High Performance Leadership

  If you have a degree in the arts, no matter how business-like you try to act, a little art has to sneak in. It's stealth-like like that. What if the way we lead a project is the way we live our life? Charts, data, measures, details...or big picture vision and boundless interpersonal energy? It's not actually a choice of one or  the other -- but if you do enough projects, it will touch your life -- and if you live enough life, it will light up your projects. What do you think? -- doug smith

How do you like change? Are you on-board every change that comes down the pike? Do you accept every new idea? Neither do your constituents. Neither does your team. Resistance isn't always right. But, it isn't always wrong, either. Someone who tells you their objections is doing you a favor: now you know. Now you can do something about it. Change the "thing" or change the way you deliver the "thing"...or dig deeper to figure out what's behind the resistance. Even the most brilliant projects need acceptance to succeed. Work on that while you work on your brilliant goal. -- Doug Smith

What's your biggest project? High performance leaders tackle tough projects -- big projects. Projects that make life better, healthier, or more peaceful. Projects launched with big aspirations, big expectations, and the energy it takes to take them on. Think about the biggest project you've ever completed. What made it work? What were the things that you did to propel that project forward? What were the results? Important projects don't always find us -- sometimes we need to launch them ourselves. Projects about things we deeply care about. Projects with outcomes that change the world for the better. What if your life were a series of projects to create a better, more fair, and more healthy world? Wouldn't that be time well spent? -- Douglas Brent Smith Front Range Leadership: Fast, affordable leadership training workshops , webinars , and teleclasses .

Do you find your projects getting bigger and bigger? Is scope creep more than a concept to you and more like a way of life? I call it the "wouldn't it be cool syndrome." Our bosses do it to us, our clients do it to us, our customers do it to us, our team members do it to us, but most of all we do it to ourselves -- we let our boundaries disappear and work expand endlessly. Do you know what that leads to? Unfinished work. That's not what you probably want. While your job might be without boundaries, your projects need them. And guess what -- if you don't set them and enforce them, why would anyone else? Centered leaders, high performance leaders create project boundaries. Shouldn't you? -- Douglas Brent Smith