Create Your Inspiration

Have you ever been caught waiting for inspiration?

I've had times when I knew that something needed to be done but I was waiting for inspiration. I'll be ready when I'm ready, I'd fool myself into thinking. What's the best way to be ready? -- get started.

There's no inspiration to wait for -- only the inspiration that we create.

How will you inspire yourself today?

-- Doug Smith

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The Benefits of Supervisory Training

When was the last time you had any leadership training? How often do the supervisors in your organization get training? If you are like most organizations, it's never enough. Some teams go without any supervisory training at all and expect supervisors and managers to learn as they go, on the job. Unfortunately, while it is memorable to learn from your mistakes, it comes at a high cost. People get tired. People leave. Important accounts go away. Customers complain. And teams struggle without the skills and knowledge it takes to build cohesive teams that are capable of solving problems, improving performance and achieving goals. Admittedly, I can be expected to support training since I'm in the business. Still, take a closer look at your own leadership career and decide for yourself. Are leaders better off with more training and development or with less? Supervisory training can generate benefits that pay off long after the training is over. Here are just a few of the things sup...

Not Too Many Goals

How many goals should you have? Is there a limit? I've known people who said that they had a hundred goals. They were working their way thru the list and checking them off one by one. Good for them. I could never do that. It's too many. How do you even keep that many straight? How do you build energy for them? Some people call a list like that a bucket-list. If that's what it is, it isn't so much a list of goals as plans for experience. That's very different. Goals require work. Goals require attention. Goals require a level of focus seldom afforded anything else. The discipline that takes limits the capacity anyone has for setting goals. We can only do so much. Of course, we aspire to do more. Of course we put lots of stretch into our goals and our list of goals. But, we can only do so many. I can't tell you what that number is. I find that 5 goals a day is a good number for me. Five achievable goals for each day and another 3 - 5 major goals that ca...

Nobody Is Interested In Excuses

Imagine this - you've been expecting someone on your team to complete an important task. The deadline is looming. You're ready for the deliverable at any time, and then...and then they start the list of excuses why they can't complete the task. No fun, right? Not acceptable, true? True for you, and true for others who rely on you as well. Leading for success leaves little room for excuses. When I worked at Whole Foods one of my bosses once said, "we live in the land of no excuses." It was true there then, and it's true here now. Nobody is interested in any excuses. -- Doug Smith

Enjoy Your Stories Developing

Have you ever noticed that something tough you once lived through, perhaps endured with some hardship, can much later become an amusing story, even a funny one? It reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite people, a famous story teller, entertainer, musician, and comedian - Steve Allen. He said: Tragedy plus time equals comedy. (the quote has often been attribute to other people, but I'm on a bit of a mission to clarify attribution whenever possible and I'm fairly certain Mr. Allen was the first to say it. Here's the whole account, from an excellent source for clarifying attribution): When I explained to a friend recently that the subject matter of most comedy is tragic (drunkenness, overweight, financial problems, accidents, etc.) he said, “Do you mean to tell me that the dreadful events of the day are a fit subject for humorous comment? The answer is “No, but they will be pretty soon.” Man jokes about the things that depress him, but he usually waits til...

Stay With Compassion

Leaders need courage. They also need compassion. We can use our compassion to balance our courage, and use our courage to increase our compassion. Compassion is so vital we must never give up on it. No matter how angry we are, no matter how disappointed we feel, no matter how high the stakes -- stay with compassion. If it cannot be done with compassion, it should not be done. -- doug smith

Move from "Me" to "We"

by David Spiegel "The secret to success is to know something nobody else does." -- Aristotle Here is another guest entry from my friend, David Spiegel. I especially like how he ties this together with one of John Maxwell's Words of The Day. As you read this, think about how you can move in the direction of turning what you do best from a "me" effort to a "we" movement. A s I was stretching this morning waiting for my trainer to finish up with his 7:30 clients, I had the opportunity to look around the gym. When I started working with Cris, the head trainer,he had appointments set pretty much back to back for himself. There was another trainer who I saw occasionally. Today, there was Cris working with "the Killer Couple" (these two really work hard!). There were also 3 or 4 other trainers working with clients. Some individuals and some working with two clients at the same time.There was a buzz of activity as these tr...

Forget What You Know?

Does it ever make sense to forget what you know? What if what you know is certain and true? What if you simply believe it to be true, but beyond your knowledge it isn't true at all? Sometimes learning requires the suspension of what we think is true. We need to be able to entertain a contradiction or paradox long enough to find a new perspective. Maybe we will change our mind, maybe we won't, but we give it air time. We let it breathe. We expand our world of possibilities just long enough to see if we're missing something important. Creatives are constantly willing to forget what they think they know to learn something far more useful. Something far more magical. Something far more brilliant. And, possibly something far more true. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes it does not and we are free to hold to what we already believe. But without trying, without the willingness to suspend judgement for long enough to see anew -- how will we ever know? -- Douglas Brent...

Finding Hope

What do you do when your project seems so off track that you'll never find your way back? What if you're so lost that nothing makes sense to you? Most of us do experience times when things get rough. We lose when we thought we couldn't. We struggle when it started so easily. Our resources dry up just when we need them most. How do we hold on? How do we move forward? Someone can help. You may not know who it is. You may have to ask more than one person (you probably will have to ask more than one person). But help is out there. Someone who has experienced similar troubles. Someone who has finished an equally gnarly project. Someone who knows how it feels to be lost and can help you navigate your pathway out of the darkness and into success. If you have help, you have hope. And that my friend will take you very, very far indeed toward where you need to go. -- Douglas Brent Smith Image credit: Southeast Regional Climate Center, University of North Carolina a...

Press Your Boundaries Forward

How tight are your boundaries? When I worked at GE an expression that was popular was "boundaries". We were boundaries in our search for solutions, in our work to satisfy customers, and in our pursuit of profit. Boundaries were permeable, not insurmountable. With one exception: integrity. That was one boundary that could not be stretched, could not be crossed, and could not be ignored. But for other boundaries much of the time our sense of what the boundary is depends on our perspective. How fixed it is depends on our creativity. How cold it is depends on our compassion. How formless it is depends on our clarity. And how limiting it is depends on our courage. We need to consider all four of these leadership strengths when we find ourselves held by boundaries. Without examining our boundaries and staying curious about why they are there or what function they serve we stay stuck. Stuck is not where we want to be. To get past stuck might take creativity, and it certainly...

What You Need

Use what you've learned to become what you need. -- doug smith

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