doug smith training

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

Do you answer your phone? I do, but then most professionals in my generation do, too. There probably aren't as many generational differences in the workplace as people focus on, but I've noticed that one difference is how we treat the phone. A phone call means different things to different people, even different generations. A phone call is still important. Even as we rely more on email and text messages and other ways of communicating online, a phone call provides a type of immediacy that can only be gotten in person or on the phone. It's vital for establishing and supporting customer relationships. It's critical to achieving your goals. People who don't answer the phone are missing great opportunities to connect with customers, clients, and possible partners.  Don't leave this very human element of relationship building unattended. Don't let your call-prompting system screen every-single-call so that no one can actually build a dialogue with you. A

How do you measure success? Having been a manager, supervisor, and project leader for many years I've had to evaluate team member success in many different ways. We usually focus on performance that is connected some how to customer happiness. Sometimes, that's not as important in our metrics as profitability. It's easy to lost track of why we're doing what we're doing if we don't measure the right things. I learned as a supervisor that if you're not careful about what you measure and how you reward performance that people will achieve the metrics you want even if they have to game the system to do it. They can miss the whole point of the exercise and instead worry about getting the reward. We shouldn't do that to people and we shouldn't let them do that to us. We should use measures that tell us how we are doing about our financial performance, yes of course, AND also how we're doing at meeting our mission. Are we serving our purpose? Are

How do you energize your goals? How about your team? Whether or not our goals have formal teams working on them, we do benefit from the help of other people. I like to consider those helpful other people as part of my goal achieving team. For people to help on our goals we need to energize them. Inspire them. Engage them. Involve them. When we give our team energy that gives our goals energy. There are lots of ways to energize those goal-teams, including: Talking about the goal Thanking people for how they have already helped Staying curious about how the goal is useful to the team members Explaining how the goal is part of a larger mission Sharing your action plan Asking for help That's just a start, but it's a good start. The team won't stay energized on its own. The owner of the goal has to help. When you give your energy to goals your energy is multiplied. Your team provides the best source to that math. Energize your team, and they'll ener

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

Do you tend to focus on facts, or emotions? Some people focus mainly on the facts and care very little about emotions. If the answer is logical, if the data supports it, that's enough. For others, it must feel right. So what if the facts prove a point, if it's not good for people what good is it? Both facts and feelings are important. That's why a key part of what I call CLUES to Success relies on understanding both the facts and the feelings of any interaction. Both matter. Appeal to logic but always remember to move emotions. We've all got emotions, whether or not we show them or talk about them. If you want to achieve your goals and solve your problems, remember to check the facts AND move those emotions. It's half the opportunity, and a half that you don't want to lose. What emotions do you think are part of your most important goal? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  Training Supervisors for Success doug smith training:  how to achieve

Do your strengths ever go to far? Doesn't it seem like anything taken to the extreme becomes too much of a good thing, becomes less than a good thing? It's the assertive person who becomes aggressive. It's the accommodating person who becomes passive aggressive. It's the peaceful person who stands by and let's bad things happen. It's the warrior who rebels against authority until all order is gone. It's taking things too far. Our greatest strengths tend to expose our greatest weaknesses. We compensate. We transfer. We blame other people. And relying only on our strengths can start to make extremes seem reasonable. Exposing our weaknesses is not all bad. It provides opportunity. It sparks conversation. It humbles us just when we are at most risk of acting in narcissistic ways. I've learned to embrace my weaknesses, not for the sake of keeping them but to avoid rationalizing them. To work on them. To find help from others and manage the extre

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

What keeps us from solving our biggest problems? Our biggest problems are big for a reason. They include baggage, challenges, surprises, resistance, and blocks that feel stronger than we are. Our biggest problems can seem tough and even insurmountable. We work our way around them as long as we can because bumping into them causes us so much discomfort. The problem with big problems is that they don't go away on their own, they get bigger. A problem ignored tends to grow increasingly faster.  Not only is that big problem getting bigger, but it's getting bigger at a faster rate and with more deeply rooted tentacles that create additional problems. We owe it to ourselves to tackle those big problems now. Roll up our sleeves, check our egos at the door, do whatever it takes but work on them now. Because if you don't like that problem now, how much will you like it when it's at least twice as big? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  Training Supervisors

Who knows about your true vision? Not some slogan, tag line, or inherited mission given to you by someone you don't even know, but rather your true vision. What you see as the reason you are here. What you hope, plan, and expect to accomplish in your lifetime. That's a big one, isn't it? Big because it requires thought and effort and big because as we form our vision we may have absolutely no idea how to accomplish it. If it's too easy it's not a vision, it's just an incremental goal. A vision is tough work. Why go at it alone? Why not get the help you'll need to bring that vision about? Why not find out if that vision even makes any sense (the world probably already has enough Don Quioxotes tilting at windmills out there). A vision is only as powerful as those who share it. Build your vision with your allies. Develop your vision with your friends. Create your vision with your mentors. Get the help you need. You'll need it. -- Doug Smith

Have you ever worked with a team member who fell just short of their intended performance even though they did everything in their power to achieve it? They're willing, they're motivated, they just ran into some challenges. Wouldn't you rather work with someone like that than someone who effortlessly hits their target but cares very little about it? Where is the better opportunity for growth? Who is the more likely better investment in your time? When you can't celebrate the result, celebrate the intention. And then push hard for improvement. It's so easy for someone to become discouraged. Find out how hard they are trying and celebrate that. Focus on the goals and the next possible steps for achieving them. Because sometimes, to someone else, that person could be you. -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership: Training Supervisors for Success