Jon Acuff

It’s a complicated world. Even picking a show to watch is a chore. Have you ever scanned Netflix, Hulu, Prime, Apple+ and Max only to say, “There’s nothing on.” On the contrary, there’s 10,000 years of content to choose from but cognitive overload stresses us out so we retreat to reruns of the Office or the Gilmore Girls.

Business is no better. By the time you finish reading this sentence there will be new tools, techniques and regulations for your industry. How do successful teams and leaders make sense of all this chaos? With four simple words.

When New York Times Bestselling author Jon Acuff got curious about why certain teams float about the complexity and outperform everyone, he did three things:

He commissioned a research study with PhD Mike Peasley.

He built a private online community of 20,000+ to test what he learned.

He worked with more than 350 companies and teams.

Over the years of research, a pattern emerged. From Lexus to Walmart, Chick-fil-A to Microsoft, successful goals always require the same four stages: Dream, Plan, Do, Review.

In the dream stage, you answer the question, “What do we want to do?” In plan, you answer, “How will we do it?” In do, you simply ask, “Are we doing it?” In review, “Did it work?”

If that’s really all it takes though, why doesn’t everybody use these stages? Well, most people do, but they get stuck.

Dreamers get stuck in the dream stage. A dreamer has 1,000 ideas and 0 actions.

Perfectionists get stuck in the plan stage. A perfectionist will change the world as soon as the plan is perfect.

Procrastinators get stuck in the do stage. A procrastinator will always start tomorrow.

Hustlers get stuck in the review stage. A hustler is addicted to do and can’t stand stopping to review to check if they’re headed in the right direction. They’re all motion, very little mission.

This is the moment in the keynote when audience members elbow each other as they quickly, painlessly identify what’s holding them back. Then, pulling from his 9 books of research and resources, Jon unleashes tactical, actionable ways to apply DPDR immediately.