Learn from Those Missed Goals

Do you remember missing a goal but also learning from it?

If we are truly setting stretch goals, we will sometimes miss. It doesn't make us unsuccessful -- it changes us, it refreshes us, it develops us -- if we take the time to learn the lesson inside.

Why did we miss?
What should we do differently next time?
What part of our goal plan did work?

Sometimes we learn more from a stretch goal that we don't achieve than from an easy one that we do.

Pick the stretch goal. Grow.

-- Douglas Brent Smith

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A Promise or A Plan?

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What's the problem with anonymous feedback? The list is long. When people can say anything they want, without any accountability, they are sometimes rude. The feedback becomes exaggerated. Not knowing what to do with it (who do you try to please?) it frustrates the person receiving the feedback. Anonymous feedback encourages anti-social comments. It opens up a level of venting that is not healthy for either party. And, rather than building relationships, it tears them down. The best place for anonymous feedback is the garbage. It's too easy to be negative when no one knows who you are. Hold people accountable. Teach them that two-way communication is responsible, respectable, and useful. Let's keep the trash talking on the basketball court and build relationships of worth at work. -- Doug Smith

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How are you at keeping up? Change is so rapid that adjusting, and evolving, has become a full time job. We roll with the changes, we drive new changes, we let go of the old. It's not getting easier, and it's getting faster. I work at it. I keep learning. I keep adjusting, and still... By the time I have it figured out it's time to try something else. Instead of getting frustrated, here's how I like to look at it: change is growth. Faster change is faster growth. Getting better is growth, so the more change the better. Are you with me on that? Because the alternative is slow-motion decay, and we don't want that, do we? -- Douglas Brent Smith

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It's better to be considered tough and show up tender than to be thought tender and show up tough. -- doug smith

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