doug smith training

Are you doing your best to achieve your biggest goal? I know there is always more that I can do. It takes discipline. It takes persistence. And, it takes a willingness to stretch and grow. I had a close friend who was fond of saying "I did my best" to get forgiveness for her failure. While I was willing to forgive (what's the point in withholding forgiveness?) I usually thought that she could have done best. If the intention and effort are both there, we can usually do better. We can do better when we've done well, and we can do better when we've missed the mark. "I did my best" is seldom true. Your capacity is much greater. How can you move from "I did my best" to doing better on your biggest goal today? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High performance leadership training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals

Have you ever invested in something thinking that it was the best possible value only to discover later that it came with hidden costs? Maybe the cost was loss of quality. Maybe it was less reliable than you expected. Maybe you simply outgrew it before it became truly useful to you. The biggest bargain comes with hidden costs. Your job is to find those costs before you need to pay them. Cheaper isn't always better and faster sometimes misses the mark. What hidden costs have you discovered in the past? What would you do differently next time? There's nothing stopping you next time. -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your goals What have you learned today?

Are you perfect yet? What a silly question! Of course not. Neither am I. Which is why we should keep learning, keep growing, keep improving. Think about where you were a few years ago - you've no doubt improved many aspects of your performance and, hopefully, have created better results than the you of a few years ago could have. That's progress. We can always do better, and it's our responsibility to keep working on it. There's just no point when we are free to kick back and say "well, I nailed that one so I'm done here." We're never done, because when you're done, you're done . Growing and making progress keeps us sharp. Learning new skills leads to setting and achieving new goals. It's an endless and fascinating process. There's every reason to embrace it and own it: growth is what we do. Our best performance becomes our next starting point. The better we do, the more our potential grows. It can feel like hard work. It can

What do you get when you've achieved a goal? First, you get the result of that goal. That's usually cause for celebrating and energy you can convert into new efforts. You get to set another goal. A tougher, more ambitious, maybe even more noble goal. Growth is the direction that goals lead us in. Success raises the bar. It's a challenge, and it's a blessing. We get to do bigger and better things. We learn constantly from both our struggles and our successes, and we use that learning to move on to the next big goal. You've got another next big goal. Why not get started right away? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  Training Supervisors for Success doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals

Are you happy with your goals? I've seen people fall into a trap sometimes: they want to be happy, and yet they set goals that don't create happiness. That kind of disconnect is not only unproductive, it's unnecessary. Every job I've ever had (and if you've been in any of my workshops, you know I've had a few) has included parts I didn't care for, and yet in my goals I always directed my actions toward creating mutual success for the organization and for my own sense of happiness. Sell more merchandise? Sure, while creating useful customer experiences. Reduce expenses? I can do that - without laying people off and without hurting service. Train the entire workforce in a compliance program that's poorly designed? Absolutely, just let me set a goal of making it both interactive and inspirational and I'll be completely energized. Align those goals you need to set with the organizational mission and strategic goals, of course. That's the price

Do you have a particular problem standing in the way of your most important goal? It would be unusual if you didn't. Whenever I think I have a really important goal, some equally big problem is likely to emerge to stop it. We either face our biggest problems, or we let them win. We either figure out how to eliminate what stands in the way (or mitigate it, reduce it, modify it, or take advantage of it) or our goal remains undone. Undone is not for you. Undone is frustrating and counter-productive. Instead, let's use that problem to grow. Finding a problem provides permission to grow. It's a natural way of communicating to us that we're going to need to improve something to get to the next level. We're going to need to grow. And, since we need to grow anyway to remain living and dynamic, why not grow in response to the needs of our goal? Once we've set the right goal no problem should stand in its way. But, we might need to solve that problem first. Ho

Have you ever been surprised by how two completely unrelated things seem to connect? The TV commercial that says the name of someone you were just thinking about. The thing you forgot to grab at home that delayed you and then just missing an accident on the road by minutes. Coincidences can sometimes feel providential. Connections pop up unexpectedly. Sometimes the solution to a problem is an unexpected connection or combination. It pays to pay attention. Grab those unexpected connections. Find out what they mean. It could be the solution to that problem. -- Doug Smith