"No Excuses!"

The greatest time and labor saving device ever invented is the phrase, "No excuses!" The most valuable resources we have are our time and energy. However, they can be lost forever in large quantities when we use them to come up with a list of reasons why we're not going to succeed. Comments like, "We may not achieve our goals if the weather is bad in the first quarter," "Due to the impact of India and China we probably won't achieve our objectives," and "With the uncertainty in the economy, we likely will miss our sales objectives" are just old-fashioned excuses. There's no value in spending time and energy coming up with a list of reasons why we won't succeed. There's only value in spending time and energy in trying to figure out how we will succeed.

In December 2004 Charlie Weis was hired as the head football coach at the University of Notre Dame. Before that hiring, Weis operated in complete obscurity outside of the NFL's inner circle. After he was hired, he received more national coverage before he coached his first game at ND than most coaches receive in an entire career. However, he said something at his first press conference that caught my ear. He said, "We're not going to make any excuses. We're not going to talk about how hard the schedule is or how rigorous the academics are or how difficult it is to get players admitted to Notre Dame. All we're going to do is line up and play the games on our schedule." Boom. Suddenly all the time and energy that used to go into explaining why Notre Dame couldn't compete in football was now being spent on figuring out how Notre Dame could compete.

One of my greatest sources of learning is from my clients. We have this really neat dynamic where they hire me to work with them, and I end up learning more from them than they learn from me. Here are five powerful examples from my clients on the value of, "No excuses!"

Marriott International

Since 1999 I've done at least three projects a year for Marriott International. Before 1999 I had huge respect for people who worked at Marriott in terms of their friendliness, compassion, and kindness. I knew that if I stayed at a Marriott hotel I would be treated as a true guest with extremely friendly service. However, my respect for people at Marriott has grown enormously over the past seven years. 1999 and 2000 were the go-go days for the hospitality industry. Everybody was traveling and going out to eat and staying at hotels. Corporate travel budgets seemed to have no limit. It was the days of the dot-com craze and it lit up the world of hospitality. Then suddenly at the beginning of 2001 the hospitality industry fell like a lead balloon. The dot-com crash of 2000 began to erode corporate travel budgets in 2001. September 11th, 2001 turned a bad situation into a disaster for the hospitality industry. 2001, 2002 and 2003 were the absolute worst times for the industry, and Marriott was no exception. However, through the entire seven years that I've interacted with people at Marriott, I never saw their culture waver. The Marriott employees were as positive and friendly in 2002 as they were in 1999 and 2005. And I don't just mean with the guests. I mean they were friendly and positive and resilient behind the scenes as well. If ever a group of people had an excuse for being tired or rude, they had it, but they never, ever used any excuses. They amazed me every time I saw them. Today their business is strong and growing stronger.

McDonald's Corporation

I've served as an Executive Coach for the top two officers in the Indianapolis Region of McDonald's Corporation for the past seven years, which means I've attended and/or facilitated dozens of meetings with the corporate staff members and owner/operators. The QSR (quick service restaurant) industry average for consecutive positive comp sales is three years. The Indianapolis Region of McDonald's just completed their eighth straight year of positive comp sales. How did they do it? Never once in seven years did I heard them talk about why they wouldn't hit their goals. Instead every year they focused together on what they needed to do to be successful as a region. It's a beautiful example on a regional level that demonstrates why McDonald's is one of the greatest companies in the world.

GSD&M

GSD&M is the national advertising agency that is very well known for being the long, long-term ad agency for Wal-Mart and Southwest Airlines. In 2005 I served as an Executive Coach for their Director of New Business Development. During that time, GSD&M was invited to pitch for the advertising work at BMW. GSD&M was competing with 15 other ad agencies. During the entire five-month, three-phase pitch process, never once did I hear any one talk about why they wouldn't succeed. All I heard and saw were people throughout the agency focused on how they could add more value to BMW. No time and energy was wasted on making excuses. Instead incredible time and energy were invested in figuring out how to do a great job for BMW. It was one of the greatest examples of business teamwork that I've ever seen. In the end, BMW awarded their advertising business to GSD&M.

Do you see the pattern here? No excuses! No time wasted on discussing why we can't succeed. Only time focused on how to succeed.

Lipic's

Lipic's, Inc. is a family owned business. I served as an executive coach for the president of the company in 2005. During that time the company developed an extraordinary Service Recognition program for companies to better recognize their employees' years of service. Within a very short period of time, they quadrupled the number of companies they worked with in the area of Service Recognition. It was like watching Orville and Wilbur Wright in action. The Wright Brothers didn't focus on why they couldn't build the first engine-propelled airplane. They focused on how to build the first engine-propelled airplane. Lipic's did the same thing. They didn't focus on why they couldn't build a great Service Recognition program. They focused on how to build a great Service Recognition program. And their business grew and grew.

Hurricane Katrina

A number of my clients were directly affected by Hurricane Katrina, as in they were doing business in New Orleans when the disaster struck. If there was ever a situation for focusing on excuses, this was it. But again I never heard anyone talk about why they couldn't be successful. They simply focused on what they needed to do to get back on track in the midst of one of the worst natural disasters in American history. Talk about real-life inspirational stories. My little problems seemed even smaller after talking with these folks. There was no way I could make excuses for anything after I heard what they went through.

If you stop focusing on the reasons why you may not succeed, does that automatically guarantee that you will succeed? Of course it doesn't. But it will guarantee that you won't waste any time or energy on the completely unproductive activity of rationalizing away success.

So line up your activities and get on with it. Pour all of your time and energy into figuring out how to improve results, and none of it into thinking about why you may not succeed.

Questions for Business Acceleration Teams

(Author's Note: Business Acceleration Teams are made up of people inside an organization who meet once a month to discuss how they can accelerate the achievement of their highest priority business outcomes. These individuals don't even have to be in the same city. They can do their work via conference calls and e-mails. The questions below can be used to generate meaningful discussion relevant to the ideas in this month's newsletter.)

1. What excuses are we making right now in our company for why we may not hit our desired objectives?

2. How can we convert each excuse into a plan of action? (Example. Excuse: "Bad weather could hurt our chances of hitting our objectives." Convert into plan of action, "These are the things we will do if bad weather hits:…" Another example. Excuse: "The low wage workers in India and China could ruin our results this year." Convert into plan of action. "Keeping in mind the low wage workers in India and China, here's what we will do to increase our chances of hitting our objectives:…")

Republishing Articles

Each month my e-newsletter gets republished in approximately 20 blogs, on-line publications, and internal publications for businesses, universities, and not-for-profit organizations. If you would like to republish all or part of my monthly articles, please send me an e-mail at dan@thecoughlincompany.com with "Republishing Article" in the subject heading. I will send you the article in a word document. All I ask is that you include my name as the author of the article and a short paragraph at the end of the article about me with a link to my website.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

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