"Anticipate the Next Adventure"

You haven't lived until you've been Googled.

Last August my great grade school friend, Ginger, googled me to see if I would speak at her organization. We had not seen each other in ten years, but she had heard I did presentations for organizations. I did the presentation and then we had lunch together. We thought it would be great if we could get our 5th grade class back together. Our school had closed down in 1974 after 5th grade, and we gradually all lost track of each other. A few weeks ago we had a party where 12 members of the final 20 people in our class got together. Some of us had not seen each other in over 30 years.

Pulling the group together and then being together was an adventure all in and of itself. Then we started pulling out the old pictures. There's a picture of all of us waiting for the bus to our final school picnic together. Everyone's face is lit up. The headline could easily read, "Anticipating the adventure of the last school picnic." That's my favorite picture from that era, even though I'm wearing purple pants. (What was my mother thinking?)

This attitude of anticipating the next adventure is what separates the great companies from the good ones.

My five biggest clients like this year are McDonald's, Marriott, Toyota, GSD&M, and ULINE.

McDonald's is the number one brand in the quick-service restaurant industry.

Marriott is the number one brand in the hospitality industry.

Toyota is the number one brand in the automobile industry.

GSD&M is one of the finest national advertising agencies in the country whose clients include Wal-Mart, AT&T, BMW, Southwest Airlines, and Frito-Lay.

ULINE is the number one brand in the shipping supply industry.

What makes these companies so great? I ask myself that question over and over and over. I think one of the main things they do is they anticipate the next adventure. They don't just set goals, they go after adventures. When I sit in a meeting or interact with people from these great companies, I can see the excitement written all over their faces. They are going after live and living it to the fullest while they are at work.

I think one of the keys to accelerating the achievement of your high priority desired business outcomes is to look at them as an adventure. Go after it! If you need a change in your current position to regain that sense of adventure, then work to make it happen. If you're heading up a department, decide what the next adventure is going to be. I'm not talking about a day away from the office where everybody goes crazy in a paintball war. I'm talking about making the actual day-to-day work an adventure. How can you go where no one has gone before? I can only imagine how exciting it must be to work at PIXAR or at Apple on the next IPOD. But the truth is every organization can create an adventure. Don't wait for someone else to do it. Go for it now. Adventures bring out the best in everyone, and that's how you become a great organization.

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. How can we do what our organization has always done, but make it into an exciting adventure?

2. What project could we go after that we've never done before that would add value to our customers and create a sense of adventure in our organization?

Resource Recommendation

The Spirit To Serve by Bill Marriott, Jr. This is a great book, and is packed with adventures throughout the history of Marriott.

The Toyota Way by Jeff Liker and David Meier. This is another great book and explains in detail why Toyota continues to achieve unprecedented heights in the auto industry.

Grinding It Out by Ray Kroc explains a host of the early adventures at McDonald's. That same spirit of adventure is alive and well at McDonald's today, and it drives innovation constantly.

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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