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

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Perfect Relationships

Is your partner perfect? Are you? I've made enough mistakes in my life and in my relationships to know that the search for perfection is illusive at best and at worst, frustrating. There are no perfect people out there waiting for us, to fall in love with us, to fix us, to bring us what we need, to fulfill our dreams. But that's OK. In fact, that's wonderful. We don't need a perfect person in order to create love. Love creates the perfect person. -- Douglas Brent Smith

Brace Yourself On The Edge

Do you pride yourself in being cutting edge? Do you try new techniques, stay creative, build innovation instead of comfort? Good for you. And if you said no, allow me to encourage you to push the edge a bit more. Get out of your comfort zone. The really big goals makes us just bit uncomfortable. We might even sweat. Push the edge, even knowing that sometimes when you push the edge you get pushed back. People might object to the radical new approach. They might take exception to your changes. Push the edge anyway. Leading often means going where no one else has gone. All the way to the edge. Pack a lunch, it could take a while, but do stay with it. -- Doug Smith

Do Your Best With Time

Here's another guest entry from my good friend and fraternity brother David Spiegel. If you know anything about the East Coast you'll get a sense for how his day went. If you ever struggle with managing time, some of this may sound familiar. As Dave says, we can't really manage time -- it's what we do with it that matters. Now, let's hear what Dave has to share: In a week where I have dedicated myself to regaining control over my time , I have come to realize that I am trying to accomplish something impossible. Time is time. Every day has exactly 1440 minutes to it and no matter what we do,we can not create any more of it. So instead of creating more time we spend our energy trying to make better use of those precious minutes each day.We attempt to manage time. Well guess what. We have no control over time. Time itself can not be managed. We can not speed it up or slow it down. Do you know why a watched pot never boils? It's a time thing...

Centered Leaders Create Positive Change

Do you feel the need to make radical changes in your team? Are there deep flaws within your organization that you've just got to transform? It can be tempting to equate radical with rude. It can seem reasonable to bend rules to change them. Centered leaders know, and practice better habits for change. Maybe it takes longer. Maybe it involves more people. Certainly, it involves all the clarity, courage, creativity and compassion that a leader can invoke -- but centered leaders find ways to radically change things with dignity and respect. Revolutionaries need not be ill-mannered or violent. There are an infinite number of paths to positive change. How can you approach change more positively today? -- Douglas Brent Smith

No Hiding The Truth

What happens when someone tries to hide the truth? It pops up, unexpected, full-blown and often unforgiving. There is no hiding the truth. The truth always bubbles to the top. Pushing down what we regard as worth hiding, even when it's clearly true, simply delays the inevitable. The truth comes out, and then whoever attempted to hide it looks doubly suspicious and unreliable. Also, when we try to hide the truth we suddenly limit our possibilities. What can we say? What should we suppress? Where are we headed? Who can know and who cannot know? Did we tell the wrong person already? Maybe we should just keep quiet... Truth we try to hide becomes our tallest wall. It's a weight we carry around wondering when we can let it go. It's a wall that prevents us from seeing the beauty that belongs in all truth, even the truth that troubles us. What secret truth are you carrying around? Isn't it time to let that go? -- Douglas Brent Smith Front Range Leadership: ...

Strategic and Communication Skills

Supervisors often bring strong technical skills to the job. When they have worked in technical jobs prior to becoming a supervisor, they were often the best at what they do. They know the ground level part of their business well enough to solve problems and deal with day to day issues. Leading is all that and more. High performance leadership requires attention to detail AND a constant view of the big picture: where is your team, your market, and your customer base headed? What does the future hold? Strong supervisors learn to add strategic and communication skills to their technical ability. What are you doing today to develop your sense of the big picture? -- Douglas Brent Smith

Bring Success to Others

What is your primary goal as a leader? I consider my primary goal to be "helping people to achieve their goals." The most challenging thing to that is that I don't succeed unless others do. The longer I work, the more I am convinced that is true no matter what your primary goal is. To the extent that we help others, enrich others, empower others -- that's the degree of success we achieve. What if your success depends on your ability to bring success to others? Will it change the way you do business? Will it change the way you look at others? Will it recalibrate success? Sure. We have goals for ourselves. What I'm wondering, though, is how much more do we get when others do well as well? I'm thinking that the answer is: a bunch more. What do you think? -- Doug Smith

Call Fewer Meetings

Do you have too many meetings? Many leaders do. Staff meetings, committee meetings, team meetings, project meetings, all-company meetings...the list goes on. Most of us can think of many meetings that were simply wastes of our time. Time is too important to waste is bad meetings. Do the people in your meeting want to be there? If not, maybe it's not a meeting that you need. Maybe there's another way to communicate your message. Maybe the work that is waiting is too important to wait. We can like the feeling of having a meeting. It feels like we're doing something. But if we're not -- if we are delaying real work, maybe we don't need that meeting after all. What scheduled meeting could you eliminate this week? Wouldn't it be nice to have that time to be...well, happy and more productive? -- Doug Smithy

Make Room for the Big Stuff

When will you get to the big stuff? Are you working on the big stuff right now? Are you working on the energizing, team-changing, life changing problems and goals that make the difference between a leader-in-name and a high performance leader? No time? No room. Listen, nobody has room for the big stuff. We all have room for the big stuff. It's all a decision. Make that decision. Work on the big stuff. Need to find time for the big stuff? Get the little stuff done. Finish it. Get it out of the way. It probably will take less time to finish than fret over anyway, so get that stuff done. The report you've been putting off. The schedule. The budget. The cleaning. The decorating. Get it all done. The big stuff is waiting. -- Doug Smith P.S. Here are the big goals that have my attention. I have no idea how to achieve any of them, but thought that sharing them is a start. I shared them previously on one of my other blogs: dougsmithtraining.blogspot.com Here are ...

Does Ranking Team Member Performance Make Sense?

Do you rank employees? Does your organization use a system of listing employees from "top performers" to "bottom performers"? You may call them something else, but do you use that kind of system? When I worked at GE we were forced, as leaders, to force rank our employees. Everyone had to fit within 9 categories. We used whatever measures we could to arrive at something resembling a logical order. The problem is, how do you compare across job platforms? How do you compare the performance of a claims adjuster to recruiter? How do you compare a customer service rep to an underwriter? How do you know that you are measuring the right things? How do you know that your assessment is accurate and unbiased? How do you know that next year your company will need the same skills and goals as this year? If you hired correctly in the first place and have been doing your job as a team leader to develop a cohesive, high performance team that works colla...

High Performance Leadership

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