Dan Coughlin's Acceleration Blog

Learning, Learning, Learning, Learning....CONVERTING!

Spent the last two days with my great mentor, Dr. Alan Weiss, at The Strategist Workshop. A day and a half immersion in the broad topic of strategy. In the end, I think it should have been called, "Strategy Made Practical." It was wonderful. I also immersed myself in a unique community of independent consultants, many of whom have become great friends of mine.

But at the core of this 52-hour excursion was learning: learning tools and tips and ideas and brainstorms on strategy, branding, leadership, life balance, execution, writing, collaborating, and on and on.

And of course the real work is conversion. In high school and college I learned a lot, but I converted a little. In other words, I learned calculus and world geography and thermodynamics, but I converted almost none of it into anything practical.

The real work of the last 48 hours is the next 48 days as I apply new learnings into practical application and helping others do the same thing.

Critics or Contributors

The other day my mom started talking about a great article by a local writer, Bill McClellan. I said, "I don't get it. All he does is criticize people. What contribution has he ever made to improve performance or results in any way?"

Then I started thinking about all of the full-time critics who make fortunes: Rush Limbaugh, Chris Matthews, Keith Oberman, Bill O'Reilly. What is their contribution to improving anything?

Do you want to be a critic or a contributor? Don't get me wrong. There's big money in criticizing everybody under the sun, but you do only get one life to live. Do you want it spent criticizing others or making a meaningful contribution that enhances other people's lives?

Creative Freedom - Creative Destruction: The Twin Engines of Business Growth

An entrepreneur is a person who craves the freedom to creatively run his or her own business. Whether you own the business is not critical. If you are an entrepreneur at heart, you crave the freedom to create ways to add value to customers and grow the business profitably.

In 1942 the Harvard economist, Joseph Schumpeter, coined the phrase, "creative destruction," which referred to the phenomenon that business growth occurs when we let go of old, obsolete ways of adding value to customers and replace them with better ways to add value.

In order to grow your business profitably, you need two forces at work: creative freedom and creative destruction. In other words, the freedom to make decisions has to include the freedom to let go of old ways of delivering value and replacing them with better ways to deliver value. Of course, only let go of the old way if the new way truly is more of a value-added for the customer.

Values Driven, Value Given

Values are beliefs that determine behaviors.

My values in my work are character, curiosity, contribution, and competence. I want to do what I think is the right thing to do in every client relationship, I want to learn new practical ideas every day, I want to add value to other people, and I want to improve the delivery of the value I offer.

What are your values? What beliefs guide your behaviors?

Value is anything that increases the chances that other people will achieve what they want to achieve.

My value is always in the form of practical ideas that people can use to accelerate the achievement of their desired outcomes. I deliver value through blogs, articles, books, speeches, seminars, consulting, and executive coaching.

What value do you deliver and how do you deliver it?

Answer these simple questions and watch your activities become much more focused and in alignment with your beliefs and your customers.

Clean Out Your Corporate Closet

My parents are inching toward 80. I've helped them move three times in the last four years. Today I moved pile and pile of stuff into their new condo. What in the world are they hanging on to all of that stuff for? Then I came to my basement, and I wondered what I'm hanging on to all of that stuff for.

Look around your business. What old habits and traditions and regularly scheduled meetings and protocols do you have in place that are adding zero toward the achievement of your critical business outcomes? Start tossing out the old useless stuff that was built for a business that no longer exists.

Packed Planes

For the first time ever, I've flown on four consecutive planes where every seat was sold. I took two flights to get to New Orleans and two flights to get to Salt Lake City.

This is a vibrant economy. There's a buzz to it. People are on the move. Globalization and digitization haven't kept people stuck to their computers all days. The opposite is happening. Even before September 11, 2001 when the dot com world was expanding by the second I never saw planes this crowded.

What does this mean for your business? How can you add value to a marketplace that is on-line and in the air in a constant flow of activity? Opportunities are everywhere. Identify where you can add value, gain the credibility and competence and content and connections you need to add that value, and then insert yourself into this cornucopia of market needs.

Projections

I could never be a futurist and tell what would happen in 20 years. And I'm not big on palm readers. But projections for your business are a different matter.

If you had to select just one area of your business to dramatically improve that would have the greatest positive impact on its long-term success, what would it be?

Would it be enhancing your brand, operations, talent management, strategy, planning, execution, supplier relationships, presence on the internet, e-commerce, client diversification, increased business with current clients, or some other aspect of your business?

Select one.

And then give yourself a reasonable time frame such as three years. If you focused your attention on dramatically improving that aspect of your business over the next three years, what would success look like?

Write that down.

Now what steps do you need to take over the next 90 days to make significant progress in that area?

Write that down.

Now, move into action.

Contribution versus Retribution

Contribution. The delivery of value. Enhancing another person's desired outcomes.

I'm reading a rather old book right now called, The HP Way, by David Packard. He places a huge emphasis on the concept of contribution. He wrote that the number one question a company should answer is not what profits it can earn, but rather what contribution the organization can make to its customers. He went on to say that the best employees are those who are not focused on how much they could make, but rather on how much they could contribute.

When you get an organization and all of the employees in that organization to focus on contribution rather than retribution, you achieve amazing results for the customers, as well as for the organization and its employees.

75 Days Remain

Today's October 15. About 2 1/2 months remain to the year. 75 days give or take a few vacation days. What ten things can you do in those 75 days to both make this year a  success and set yourself up for even greater success next year? Take 10 minutes and write down 10 things you can do to finish this year with an extraordinary flourish. Ready, go...

Four Critical Thinking Skills

Clarifying, Understanding, Predicting, and Selecting.

If you keep improving those four critical thinking skills, you will add tremendous value in every area of your life. If you help the members of your various groups enhance these thinking skills, you will have an exponential impact on results.

Take any situation and ask four questions:

1. What is our current situation?

2. Why did it occur?

3. What options do we have going forward, and for each option what would happen if we chose to do that?

4. What is our best option?

Then move into action with your best option.