Dan Coughlin's Acceleration Blog

Why do executives/managers fail?

The vast majority of the executives/managers I've encountered were intelligent, experienced professionals. They knew their businesses, employees, and customers. And yet roughly 10% of these people that I've observed over the past ten years have failed. They've lost their jobs or were demoted. This wasn't because of a downsizing. They were fired or demoted because they failed to move the organization or group forward.

Why? What went wrong when the future was so bright?

Seems to me there are four main reasons why these people failed: poor confidence, poor communication, poor judgment, and poor direction.

Sometimes they tried so hard to try to please their bosses that they would become ogres and trample over their direct reports. They didn't have the confidence to stay true to themselves.

Sometimes they knew the answers, but no one else could understand their messages. They were great by themselves, but terrible in getting others to move forward. Their employees were hard working and dedicated, but they couldn't figure out what was important to these executives and managers.

Sometimes they made horrible judgment calls. One person, a married person, dated one of his employees, another married person, and then gave that person preferential treatment in front of the other employees. Bye bye boss.

Sometimes they rallied around a business strategy that was so flawed the only way to turn it around was to get a different boss.

Take your time to think about your values, strengths, and passions. Stay true to yourself. Take the time to clarify your messages so other people can understand them. Take the time to think through your decisions to make good judgment calls. Take the time to consider your organization's strategy, and the impact it may have on the future of the organization.

Business is like Bowling

Barb and I went bowling with our children, Sarah and Ben, last Saturday. It was the Thanksgiving weekend, and we just wanted to enjoy being together. Sarah had an interesting streak going. She hit 7, 8, or 9 pins on every frame. In the end, she scored an 81. However, if she had just hit four strikes in a row, which only amounted to a total of about 5 more pins during those four frames, her score would have been way, way higher.

It dawned on me that that's the way business is. If you are third in your performance category or industry every month for an entire year, then you probably had a mediocre year. But if you could just raise the bar a little bit for 3-4 straight months, you would suddenly be known as an industry leader.

Go for strikes whenever you can get them and knock all of the pins down. If you just do that three or four times in a row, you can change the trajectory of your business and your career.

Thank you!!

Thank you, Barb, for being a wonderful wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, volunteer, and person. You've made my life amazingly better since I met you 12 years ago.

Sarah, thank you for being a GREAT daughter. You are so sweet and kind and caring and funny and obstinate. I appreciate everything about you.

Ben, thank you for being a GREAT son. You have so much energy and such a great sense of humor. I appreciate you in so many ways.

Thank you, mom and dad, for being guides and role models and exemplars of the life we should all want to live.

Thank you readers and clients and friends and neighbors who have taught me so much about life.

Thank you writers who have provided me with the books filled with insights that have continually changed my mind and my life.

Thank you, God, for creating this thing called life with all its interesting challenges and excitements and craziness.

Thank you!!!

Pace Yourself and Others

I just watched an extraordinary high school soccer team, one of the best in the country: St. Louis University High School. One of the most impressive parts was the pacing of the game. Quick, short passes followed by long passes and quick services into the penalty box. Patience on defense and then quick counterattacks. Working the ball backward and side to side. Never attacking in the same way twice in a row.

Think about your organization.

Is everyone going a 100 MPH straight ahead all of the time? Are people taking the time to breathe and think and consider alternative routes to achieving the desired goals? Are you giving key performers rest and breaks so they can finish projects off successfully?

Pace your team and vary the approach. Sometimes push them hard and sometimes back off. Sometimes spend time collaborating and sometimes focus on full speed ahead.

A Decade versus A Year

I have to admit I'm not a big Tony Robbins fan. His style just doesn't work for me. But he said something a long time ago that I really did like. He said, "You'll be surprised how little you can achieve in a year, and how much you can achieve in a decade."

Now that's a great point.

To achieve greatness in any endeavor, it takes a sustained focus over the long term. It takes years to hone the subtle details that separate the great ones from the average performers. It takes years to understand your customers and develop the product or service that best meets their needs. It takes years to assemble the team, the marketing, the right price, and so on.

You might be depressed by the end result of one year's efforts, but you also might be blown away by the net result of ten years of combined efforts.

The Value of Whirlwinds

Sometimes the tornado is the best way to turn the learning pace up. I've been on the road 8 of the last 9 days and 11 of the last 20. Been to Providence, Denver, Dallas, San Antonio, and Kansas City. So many lessons learned...

Strategy, selling, teaching, speaking more conversationally, interacting with other consultants, the speaking industry, videos, new books, new book idea, a new white paper, a great audio book called, "Reading Lolita in Tehran" that my brother gave me, a great book by Andy Grove "Only the Paranoid Survive", and on and on and on. New people, new magazines, new shows, new opportunities.

Let the dust fly sometimes, but not forever, and see what comes out when it settles down. Be open minded. You never know what might happen.

ACCELERATE by business keynote speaker and management consultant, Dan Coughlin, is available wherever books are sold.

To order in bulk for a discount, e-mail Patrick Malloy at Barnes & Noble at crm2618@bn.com.

Great Book on Marketing

Just read a terrific book on marketing called, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, by Al Ries and Jack Trout that was recommended by my friend, Alan Fortier. Alan's a highly successful expert on strategy so I took his advice to heart. It's a great book packed with powerful insights explained in a short format. Here's one: the law of the category. It says, if you can't be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.

Apple wasn't first in the MP3 downloadable music category. But they were first in setting up a music store and a device for downloading music legally. Combine that with an ultra-hip design and boom.

What category can you be first to the market in?

Are you willing to improve?

I'm 45 and have made my full-time living speaking and consulting for the past ten years. Along the way I've given hundreds of seminars, workshops, and keynote presentations. Yesterday a person watched a video of a keynote I gave a few weeks. She gave me honest, direct feedback on what could be better. It wasn't complicated to understand her point of view.

The challenge is am I willing to listen and to improve.

I remember about 30 years ago a senior in high school telling me he had learned everything there was to know about soccer and that no college coach could teach him anything new. He was done learning.

I'm not done learning. I wrote the person back and thanked her for the insights. I considered it carefully and will attempt to incorporate it because I agree with her suggestions. This doesn't mean that I try to do everything that everyone suggests. But I consider inputs and decide what I can use and what I can't use. And I hope I never stop learning and improving.

Are you done learning and improving, or are you still open to input?

The Inner Circle

If you're in charge of a business or business unit with more than 15 employees, then I'm guessing you have an inner circle of 4-8 people who make the key decisions. They probably have functional responsibilities like marketing, operations, and so on, in addition to their responsibilities as members of the leadership team (or executive team or whatever the group is called.)

The relationships within this inner circle will largely determine the success of the organization. Here's a few thoughts to consider:

Is each member competent at delivering value within his or her functional responsibilities?

Is each member capable and willing to look at the organization as a whole rather than just his or her department?

Is each member honest with the other members of the inner circle?

Is each member willing and capable of collaborating with other members of the inner circle to develop better ideas for moving the organization forward?

That's a pretty good checklist to start with. Identify any "no's" you get, and assemble a plan of action to turn them into "yes's."

Add any other questions you think are important.