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The Wiley Coyote is the Acme of Success

Guest post by: Don Doman

Article Overview: We've all seen him trying to catch the roadrunner using rocket propelled skates, painting fake tunnels on rock walls, and running off into space from a cliff and standing there until he notices he is completely without support. He never catches the roadrunner, so why should we copy him? The coyote is a survivor, and in today's business world that's success.

The Wiley Coyote is the Acme of Success

We've all seen him trying to catch the roadrunner using rocket propelled skates, painting fake tunnels on rock walls, and running off into space from a cliff and standing there until he notices he is completely without support. He never catches the roadrunner, so why should we copy him? The coyote is a survivor, and in today's business world that's success.

In an article for Smithsonian Magazine an amazing story of change and adaptation is told featuring the coyote.

"The coyote, that cunning canine of wide-open spaces, has come to the nation's capital. And to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities. In fact, coyotes have spread to every corner of the United States, shifting their behaviors to fit new habitats and spurring researchers to cope with a worrisome new kind of carnivore: the urban coyote."
-- City Slinkers by Christine Dell'Amore

Each day there are innovations in technology and communications. We need to be like the coyote and shift our behaviors to fit new challenges. We need to look for different ways of doing things and finding paths to success. We need to reach more people, communicate better with them, and deliver products and services that will be beneficial. How can we do this?

"One of its most celebrated traits is its trickiness; coyotes have been outsmarting trappers for centuries. Recently, biologist Jon Way, who has been studying the predators in Massachusetts, set a trap near the Boston Airport. Coyotes somehow snagged the rib meat put out as bait without getting caught. In the Navajo version of the creation of the world, old men had just finished embroidering the sky in brilliant patterns when the trickster Coyote ran across their work, scattering the stars."
-- City Slinkers by Christine Dell'Amore

Stan Gehrt, a wildlife biologist at Ohio State University, has a theory that the successful coyotes are now teaching their survival skills to new generations. I like that. If they are staging "Success and the Coyote" seminars across the country we should all be standing in line for tickets.

Until Wiley Coyote comes to your town, there are other training methods available, however. I like a training program from Australia called Creative Problem Solving. This turn-key seminar comes with video, complete script, and participant handouts all on one CD-ROM and an accompanying video tape. The only thing it doesn't have is a coyote . . . or even a dingo.

"In an age of computers and technology, the one thing that sets us apart from machines is our ability to be creative. Managers and supervisors who can nurture an ideas environment where employees and team members are encouraged to see problems and solutions through new eyes - and then develop solutions that add to the organizations value through improved processes, new products or better marketing, will achieve success."
- ad copy for Creative Problem Solving

We need to look both inside and outside our organizations. What will work? What could work? What's worked ages ago that might work for us now? We need to ask these questions and more. We shouldn't be afraid of ideas and innovations. We should embrace them and the opportunity to survive. We should think of ourselves as hungry coyotes out on an adventure. Each day brings new wonders. Isn't that exciting? Doesn't that sound like fun?

Christine Dell'Amore ends her article with a description of two coyotes caught on film. She says they look curious, fearless and eager. Curious, fearless and eager? Isn't that what we should all be?

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