Executive Coaching

Just like a guru or traveling project manager, professional nurses are starting to benefit from a growing trend throughout the US economy.  Nurses came to day test drive potential hospitals, doctors offices, practices and even private jobs.  A whole new segment of the nursing industry is opening up for nurses that are willing to travel across the country and work temporary to medium-term contract jobs as a travel nurse.

Nurses might be called on to work for three to 60 than nine months in the hospital on the opposite side of the country from where they live today.  The typically paid on a contractual basis in the traveling costs are usually included.  There's a long history of travel nursing within the medical profession.  Many nurses are working to rewrite the concept of what travel nursing is.  It's no longer necessarily a maiden that accompanies an elderly person on a long trip or voyage across the country or even across the ocean.  Nursing professionals need not be women at all and the preconceptions of the past have continued to rapidly break down over the last couple of decades.  They have been reformed with highly trained, technical professionals, often times specialized in specific areas of medical practice.

The job now requires highly skilled and talented professionals often times even pays bonuses for nurses with unique capabilities in areas from midwifery to sedation or even x-ray technicians.

My associate recently sold his web software company for mega-bucks and decided to relocate in the Northern California real estate  for a brief stop over until he and his girl friend Alicia figured out what they really wanted to do.

Since the real estate marketplace was in the midst of downswing, they had decided whether to look at houses for rent or buy a house.  If buying a house, should they go for a mortgage and get mortgage quotes or buy the house straight out?

Since Alicia was the financial planner of the family, my associate decided to let her come up with the positives and the negatives
regarding to the situation.   She used the Tangible Vision that she
built and connected together.  The Tangible Vision delineated their future goals and objectives, their current situation and their values.

She went to NationalRelocation,com and a few other sites to determine what was our best options.  After a few days of comparing and contrasting the current market situation with their Tangible Vision, they decided to live in Northern
California. 

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was sentenced to 24 years of prison. This will likely translate to 20 years and four months if he is good in prison. Skilling was seen as not very cooperative and possibly even worse from a sentencing perspective not very humble or apologetic during questioning.

Cooperative CFO Andrew Fastow was given a six year term for cooperating with prosecutors in the case. Founder Kenneth Lay died before his own sentencing and his conviction was overturned due to his death, which prevented any potential appeals.

By comparison Bernard Ebbers, the CEO of WorldCom, received a 25 year sentence for his role in that Fraud.

So what is the lesson of these convictions?

1. Company Officers of US Companies are accountable to US Law
2. If you die, you don't need to appeal to the courts (but maybe you will to a higher power)
3. If you cooperate, you may still go to jail, but you may get out before you die of old age.
4. Don't cook the books!
5. Ignorance is no defense!
6. If you are guilty of number 4, then you better apologize loudly before sentencing.

Honestly, I'm not certain if too many other lessons have or will be learned from this affair. Sorbanes Oxley has been created and strengthened. Unfortunately, that legislation is very very flawed and even more unfortunately has very very large loop holes that are being used by Multi-National Corporations every day. From a pessimistic perspective, these convictions may represent an old breed of corporate officers that will do time in prison because they were not smart enough to avoid the loopholes. I say pessimistic because too many companies are looking for the loopholes instead of making changes in the corporation to keep things on the up and up.

In the meantime, I look forward to the next big Public Accounting Firm scandal to hit. Enough attention has been focused on the boardroom, its time to get back to the trenches and root out some of the Accounting Firms that are endorsing the loopholes and showing corporate officers around the world how to navigate these loopholes.

A little honey can go a long way, and sometimes that honey if given to your partners can go a long way towards helping your company in ways you may have never imagined, so thank your partners, contractors and outsourced workers publicly - it will help your business!.

When you publicly acknowledge and thank your partners or contractors or outsourced collaborators, it serves to promote their work and company. In the world of the internet, if you do this within your blog or web page, it can increase their marketing efforts on the web by improving their search engine ranking.

If they provide hyperlinks back to your company and in a content conducive way talk about the great and positive things they are doing working with your company, this will in turn increase your search engine ranking due to 1. the existence of the hyperlink in the first place, 2. the content and descriptions they provide on the page with the hyperlink, and 3. Due to their increased search engine ranking resulting from your comments, their new and increased search engine status will serve to elevate your search engine importance as well.

Many search engines determine the importance of a site based on the importance of sites that link to it. So if your partner is relatively obscure and they link to you it will help. However, if you help them and make them less obscure through your public acknowledgement, their link will help you even more!

You can think of it as the I'll scrath your back so that you can scratch my back more effectively effect!

Technorati Tags: promoting partners, search engine ranking, more effective back scratching, SEO

I recently commented on the blog of the 'Small Business CEO' regarding an open call asking what to do with old business books left on the bookshelf.

Titled

'Used Business Books - What to Do with Them?'

Here is my response:
Don't neglect the obvious!

You blog about Small Business topics. You've read a number of business books that no longer have enough to teach you to consider a re-read.

Grab a book at random once a month, pick a chapter/topic as it catches your eye, scan it for a quick topic, preferably something that you have experience with (experience that is not in the book) and put in a quick article to your blog.

You are sitting on a treasure trove of recyclable content, inspiration and rapid reference that you have mastered already.

Its always easy to find things the second time around, and I'm sure you can employ your wisdom to the books reference material in a way that your readers will benefit from even more than if they were to pick up the book from you.

Not to mention, your perspective changes. Its one thing to learn a business concept in school when you have no experience. Its very different for a person with experience to learn something from the same concept as more depth can be applied to the lesson. Your now in the position of a blog instructor so go back find the useful lessons and share them with us with a little applied wisdom!

Best Regards,
Brett

Corporations and large companies by their nature and organization institute policies that do not always fulfill the needs of all employees. Typically, policies are established to cover the lowest common denominator within a company.

This is a condescension, but the truth of the matter is that a company has to insure that policies cover everyone regardless of how well they execute their intended purpose. Policies for the masses by their nature will often have a detrimental impact on high performers within the organization.

Some employees bring a high level of integrity, personal motivation & effectiveness to a company. Over time company policies and initiatives can begin to erode or chip away at the facade of an effective person, resulting in symptoms of burn out.

Below is a paraphrased response provided to an associate experiencing several aspects of this dilemma:

1. You must make the call at the end of the day and determine what is best for your career.
2. It will be the right decision no matter what.
3. If you step back and look at our career choices that you have to make every day,
a. Stay in a job
b. Resign a job or transfer,
then you must look at it like a prudent a prudent stock market investor.

Every day a trader owns a share in the market is another day they made the decision to buy that share at the current price as opposed to selling the share, cashing in and moving on.

Careers are similar in comparison, every day that you choose to stay in a job under the current terms or environment, it is a day you have signed on to continue working.

Some people might complain, "If I had only known what I was getting into before I took this job."

They should realize that at this point in time they do know and they accept the condition each time they walk back into the office.

4. An important tenant of negotiation can be achieved if you face up to the reality that you will not get the best deal if you are not prepared to walk away from the offer on the table and mean it.

5. Many people will choose not to walk away, but if our bluff is called then itÂ’s a matter of integrity. To cave on this integrity issue results in a situation where you are making a destructive choice to opt for something that is less beneficial and possibly harmful to yourself.

6. If you must be prepared to walk from a deal, then you better be ready every single day. Being ready and confident in your own ability to walk, helps you navigate the career path of what is best for you and best for your company. If you can navigate this path for yourself, you can then begin to help the company you have chosen to associate with and navigate an even more complicated path for your company.

7. The best defense or preparation for a day when you have to walk is to start your preparations right now. Look at everything you do and ask yourself, would this be valuable to me in a different life, career, or business.

a. If yes, how so and how would I apply it.
b. Who is my customer, and how will they pay me?
c. Make note of it and file it away where you can find it in a hurry.

If its not truly important to you, there is a very good chance that its not important in reality to your company either. If it were important for your company, your company would make it important for you. This sounds like a line straight out of Office Space. There is a big company meeting and the drolling moron of a manager is telling everyone that they should think everyday what is good for the company. The truth is that unless your prepared to walk, you are not in a position to make that determination accurately.

When you start to approach your work this way, youÂ’ll start to move away from the inefficient wasteful exercises and get back on track for whatÂ’s important not just to your company but to yourself. You will be working for yourself and not answering to every whim of a corporate machine geared to run all over you and take advantage of you as a resource. Change yourself into a partner of the organization and make the relationship more organic and prosperous for all parties involved.

For more information on this topic please contact Softduit Partners.