Dan Coughlin

Biography

Dan Coughlin is in the practical idea business. His goal is to give clients, audience members, and readers practical ideas they can use immediately to accelerate their most important business outcomes - and their careers.

He is president of The Coughlin Company, Inc., a consulting firm at the forefront of work on business acceleration, which is the field of study of how organizations generate sustainable, profitable growth.

Dan has been quoted on preserving employee dignity in The New York Times business section, Investors Business Daily on analyzing business results, and has a four-page interview on mid-level managers appearing in the Summer 2007 Edition of MWorld, the Journal of the American Management Association, and has had his articles on management, leadership, strategy and innovation placed more than 100 times in trade publications.

As a business speaker, Dan has provided hundreds of presentations on business acceleration to clients including Toyota, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Marriott, St. Louis Cardinals, AT&T, Boeing, Eli Lilly, IKON Office Solutions, American Bar Association, and more than 75 other organizations. His topics include change management, leadership, teamwork, strategy, branding, and innovation.

As an executive coach, Dan has provided more than 1,500 Executive Coaching sessions for presidents, vice-presidents, senior directors, and national managers at Fortune 500 and major privately owned companies. He has invested over 3,000 hours on site observing executives and managers in more than 20 industries. His business coaching concentrates on improving decision-making, communication, and talent management.

As an Organizational Development consultant, Dan concentrates on organizational strategy, execution, problem solving, and innovation.

Dan`s first book, Corporate Catalysts: How To Make Your Company More Successful, Whatever Your Title, Income or Authority (Career Press, 2005)) attacks many widely held corporate fallacies and provides an enormously pragmatic approach to accelerating individual careers and high priority organizational outcomes. Corporate Catalysts has been published in Chinese as well as English, and has been used in the Executive Education programs at Boeing, McDonalds, GSD&M, Marriott, and Ronald McDonald House Charities.

His second book, Accelerate: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Business Momentum (Kaplan Publishing, 2007) provides practical insights into accelerating a managers performance, the performance of his or her staff and organization, and the impact the organization has on consumers.

He holds a Bachelors of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Notre Dame and a Masters degree in arts and teaching from Webster University. He has served as an adjunct professor on entrepreneurship and leadership for St. Louis University and Webster University Graduate School of Business.

Dan lives in St. Louis, MO with his wife, Barb, and their children, Sarah and Ben.

Publications

The Management 500: A High-Octane Formula for Business Success
The world of auto racing is thrilling, energizing, and runs at a break-neck speed. But it also requires incredible accuracy, nuance, and impeccable performance to ensure a win. These same qualities are essential for every manager who wants to build a sustainable, profitable business. Known as "The Management 500", this is the real-world race that business managers compete in to generate significant growth each year for three consecutive years. "The Management 500" provides practical management lessons from the history of professional auto racing. With insights and stories from some of the most successful people in Formula 1, IndyCar Series, and NASCAR over the past 60 years, consultant Dan Coughlin helps busy managers who want to rev up their skills in areas like leadership, teamwork, strategy, branding, problem-solving, dealing with change and innovation. From Enzo Ferrari to Kyle Busch, and from the Indianapolis 500 to the Daytona 500, this book has taken invaluable tips from the fast, furious world of racing and shows how every business manager can combine passion with precision to compete and win in today`s competitive business world.

Titles

Accelerate Your Impact as a Leader
Organizations from large to small need effective leaders at all levels to achieve and sustain success. In this high-energy, high-impact session, Dan Coughlin explains the key leadership actions necessary to influence the decisions people make. Based on his 3,000 hours of on-site executive coaching in over 30 industries, he debunks the traditional myths of leadership and shows how any employee can impact the way other people think and drive better sustainable business results.

Customers don`t care which department was most successful. They only care about the value the departments deliver collectively to them. Leaders create more value for customers by effectively influencing divergent individuals to support a common cause. Dan explains how every leadership style can be effective, except for the dreaded chameleon and the polite dictator. He shows how preserving your integrity supports long-term business success.

Innovate to Generate Sustainable, Profitable Growth
A business innovation is the creation of additional value for customers that they will pay for at a profitable margin to the organization. It has to be both: new value that the customer does not already have and a profit-generator for the business. One without the other is insufficient.

Dan Coughlin demystifies the process of innovation, and makes it simple, clear, and practical. He explains that innovation is about creating and delivering greater value for other people with more appropriate values based on a better understanding of them.

He shows how every employee can generate breakthrough ideas to increase efficiency, improve execution, and boost the bottom-line. From scheduling thinking time to using the observation tower to using OPS (Other People`s Successes), audience members will walk away with ideas they can use immediately to begin to generate powerful innovations.

Dan explains how successful business innovators boldly walk away from a lot of good ideas so they can focus on a few great ideas. He explains the importance of prototyping to save time and money. If you want your organization to propel itself beyond today's performance level to generate sustainable, profitable growth, this is a must-attend session.

Strengthen Your Brand for Long-Term Success
Your brand is your reputation in the marketplace. Your brand is the value that customers think they receive when they buy from your organization or potential customers think they will receive if they do buy from your organization. Your brand is not what you want to be. It`s what customers and potential customers believe you are right now.

Dan Coughlin, who has worked with such great brands as Toyota, McDonald`s, Marriott, GE, Coca-Cola, Prudential, Subway, Ace Hardware, Jack in the Box, Boeing, Kiewit, and the St. Louis Cardinals, provides penetrating insights into the dos and don`ts of building the brand you want. He explains the importance of defining and owning a performance category that matters deeply to customers and will generate the financial outcomes your organization desires.

He walks the audience through the importance of a brand audit and the steps necessary to complete it successfully. He demonstrates how an obsession with undisciplined experimentation can ruin a brand and destroy the sustainable, profitable growth of an organization.