Art Turock - Biography

As an elite performance catalyst, Art Turock helps organizations to solve their foremost talent development challenge-that is, orchestrating the journey from competent performance to becoming consummate professionals. Building on leader's fascination in upleveling performance from good to great, Art's ideas have appeared in Success, USA Today, Fortune, The One-Minute Manager series, Association Management, Bloomberg News, and CNN. Since 1986, Turock has been a prized resource to over 120 Fortune 500 companies (including Merck, IBM, 3M, Procter & Gamble, AT&T) as well as ASAE and Young Presidents' Organization.

Art has written two Strategic Reports ("Driving Sales When Wal-Mart Makes the Rules" and "Creating Sales Calls Customers Would Pay For") and two books, Getting Physical: How to Stick With Your Exercise Program and Invent Business Opportunities No One Else Can Imagine. In 2009, he will publish What It Takes to Be Great.

Art Turock's career has been marked by reinventing his expertise based on his astute sense of knowing customers' unmet or latent needs before they can even put them into words. In his latest program, "What It Takes to Be Great," he translates findings from a massive body of elite performance research with athletes, performing artists, and scientists, into business applications. The key finding is that stars aren't born; rather they are made through deliberate practice. Unfortunately, corporations unknowingly derail the journey to great achievement. They establish goals, tell employees what to do, and offer training in how to execute skills, but fail to nurture opportunities for ongoing deliberate practice. Art addresses the pivotal questions for anyone aspiring to great performance-What are the elements of deliberate practice and how do you harness their power in a time-pressed workplace?

In his late 50's, Art tests the elements of deliberate practice as a competitive master-level sprinter in the 100 and 200 meter dash. He also brings insight from his experience of the culture-shaping practices of Head Coach Pete Carroll and the USC Football program, which holds the best winning percentage in college football history.

Since 1999, Art's most frequently-requested speech, "Invent Business Opportunities No One Else Can Imagine," challenges a taken-for-granted mandates for business success: "Ask customers what they want and give it to them." But is it that simple? Unless you are blessed with Jules Verne-like visionary customers, their answers to surveys and focus groups will be tweaks on what the industry already provides-not exactly input that fuels bold innovation. For aspiring trend setters, Art teaches fresh eyes thinking methods for inventing business opportunities that disarm competitors and astound customers.

In audience evaluations, Art Turock's programs are highly rated on 3 qualities: thought-provoking content, extraordinary customizing, and packaged for take home application.