What do you do after you flunk out of college? Some people get a job, some join the military, some move back home to continue to live as children, and then there are the few who are daring enough to take to the road. For a young woman , the idea of hitchhiking can be threatening, but with a little luck and learning who to trust, what a thrilling way to find out about themselves and to learn some life lessons while becoming what is known to hitchhikers as a "road dog".

R.K. decided that she wanted to see the country. With few financial resources, she departed from her mother's home for a life of possibilities, deciding to hitchhike along the way. One of her first rides was with an old man who was drinking. After being rescued by the police, she made the decision early on to never ride again with someone who was drinking.

She quickly discovered the world of the Rainbow Gatherings around the country. Either walking, riding with acquaintances, or hitchhiking she found a way of life that perfectly matched her current ideals. This communal gathering excited her with the gypsy lifestyle at first, taught her much, and allowed her to discover certain qualities in herself and others. Along the way she met many generous people and managed to travel with two extraordinary dogs for companionship and protection.

This book is her memory of particular events and places she experienced through her naive and adventurous eyes. While looking for safety, shelter, and companionship, this young woman also discovers much about herself relying on her personal instincts. The lessons learned as solutions to particular problems changed her life especially in the area of natural medicine. Traveling without much money but literally by her wits, she finds that there are numerous ways around the bureaucracy of passports and visas. Also, learning about people, problems, and trust makes Travels with a Road Dog an educational, but enlightening read through an unusual perspective.

Most of the names of the characters were changed. However, there was one place where the changed name was confused with the real name, making the recounted memory a little confusing for this one episode. For the most part, the book was well edited and especially well-organized. The strength of the writing was definitely the author's passion with her choices at this particular time in her life.

This account was wonderful in experiencing another lifestyle through someone else. Her experiences and problems are informative and uplifting with her solutions and sometimes, learning with her from the failures. Travels with a Road Dog is the true account and lessons learned from a young woman while discovering more about other people, places, and most importantly, about herself.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7412040

• 0 komentar »

Title: The One Minute Manager
Author: Kenneth Blanchard, Ph.D. And Spencer Johnson, M.D.
- are the authors of Who Moved My Cheese?
Chapters: 16
Pages: 111
The Symbol: Modern Digital Watch that indicates 1 minute as a reminder to take time to look at the people you manage and know that they are your best resource.
Characters:
1. Bright Young Man
2. The One Minute Manager
3. Mr. Trenell - One Minute Goal Setting
4. Mr. Levy - One Minute Praising
5. Ms. Brown - One Minute Reprimand
6. Ms. Metcalfe - Secretary
Introduction:
Almost everything that you do with the people you manage should take a maximum of One Minute. That would be the first thought you would have reading the book. But once you're done of course it does not mean literally One Minute. It just means that you should not take more time in getting things done when you are efficient enough.

Matters that requires more than a minute should still be dealt with accordingly. Its the little time you spent with your people in the right moment that makes a difference. This is well laid out with the three guides of the One Minute Management explained in the book: One Minute Goal Setting, One Minute Praising and One Minute Reprimand. It is quite important that you do these guidelines straight when it is needed to obtain the right output to secure better people management skills.

Most managers as cited in the beginning of the book do not apply these and tend to go overboard. Let's take One Minute Goal Setting... if a leader takes time in preparing each member and the entire team with this then all will be on the same page and need not to be misguided along the production. It would be an easy reference to what they are expected to produce since it would be straight to the point.

Following the explanation below by the character Mr. Trenell. Same with One Minute Praising, highlighting the action needed to strengthen or emphasize the desired output and maintenance of it, explained by the character Mr. Levy. And most importantly, ensuring that behavior in the work environment that should not be tolerated will be explained on how you should manage this by the character Ms Brown.
Mr. Trenell - One Minute Goal Setting
a. Agree on your goals
b. See what good behavior looks like
c. Write out each of your goals on a single sheet of paper using less than 250 words.
d. Read and re-read each goal, which requires only a minute or so each time you do it.
e. Take a minute every once in a while out of your day to look at your performance and
f. See whether or not your behavior matches your goal.
Mr. Levy - One Minute Praising
a. Tell people up front that you are going to let them know how they are doing.
b. Praise people immediately.
c. Tell people what they did right - be specific.
d. Tell people how good you feel about what they did right, and how it helps the organization and the other people who work there.
e. Stop for a moment of silence to let them "feel" how good you feel.
f. Encourage them to do more of the same.
g. Shake hands or touch people in a way that makes it clear that you support their success in the organization.
Ms. Brown - One Minute Reprimand
a. Tell people beforehand that you are going to let them know how they are doing and in no uncertain terms. (the first half of the reprimand)
b. Reprimand people immediately.
c. Tell people what they did wrong - be specific.
d. Tell people how you feel about what they did wrong - and in no uncertain terms.
e. Stop for a few seconds of uncomfortable silence to let them feel how you feel.
f. Shake hands, or touch them in a way that lets them know you are honestly on their side.
g. Remind them how much you value them.
h. Reaffirm that you think well of them but not of their performance in this situation.
I. Realize that when the reprimand is over, it's over.
Conclusion:
The book was written by authors who also wrote "Who Moved My Cheese?", same as with the book that has enough pages on it to explain its objective which is on management of people and value of people as well. It keeps the reader on the edge of his/her seat which almost makes the reader feel that it only takes just a minute to read the book. It could be highly recommended for managers to read the book to lessen time spent in managing people and more on getting results the correct way without increasing pressure too much rather increasing the employee's initiative in getting things right.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7286986

• 0 komentar »

A recent Linkedin Poll discovered 32% of respondents ranking Teamwork as the weakest link in their practice. Since patient's perception of teamwork is one of the two key factors for referral generation (the other factor is your expertise), teamwork is important not only to get the job done but also to grow your practice. So, teamwork must be one of the key design criteria for medical practice management systems. For instance, electronic medical record (EMR) software is designed for compliance and for teamwork between physicians. 

Similarly, billing software must be designed for teamwork between physicians, insurance companies, and billing staff. What are design principles for successful medical practice management systems?
In the absence of comprehensive books focused on user interface design for medical office management systems, I recently read three design books that have to do with general design, user interface design, and social network design. Below is my summary of lessons learned.

Donald Norman - "The Design of Everyday Things"
Technology - especially computer technology - advances quickly. But humans do not change quickly, and the processes we use to perceive, learn, and think change slowly. Donald Norman, a cognitive scientist and author of "The Design of Everyday Things," noted this fact 30 years ago, in 1983. According to Donald Norman, the real culprit for "user judgement error" is always the design. His book, which has been adopted in leading colleges as a standard textbook, pays tremendous attention to the psychology of the mind, to how our mind works, resulting in a pragmatic set of four basic design principles:

1. Conceptual Models that explain how things work, so that we can use different behaviours to accomplish our goals. Different classes of actions must have different command sequences or menu items to avoid capture or description problems.
2. Feedback so we know immediately the result of our action. The state of the system needs to be clearly communicated to the user, helping to avoid mode errors.
3. Constraints, making it impossible to use the device the wrong way. Also allow reversible actions.
4. Affordances, making the appropriate actions perceptible and inappropriate - invisible.

So, if you want to design something hard to use, you can follow these rules (what NOT to do):

1. Hide things. Widen the "Gulf of Execution:" give no hints to the expected operation. Widen the "Gulf of Evaluation:" give no feedback, no visible results of the action.
2. Be arbitrary. Use non-obvious commands and names. Use arbitrary mapping between intended action and result. Use idiosyncratic language and abbreviations. Use uninformative error messages.
3. Be inconsistent. Change rules. Do the same thing in different ways when operating in different modes.
4. Be impolite. Treat erroneous user actions as breaches of contract. Snarl. Insult. Mumble unintelligible verbiage.
5. Make operations dangerous. Allow a single action to destroy invaluable data or work. Prevent recoverability. But add warnings in the manual. When users complain, ask "Did you read the manual?"

One of the key observations of Norman's book is that easy looking is not necessarily easy to use. A surfboard and ice skates look simple but require years of practice to use them well. They look simple because there are few controls and no moving parts. In such cases, the user accomplishes rich complexity of action through rich execution. If there was a single control for each possible action, then execution would reduce to simply finding and applying the proper control.

So the more controls, the easier is the operation but the more complex is the appearance and the more difficult is the task of finding the right control. Conversely, the fewer controls, the simpler and easier is the appearance of the device but the more difficult is the operation.

Reading Norman's book helps develop your power of observation. Norman's book teaches how to observe and understand design of things around us, how to see what conflicting constraints they must satisfy and apply his principles to create useful designs.

Know any health care providers who complain about shrinking insurance payments and increasing audit risk? Help them learn winning Internet strategies for the modern payer-provider conflict by steering them to Vericle - Medical Billing Network and Practice Management Software ( http://www.vericle.com ), which powers such leading-edge billing services as Affinity Billing ( http://www.affinitybilling.com ), Billing Dynamix, and Billing Precision, and is home for "Medical Billing Networks and Processes" book by Yuval Lirov, PhD and inventor of patents in artificial intelligence and computer security.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7313371

• 0 komentar »