All the Best,

Karen Juliano
Editor-in-Chief and
Director, Communications and Marketing
StrategyDriven
 
 

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Jeff Kortes is the President of Human Asset Management LLC, a human resources consulting firm which specializes in executive search, retention, engagement and front line leadership training. He is a ‘no nonsense,’ action oriented strategist that helps organizations acquire talent, engage and retain people as well as training the heart of their organizations… their front-line leadership using his Execution Focused Leadership^® series.

In addition to running his executive search firm, he is a skilled facilitator, trainer, and professional speaker who energizes participants. Jeff has 25 years experience in human resources in both public and private sector organizations. He obtained this experience while functioning in construction, manufacturing, municipal government, and high tech environments.

Jeff is a regular blogger on retention, recruitment, and leadership and has also written and published the book No Nonsense Retention: Painless Strategies To Retain Your Best People. No Nonsense Retention is a hard hitting yet easy to read primer on how to develop and implement a strategic retention process in any department or organization. The book is based on real life experiences and research of organizations that successfully retain their talent.

Speaking Engagements

Jeff is a regular speaker to associations and companies about retention, recruitment, and leadership. His programs include:

• No Nonsense Retention… Painless Strategies to Retain Your Best People
• Slug Proof Your Team… No Nonsense Strategies to develop a High Performance Organization
• Anyone Can Recruit… But can you sell the Organization?

To learn more about Jeff’s programs, visit his website www.SlugProofYourTeam.com

Follow Jeff on Twitter: twitter.com/nononsenseguy

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Today, we remember all those who made the ultimate sacrifice to secure for us, our children, and all future generations, the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The video below honors the memory of First Lieutenant Travis Manion, United States Marine Corps, and Lieutenant Brendan Looney, United States Navy, who were United States Naval Academy classmates, company mates, and roommates; becoming as close as brothers. One went to Iraq, the other to Afghanistan. Both were killed in action and have been laid to rest, side-by-side, in Arlington National Cemetery.

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By applying the right people, processes and technology to those three focus areas, HPM can empower companies to execute a powerful business strategy that can reduce healthcare costs while also improving employees’ health outcomes.

The first step rests with how companies choose to deliver health benefits to their employees. There are two ways that organizations can provide coverage: through fully insured plans, in which they purchase coverage from an insurance company, or through self-insured plans, in which they directly cover employees’ healthcare expenses.

Self-insurance recently has become the option of choice for a majority of the workforce. In 2008, the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) found that 55 percent of workers with health insurance were covered by a self-insured plan. The decision to self-insure has been embraced enthusiastically by large corporations – 89 percent of workers employed in firms with 5,000 or more employees were in self-insured plans in 2008.

By self-insuring, employers can control the costs of providing health benefits to their employees because it allows them to:

• Obtain more specific information about their actual healthcare expenditures.
• Control costs, because instead of paying health insurance premiums that typically rise 9 to 10 percent per year, they can pay for routine expenses such as doctor visits, procedures and prescription drugs through a self-insured plan, obtaining lower-cost catastrophic or “stop-loss” policies to cover major medical events.
• Enable better “human capital management” by recognizing in advance what types of health events are emerging in their covered population in time to help employees avoid a catastrophic event.

An HPM strategy has profound implications for senior management in the three critical areas of governance, risk and compliance. This manifests itself in the following ways:

• Governance requires the active engagement of business units beyond human resources – strategic planners, financial and operations executives, and the IT group.
• Self-insured firms must manage their own risk, so access to real-time data that is tied to the plan is imperative.
• Although corporations have dedicated resources to compliance activities, an HPM system is automated and therefore can deliver those required reports as an ancillary function. This way, organizations can generate the necessary documentation for auditors, regulators and others without devoting valuable resources to that single function.

Governance, Risk, and Compliance Management Strategies for Self-Insured Health Plans: How Senior Executives Can Use Healthcare Performance Management as a Business Strategy explores how HPM, combined with self-insurance, empowers organizations to better manage their governance, risk and compliance exposures, and delivers bottom-line value to the company.

Click here to download a complimentary copy of this Healthcare Performance Management Institute report.

Want to learn more?

Listen to our recent StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective podcast interview with George Pantos, Executive Director of the Healthcare Performance Management Institute during which we discuss how companies can keep their current health plans in light of the recently passed healthcare legislation and under what circumstances they may wish to do so.

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LeadershipDigital‘s goals are:

Collect High Quality Content – The goal of a content community is to provide a high quality destination that highlights the most recent and best content as defined by the community.

Provide an Easy to Navigate Site – End users most often are people who are not regular readers of the blogs and other sources. They come to the content community to find information on particular topics of interest to them. This links them across to the sources themselves.

Be A Jump Off Point – To be clear all content communities are only jump off points to the sources of the content.

Help Surface Content that Might Not be Found – It’s often hard to find and understand blog content that’s spread across sites. Most users are not regular subscribers to these blogs and other content sources.

The site is a collaborative effort started by Tony Karrer. It is generously sponsored by Enlightened Leadership Solutions.

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Rachelle is a connoisseur of various online marketing methodologies. She has consulted with numerous firms and contributed to the development and implementation of their marketing strategies, specifically for search engine optimization and social media marketing, in order to expand their web presence and visibility. Her strategies integrate every aspect of SEO and social media marketing from start to finish.

Rachelle particularly enjoys keyword research for SEO campaigns, since it appeals to her more analytical thought process. Ironically, she also enjoys writing and blogging, both for SEO blogs and in general, for the creative outlet that it provides her. Rachelle’s love of language has served her well both in terms of writing as well as proofreading and editing.

Originally from New Jersey, Rachelle currently attends Bar Ilan University in Jerusalem, Israel.

Rachelle can be contacted at: RachelleZimmerman@StrategyDriven.com

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Active management of healthcare delivery and cost control has not typically been seen as an integral part of the mission for human resource (HR) departments. But changing times – and skyrocketing costs – have pushed healthcare performance management (HPM) center stage for companies that want to boost productivity, while investing benefits dollars in better health outcomes for their employees.

This shift away from traditional ways of managing employee health benefits stems from a clear and universal reality: rising healthcare costs increasingly pose a core business challenge. Indeed, U.S. healthcare spending approached $2.25 trillion in 2007 – more than 16 percent of the gross domestic product according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Employers increasingly are feeling the bite of those rising costs. A 2008 study conducted by the health policy journal Health Affairs showed that average annual premiums increased 5 percent to $4,704 for single coverage and $12,680 for family coverage. The study’s data was derived from interviews with 1,927 public and private employers.

New research echoes those trends. According to a Dec. 2010 report from RNCOS Industry Research Solutions “U.S. Healthcare Sector Forecast to 2012”, national healthcare spending is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of around 5 percent during 2010-2013.

The Last Mile: The Role of HPM in Rounding Out the Enterprise Human Resource Management Mission calls on companies to incorporate workforce health into their overall strategy for protecting and developing their human capital resources. This report also explains how HR teams are deploying healthcare performance management (HPM) technology to improve employee health and productivity.

Click here to download a complimentary copy of this Healthcare Performance Management Institute report.

Want to learn more?

Listen to our recent StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective podcast interview with George Pantos, Executive Director of the Healthcare Performance Management Institute during which we discuss how companies can keep their current health plans in light of the recently passed healthcare legislation and under what circumstances they may wish to do so.

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Hank Moore is an internationally known business advisor, speaker and author. He is a Big Picture strategist, with original, cutting-edge ideas for creating, implementing and sustaining corporate growth throughout every sector of the organization. He is a Futurist and Corporate Strategist^TM, with four trademarked concepts of business… heralded widely for ways to remediate corporate damage, enhance productivity and facilitate better business.

Hank is the highest level of business overview expert and is in that rarified circle of experts such as Peter Drucker, Tom Peters, Steven Covey, Peter Senge and W. Edwards Deming.

Hank has presented Think Tanks for five U.S. Presidents. He has spoken at five Economic Summits. As a Corporate Strategist^TM, Hank speaks and advises companies about growth strategies, visioning, planning, executive-leadership development, futurism and the Big Picture issues which profoundly affect the business climate. The Business Tree^TM is his trademarked approach to growing, strengthening and evolving business, while mastering change. He conducts independent performance reviews and Executive Think Tanks nationally… with the result being the companies’ destinies being charted.

Hank has provided senior level advising services for more than 5,000 client organizations (including 100 of the Fortune 500), companies in transition (startup, re-engineering, mergers, going public), public sector entities, professional associations and non-profit organizations. He has worked with all major industries over a 40-year career. He advises at the Executive Committee and board levels, providing Big Picture ideas.

He is the nation’s premiere expert on Big Picture issues… and how core business specialists may enlarge their scope and assume mantles of greater responsibility and recognition. Hank has overseen 400 strategic plans and corporate visioning processes. He has conducted 300+ performance reviews of organizations. He is a mentor to senior management. This scope of wisdom is most often utilized by CEOs and board members.

Hank speaks and advises companies about growth strategies, visioning, planning, executive-leadership development, futurism and the Big Picture issues which profoundly affect the business climate. The Business Tree^TM is his trademarked approach to growing, strengthening and evolving business, while mastering change. Business visionary Peter Drucker termed Hank’s Business Tree^TM as the most original business model of the past 40 years.

The Business Tree^TM is the only book that encompasses a full-scope business perspective, whereas the other books are micro-niche focused. This book contains original case studies in which the author was directly involved, not a rehash of others that have appeared elsewhere. This is the only book to offer an original business model, one that has been utilized in the author’s track record of success over the last 20 years. These qualities make it invaluable for the corporate and small business markets.

Additional Information

Hank has written numerous articles and several books on a wide range of business and management topics. His book, The Business Tree: Growth Strategies and Tactics for Surviving and Thriving, reveals his trademarked approach to growing, strengthening and evolving business, while mastering change. Two of Hank’s insightful articles include:

• MacroScope: Big Picture Perspective Takes Your Business Further
  
• How to Evaluate Consultants

Additional materials may be found on Hank’s website, www.HankMoore.com

Speaking Engagements

A captivating speaker, Hank is featured at some of the most prestigious conferences and gatherings held each year. To learn more about Hank’s presentation topics and availability, visit any one of the speakers bureaus listed below:

• Gold Stars Speakers Bureau
• Keynote Speakers
• Professional Speakers Network
• Silver Fox Advisors
• Sterling International Speakers

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Loss of productivity costs resulting from acts of incivility and poor managerial behavior are staggering and yet goes largely unrecognized. There is no financial statement line item, no general ledger entry, and no budget explicitly set aside for this expense that can cost an evenly modestly sized company hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Likewise, those companies taking action to improve their workplace environments can realize significant financial rewards by doing so.

Using the StrategyDriven Value of Employee Productivity nomograph and method outlined here, organization leaders can gain a better appreciation for the direct monetary value associated with a change in employee productivity and begin to better value their diversity and inclusion initiatives.

StrategyDriven Premium Members can access the Cost of Employee Distraction by clicking here.

Not a StrategyDriven Premium Member? Click here to sign-up for your Premium Membership and receive instant access to this and all other StrategyDriven whitepapers, models, and tools and templates.

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In 2011, health premiums will continue to surge upward with most major surveys projecting increases in the 9 percent to 12 percent range – or over eight-times the rate of inflation. Without change, the Business Roundtable, an association of major U.S. corporate CEOs, predicts employer health costs will increase 166 percent by 2019, resulting in a cost burden of $28,530 per employee – three-times the 2009 employee cost of $10,743.

In this environment, employers – major payors of the $2.6 trillion annual U.S. healthcare bill – are under enormous pressure to find out where their benefit dollars are going. These same employers are focusing on how they and their workforce are able to get the best value for the money spent on healthcare.

Employers seek answers to questions such as:

• What steps can I take to identify and mitigate my healthcare expense trend?
• What areas are showing the highest potential for costly future medical risks?
• What proactive steps can be taken to control costs and improve employee health behavior?

This research report provides an overview of the data and tools needed by employers to interpret relevant plan data, find the problems and determine solutions. It also addresses the basic obstacles and ‘hidden’ barriers to employer healthcare control and the opportunities to overcome these barriers with collaboration between employers and gatekeepers – consultants, brokers and insurers – for improved health plan performance.

Click here to download a complimentary copy of this Healthcare Performance Management Institute report. (Complimentary site registration required.)

Want to learn more?

Listen to our recent StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective podcast interview with George Pantos, Executive Director of the Healthcare Performance Management Institute during which we discuss how companies can keep their current health plans in light of the recently passed healthcare legislation and under what circumstances they may wish to do so.

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Without adequate sales, any organization will fail – yet even star sales persons experience low conversion rates and long sales cycles. And with today’s abundance of easily accessible product pricing and performance information these individuals face increasing pressure to lower product costs and increase value. With the company’s future on the line, the question becomes: How can sales professionals increase sales, protect margins, and avoid the race to the bargain basement?

StrategyDriven Consultative Selling Knowledge Center focuses on the consultative selling tools and techniques executives, managers and sales professionals can use to improve their organization’s sales effectiveness; helping them increase their product and service value and convert more potential customers into buying clients. During the five part podcast series comprising this knowledge center, we focus on:

1. Action Selling examines the method for establishing and building business relationships; enabling sales professionals to better engage and understand their client’s needs in order to provide greater value and increase sales.
2. Selling Your Price further explores how the Action Selling process is used to help clients understand they are not purchasing a commodity product but rather one that is highly differentiated by the value you and your company offer.
3. Questions: The Answer to Sales explores how asking questions enables salespeople to better understand their client’s needs and align their product or service offerings to fulfill those needs; establishing the salesperson as a value-adding consultant rather than a commodity seller.
4. Masters of Loyalty explores how professional salespeople can move customers beyond being merely satisfied to true loyalty such that they have stopped shopping and are highly resistant to competitors’ appeals.
5. Sales Strategy from the Inside Out examines how businesses employing a consultative sales method realize dramatically increased revenues.

StrategyDriven Knowledge Centers provide executives and managers with a focused, deep-dive examination of a critical business performance area by one of our expert contributors. Each Knowledge Center contains a collection of insightful perspectives and immediately implementable tools that can be used to improve performance in its respective mission critical area. The StrategyDriven Consultative Selling Knowledge Center is co-presented by Duane Sparks, Chairman and Founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based strategic sales training company that has trained and certified more than 350,000 salespeople in more than 3,000 groups in the system and skills of Action Selling.

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Best Wishes Always,

Karen Juliano
Editor-in-Chief and
Director, Communications and Marketing
StrategyDriven

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Best Wishes Always,

Karen Juliano
Editor-in-Chief and
Director, Communications and Marketing
StrategyDriven

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Sharon Drew is the developer of the Morgen Buying Facilitation Method^®, a decision facilitation model that helps decision-makers recognize and manage the internal, behind-the-scenes issues that must be addressed in order to get the buy-in necessary to implement any change.

Sharon Drew is the author of The New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, the Amazon Bestseller, Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it, and 5 other books on helping buyers manage their change management issues before they can make a purchase. She has written over 1000 articles, done over 40 podcasts and webinars, and has a blog that is currently ranked #6 of all sales and marketing blogs. Sample chapters of Sharon Drew’s work include:

• Buying Facilitation^TM: The new way to sell that influences and expands decisions
• Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it

Buying Facilitation^TM has been trained on at several global corporations such as: KPMG, BOSE, Intuit, Wachovia, Dryfus-Mellon, Morgan Stanley, Kaiser, Proctor and Gamble, and DuPont. Sharon Drew is currently adding her content to Kadient playbooks and is speaking with other sales/marketing enablement companies to add Buying Facilitation^TM to the front end of their current technology to help sellers enter the buyer’s buying decision journey earlier.

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Thank you for making our third year a very successful one. May you enjoy the happiest of Thanksgiving Holidays.
 
 
Best Wishes Always,
The StrategyDriven Team

No related articles.

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. With your support, our community of listeners and readers has grown tremendously in the past several months. Please help us continue to grow by recommending the StrategyDriven Podcast to family, friends, and colleagues who you believe will benefit from listening.

Additionally, please consider voting for us monthly on Podcast Alley by clicking here. Casting your vote for the StrategyDriven Podcast improves our monthly ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, grows our community.

Thank you again for listening to and voting for the StrategyDriven Podcast !

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In addition to the insightful articles and interviews of dozens of today’s most renowned executives and thought leaders, StrategyDriven Premium Members receive access to our expansive collection of:

• Principle Articles (Sample: Organizational Accountability – Fundamental Accountability Drivers)
• Best Practice Articles (Sample: Resource Management Best Practice 3 – Establishing the Foundation for Personnel Resource Sharing)
• Warning Flag Articles (Sample: Strategic Planning Warning Flag 2 – Near-Term Focus)
• StrategyDriven Whitepapers
• StrategyDriven Models
• StrategyDriven Tools and Templates
• and now a complimentary copy of a StrategyDriven Guest Contributor’s book!

These StrategyDriven products provide insight to the real-world application of strategic business planning and tactical execution best practices – a blending of practical workplace experience combined with sound research and academic principles. As such, a StrategyDriven Premium Membership provides you with access to the insights and experiences of exceptional business leaders without the expense associated with maintaining an MBA staff.

Be one of the first 25 to register for a monthly StrategyDriven Premium Membership and begin your journey to greater effectiveness and increased efficiency… with a complimentary copy of a StrategyDriven Guest Contributor’s book.
 
 
* Paid membership required. Available only to those living within the United States. Name and address information required. Books shown are illustrative. Actual book provided may differ. Books typically valued from $14.95 – $29.95 USD. Book value is not guaranteed. Subscriptions can be canceled at any time. Please note that Premium Member access will continue until the paid subscription expires.

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The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. With your support, our community of listeners and readers has grown tremendously in the past several months. Please help us continue to grow by recommending the StrategyDriven Podcast to family, friends, and colleagues who you believe will benefit from listening.

Additionally, please consider voting for us monthly on Podcast Alley by clicking here. Casting your vote for the StrategyDriven Podcast improves our monthly ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, grows our community.

Thank you again for listening to and voting for the StrategyDriven Podcast !

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The grandfather clause is a provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that seeks to keep a key promise made by the Obama administration: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” But interim final rules handed down by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other federal agencies June 17, 2010, appear likely to frustrate the intent of the law and hamstring employers’ ability to offer the best coverage options in a cost-effective manner. In adopting an overly restrictive interpretation of the grandfather clause, the rules essentially diminish employer flexibility to make plan design changes by tying allowable changes to current plan structures.

A new report by the Healthcare Performance Management Institute examines the grandfather clause, the new HHS rules that will govern its implementation and the likely impact on employer health plans. The report also addresses factors organizations should consider when deciding whether or not the benefit of retaining grandfather status outweighs making certain plan design changes.

Click here to download a complimentary copy of this Healthcare Performance Management Institute report.

Want to learn more?

Listen to our recent StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective podcast interview with George Pantos, Executive Director of the Healthcare Performance Management Institute during which we discuss how companies can keep their current health plans in light of the recently passed healthcare legislation and under what circumstances they may wish to do so.

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In addition to the insightful articles and interviews of dozens of today’s most renowned executives and thought leaders, StrategyDriven Premium Members receive access to our expansive collection of:

• Principle Articles (Sample: Organizational Accountability – Fundamental Accountability Drivers)
• Best Practice Articles (Sample: Resource Management Best Practice 3 – Establishing the Foundation for Personnel Resource Sharing)
• Warning Flag Articles (Sample: Strategic Planning Warning Flag 2 – Near-Term Focus)
• StrategyDriven Whitepapers
• StrategyDriven Models
• StrategyDriven Tools and Templates
• and now a complimentary copy of a StrategyDriven Guest Contributor’s book!

These StrategyDriven products provide insight to the real-world application of strategic business planning and tactical execution best practices – a blending of practical workplace experience combined with sound research and academic principles. As such, a StrategyDriven Premium Membership provides you with access to the insights and experiences of exceptional business leaders without the expense associated with maintaining an MBA staff.

Register today for your annual StrategyDriven Premium Membership and begin your journey to greater effectiveness and increased efficiency… with a complimentary copy of a StrategyDriven Guest Contributor’s book.
 
 
* Paid annual membership required. Available only to those living within the United States. Name and address information required. Books shown are illustrative. Actual book provided may differ. Books typically valued from $14.95 – $29.95 USD. Book value is not guaranteed.

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In each episode, our co-hosts and their guests present a richer and deeper exploration of the principle, best practice, and warning flag articles found on the StrategyDriven website. Their discussions identify benefits, define implementation methods, and provide examples to help leaders increase alignment and heighten accountability within their organizations.

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. With your support, our community of listeners and readers has grown tremendously in the past several months. Please help us continue to grow by recommending the StrategyDriven Podcast to family, friends, and colleagues who you believe will benefit from listening.

Additionally, please consider voting for us monthly on Podcast Alley by clicking here. Casting your vote for the StrategyDriven Podcast improves our monthly ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, grows our community.

Thank you again for listening to and voting for the StrategyDriven Podcast!

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The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer   The Success Principles is a roadmap for anyone-from marketing professionals to small business owners, and from teachers to students and parents — striving to achieve their professional and personal dreams and goals. Touching on every aspect of our lives, The Success Principles offers 64 practical and inspiring principles to get any aspiring person from where they are to where they want to be. It’s an encyclopedia for mastering life… so you can achieve any dream, become who you want to be, and make your life exactly as you want it. This is one program you can’t leave out of your success library. The Success Principles contains all the key elements of a successful, happy life, together, in one place!

This is usually a private teleseminar for The Emmerich Group member clients. However, as a special gift to our audience, Roxanne is extending an invitation for StrategyDriven readers and listeners to participate in this information rich event. This is a great opportunity to bring your whole team together for a Lunch ‘n’ Learn or team learning opportunity.

Join Roxanne and Jack for the call on September 8, 2010 at 12:00 noon Central for one hour to discover:

• How to get from where you are to where you want to be.
• The biggest difference between people who are successful and those who aren’t.
• How to change the outcome of any event, simply by changing your response to it.
• Why you should drop out of the “Ain’t It Awful” Club and instead surround yourself with success, positive and nurturing people.
• How to complete past projects, heal past relationships and process old hurts, so you can embrace the future.
• How to ask for and get everything you want…from people who can give it to you.
• How to deal with fear and uncertainty.

A teleseminar like this usually costs $500 – $1000 or more, depending on the size of your company. We are inviting you and your team for FREE as a special gift to prepare you for a better 2010 – regardless of the economy.

Registration is easy! To sign up, go to www.ThankGoditsMonday.com/jack-canfield.

Space is filling up quickly so be sure to sign up right away!

Clear your schedule and register TODAY!

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1. Special Gift – Chat with the Experts™ Teleseminar with David Allen, author of Getting Things Done
2. StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 19 – An Interview with Arlene Johnson, author of Success Mapping
3. StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 18 – An Interview with Roxanne Emmerich, author of Thank God It’s Monday!
4. Complimentary Resource – The Principles Of Project Management
5. Thank God It’s Monday! Book on Kindle Available at No Cost from August 2-7, 2010

• What is organizational alignment?
• What are the benefits and bottom line value of having a well aligned organization?
• If one visited a well aligned organization, what observable organizational and behavioral characteristics would readily observable and why are these important?
• What programs and processes must an organization have in place and running well if it is to be aligned?
• What actions to the leaders need to take in order to establish and maintain the workforce’s focus on achievement of the organization’s goals?
• What is organizational accountability and what is its role in achieving organizational alignment?
• What in your experience is one programmatic and one behavioral challenge that keeps organizations from achieving true alignment?

Each Monday at 1 pm Eastern / 10 am Pacific, Robert Thompson’s Thought Grenades provides rants and raves about current leadership issues and practical ideas to unleash the leader within. Click here to listen and learn about organizational alignment from three of today’s foremost leadership and management experts.

Want Nathan’s show note? Click here to download an outline of Nathan’s key points and thoughts on organizational alignment.

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1. StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 1 – An Interview with Robert Thompson, author of The Offsite: A Leadership Challenge Fable
2. StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 36 – An Interview with Robert Wysocki, author of Adaptive Project Framework
3. StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 35 – An Interview with Robert Kolb, co-author of Corporate Boards
4. StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 38 – An Interview with Robert Morison, co-author of Analytics at Work
5. Thank You! for Making the StrategyDriven Podcast the #1 Ranked Business Podcast in April

In each episode, our co-hosts and their guests present a richer and deeper exploration of the principle, best practice, and warning flag articles found on the StrategyDriven website. Their discussions identify benefits, define implementation methods, and provide examples to help leaders increase alignment and heighten accountability within their organizations.

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. With your support, our community of listeners and readers has grown tremendously in the past several months. Please help us continue to grow by recommending the StrategyDriven Podcast to family, friends, and colleagues who you believe will benefit from listening.

Additionally, please consider voting for us monthly on Podcast Alley by clicking here. Casting your vote for the StrategyDriven Podcast improves our monthly ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, grows our community.

Thank you again for listening to and voting for the StrategyDriven Podcast!

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3. StrategyDriven Podcast Receives Top Honors in March
4. StrategyDriven Podcast Begins the Year with Top Honors
5. StrategyDriven Podcasts Receive Top Honors in August

This is a very special limited time opportunity where you can get the Kindle version of the TGIM book, but only between August 2nd through the 7th, after that the price goes back up. Even if you already own your own copy of the book, you’ll want to carry the digital version with you on your PC, Kindle or iPad.

Plus, you’ll want to tell all of your friends and colleagues that you care about so they can get it too. Send tweets, Facebook it, blog about it, email and yell it from the roof tops… just make sure you let them know that the Kindle version will only be F-R–E–E between now and August 7, 2010.

Imagine giving them the gift of improving their workplace culture and finding out how to create a workplace where they love what they’re doing… And customers love them too!

This is a limited time offer, sponsored by the publisher to create a massive impact and help companies looking to bust bad attitudes, kick-start sagging sales figures, and create companies that employees love to work FOR and customers love to work WITH.

How to get it? Visit www.Amazon.com or search using your Kindle Reader device between now and August 7th and shop the Kindle Store for the title: Thank God It’s Monday! by Roxanne Emmerich and then download it.

Want to learn more about Roxanne Emmerich and Thank God It’s Monday!? Listen to the StrategyDriven Podcast interview during which Roxanne shares with us her insights on how to create a workplace that engages the hearts and minds of employees and customers; resulting in increased growth and higher profits.

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1. Seven Secrets of a “Thank God It’s Monday” Workplace
2. StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 18 – An Interview with Roxanne Emmerich, author of Thank God It’s Monday!
3. Are You Serious About Getting Your People Saying “Thank God It’s Monday” AND Growing with Profits Again?
4. StrategyDriven is Now Available on the Amazon Kindle
5. Thank God For a Good Recession: 7 No Fail Strategies to Pull Ahead During Tough Times

The cost of employee distraction resulting from acts of incivility is staggering and yet goes largely unrecognized. There is no financial statement line item, no general ledger entry, and no budget explicitly set aside for this expense that can cost an evenly modestly sized company hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

Using the StrategyDriven Cost of Employee Distraction nomographs and method outlined here, organization leaders can gain a better appreciation for the direct monetary cost associated with employees worrying about and avoiding those committing acts of incivility and begin to better value their diversity and inclusion initiatives.

StrategyDriven Premium Members can access the Cost of Employee Distraction by clicking here.

Not a StrategyDriven Premium Member? Click here to sign-up for your Premium Membership and receive instant access to this and all other StrategyDriven whitepapers, models, and tools and templates.

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1. New Tool Release – Cost of Employee Attrition
2. Diversity and Inclusion – Return on Investment, part 1: Employee Turnover Reduction
3. New Whitepaper Release – Project Size Determination
4. Complimentary Resource – More Data Doesn’t Always Mean More Cost
5. Introducing the StrategyDriven Employee Engagement Center of Excellence

All too often, employees possess tremendous untapped value. Leaders who more fully engaging their employees begin to unleash this value by inspiring those who work for them to apply the full measure of their creative energy and talent to performing work aligned to the achievement of organizational goals. Winning employees’ trust and commitment is no easy task. Leaders seeking the practical tools and insights to better engage employees need to look no further than the StrategyDriven Employee Engagement Center of Excellence now available on StrategyDriven.com.

“The current economic downturn and recent changes in healthcare regulations makes it more important than ever to maximize the value creation of every employee,” explains Karen Juliano, StrategyDriven’s Editor-in-Chief. “StrategyDriven experience and research by the Gallup Organization reveal that companies having world-class levels of employee engagement are 18 percent more productive and 12 percent more profitable than those performing in the bottom quartile. In fact, these companies realize 3.9 times the Earnings Per Share growth rate of low performers within their industry.”

The StrategyDriven Employee Engagement Center of Excellence provides the actionable tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their employees’ level of engagement, thereby increasing productivity and profitability. Our many articles and podcasts cover those topics critical to improving employee engagement including: Management and Leadership, Diversity and Inclusion, Organizational Accountability, Decision-Making, and Business Strategy.

StrategyDriven Centers of Excellence provide executives and managers with the multitude of tools, techniques, and insights needed to not only address but to excel at today’s most challenging business issues. Each Center of Excellence contains a collection of real-world tested tools and hard-won leadership insights based on our contributors’ work with dozens of small, mid, and large size companies with both domestic and international operations across many industries. Collectively, these methods represent the hundreds of years of experience of today’s most sought after leaders – our contributors.

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1. Seven Secrets to Employee Engagement (Hint: It’s NOT about the Benjamins)
2. StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 3 – An Interview with Forrest Breyfogle, author of Integrated Enterprise Excellence, Volume I – The Basics
3. Learn How to Achieve Enterprise Excellence at an Executive One-Day Seminar with Forrest Breyfogle
4. Learn How to Achieve Enterprise Excellence at an Executive One-Day Seminar with Forrest Breyfogle
5. Learn How to Achieve Enterprise Excellence at an Executive One-Day Seminar with Forrest Breyfogle

On September 20-22, the developer of the decision facilitation model Buying Facilitation^® will be running a rare public training program in Boston to teach you how to help buyers buy.

Sharon Drew Morgen, author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it, will be running her learning facilitation program for 18 participants.

Sales only manages the needs assessment and solution placement end of the buying decision. But buyers have work to do before they can make a purchase: they must handle the political, rules/relationship issues that go on behind-the-scenes to get buy-in. And selling – even with the best technology and data – doesn’t go behind-the-scenes.

Buying Facilitation^® is based on systems thinking and how change happens. It details, and helps influence, the buying/buy-in decision journey.

This is a rare opportunity to study directly with Sharon Drew. This program is for sales folks, change agents, and consultants.

Join Sharon Drew for 3 days on Monday – Wednesday, September 20-22, to discover:

• how change happens – within the buyer’s environment;
• how decisions get made – to buy, to implement a change;
• how to formulate Facilitative Questions, use decision sequences for decision making, and help internal systems buy-in to a purchase quickly;
• how to prospect, close, avoid objections and become part of the Buying Decision Team on the first call.

To register, http://www.newsalesparadigm.com/3day_bft.php
Syllabus: http://www.newsalesparadigm.com/ebooks/bft_3days.pdf

To contact Sharon Drew Morgen with questions about the program or the outcomes, contact: sdm@austin.rr.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation^®, the change management model that navigates through the decision making process. She’s written 7 books and over 1000 articles on this material. Her clients consistently achieve a 400-600% increase in revenue. Learn more about Sharon Drew Morgen and Buying Facilitation^® at: www.sharondrewmorgen.com.

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3. StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 39b – An Interview with Sharon Drew Morgen, author of Dirty Little Secrets, part 2 of 2
4. Get Buy-In First Before Initiating Strategic Change
5. Be a GPS System for Change

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The cost of employee turnover is staggering and yet goes largely unrecognized. There is no financial statement line item, no general ledger entry, and no budget explicitly set aside for this expense that can cost an evenly modestly sized company well over a million dollars each year.

Using the StrategyDriven Cost of Employee Attrition nomographs and method outlined here, organization leaders can gain a better appreciation for the direct monetary cost associated with attrition and begin to value their retention focused initiatives.

StrategyDriven Premium Members can access the Cost of Employee Attrition by clicking here.

Not a StrategyDriven Premium Member? Click here to sign-up for your Premium Membership and receive instant access to this and all other StrategyDriven whitepapers, models, and tools and templates.

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1. New Whitepaper Release – Project Size Determination
2. Complimentary Resource – More Data Doesn’t Always Mean More Cost
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5. StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 30 – The Cost of Not Engaging Employees