NY Times Business Best Sellers & Recommended Reading
The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey
The Trusted Advocate: Accelerate Success with Authenticity and Integrity by John Mehrmann
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman
Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey
Money, and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Wealth, Health, and Happiness by Esther Hicks
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Pink Daniel H.
The Speed of Trust by Rebecca R./ Merrill, Rebecca R. (CON) Merrill
Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss
A Sense of Urgency by John P. Kotter
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy by David M. Smick
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin
The First Billion Is the Hardest: Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America's Energy Future by T. Boone Pickens
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
http://www.amazon.com/NY-Times-Business-Best-Sellers/lm/R3DU9GN0H2SJ7V/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full
Monday, December 8, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
The Trusted Advocate is the Most Recent Award Winning Book for the Amazon Kindle Reader
The Trusted Advocate: Accelerate Success with Authenticity and Integrity, by John Mehrmann and Mitchell Simon, is now available for the Amazon Kindle Reader at a discounted price.
PRLog (Press Release) – Nov 24, 2008 – The award winning book, The Trusted Advocate: Accelerate Success with Authenticity and Integrity is available as an electronic book for the Amazon Wireless Reading Device.
Released just in time for holiday shopping, the paperless electronic copy of The ‘Trusted Advocate: Accelerate Success with Authenticity and Integrity’ is the perfect gift for colleagues, peers, employees, managers, and family members. Available from the Amazon Kindle Store for less than US Ten Dollars, this small investment can alter the course of a career, guiding the reader and the organization to new levels of success in the coming year. It is a gift that continues giving with a new discovery in every chapter of the book.
Popular talk show host Oprah Winfrey announced her endorsement for the Amazon Kindle e-book reader. On her talk show, joined by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oprah proclaimed the Kindle as her favorite new gadget. Books on Oprah’s Kindle include ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho, ‘The Forever War’ by Dexter Filkins, and Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones’ by Suzanne Somers.
“I recommend that once you read ‘The Trusted Advocate’, you will not want to put it down. You will find extraordinary ideas in this book which will transform your way of thinking, create a positive customer experience and create a happier you,’ said Rick Driscoll, President and CEO
The electronic version of ‘The Trusted Advocate’ is available at a mere fraction of the price of the Hard Cover version, but contains all of the same inspirational, motivational, and educational material.
“There are a few books in my collection that I keep close at hand to refer to again and again. ‘The Trusted Advocate’ is one of those books. John Mehrmann shows you how to build a business with integrity that keeps customers coming back because you are considered a valued resource and advocate for their business. You will learn how to engage customers and build relationships,” said Mike Coleman, speaker, author, and marketing consultant with Charting My Course. www.ChartingMyCourse.com
“John’s extensive experience in the arena of sales and his system of selling are right for the times we live in. John Mehrmann’s books and articles should certainly be at the top of your reading list,” said Will Fultz, author of www.TopSalesBlog.com
‘The Trusted Advocate’ has received both the Editor’s Choice Award and the coveted Publisher’s Choice Award in 2008. Hard Cover copies and Paperback versions of the book are available for purchase online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble Bookstores, and Borders. In addition, international recognition for ‘The Trusted Advocate’ have fueled international sales of the book.
For more information on ‘The Trusted Advocate: Accelerate Success with Authenticity and Integrity’, and a list of suggested international online sales outlets, please visit www.Trusted101.com
To purchase the Amazon Kindle version of ‘The Trusted Advocate’, simply visit the Kindle Store at Amazon and follow the instructions to download an e-book version. For more reader reviews, chapter summaries, excerpts from the book, and a list of online booksellers, please visit http://www.Trusted101.com
# # #
John Mehrmann, author of The Trusted Advocate: Accelerate Success with Authenticity and Integrity. Visit http://www.ExecutiveBlueprints.com for free articles, free download presentations and training materials, case studies, and incredible information
http://www.prlog.org/10145391-the-trusted-advocate-is-the-most-recent-award-winning-book-for-the-amazon-kindle-reader.html
PRLog (Press Release) – Nov 24, 2008 – The award winning book, The Trusted Advocate: Accelerate Success with Authenticity and Integrity is available as an electronic book for the Amazon Wireless Reading Device.
Released just in time for holiday shopping, the paperless electronic copy of The ‘Trusted Advocate: Accelerate Success with Authenticity and Integrity’ is the perfect gift for colleagues, peers, employees, managers, and family members. Available from the Amazon Kindle Store for less than US Ten Dollars, this small investment can alter the course of a career, guiding the reader and the organization to new levels of success in the coming year. It is a gift that continues giving with a new discovery in every chapter of the book.
Popular talk show host Oprah Winfrey announced her endorsement for the Amazon Kindle e-book reader. On her talk show, joined by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oprah proclaimed the Kindle as her favorite new gadget. Books on Oprah’s Kindle include ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho, ‘The Forever War’ by Dexter Filkins, and Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones’ by Suzanne Somers.
“I recommend that once you read ‘The Trusted Advocate’, you will not want to put it down. You will find extraordinary ideas in this book which will transform your way of thinking, create a positive customer experience and create a happier you,’ said Rick Driscoll, President and CEO
The electronic version of ‘The Trusted Advocate’ is available at a mere fraction of the price of the Hard Cover version, but contains all of the same inspirational, motivational, and educational material.
“There are a few books in my collection that I keep close at hand to refer to again and again. ‘The Trusted Advocate’ is one of those books. John Mehrmann shows you how to build a business with integrity that keeps customers coming back because you are considered a valued resource and advocate for their business. You will learn how to engage customers and build relationships,” said Mike Coleman, speaker, author, and marketing consultant with Charting My Course. www.ChartingMyCourse.com
“John’s extensive experience in the arena of sales and his system of selling are right for the times we live in. John Mehrmann’s books and articles should certainly be at the top of your reading list,” said Will Fultz, author of www.TopSalesBlog.com
‘The Trusted Advocate’ has received both the Editor’s Choice Award and the coveted Publisher’s Choice Award in 2008. Hard Cover copies and Paperback versions of the book are available for purchase online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble Bookstores, and Borders. In addition, international recognition for ‘The Trusted Advocate’ have fueled international sales of the book.
For more information on ‘The Trusted Advocate: Accelerate Success with Authenticity and Integrity’, and a list of suggested international online sales outlets, please visit www.Trusted101.com
To purchase the Amazon Kindle version of ‘The Trusted Advocate’, simply visit the Kindle Store at Amazon and follow the instructions to download an e-book version. For more reader reviews, chapter summaries, excerpts from the book, and a list of online booksellers, please visit http://www.Trusted101.com
# # #
John Mehrmann, author of The Trusted Advocate: Accelerate Success with Authenticity and Integrity. Visit http://www.ExecutiveBlueprints.com for free articles, free download presentations and training materials, case studies, and incredible information
http://www.prlog.org/10145391-the-trusted-advocate-is-the-most-recent-award-winning-book-for-the-amazon-kindle-reader.html
Performance Management
Data is worthless, but knowledge is priceless. Perhaps no single event in history underscored this more dramatically than the rise and fall of the Dot Com Era. Accumulating massive data warehouses of information and customer records proved to be worthless when data could not be converted into real world revenue.
During the Dot Com Era, some organizations recognized the benefits of using data as a means to provide meaningful and informative results. These organizations enjoyed exponential growth with intelligent decisions, both for themselves and as a service for their customers. The organizations that collected massive amounts of data and failed to transform the data into business intelligence and performance management became colorful examples of failed business plans. The failed organizations became vacant high rise versions of ghost towns, lined with ping pong tables and beanbag chairs. Meanwhile, the organizations that turned data into knowledge, metrics into performance management, and fed intelligent responses to customers, became dominant forces in a new economy. One need not look any further than Google to see a brilliant example of turning access to data into a responsive, informative, and intelligent tool for client convenience and generating internal revenue. The Internet is an ocean of publicly accessible data, most of which may be considered worthless when taken out of context. However, when this enormous vault of human knowledge and creativity is harnessed and focused through the single microscopic lens of a search engine to sort, filter, and present the relevant data, then the data becomes knowledge on a silver platter.
Does your organization harness the power of data or the power of knowledge?
Does your organization collect information for reporting or for informed real time business decisions?
Does your organization use data to measure the performance of the past or to apply measurements to predict and alter the course of the future?
You really do have a crystal ball, because history really does repeat itself. If you have collected historical data and measurements, then you have the framework to begin building your the future according to your own plans and blueprints. If you understand the cause and the effect of your actions and your decisions in market conditions and environments, then you can make knowledgeable decisions to chart the course of your destiny. You can respond to external conditions, you can react to internal changes, and you can change the course of your own destiny.
You can choose to use information to deliver focused and informed results for better understanding and decisions, using your data like Google. Alternately, you can collect data to make colorful roadmap reports of where you have been, and select the graphs that portray only the desired perspectives. Reports tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, but often do not portray the whole truth. You will know when you are on the right track when your metrics, dashboards, and performance management look forward at least as much as they report backward on historical trends.
Cashing in data and history for performance management, knowledge, and revenue is not just for big organizations. The same principles apply for individual planning and performance as well.
Advance Alerts and Exception Based Reports
Gather your most relevant data and reports that demonstrate the key metrics for measuring success. The key metrics for measuring success quite often include the following topics
Finance, revenue or costs
Customer satisfaction
Quality
Productivity
Speed
Performance
Refer to the data that you have been using to measure your performance in the past. Identify the critical components that have influenced finance, customer satisfaction, quality, productivity, speed, or performance. Make a list of events, internal, and external catalysts that have resulted in specific desired or undesired outcomes. Using your experience and historical data, make a note of the cause and effect illustrated in your trends. Study the causes to extract meaningful measurements that result in desired and undesired trends.
Once you have identified critical catalysts with associated metrics, then you can create new predictive reports to help guide your business with intelligent information.
Reports that contain all available data may be overwhelming and may actually hide important facts or trends. If you are measuring hundreds or thousands of transactions, the average performance might be acceptable enough to temporarily hide a few individual exceptions that could create a future catastrophe. Augment the reports of overall activity with specific, focused, exception based reports that isolate the data elements that you have determined to be catalysts for your business. The exception based reports are based on those exceptions from normal business that you have identified as the root cause for good or bad effects. These concentrated reports should be reviewed for immediate response, and the overall effects should create a consistent result in the reports for overall accumulated activity.
Short Term Goals and Long Term Goals
Be sure to compare short term and long term plans, goals, and trends. Monthly and quarterly activity may be the result of seasonal trends. Weekly trends may reflect consistent activities on certain days of the week. Marketing and sales activities are especially impacted by daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly trends. These activities may also be greatly impacted by external events. When gathering data for historical analysis to create predictive trends, document footnotes as a reminder of external events and activities that may influence your results.
For personal planning and internal organizational planning, balance short term goals with long term goals. This is especially true when balancing personal and professional budgets. Short term investments should be balanced with long term rewards. Spending a budget when it is available, to avoid losing it, is sometimes in the best interest of both short term and long term goals. Putting off an activity, scheduling time and resources, is often highly influenced by immediate and urgent needs. Compare urgent needs to long term priorities and extended impact to determine the best balanced approach.
Balance Company and Personal Objectives
Are the management reports accurately reflected in the personnel performance metrics? When it comes time to provide yearly reviews, have the specific measurements for individual performance been accurately reflected to coincide with the performance reports administered by the organization?
Each individual should have a personal set of defined goals and objectives that can be measured for performance. The measurement for performance may be based on speed, accuracy, quality, or simply based on completion of certain tasks. Timeliness and customer satisfaction are also common measurements for performance. Individual indicators should be directly connected with the overall performance management reports. This enables each individual to recognize how much personal performance impacts the total team achievement. When this happens it is very easy to conduct performance appraisals in a fair and unbiased manner, with no surprises for anyone. More importantly, the recognition of personal contribution becomes a daily conversation of mutual commitment, rather than a yearly review.
Balance Internal and External Objectives
If you achieve your goals and objectives, is it at the expense of your vendors, suppliers, or clients? If meeting your objectives requires unbalanced sacrifice from business partners or customers, then you have only delayed inevitable decay and your own demise. If your success can only be achieved by sacrificing vendors or suppliers, then the best ones will eventually lose interest and find alternatives to protect their own organizations. Creating this culture with vendors causes conflict and a lack of mutual commitment. Treat vendors and suppliers as partners for mutual success, and expect the same in return.
If your success requires the unilateral sacrifice of clients, then you will likely find yourself without any customers. Clients can be as loyal as vendors and suppliers when treated with dignity, value, commitment, and respect. Clients will not be as patient as vendors if this relationship is lacking.
Use Technology to Empower Business Objectives
Use technology to collect, collate, and isolate the key catalysts for your business. Use historical trends to create exception based predictive reports. Monitor the trends of short term and long term activities and objectives. Use real data to demonstrate individual performance as it contributes to overall performance, and make this available to individual contributors on a daily basis. When you empower individuals to monitor performance on a daily basis, the individuals begin to manage success of the overall business. The individual contributors are most likely to recognize the cause and effect as illustrated in exception based reports, and have the ability to apply effective change when necessary. Individual contributors typically have the most significant personal relationships or interactions with vendors, suppliers, and customers. Technology can be used to enable visibility throughout the entire organization. Technology can facilitate empowered and informed communication, supplying not only the exceptional trends, but also the specific supporting data that is necessary to make real time educated decisions.
Now the decision is yours. Will you use technology to aggregate and communicate relevant data in focused response like Google, or will you be sitting back in your beanbag chair with your colorful graphs of a bygone era?
______________________________________________________
Words of Wisdom
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."- Alan Kay
"All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse."- Benjamin Franklin
"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
"Data is worthless, but knowledge is priceless."- John Mehrmann
______________________________________________________
The Trusted Advocate: Accelerate Success with Authenticity and Integrity is now available for the Amazon Kindle e-book Reader
The Trusted Advocate is also available online in hardcover and paperback from www.Amazon.com (Hardcover), www.Amazon.com (Paperback), www.BarnessndNoble,com, www.Borders.com, and www.Target.com.
"There are a few books in my collection that I keep close at hand to refer to again and again. The Trusted Advocate is one of those books. John shows you how to build a business with integrity that keeps customers coming back because you are considered a valued resource and advocate for their business. You will learn how to engage customers and build relationships rather than 'selling'.
Real world examples of the principles taught in the book are scattered throughout along with activities that will help you apply the principles John teaches. Check out the advocate cycle on page 125. If you do nothing but follow this practical example, you will have a better business, stronger relationships, and increased sales."
Mike Coleman
Speaker, Author, and Marketing Consultant
Charting My Course
www.ChartingMyCourse.com
During the Dot Com Era, some organizations recognized the benefits of using data as a means to provide meaningful and informative results. These organizations enjoyed exponential growth with intelligent decisions, both for themselves and as a service for their customers. The organizations that collected massive amounts of data and failed to transform the data into business intelligence and performance management became colorful examples of failed business plans. The failed organizations became vacant high rise versions of ghost towns, lined with ping pong tables and beanbag chairs. Meanwhile, the organizations that turned data into knowledge, metrics into performance management, and fed intelligent responses to customers, became dominant forces in a new economy. One need not look any further than Google to see a brilliant example of turning access to data into a responsive, informative, and intelligent tool for client convenience and generating internal revenue. The Internet is an ocean of publicly accessible data, most of which may be considered worthless when taken out of context. However, when this enormous vault of human knowledge and creativity is harnessed and focused through the single microscopic lens of a search engine to sort, filter, and present the relevant data, then the data becomes knowledge on a silver platter.
Does your organization harness the power of data or the power of knowledge?
Does your organization collect information for reporting or for informed real time business decisions?
Does your organization use data to measure the performance of the past or to apply measurements to predict and alter the course of the future?
You really do have a crystal ball, because history really does repeat itself. If you have collected historical data and measurements, then you have the framework to begin building your the future according to your own plans and blueprints. If you understand the cause and the effect of your actions and your decisions in market conditions and environments, then you can make knowledgeable decisions to chart the course of your destiny. You can respond to external conditions, you can react to internal changes, and you can change the course of your own destiny.
You can choose to use information to deliver focused and informed results for better understanding and decisions, using your data like Google. Alternately, you can collect data to make colorful roadmap reports of where you have been, and select the graphs that portray only the desired perspectives. Reports tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, but often do not portray the whole truth. You will know when you are on the right track when your metrics, dashboards, and performance management look forward at least as much as they report backward on historical trends.
Cashing in data and history for performance management, knowledge, and revenue is not just for big organizations. The same principles apply for individual planning and performance as well.
Advance Alerts and Exception Based Reports
Gather your most relevant data and reports that demonstrate the key metrics for measuring success. The key metrics for measuring success quite often include the following topics
Finance, revenue or costs
Customer satisfaction
Quality
Productivity
Speed
Performance
Refer to the data that you have been using to measure your performance in the past. Identify the critical components that have influenced finance, customer satisfaction, quality, productivity, speed, or performance. Make a list of events, internal, and external catalysts that have resulted in specific desired or undesired outcomes. Using your experience and historical data, make a note of the cause and effect illustrated in your trends. Study the causes to extract meaningful measurements that result in desired and undesired trends.
Once you have identified critical catalysts with associated metrics, then you can create new predictive reports to help guide your business with intelligent information.
Reports that contain all available data may be overwhelming and may actually hide important facts or trends. If you are measuring hundreds or thousands of transactions, the average performance might be acceptable enough to temporarily hide a few individual exceptions that could create a future catastrophe. Augment the reports of overall activity with specific, focused, exception based reports that isolate the data elements that you have determined to be catalysts for your business. The exception based reports are based on those exceptions from normal business that you have identified as the root cause for good or bad effects. These concentrated reports should be reviewed for immediate response, and the overall effects should create a consistent result in the reports for overall accumulated activity.
Short Term Goals and Long Term Goals
Be sure to compare short term and long term plans, goals, and trends. Monthly and quarterly activity may be the result of seasonal trends. Weekly trends may reflect consistent activities on certain days of the week. Marketing and sales activities are especially impacted by daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly trends. These activities may also be greatly impacted by external events. When gathering data for historical analysis to create predictive trends, document footnotes as a reminder of external events and activities that may influence your results.
For personal planning and internal organizational planning, balance short term goals with long term goals. This is especially true when balancing personal and professional budgets. Short term investments should be balanced with long term rewards. Spending a budget when it is available, to avoid losing it, is sometimes in the best interest of both short term and long term goals. Putting off an activity, scheduling time and resources, is often highly influenced by immediate and urgent needs. Compare urgent needs to long term priorities and extended impact to determine the best balanced approach.
Balance Company and Personal Objectives
Are the management reports accurately reflected in the personnel performance metrics? When it comes time to provide yearly reviews, have the specific measurements for individual performance been accurately reflected to coincide with the performance reports administered by the organization?
Each individual should have a personal set of defined goals and objectives that can be measured for performance. The measurement for performance may be based on speed, accuracy, quality, or simply based on completion of certain tasks. Timeliness and customer satisfaction are also common measurements for performance. Individual indicators should be directly connected with the overall performance management reports. This enables each individual to recognize how much personal performance impacts the total team achievement. When this happens it is very easy to conduct performance appraisals in a fair and unbiased manner, with no surprises for anyone. More importantly, the recognition of personal contribution becomes a daily conversation of mutual commitment, rather than a yearly review.
Balance Internal and External Objectives
If you achieve your goals and objectives, is it at the expense of your vendors, suppliers, or clients? If meeting your objectives requires unbalanced sacrifice from business partners or customers, then you have only delayed inevitable decay and your own demise. If your success can only be achieved by sacrificing vendors or suppliers, then the best ones will eventually lose interest and find alternatives to protect their own organizations. Creating this culture with vendors causes conflict and a lack of mutual commitment. Treat vendors and suppliers as partners for mutual success, and expect the same in return.
If your success requires the unilateral sacrifice of clients, then you will likely find yourself without any customers. Clients can be as loyal as vendors and suppliers when treated with dignity, value, commitment, and respect. Clients will not be as patient as vendors if this relationship is lacking.
Use Technology to Empower Business Objectives
Use technology to collect, collate, and isolate the key catalysts for your business. Use historical trends to create exception based predictive reports. Monitor the trends of short term and long term activities and objectives. Use real data to demonstrate individual performance as it contributes to overall performance, and make this available to individual contributors on a daily basis. When you empower individuals to monitor performance on a daily basis, the individuals begin to manage success of the overall business. The individual contributors are most likely to recognize the cause and effect as illustrated in exception based reports, and have the ability to apply effective change when necessary. Individual contributors typically have the most significant personal relationships or interactions with vendors, suppliers, and customers. Technology can be used to enable visibility throughout the entire organization. Technology can facilitate empowered and informed communication, supplying not only the exceptional trends, but also the specific supporting data that is necessary to make real time educated decisions.
Now the decision is yours. Will you use technology to aggregate and communicate relevant data in focused response like Google, or will you be sitting back in your beanbag chair with your colorful graphs of a bygone era?
______________________________________________________
Words of Wisdom
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."- Alan Kay
"All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse."- Benjamin Franklin
"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
"Data is worthless, but knowledge is priceless."- John Mehrmann
______________________________________________________
The Trusted Advocate: Accelerate Success with Authenticity and Integrity is now available for the Amazon Kindle e-book Reader
The Trusted Advocate is also available online in hardcover and paperback from www.Amazon.com (Hardcover), www.Amazon.com (Paperback), www.BarnessndNoble,com, www.Borders.com, and www.Target.com.
"There are a few books in my collection that I keep close at hand to refer to again and again. The Trusted Advocate is one of those books. John shows you how to build a business with integrity that keeps customers coming back because you are considered a valued resource and advocate for their business. You will learn how to engage customers and build relationships rather than 'selling'.
Real world examples of the principles taught in the book are scattered throughout along with activities that will help you apply the principles John teaches. Check out the advocate cycle on page 125. If you do nothing but follow this practical example, you will have a better business, stronger relationships, and increased sales."
Mike Coleman
Speaker, Author, and Marketing Consultant
Charting My Course
www.ChartingMyCourse.com
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