doug smith training

I've said it often and it is still true: there are no perfect people, there are no perfect processes, and there are no perfect products. Nothing in this life is perfect. In a way, isn't that perfect? It means that it is completely up to us to make things better. It is within our need to improve processes, to develop people, to create new products. If we don't do it, who will? That means we might need to overcome our ego's need to feel perfect by examining exactly where we stand. How are we doing? What does the feedback say? Where are we on this road of improvement? Critical thinking requires some self-evaluation. Not to hurt our feelings, but to develop our capacity. Are we perfect yet? Of course not, but it's ever so much fun to be on the road headed in that direction. -- doug smith  

This is probably get some disagreement. We've come to rely so much on one particular trait of business, probably even more than price. Convenience. We make so many decisions based on how EASY a transaction is. It's so much EASIER than ever before and we've all been spoiled by click-and-ship that anything with any friction whatsoever gets passed over. That's an understandable decision, but not always the best one. Convenience is great, but no substitute for quality. Hamburgers are convenient but wouldn't you rather eat a steak? (please excuse me my vegetarian and vegan friends.) Social media is convenient but how about the depth and richness of a long face to face conversation with a dear friend? I advocate that we consider other measures in our important decisions. Measures other than convenience: Quality Durability Care Beauty Drama What would you add to the list? Convenience is a poor measure of quality.  Let's consider everything else that makes business -- a...

Productivity is a loaded word that is thrown around as if it means unlimited quality. It's not. Like most words, productivity is a relative term.  While you can always improve productivity (if that means doing more with less) there will also be a cost. That cost is usually in quality. Unless you develop a completely new way of doing something (or at least revolutionize the process) when you do more of it you inevitably reach a capacity limit. Approaching that intersection, the traffic heads for trouble.  We see it all the time: a relentless race to the bottom to make things cheaper and more plentiful at the huge sacrifice of quality. That loss feels like a real human loss. Yes, a phone-cue is faster than waiting to speak to a human, but there has been a significant loss in human contact in the business world. Long before AI started doing work for us, we let customers do their own heavy lifting. That results in a lot of dropped balls and a lot of unhappy customers. How you meas...

The trouble with production quotas is that they cause people to do anything necessary to meet them. Cheat. Lie. Cover-up. Bend the rules. Break the rules...if the stakes are high enough and the pressure is strong enough people may feel forced into doing whatever it takes to win. That's not winning. Leaders do need to measure success and we do need to identify key activities on the path to that success, but we must constantly be careful about the means as well as the ends. How strong is your focus on quality? How committed are you to integrity? Are people on your team rewarded for supporting the team? The problem with competition is that someone always loses. It does not need to be your team. -- doug smith

How important is commitment to you? When someone tells you that they will do something, are you fine with a casual "maybe they will, maybe they won't" or are you looking for a true commitment? It's not always easy to find these days and yet it is more valuable than ever: commitment. If you want high performance results it takes commitment. If you want quality service for your customers it takes commitment. When there is an easy way out, people will find it unless they are committed to excellence. Everything is optional until you commit. -- doug smith  

  Quality of thinking is the core of control. Control your thoughts and you can control your words. Control your words and you can control your actions. Control your actions and you can control your results. It all starts with the quality of your thinking. -- doug smith

It hurts to feel that you're not good enough. Doubts creep in and sting with a discouraging pain. But what if there's another way to process it? Not good enough, as bad as it feels, is always true, isn't it? We can always be better. We should constantly improve. And sometimes, in that process, we can realize that good enough -- for now -- may be good enough. Until we make it better. Let's enjoy the moment, and breathe, and then focus on making it better. -- doug smith  

It's important to provide the best possible service to our customers. If that takes extra effort, it's well worth it in the good will that develops. If the customer feels good about the service, the organization is much more likely to prosper. And -- even better -- when your customers are happy it makes it easier for you to be happy, too. Service to others serves us the best. -- doug smith  

For a long time now, for many products, it's been a race to the bottom. Offer the basic thing at the lowest price and capture as much market share as you can. As customers, we've gone along with this because we do love low prices. And, it's deceptive because it feels as if many things CAN costs less without sacrificing quality. Cheap TVs are still good. Even cheap cars are better than cars of yesteryear.  But it doesn't hold up for everything -- especially anything involving human interaction, and anything involving customer service. When we reduce staffing to the bare minimums and when we allow robots to answer our questions we are pushing the quality down. Sometimes, better service and higher quality products simply cost more to produce. If we allow the lowest price items to prevail on everything, everything will end up lower in quality.  If we keep rewarding the cheapest price we'll keep creating the cheapest life.  I don't think that's what we want. How ...

As quantifiable as it may be, productivity is in the end, highly subjective. "How can that be?" "We define importance. We define what matters. You can decide how much is enough." "But it's all numbers. It's all measurable..." "Yes, once you've decided what matters. Once you've define the quality you want. None of the productivity matters unless the quality is there." "Well, my boss wouldn't agree with that very much." "How much do you like working for your boss?" "Not very much..." You might disagree. Many people do. But consider this: would you rather have exactly what you want, or a whole bunch of what you don't want?  I thought so. -- doug smith

I once had a boss who had higher standards than me. Every day seemed like a challenge. There just wasn't any pleasing this boss. I'd get to a new level and she'd urge me to raise the level again. "Keep learning," she'd say. "Keep developing. Make your customers unforgettable and they will never forget you..." She was right. The chase is endless. The effort is unrelenting. And the joy, ah the joy becomes inexhaustible. If your boss has higher standards than you do, raise your standards.  -- doug smith  

  Perfection is a direction, not a destination. -- doug smith

  People make so many decisions based on price that I wonder if they realize what they are choosing. I've done it, and maybe you have to -- given price precedence in making a decision. Sometimes that's reasonable. We don't always need to pay the higher price and we do enjoy a bargain. But... As obvious as it is, it's worth remembering that the best costs more. When you want the best, keep that in mind. -- doug smith

Once I was rehearsing with a band and as we were tuning one of the musicians said, in jest, "close enough for jazz." We could spend more time getting it more precise, we could find an electronic tuner to get it exactly right, or we could settle for a quick "good enough." It was a joke because good enough is not good enough -- for a jam session, a rehearsal, or a performance. Quality matters. The audience can sense your level of quality even when they are not trained to detect it. And, if you don't start out "in tune" there's no telling where you'll go. It doesn't automatically get better. In fact it tends to get progressively more out of tune. It starts a cavalcade of crap. Letting quality slide starts an avalanche of chaos. High performance leaders insist on quality. Not perfection, but a quality so high that it appears to be perfect to most people. It takes longer. It's usually harder. Give it the time. Give it the effort. Quality mat...

Does every single member of your team understand and follow your team standards? Leaders can get lazy about the behaviors they accept and the behaviors they tolerate. It can feel like a hassle to remind team members that they must keep your team norms and meet your expectations. Remind them anyway. It's tough to tighten up loose standards -- do it anyway. Where is your team headed with sloppy, loose, carefree standards about what is acceptable and what is expected? Down. That's not for you. That's not what you want. Meet your standards. Remind your team how to meet your standards. And keep quality (and morale!) high. It's something that high performance leaders do. -- doug smith

Old does not always mean outdated. New does not always mean best. Quality knows no age. -- doug smith

A typo can be the difference between distinction and extinction. Quality matters. -- doug smith

Have you ever noticed that a business you are dealing with suddenly offers a better deal to NEW customers than what you already have? How does that make you feel? Big data has produced so much specific stratification in our customer worlds that it is now possible to only give our best to those customers who are most profitable. It is possible to overlook those customers who have been loyal (and have gotten us to where we are) in favor of recruiting new customers. It is possible to treat different classes of customers differently. Does that feel intuitively right to you? What if you're a member of a class that's treated with lower quality than another? Chances are, that IS happening to you in one transaction or another. Do we really want to keep building a society where those who pay more are treated better? What about offering everyone our constant best? That doesn't mean that we stop using data to identify our best opportunities or serve our best customers exquis...