Art Turock is an elite performance provocateur who helps businesses translate elite performance research into practices for developing superior talent as a competitive advantage. His presentations, coaching, and consulting efforts disturb his clients sense of what constitutes competent performance and triggers their conceiving and aligning with new standards for elite performance.

Art's ideas have appeared in Success, USA Today, Fortune, Association Management, Bloomberg News and CNN. Since 1986, Turock has been a valued resource to over 120 Fortune 500 companies, (including Merck, IBM, 3M, AT&T), as well as ASAE and Young Presidents' Organization.

After spending 12 days in practice sessions studying the "Win Forever" philosophy with Coach Pete Carroll and the USC Trojan Football coaches, Art translates their culture-shaping principles for achieving sustained greatness to business leaders.

Art's most frequent consulting projects guide senior management teams in the process of executive reinvention, as well as learning his branded approach to "Coaching With a Healthy Disregard for the Unreasonable."

Art's primary program and upcoming book, Competent is Not an Option, deals with an unrecognized need-most organizations do a brilliant job of producing competent contributors but a miserable job of developing consummate professionals. Today's unquestioned talent and leadership development approaches run counter to extensive elite performance research, which emphasizes deliberate practice as the factor that distinguishes experts in any field.

This enormous deficiency in developing talent became evident when Art experienced a confluence of wakeup calls involving ventures into sports, a rare field where deliberate practice is the customary approach to talent development. At age 55, Art took up a new hobby, sprinting, where his deliberate practice regimen enabled him to tap into hidden reserves of physical capacity compete in masters track national meets, and achieve an All American standard time in the indoor 60-meter dash for his age group.

• Invent Business Opportunities No One Else Can Imagine - When the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments for Business Success come down from Corporate Mount Sinai, they will include: "Ask customers what they want and give it to them." But is it all that simple? Unless you are blessed with Jules Verne-like visionary customers, their answers to surveys and focus groups will be minor tweaks on what the industry is already providing, not exactly the input that fuels bold innovation. Sales gold mines lie in recognizing and offering solutions to "latent needs," that is, what customers might value, but have never experienced and would never think to ask for. But how do you know your customers' needs before they do? This program covers five integral elements for inventing business opportunities no one -- your customers or your competition -- can imagine.
  
  
• Change Mastery: Reinventing the Competitive Game - Your best sustainable edge is being better at mastering change than your competition. "Change-master" companies excel because of two strengths. First, they see the danger of relying on yesterday's "winning formula" which is really a disguise for resisting change. Second, they know how to minimize resistance and create positive momentum for change. Topics covered include: getting "committed" buy-in for change; curtailing blaming, instilling ownership; viewing uncertainty as a positive condition; and staying focused on results despite distractions.
  
  
• The Leadership Dilemma: Making the Transition from Too Much Management to the Right Amount of Leadership - As the pace and complexity of change intensifies, every business must examine its balance of management and leadership capabilities. "Management" specifically deals with short time frames, details, eliminating risks, scrupulous rationality, and gaining compliance with existing best practices, toward the goal of producing predictable results. "Leadership" emphasizes long term viewpoint, calculated risks, inspiring people's values and reinventing strategies to prepare an organization for the future marketplace. Achieving the right balance leads to the perfect blend of continuous quality improvement and strategic foresight that characterize winners.
  
  
• What Great Managers Do to Retain Top Talent and Motivate Peak Performance - Faced with tight labor markets, unprecedented change to manage and tough demands for productivity, today's managers are searching for solid answers. This program capitalizes on a 15-year Gallup Organization study (comprised of one million talented employees and 10,000 great managers) that examines two pivotal questions: 1) What does top talent need from their work environment to produce profound results? 2) What are the best practices employed by great managers for retaining and motivating top talent? The study offers conclusive evidence for the power of managers in influencing employee performance.
  
  
• Sustaining Exceptional Performance: Honoring Your Company's Best - This program is especially suited for recognition events or where a group seeks to preview the qualities of the most valuable performers in the 21st century organization. It is designed for professionals who've developed their skills to a mastery level but now require powerful self-management strategies to eclipse their already extraordinary results. Techniques include: peak performance goal-setting, being value-driven, developing a "healthy disregard for the impossible," and becoming a "role pioneer." Instead of flashes of brilliance, exceptional performers know how to cause breakthroughs by design, under any and all business circumstances.