About WWork Digital Consultants

Hi, I’m Susan Smith, and I’m the driving force behind Wired For Work. Digital consultants at heart, our passion is leveraging technology to help individuals and businesses thrive. The overall process is driven by metrics to solve problems, improve performance, and utilize  tools including OKRs and KPIs.

I started my career as a corporate industrial engineer working on process improvement for manufacturing facilities. After getting an MBA, I moved from the technical and operations side of business to the commercial. Eventually,  I joined a small business, partnering with the US SBA for a nationwide conference tour for female entrepreneurs.

After that I took on the role of entrepreneur, heading up a web design and internet marketing agency. During that time, I also co-founded two nonprofit junior rowing clubs.

Recently, I managed the domestic operations for USRowing, a 75,000 member national organization for the sport of rowing. While at USRowing, I took on the role of interim CEO twice during some very challenging times for the organization. Both times the organization emerged with record surpluses after experiencing significant deficits.

I am among many who have led businesses through the pandemic and are here to say that our businesses were stronger for it. We were forced to rethink our business models, focus on the basics, and do it with limited resources. From my personal experience, I can say that we would not have been successful without our digital arsenal and the discipline of following a process of  FOCUS – ALIGN – MEASURE – TWEAK.

Which brings me full-circle to the reason for creating Wired For Work…to help businesses thrive by utilizing digital technology. We’ll be exploring OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). We’ll see how they work with KPIs to ensure resource alignment and work together to monitor performance. But you’ll need to start with FOCUS first.

Following are some books I have “read” recently and have influenced my thinking on this work, my family and life. To clarify, these days I actually listen to the books during an early morning walk, then buy the used book online to highlight the parts I want to remember. Some of my recent favorites include –

 

Branding

• Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step StoryBrand Guide for any Business by Donald Miller with Dr. J.J. Peterson
• Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller

Digital Marketing

• Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets, and Traffic Secrets trilogy by Russell Brunson

Business Transformation

• Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones – James Clear
• Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results – 2nd edition by Christina Wodtke
• Nudge: The Final Edition: Improving Decisions About Money, Health, and the Environment by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
• The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino
• The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch (2nd reading of this book) 
• Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John Doerr

Business Leadership

• Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle
• Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead – added bonus was an autograph by author Laszlo Boch in this used book 😉
• No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer

Spirituality

• The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckart Tolle (2nd reading of this book)