanding that not every wolf aspires to be the leader; there are roles to be played within that wolf social structure,” he said.

Adams has successfully brought his leadership strategy to Lighthouse, according to Van Fleet.

Lighthouse also benefits from Adams’ public speaking engagements and ESPN basketball broadcasts, which represent a marketing opportunity for the company.

Adams called ESPN the greatest marketing platform in the world. “For Lighthouse Technologies and myself to have that opportunity to go on the air 25 times to 40 times a season, that’s pretty powerful,” he said.

Article taken from the Dayton Daily News: http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/business/beavercreek-it-firm-taps-espn-basketball-analyst/nTBqg/