Deltek meets Emile Coue'

We were somewhat surprised by the results of a recent survey of Government contractors as reported by WashingtonTechnology.com. The survey of 250 Government contractors conducted by Deltek (a provider of accounting software for Government contractors) found that 83 percent of contractors that were recently audited by DCAA had “good” to “excellent” relationships with that Agency and the preponderance of those thought that relationships with DCAA were improving. Well, that certainly doesn’t jibe with our own experience and with ample anecdotal evidence. It made us think of Emile Coue, the father of autosuggestion whose favorite phrase was “Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better."


Emile Coue’ was a pharmacist and when he gave medicine to people, he would praise the medicine to some and say nothing about its effectiveness to others. He found that those people who bought the medicine with the added praises, did much better than those who did not receive the added praises. From there, Coue’ discovered the power of imagination and autosuggestion. His methods were based on two principles. First, when willpower and imagination come into conflict, the power of imagination wins out and secondly, imagination can be trained more rapidly than willpower. So, maybe if we keep telling ourselves that relationships with DCAA are getting better and better, we’ll start to believe it – and Deltek can sell more software.