On Saturday November 4th I had the pleasure of hearing a Keynote on innovation by Guy Kawasaki, managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, and former Mac Evangelist for Apple. The presentation was the closing keynote of the 11th annual International Coach Federation (ICF) Conference in St. Louis.
Guy is an energetic, fun speaker and it was a very good presentation. I felt the other two keynotes of the conference were more powerful and valuable to an audience of professional coaches. All the keynotes provided something of value.
The one nugget from the Kawasaki speech was that businesses don’t need mission statements, they need mantras.
Guy pointed out that most mission statements are hard to understand, too long, impossible to remember and therefore don’t get “buy in” from stakeholders. He suggested that what we as business owners need is a mantra, two or three words that sum up what we do or stand for.
He gave several examples of mantras:
Wendy’s = Healthy Fast Food
FedEx = Peace of Mind
Nike = Authentic Athletic Performance
Ebay = Democratize Commerce
What then is your mantra? What do you as a small business do or stand for? I answered those questions myself during and after the ICF Conference. The work of Great Lives Coaching is to have every gay man thrive in the world. What that means is that we don’t function out of survival but from aggressively creating our own joy and a better world because of it. My mantra for Great Lives Coaching is “Thrive Not Survive.”
Posted on Nov 30th 06 by David Stocum.
David Stocum works empowering gay men to thrive in business, career and life. David hosts the ICF GLBT SIG, Rainbow Coaches Alliance (Coach U and Coachville) and Rainbow Network (GLBT business owners) online communities. David will be co-presenting at the ICF Conference on bringing Coaching to the GLBT community. David lives in Las Cruces, NM with his partner of 7 years. He is active in the local GLBT community as a volunteer. http://www.greatlivescoaching.com
Other posts on Coachamatic by David Stocum.
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