doug smith training

Do you think that people can achieve their goals without some sense of accountability? There may be some people who are so focused and so dedicated that they truly act relentlessly on their goal action plan and always achieve their goals. But some of us need help. Some of us benefit from an accountability partner to check in, ask how we're doing, and advocate for staying the course when temptation or lethargy threaten to derail our goals. Who holds you accountable for achieving your goals? Is it worth finding someone who will help? -- Doug Smith doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership:  High performance leadership training

Even when you have a clear goal, do you sometimes find it difficult to achieve it? I know how easy it is to get distracted. Urgent needs pull us away. Other people's goals come between us and our goals. Before we know it, our important goals can seem unimportant and end up not done. Wouldn't your life be more exciting if you focused more on achieving your goals? What if you acted as if your most important goal were your most important thing? What if you gave it all of your best attention? Set clear and exciting goals, create an action plan, and then act relentlessly on your plan. Because when we focus on achieving our goals, we do. -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership: High performance leadership training

Do people talk about your goals? Do they get excited and share your goals with other people? It's a good gage for vitality. If people talk about your goals they are stirring up interest and probably helping. They work on what excites. Design the kind of goals that people want to talk about. Goals that make a difference. Goals that bring about useful change. Goals that make lives better and happier. That's what you're working for, right? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High performance leadership training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals

How confident are you about solving problems and achieving your goals? High performance leaders are confident. They bring their own confidence to the tasks ahead. They drive for results with the knowledge that through careful planning and relentless application they will achieve their goals. Where does confidence come from? Results. Where do results come from? Focused attention combined with confidence. You have to create some level of confidence within yourself, set about the hard work, and then as success begins to reveal itself your confidence will natural rise even more. Only you can control how much confidence you bring to the game. Why not bring all you can? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High performance leadership training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals

Do you have too many goals? Sometimes I find myself in that situation - with so many goals that I can't remember them all and certainly can't complete them all in time. My advice on this is: don't do that! Focus on the big goals. Keep your goals aligned with you overall purpose. Sure, it's useful to break the big goals down into smaller pieces but that's not the problem I'm talking about. Too many unrelated goals is where we go wrong. Be careful about being confused by too many little goals. Focus on the goals that are aligned to you mission.  The big stuff matters. The big goals matter. Start with that. What's your biggest goal? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High performance leadership training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals

What have you learned today? That's my favorite question. I once wrote a regular column and ended every piece with that question. I usually started each article with this phrase "what I learned from..." and my learning could come from the oddest and most unexpected places. What I Learned From Dunking A Basketball, What I Learned From Riding The Bus, What I Learned From Making Mistakes...you get the idea. When we keep learning we can improve our performance. Learning allows us to grow, to adjust, to change. Learning keeps us fresh and creative. Learning is critical to our success. If you want to achieve your goals, keep learning. Learn constantly, learn deeply, and learn broadly. It's the best thing going. What have you learned today? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High performance leadership training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals

How's your goal achievement plan doing? Setting a clear goal is great. Creating a masterful plan is brilliant. Acting relentlessly on your plan keeps you moving forward. No slacking. No excuses. No side trips. No false starts. Relentless, persistent, motivated action. If you want to achieve your goals, act relentlessly on your plan. Without discouragement. Without delay. Bring your whole self to the game and move with all the power you are blessed with. Make those goals move and they'll move you with joy. What's the next step on your action plan? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High performance leadership training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals

How motivated is your support team? Are the people you are counting on to help when help is needed fully prepared to do that to achieve your goals? It's easy to lose track of our support team. Aren't they there to support us? The reality is that our support team also needs our support. We must keep them informed. We must keep them interested. We must keep them curious. If you want to achieve your goals, energize your support team. You do want their help, don't you? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High performance leadership training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals

What's your excuse for not achieving that big goal? Can you allow me to speak with a bit of an edge here? Can I be frank with you (and myself!) here? Nobody cares about your excuses. People care about results. People care about people. People care about goals. But absolutely no one cares about your excuses. Why not give them up? Why not take up residence where, as one of my bosses at Whole Foods used to say, "the land of no excuses"? You won't miss them. You don't need permission to fail. You need power to achieve. You need to finish your goals. If you want to achieve your goals, drop all excuses. There. I said it. Thanks for letting me get that out. I promise I'll work to eliminate all excuses from my work. How about you? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High performance leadership training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals

Why do people lie? It's aggravating. It's inconvenient. It's often easy to spot. And yet, we all do it. I'm not pointing any fingers here because I know that I've spun my own version of the truth sometimes. I'm working to stop that. The older I get the more I see the value in pure, unfiltered truth. But truth is sometimes hard to take, and maybe that's why we sometimes lie. Lies blur our vision. Lies bruise our relationships. Lies block positive energy and fill space with something much worse. We should tell the truth. As centered leaders, problem solvers, and goal achievers we should also bring out the truth. We should create the kinds of spaces and places where people know that they are free to tell the truth - and more than that must tell the truth because we insist on it. Every little lie creates a vast chasm. Let's do better than that. Let's tell the truth. And, taking the next step, let's also insist on the truth. What "t

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

What does it mean to serve your goals? Setting a clear goal is a great start. Creating an action plan gets you moving. Acting relentlessly on that plan keeps us on the path to achieving our goals. Do we need to serve them as well? Here are some ways to serve your goals: Stay open minded - the needs may change. Involve other people - the goal might be bigger than you. Talk about your goals. Work on your goals first.  Revisit your goals before you finish the day - how are you doing? Moving forward on those action items that seem to keep alluding you. Serve your goals and they will serve you well. What can you do to serve your most important goal today? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High performance leadership training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals

Who judges your creativity? Yes, we do need to analyze our problems and yes, we do need to evaluate our choices but when it comes to creativity we are better served to leave the judge behind - at least for awhile. Have fun with it. Go wild! Let your creativity find its flow and go where it wants to go. Safely, of course. With some dignity, perhaps. But let it fly. Creativity has no need of judges. Analyzing has its role and I'm all for supporting that role when the time comes. When it comes to creating new things though, whether they are works of art, splendid performances, or evolved processes, creativity flies best unimpeded. What creative work are you ready to open up today? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High performance leadership training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals

How much fun are you having working on your biggest goal? I do best with the goals I work on that provide a sense of fun. Maybe it's the work, maybe it's the people, maybe it's the crazy commitment it takes, but big goals that engage my sense of fun move faster. When it stops being fun it's harder to get done. Keep it fun! What makes a goal fun? Well, that's up to you! What's fun for me might be different than what's fun for you, but here are some indicators of a fun goal: it's challenging it creates the need to learn other people smile a lot when you talk about it you laugh there's a sense of progress, maybe even score-keeping as much as you want to achieve the goal you almost don't want it to end it's filled with surprises that both challenge AND delight you Yes, we should act relentlessly on our goals -- and we should have fun in the process. What makes a goal fun for you? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leader

Have you identified everything that might slow down your progress toward your goal? When it comes to achieving our goals, things that can seem neutral might actually be barriers. Things like a co-worker who doesn't care about our process changes. Things like a set of resources that are more dynamic than reliable. Things like shifting organizational goals. Anything that doesn't contribute to your goal has the potential to slow it down. Do you have a risk strategy for emerging barriers? Should you? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High performance leadership training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals

Do other people understand and support your biggest project? I sometimes take for granted that people who should care about my project do care about my project. It's not that easy. People need to know about what's going on. They need to be involved. They need to connect with the creative reasons for even doing the project. And, they need to understand the benefits to a project. Just because you take your project seriously doesn't mean that anyone else will -- unless they have a reason to. Do you know the reasons why people should take your project seriously? -- Doug Smith

What kinds of questions do you ask when you're solving a problem? Do you stay curious enough to be open for whatever the answers are? I've discovered that once we identity the problem, the best path toward solving it is to change that problem into a goal. What is it that we really want? The next step is to identify the barriers to that goal. What's preventing us from achieving our goal? Then I change those barriers to questions. It's a bit like using the classic problem solving tool of the "Five Whys" -- asking a series of whys to get to the root of the problem. In this variation, we're asking curious questions to figure out how to get beyond whatever is constraining us from achieving our goals. Solving problems starts with asking truly curious questions. What questions could help you solve your biggest problem? Are you ready to ask them? -- doug smith doug smith training: how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership: High Performance

How many people know about your most important goal? Here's why it makes sense to tell more people about your goals: - It helps find people who are eager to help you - Talking about your goals gives you new ideas on how to achieve them - Once your goals are known you feel more accountability - People can help you figure out how to solve the problems you will encounter It's safe to keep our goals to ourselves. That way, if we don't achieve them there's no one to ask what happened. But that way, we are less likely to achieve them. Who needs to know about your goals? Will you tell them today? -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership: High Performance Leadership Training

Is there something between you and your goal? I can usually identify something that is working against my goal.  It could be a distraction, or it could be a valid concern like another goal or a persistent problem. Things pop up to stand in our way. What we need to do is work through that. We need to identify our constraints and surpass them. We need to defeat the goal blockers and persist. We need to act relentlessly on our plan. Find the barriers and break them down. Identify your impasse and get over it. Your goal is waiting for your motions to success. -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership: High Performance Leadership Training

Have you ever been stuck in a routine? It happens to me sometimes - I get really comfortable doing things in a certain order, eating certain types of food (I'll never get tired of pizza) and working at certain jobs. These little ruts are comfortable but not where I want to live. To live creatively we do better to break out of those routines. We need a change of scenery. We need to meet new people. We need to rock our own world enough to get off center long enough to know what our center really is. But it doesn't need to be earth shaking. We don't have to turn our lives upside down. We could even be happy with the way things are. That still leaves plenty of opportunity to see new, hear new, feel new, experience anew what may have been right in front of us all along, but brings a breath-taking newness to our life. There is something completely new about this moment in time. It's unique. No matter how familiar it seems, we've never lived this moment before

LEARNING ACTIVITY (allow about 20 minutes) Purpose : To help the participants focus on their vision, their mission, and their key measures. It's also an opportunity to practice drawing. Materials : At least one sample baseball card for everyone in the group (you could use cards from another sport but I'm partial to baseball cards). Blank index cards for each person as well. More than one is recommended in case they need to do-over an early attempt. Process : Review the sample baseball card. Identify what makes it so useful. What does it report? Note the picture - what does it say about the person on the card? Write your vision and/or mission at the top of the back of your card. Do your best to keep it to ten words or less. If you don't currently have a mission, now's the time to write one! Think about what is important about what you do for a living and how those things are measured. Identify 3 to 5 key measures that you are held accountable for. Write a

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe What would we do without creativity? Life would be so much less colorful. Songs would not be sung. Pictures would not be painted. And leaders would use the same old strategies that irritated people before. Creativity helps us grow. Creativity IS growth, and we must never stop growing. Creativity is a necessity. The next time someone implies that you don't have enough time to be creative, ask them how they'd feel without the things that make life worth living - joy, celebration, examination, and love. Yes, even love - for how much can we love without getting creative?  What creative work of art (or commerce!) are you working on today? -- doug smith doug smith training: developing creativity

What are you afraid of? Just kidding. I'm afraid of lots of things. Losing my phone. Falling over a cliff. Wandering naked in the street. Just kidding. But, aren't we all afraid of some things that are irrational to be afraid of? Don't we all hold ourselves back far more than we need to in order to protect ourselves from embarrassment, from harm, from making mistakes? We will make mistakes. We will hurt feelings. We will stub our toes. That's part of the creative life. That's part of living. Creativity needs a certain fearlessness. We must be able to let go and let loose. We must be able to laugh at the fear that paralyzes our impulses and push through those walls of warning. Full speed ahead! Imagine what we'll learn! Developing Creativity: Talk to someone who scares you just a little. Not an actual criminal or dangerous person, just someone who scares or intimidates you a little.  See a scary movie, whether or not you like scary movies. Not

Could you be more creative? I could. I think I'm already plenty creative but I know that there is always an unlimited amount of creativity there for me to grab. I can always pull up some more. How about you? You are about as creative as you want to be -- and your creative potential is unlimited. Let's go! Being Creative: Draw a picture. It doesn't matter how great it is. Draw it. Take a picture of something at an unusual angle. Get all Orson Welles with it. Feel the difference. Describe it. Write about it. What if it were used for something completely different - what could it be? Tell yourself this: "I am becoming the most creative person I know and I love it." -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your goals   Front Range Leadership: Training Supervisors for Success What have you learned today?

How deep is your deepest relationship? Do you know everything about them? Can you talk about whatever is on your mind? Do you know each other so well that you can make each other laugh with the slightest gesture or word? We can't get to know everyone that deeply. It would likely wear us out. But, we can get deeper on so many more relationships. So many of our friends and acquaintances barely know us. We can change that. We can creatively build relationships that help us smile, grow, learn, and solve problems. Isn't it through our deeper relationships that our happiness blossoms most prominently? Aren't we most creative when we are with other creative souls? The faster path to solving problems and achieving goals is thru deeper relationships. Who can you get to know better today? -- Doug Smith doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership:  Training Supervisors for Success What have you learned today?

Do you limit your partner's growth? Whether it's a business partner, organizational partner, creative partner, or life partner, do you ever expect them to stay exactly the way they are? I know I've done that. In love with the person who was, I sometimes yearn for more of that same person. I want that same perfect person. But that person changes. We can't stay exactly the way we are. We need to keep growing. Expecting our partner to be perfect is a harsh judgement on ourselves. Relax the judge and watch that wonderful partner grow. Who have you held back a little lately? How can you liberate their creative self today? -- Doug Smith doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership:  Training Supervisors for Success What have you learned today?

Why would anyone hold back their creativity? And yet, we do it all the time. I know that when I am at my most creative it becomes my happiest as well. There's no separating the higher quality of life from the greater degree of creativity. And yet, we let things get in the way. Let's break the bonds that tie us down from creating great things. Let's cut the cords that wrap us into distraction. Let's tear down the walls that come between us and our creative best. Unleashing our creativity makes us more valuable to ourselves and others. Ready? Set? Go! -- Doug Smith What have you learned today?

Do all the problems of the world sometimes seem overwhelming? What on earth can we do? What we can't do as individuals is solve them all. It's too much. I get tired just thinking about it. But, there is still much that we can do. There are problems that we can help solve. We can work together and focus on what matters most to us and set noble goals. Then, centered and creative we can achieve those goals. Once we realize it's not our job to solve every problem it becomes easier to solve the problems we are ready to solve. What problem are you ready to solve? -- Doug Smith doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership:  Training Supervisors for Success What have you learned today?

Do you evaluate what someone is saying, while they're saying it? Do you ever have your mind made up before someone is done talking? I've done that. Many times. It's easy to jump to our own answers, and our own solutions before we hear the whole story. We need to hear the whole story (or at least enough of it so that we know what the story really is). Here's the best way that I know. Listen with curiosity. Listen without judging what the other person is saying or who they are. Listen. To find the true causes of a problem we need to listen without judging. It's not always easy. It takes practice. To get past our inner filters and snap judgements, it's worth the effort. Are you willing to listen with curiosity? -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership: Training Supervisors for Success What have you learned today?

Do you ever think that it's a bit hard to uncover the truth? Sometimes I've worked on problems where the hardest part in getting through an obstacle is uncovering the truth behind what's causing it. And yet, once the truth is uncovered, things can get moving again. People have their reasons for hiding things. Maybe they are afraid of the consequences. Maybe their self-esteem is at stake. Maybe they just don't know any better. As leaders, when we stay curious and persistent we can do everybody a favor by discovering the truth. The objective, fact-driven, feeling-validated truth. Solving that for the whole world would take a lifetime. Solving that for each project is just plain responsible and certainly possible. It takes more courage to uncover the truth and that's because the payoff is so huge. Finding the truth helps us solve our problems and achieve our goals, and that's what project management is all about. What deep-rooted truths does your projec

How do you feel, after doing someone a big favor or  completing a difficult task, when they simply say "thanks, I appreciate that..."? For me, it's not enough. Appreciate what, exactly? And, does that mean you'll be expecting it again? Instead of saying "I appreciate that" it is greatly upgraded when we add specifics about what we're thankful for and describe exactly how it helped. Expressing specifically what was so good, and how it helped let's people know we understand the importance of it. No one wants to be taken for granted, and simply saying thanks is really light-weight in response. Let's do better. Let's do more. Let's be specific, authentic, and sincere. People like specific, heart-felt appreciation. If you want to energize your team, how about letting them know that you care - specifically. How can you enhance the quality of your appreciation for others today? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  Training Supe

How do you feel about the status quo? In the project management world, status quo is not enough. We must keep moving. We must act relentlessly on our plan. We must stay creative. I'm fond of quoting my friend Andrew Oxley about this: "In nature there is no stasis. We can choose growth or we can choose decay but there is no standing still. Life only knows those two directions." That's your project. There is no standing still. If it's standing still, it's decaying or getting worse or falling behind schedule or running over budget. There is no stasis. There's no standing still so we might as well move in the direction we need to go. Keep moving. It's your best option. What part of your action plan has been standing still lately? What will it take to get it moving? -- Doug Smith

When you're working on a project, do you ever wonder why common sense is in such short supply? People make mistakes that seem silly. Standard procedures are sometimes ignored creating havoc. Relationships that should be sound and happy feel haggard and lost. Where IS all this common sense? When I'm the leader, I sometimes forget that not everyone shares my same view of common sense. Not everyone on the team has experienced the kinds of things that lead me to believe that certain project concepts are common sense and so they don't share that view. We all have places in our work that seem simple to us but more complicated to others. Just because something is common sense doesn't mean that people are doing it. We may need to tell them about our version of common sense. We may need to make processes fool-proof. We need to make things easy. The next time you think to yourself, "why are they missing that thing that is clearly common sense" consider the o

Does your most important project include a financial business case AND a compelling story? I've noticed that project leaders tend to forget one or the other. You need both. Why? Because half of the world is laser-sharp focused on the financials while the other half cares about the financials but needs a compelling story. A compelling story is the cool reason why you are doing a project. It's the people side. It's the part that when the project is finished makes you and your constituents feel warm and fuzzy. Maybe you're not a warm-and-fuzzy kind of person. I'm not. But, I've learned that the chances of sustaining support and achieving the project goals improves dramatically when the project includes both a business case and a compelling story. The business case shows the financial impact of your project on the organization. It shows how will your project improve your results in any of these areas: Revenue Expenses Customer Happiness Team Member

Have you ever noticed that one of the toughest parts to solving a problem is getting people to adapt the solution? We just don't like to change. Sometimes our solution feels tougher than living with the problem. The discipline of doing something differently, and better, is challenging. Some of the biggest problems have the easiest of solutions. The challenge is influencing people to change. What are your easy answers? What do you think prevents people from doing those changes? How can we influence them quickly and collaboratively? Answer those questions successfully, and lots of problems melt away. -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership: High performance leadership training doug smith training: how to achieve your goals

You probably already have reports in place for your project. How certain are you about your project's progress? Is it moving as fast as you want it to move? Are you energizing your team with the progress your project makes? A project without progress is begging for attention or closure. If it was scoped correctly, planned carefully, and resourced properly your project should be making significant progress. People need to see that progress. People need to feel that progress. If the energy has drained out of the progress, it's time to make a decision: ramp up the energy, or shut down the project. What's your choice? -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your project goals

Those pesky project problems! Do they ever bother you? Wouldn't you love a project that had NO problems to solve so that you could race right through to the end? That's not likely to happen very often and it's probably best. Solving problems exposes us to new ideas. Solving problems helps us focus on our project goals. Solving problems is the way to that faster conclusion. The purpose of solving problems is to better achieve our goals. When you look at it like that, they don't seem so annoying, do they? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  Training Supervisors for Success doug smith training:  how to achieve your project goals

Where do your best project ideas come from? When we're creating something new we need lots of new ideas. The ones we bring with us are great, but we might need more. We probably need more. We certainly need more. As the project manager, part of your job is to find the best sources of new ideas. To spark some inspiration, think about where great ideas come from. They don't even have to be related to your project because great ideas from unrelated areas might just get your team going in a spectacularly new and creative direction. Sometimes several unrelated ideas can produce the best solution to your project problem. Get lots of ideas! Why not invite some new ideas into your next project meeting? -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your project goals

Does it ever feel like your project has one problem too many? Just when you're about to solve one problem another pops up and keeps you from your goal. Just when we seem to have everything under control something else slips out of view and into trouble. One problem too many just means that it's time to find the help you need. Maybe someone on your project team has the answer. Maybe your project sponsor knows what to do. Maybe the customer has an idea that will take ten problems off the table and help you focus on the goal. Asking for help not only gets you closer to solving those project problems but it also energizes your team. The help is out there. We just need to ask. -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your project goals

When is the best time to be working on your project goals? Right now, of course. Now is the time that we have. While we might be easily distracted our project goals are waiting for us to take action. There is no better time than right now to work on your project goals.  Act relentlessly on that project plan. Find the goal that's ready for the next action. Then, act! -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your project goals

Do you have a favorite solution? I've misapplied solutions sometimes simply because they were my favorite answers. Need more flexibility? Take all the flexibility you need. Or not. The answer that first pops into our mind is not always the right answer. It's just the answer we know best. That big problem might be easier to solve once we let go of that ineffective solution so deeply imbedded in us. We might be conditioned to pick that idea. We might be in a pattern of dysfunction. We might be wrong. Can you let go of an imbedded solution long enough to make room for something new? You can always come back to your favorite idea if it turns out to be the best one. But it often isn't. Solving project problems usually means creating something completely new. Where do your best NEW ideas come from? -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your project goals

How sure are you that the people on your project team are clear about the project goals? I've often made the mistake of thinking that just people I was clear about the project goals that everyone else was also clear about them. They may need to hear about them more than once. Probably at least five times is the minimum that a team member needs to hear about the goals before they truly understand them. As clear as they may be, you need clear understanding as well. The more clear and direct your project goals are, the more likely you are to achieve them. How clear are your team members about your project goals? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  Training Supervisors for Success doug smith training:  how to achieve your project goals

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by how much there is to change? I know the feeling - there are so many big problems to solve that it can crush expectations and send me into a zone of retreat. But, that's not where I belong. That's not where any of us belong. We belong involved in the work that makes life better. Better for us, better for our customers, better for our team members. Even (gasp!) better for our competitors and enemies. There IS a lot to be done. No single one of us will be able to change everything. What we can do is change what we can change. We can work constantly at learning, developing, improving, growing, caring. If I can't change the world I can at least change a moment at a time for the best. We can build great moments. One moment at a time. What will be your greatest moment today? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  Training Supervisors for Success doug smith training:  how to achieve your project goals

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