doug smith training

Leadership, no matter how much it is intended to be permanent, is temporary. A day comes when the direction changes, the dance shifts, and the once stable boss is lost. Lost in direction, lost in relevance, lost in the times. What if we kept our leadership portable? Leadership could be fluid, flexible, and responsive as it remains centered. As circumstances change, our leadership must flow with it while finding the strength of a foundation without the chains of stagnation. That's not easy but it's part of the art of leadership. Partly science, partly art, leadership requires us to know when it's time to stand and know when it's time to flow, and yes even know when it's time to go. Portable is more powerful than authority if authority is not portable. We don't need to ask for change in order for change to change us.  -- doug smith  

Do your action plans ever weigh you down? I've been on projects where the action plans were so detailed, so precise, and so constricting that each task felt like a burden in my day. It took the fun right out of it. Yes, we do need detailed plans to achieve our goals. Yes, we do need to relentlessly follow our plans in order to overcome certain obstacles. But, we can have fun in the process. We can add our creativity. We can embrace new possibilities. We can improvise a new script when the old one seems stale. Goals are meant to give us more hope, not to chain us to a plan. When the plan slows us down, dance! Well, maybe not really dance. But I have been known to break into dance and noticed that it helps. What works for you to get your creative juices flowing? -- Doug Smith