Practical Ideas are the Software of Business Acceleration

Computer people intimidate me.

They write software that seems to change the world everyday. I've been reading about Google versus Microsoft, and how the winner will take over the software world. I read about the magic of iMacs, iMusicTunes, iPods, and i don't know what all else.

Then I realized we all can write software.

Business acceleration is the practice of increasing the rate of achievement of high priority business outcomes in a sustainable and profitable manner. The absolute key to business acceleration is to uncover and apply practical ideas for achieving better sustainable results. And the beautiful thing is that practical ideas for accelerating important results are all around us. We simply need to strengthen our skill of observation.

In his brilliant book, "Confessions of an Advertising Man," (Southbank Publishing, 1963), David Ogilvy wrote that the ability to observe the world around us and make meaningful connections is the sign of a highly creative person. He wrote, "Creative people are especially observant, and they value accurate observation (telling themselves the truth) more than other people do."

Here are sources for meaningful observations:

• The Wall Street Journal
• BusinessWeek
• Fortune magazine
• Books
• Sermons
• Highly successful people
• Highly unsuccessful people
• Stories about famous people
• Stories about organizations from over 50 years ago
• Your neighbors
• Your colleagues
• The organizations you buy from

Look around you. Identify one organization you consider to be highly successful. It could be any organization. It could be a hair salon that you've heard or read about. Set up an appointment, get your hair done, and ask questions like, "How do you give such great service every time? Where do you find employees with such passion? How do create an environment where people are both professional and down-to-earth at the same time?"

Listen to their ideas, ask yourself how you can use the ideas in your organization or in your daily work, make any necessary adjustments to the ideas, and put them into practice. By doing that over and over and over again, you will start to see connections between ideas that will make them even more powerful and useful in accelerating results.

Just as great software writers and great advertisers can see connections and plot the steps necessary to put the final idea together, so too can we find practical ideas all around us and use them to accelerate the achievement of our desired outcomes.

Here are several examples of ideas that have come to me by asking, reading, observing, and connecting ideas:

1. I asked a Southwest Airlines flight attendant what it was like to work for Southwest. She said she loved it because at meetings everyone sat with everyone else. There were no cliques or seating by title. She said everyone understood the purpose of Southwest was to provide an enjoyable experience at a reasonable price.

   Practical Idea #1: When you have a gathering of employees, don't associate them with their titles. Let people mingle and mix around. If they sit in cliques, then randomly spread them around the room throughout the meeting. It creates a more collaborative atmosphere.

2. I asked the woman in the men's clothing department at Nordstrom's how they found so many friendly people to work there. She said, "We ask prospects if they are compulsive smilers. If they don't immediately say yes, then we probably don't hire them."

   Practical Idea #2: Identify the desired behaviors you want your employees to consistently display. Then build your interview process around those behaviors with questions, role plays, and case studies to help select your desired workforce.

3. I read a book about the tv series, Friends, and David Schwimmer said the key to their success was the ensemble approach, a process where no one knew or cared who would get the best lines each week.

   Practical Idea #3: Don't highlight anyone as the person who needs to come up with the great idea. Keep drawing ideas from the group, and keep encouraging people to connect ideas together to make even better ideas. Applaud the ensemble effort every time you see it.

4. One of my clients is Spa Shiki so part of my work is to be a client. One day I was getting a 90-minute facial, which was to die for, and I asked the woman how often she gave facials. She said she basically gave seven to eight facials every day five days a week. I asked her how she gave such great attention to every customer. She said, "I love making people beautiful." Whoa, I about fell out of my chair. She had a passion, and she poured it into her work.

   Practical Idea #4: When assigning roles and responsibilities, always look to put people in a position where they can use their strengths and passions to make the greatest impact for the customer. This intersection between an employee's strengths and passions, the organization's desired outcomes, and the customer's desired outcomes is the point where business acceleration occurs.

5. I watched my children on a teeter-totter. My daughter, Sarah, who is two years older than my son, Ben, always gained leverage on Ben and stuck him up in the air. Then it dawned on me that if Ben could scoot back on the teeter-totter, he could get leverage on Sarah and stick her up in the air. That's when I realize the power of an effective strategy, which allows an organization to gain leverage in the marketplace and gain the upper hand over much bigger and more successful organizations.

   Practical Idea #5: An effective strategy gains leverage for an organization in the marketplace in a way that matters to customers and prospects. Then the question becomes, "What does an organization have to leverage?" In the end, every organization can leverage three things: what it is good at doing, the behaviors that are consistently displayed by the employees, and what the members of the organization are passionate about doing. All strategy work can be reduced to a single question, "How can we leverage the skills, passions, and consistently displayed behaviors in our organization in a way that will matter to customers and prospects and generate sustainable, profitable growth?" Once you find the answer, then pour every effort into fulfilling that strategy. (Jack Welch reinforced this practical idea in his new book, "Winning".)

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

Accelerate Update This section is always current to the current month

I suppose every book changes an author's life to a certain degree. My first book, which was self-published in 1995, was called Inside Out: A Catalyst for Conscious Living. It's out of print now for a number of good reasons. The layout, which yours truly did, looks like something a first grader could do today. And the ideas are very theoretical, which doesn't fit my approach anymore. However, I read the book a few months ago, and I was pleased by how clearly I had explained my early thoughts on improving performance.

My second book, Corporate Catalysts: How to Make Your Company More Successful, Whatever Your Title, Income, or Authority was published in 2005 by Career Press. That book was a step forward in clarifying my ideas on improving performance and understanding how to write a whole book. It's one thing to dream about getting a book contract and another thing to write a 70,000 word manuscript.

My third book, ACCELERATE: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Momentum, which was published in May 2007 by Kaplan Publishing, has changed my business dramatically. Up until that book was published, I mostly did projects for four companies: McDonald's, Marriott, GSD&M, and Toyota. In the past 12 months, I've worked with business owners, executives, and managers within dozens of small, medium, and massive organizations in more than 20 industries ranging from boats to banks to software to financial services to trucking to lighting to home healthcare to hospitals to optometrists. It's been an exciting adventure.

If you want to see my speaking calendar for 2008, which we'll try to update every two weeks, please click here.

Currently, I have 66 speeches scheduled for 2008. If you would like for me to speak at one of your events in 2008 or 2009, feel free to contact me at dan@thecoughlincompany.com and I will be glad to see if we can make it work.

If you want to see my speaking topics and a video of footage from some of my keynote speeches, please click here.

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