David Goldsmith

In today’s economy, people are increasingly looking for answers, and they’re not seeing the same value in generic presentations of the past. They want someone to help them identify their challenges and to provide solutions to them. Leadership and management expert David Goldsmith is a consultant, advisor, NYU professor, speaker, telecast host, and author of more than 500 published articles on topics such as strategy, technology, new product development, marketing, customer service, innovation, and forecasting to name a few. He is co-founder and President of Meta Matrix Consulting Group LLC based in Syracuse, NY.

Consulting from the Stage, is based around David Goldsmith’s expertise in 12 core leadership and management activities. His book, PAID TO THINK, covers 12 topics in depth including many not listed above. He speaks in depth on these topics from both process (education) and application perspectives. David has forecasted the future of more than 50 industries and teaches two courses at NYU: one on Executive Strategy and another on Innovation.

PROGRAM TOPICS

Paid To Think™
A Proven Process for Strategizing and the 12 Daily Activities All Leaders and Managers Must Perform
If you’re a leader or manager, then above all else, your number one priority and first responsibility to your organization is to think. And in a world that values busyness over idleness, execution can be improperly valued above thinking and strategizing. Yet every leader must understand what it means to think and how to focus in ways that produce the highest returns for their organizations. The greatest leaders possess specific thinking skills and perform twelve essential activities. In this engaging and inspiring program, David Goldsmith shares a proven approach to thinking and strategizing and the twelve activities that they should be performing daily. This program is based on David’s findings over the span of 20 years of working with decision makers around the globe and from his one-on-one interviews with 1,600 successful leaders and managers. Audience members walk away with practical “tools” that they are able to apply on their own and teach to their management teams to move their organizations forward rapidly.

Forecasting
Harnessing the Power of Future-Focused Decision Making and Making Decisions Today by Being Certain about Tomorrow
Forecasting is an essential skill for decision making. The best leaders and managers know that the decisions they make today will impact their organizations beyond the present in months and years to come. But decision makers don’t have crystal balls; they must extrapolate from what they know in the present to make decisions that will safely and successfully lead their organizations into the future. Organizational successes come from good leadership decisions, such as expanding at a rate that keeps the organization strong to properly adapting to marketplace changes, but even more importantly, leadership decisions that are able to stand the test of time better than their competitors’ decisions. In this program, David Goldsmith shares the same forecasting techniques he uses to accurately forecast the opportunities and challenges for clients in a wide range of industries. Participant leave with the tools and knowledge they need to safeguard their organizations in the present and drastically improve their health and success in the future.

The Art and Science of Competitive Intelligence, or How to Get the Goods on the Competition and Turn Data into Gold
All great leaders keep an eye on the competition as they build their own organizations, because getting to know the competition is essential for making good leadership decisions. In fact, a great deal of information you might need is available to the public for free. However, haphazard modes of acquiring and using information—conferences, websites, contacts, etc.— aren’t usually enough to deliver optimal benefits. Furthermore, you need ways to effectively process the information, extrapolate new knowledge from it, and anticipate the competition’s next moves. In this program, David Goldsmith shares his proven competitive intelligence model that decision makers in profits, nonprofits, government, military and education can use to structure the CI process, and in return, gain accurate data, be able to forecast more precisely, and make better strategic decisions.

Rethinking Leadership and Management
Throw Off Self-Limiting Thinking to Accelerate Achievement
Most decision makers are continually learning and improving themselves, so it’s no wonder they have the occasional “aha” moment when they realize that an old way of thinking can’t effect a new success. David Goldsmith challenges audience members to rethink common and comfortable ideas they have about their roles as leaders and managers and to adopt new and innovative approaches to the way they do their jobs. Some favorite new concepts include: the Economics of Thinking, the Goldsmith Productivity Principle, Win by A Nose, People Love Change, Doing More with Less, and so on. Each message helps audience members shake off self-limiting thinking and open their eyes to new approaches they will want to use to solve challenges and create opportunities. Past attendees say they could never go back to old ways of thinking and that this program has transformed their ability to rapidly reach their goals and objectives.

Win by a Nose, Lose by a Nose: Strategies and Tools that Put Organizations in the Winners Circle
A slight edge is often all it takes to win big. In fact, more successes than we’d probably feel comfortable knowing about are the result of near wins rather than landslides. Think about those win-by-a-nose horse racing photos where mere millimeters separated victory from crushing defeat where second place spells a double loss of both the prize and everything invested into the quest. Organizations win and lose by noses, too. But to earn wins, leaders need to think and act with an organization-wide scope, not just a sales perspective. In this program, David Goldsmith will elevate the audience’s perspective to the 50,000-foot leadership view, where participants will learn to see organizational-wide opportunities and solutions beyond any single department, individual, or activity. Participants will leave with tools, concepts, and techniques they can use to build and maintain winning strengths throughout their organizations.

Redefining Your Future
The Turbo Charged Approach to Rapid Strategizing
What if you could improve the decision-making abilities of your entire leadership and management team in just one day? Think about what your organization would be like tomorrow if every leader and manager made one improved decision today. One way to achieve better decision making is through a process tool called Redefining. With Redefining, frustrations from costly mistakes, miscalculations and assumptions are replaced with achievement and improved morale. Redefining ensures that your organization’s assets and resources are focused on the right and best challenges at any given time. Used by decision makers in some of the world’s most respected companies, it is potentially the most powerful strategizing tool ever developed, say past participants of this program. The Redefining process, which took 5 years to develop, test, and refine, helps leaders and managers uncover their true challenges—opportunities or problems—so that they focus on real issues, both personal and professional, not just symptoms. In this program, David Goldsmith provides audience members with this must-have tool for setting strategy , selecting projects and initiatives, and determining goals. Audience members learn the four words that accelerate forward action, how to avoid the mistakes that most people make when addressing challenges, and how to make better decisions every day. Imagine the transformation that occurs in organizations when participants bring this tool back to their teams.

Creating a Culture of Innovation
How to Use Innovation to Stand Out in the Crowd
Innovation is the single greatest factor that separates average from excellent organizations. Leaders will be increasingly expected to innovate in their organization’s products and services, in their individual departments, in operational efficiencies, in their alliances and relationships with stakeholders…everywhere. Regardless of whether audience members are in retail, manufacturing, engineering, education, or any other discipline, they must address three areas of innovation to survive, compete, and win in the 21st Century: 1) the creation of a culture of innovation, 2) the development of innovative thinkers, and 3) the internalization of the rationale behind innovation. In this program, David Goldsmith will teach audience members how to address these three areas of innovation, reveal the triggers of innovative thought, and how to implement innovation organization wide. Audience members will leave prepared for the next wave of change, armed with techniques to trigger innovative thought amongst their staff members, and better able to facilitate the innovation process throughout their organizations.

Winning in the 21st Century
How Innovation Improves Your Products, Services, and Operations
When it comes to improving organizations, leaders have options. They can introduce new products and services to the marketplace or they can make internal changes that improve their organization’s ability to win in its particular arena. In either instance, leaders who possess the essential tool taught in this program command a great advantage over competitors in their marketplace. You’ll want to teach this universal tool to other decision makers in your organization, too, to boost success in every corner. For example, an IT manager will improve the way he or she selects and introduces an innovative new “product” in the form of installing new software to speed up organization-wide processing, or an accounting manager will do a better job producing easier-to-read billing statements for clients . This program is a mini version of David Goldsmith’s 42-hour-long New York University program, where participants walk away with practical and proven concepts as well as this essential tool so that they can adeptly manage the product/service-development process, minimize risk, increase success, and transform their organizations.

The Secrets and Strategies of Empowering Others
Developing High Performance Individuals and Organizations
Maximizing individual and organizational performance is the goal of most leaders, but knowing how can be a challenge. You want to be sure that when you transfer authority, power, and responsibility to others, you do so in ways that ensure certain and predictable results. That means you need skills and components of equipping others before handing off responsibilities. In this program, audience members learn improved methods for empowering others that produce faster and more targeted returns than traditional techniques such as walk-around management. David Goldsmith arms participants with a step-by-step model to empowering others that contains the strategies, tactics, tools and tips every decision maker needs to reach their goals faster, to eliminate common but preventable headaches and “surprises,” and to generate great returns.

The Advantages of Thinking Global
Getting Everyone to Think Bigger and Win More
Leaders and managers who “are global” make better decisions, have organizations that develop improved winning products and services, and gain the innovative advantages of a diverse-minded staff. Yet the majority of good and well-meaning decision makers never recognize the wealth of opportunities that exist before them, because they haven’t actually gotten up to global speed yet. In this program, David Goldsmith teaches participants how to develop a broader approach to thinking, how to adapt their current strategies and tactics to maximize their effectiveness, and how to open the fire hose of global opportunities by making simple changes throughout their organizations: from what products and features they sell to how they sell them, from what alliances they build to how they leverage those alliances, from how they network using the traditional methodologies to how they’ve updated their networking opportunities through “social networking,” and from how they build internal teams to how they assemble diverse and innovative collaborations globally.

Getting Others to Yes
How Leaders Sell Themselves, Their Ideas, and Their Organizations to Others
Leaders are the ultimate salespeople, regardless of whether they sell products and services or not. They must sell their credentials, their ideas and initiatives, and their organizations’ strengths and potential all the time to a wide range of “buyers” such as managers, front-line employees, bankers, officials, media, board members, consumers, colleagues, global contacts, vendors and so on. Yet, given the complexities of leadership sales, it’s surprising that most decision makers have never taken even a single sales course! In this program, David Goldsmith shares his secret counter-intuitive executive selling approach and provides audience members with proven tools and methodologies to achieve the types of immediate results that transform careers and organizations.

Building Strategic Alliances
How to Plug In, Tune Out, and Move Forward
At one time or another, every leader has recognized and capitalized on the benefits of a personal or professional connection. Yet developing a successful strategic alliance that delivers on its intended purpose can be tricky at best, which is why leaders who know about the six forms of alliances are in the advantageous position of selecting and building the right and best “bridges” to meet their organization’s needs. In today’s world, leaders need more than ever a tool kit they can use to establish and leverage the potential of strategic connections. This program is designed to get audience members up to speed fast on the latest rules and tools they need to build and maintain connections and alliances. In addition, David Goldsmith shows audience members how to select advantageous allies and how to work those relationships using today’s powerful social media tools—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more—to maximize returns and gain faster and better results than were previously available.

Putting People Last And The Tool that Will Have Them Thanking You
Even leaders who have the respect and cooperation of hard-working people on staff tend to make a single mistake when it comes to motivating others and eliciting maximum performance. Ironically, most leaders and managers already have a reliable tool at their disposal for increasing productivity and inspiring self-motivation amongst their teams…a tool they don’t use simply because they’re unaware of its power. In this program, David Goldsmith blasts the common misconceptions and mistakes that de-motivate workers and decrease performance, and then redefines for audience members this mystery tool and how to use it to identify new opportunities, expand human potential, boost morale, eliminate waste and errors, and place organizations on the road to achieving more with less.

Advanced Strategizing:
Getting from Point A to Point B Better, Faster, and Cheaper
Every leader must engage in some form of strategizing to move their organization forward, whether they are developing strategy for their entire organization or for a small project or department. Yet strategizing is often complex process composed of “invisible” steps that make the task more difficult, haphazard, and unreliable than it needs to be. From the moment an idea sprouts in one’s mind to the time that idea becomes a reality, several decisions and activities must take place, and the less likelihood of important steps being missed, and the more likely predictable and reliable the results will be achieved. In this program, David Goldsmith provides audience members with a workable model for strategizing that helps leaders and managers identify their best strategy and ensure that all critical steps in the process from vision to reality are covered, and organizational goals are reached. This proven model simple enough for audience members to transfer to others so that individuals throughout organizations work more effectively with each other throughout any process from start to finish.

Maximizing Returns on Your Time Investments
Think about it; can anyone actually manage time? In reality, we can only manage ourselves and our responsibilities within a set span of 24 hours, and winners just do a better job at identifying their priorities and preventing time-wasting clutter from steering focus from addressing those priorities. As important at priority management is, even the top US business schools don’t offer courses that address the basics of time or priority management! In this program, David Goldsmith teaches a technique to audience members that they can use daily to hit the ground running and accomplish desired outcomes. Participants learn how to select and schedule strategic and tactical priorities. They also learn how to pass on this technique to others in their organization to focus energies and increase performance across the board.

Leading and Managing in Turbulent Times
Doing More with Less
Faced with the repercussions of recent years’ economic events, leaders and managers must continually face the expectation of Doing More with Less. However, this concept is not something new, something increasingly pressing, or something that’s necessarily negative. In this program, participants learn that Doing More with Less is none of the above. Once you understand the misconception and get to the truth, your new perspective enables you to see the previously invisible opportunities before you, to select projects and introduce initiatives that move your organization forward and how to produce the best returns from your organization’s resources…especially in instances where ROI can’t be measured in dollars and cents. In this program, David Goldsmith shows participants how historical and current-day leaders have turned Doing More with Less into a windfall of opportunity and achievement, and he arms leaders and managers with the knowledge and skills they need to address projects intelligently and to execute with confidence. Audience members walk away with practical and easily applicable tools for identifying and selecting their best options, ensuring that they don’t overload their staff or overspend their resources, and understanding how to translate strategy into bankable results.

Great Leaders Don’t Need Charisma
Many decision makers read books or leave seminars feeling motivated but also scratching their heads and asking, “So what do I do now?” That’s because inspirational programs that tout leadership attributes—like charisma, perseverance, determination—don’t teach leaders and managers how to internalize these traits nor how to convert personality attributes into successes. However, anyone can improve their ability to lead and manage others by making simple shifts in how they think and perform. In this program, David Goldsmith paves the way for self improvement by unveiling truths about leadership and sharing with audience members specific activities that are proven to increase individual and organizational performance.

Technology’s Role in Your Next Best Step
A Lucrative Perspective on Creating Opportunities and Solving Challenges
What’s your next best step that will produced the highest returns? Your organization’s ability to see and capitalize on this next best step may very well hinge on leadership’s use of technology to address opportunities and challenges. Yet understanding and using technology can be confusing, time consuming, and costly. Whether you want a simple fix, like how to better service customers, or a complex change to become more functionally operational, there’s usually a techno-based solution. David Goldsmith will show participants how they can effect positive transformation within their organizations through the innovative use of technology. Audience members will walk away with the same techniques, concepts, and tools that enabled one US-based client to grow sales and improve operational efficiencies while moving to an exotic country and working fewer hours each day. This is a program is a guaranteed mind-shifting experience for leaders and managers in all industries and sectors.

How to Create Explosive Association Growth
That’s right, experience explosive growth by learning how to create it in areas that are often the most challenging for associations: membership growth and volunteer recruitment. David Goldsmith, one of the world’s premiere business futurists and leadership-management strategists, tells you why associations struggle to find and/or keep membership. He explains why the premise “if you offer networking and education, members will stay,” is a myth and shows how associations can deliver on their members’ investment. He also shows you how not to rely on the altruism of volunteers and reveals the secret to discovering what volunteers really want in return for their time.