TIME MANAGEMENT? NO!Written by Dr. Dorene Lehavi
Many people want to be coached to manage their time better. I say NO! to that. You cannot manage time anyway; it just keeps ticking away no matter what you do. What you can do is manage yourself based on two concepts I keep mentioning: self-knowledge and self-acceptance. Following are four principles to maximize time that you have. They take time to incorporate into your life at habit level. Don't give up. Keep practicing. 1) GOOD ENOUGH Accept that no human being is meant to do everything. We all have our uniqueness; things we do better than others and vice versa. Perfection is not a human condition. Cut yourself some slack and adopt concept of "good enough". You can rework your resume 50 times. Is it really so much better than a much earlier draft? You can shop for perfect dress endlessly? Wasn't first one you tried and liked as good as 15th? How much time did you spend past "good enough"? Demand higher standards of excellence where it really counts. 2) SPECIALNESS Concentrate on excelling in what you do well, what you would enjoy doing better, and new areas you would like to learn. Delegate, hire, share, partner with people who complement you or can fill needs you have in areas you don't enjoy or do not know that well. Don't ever berate yourself for not being able to do it all. Appreciate your talents and excellence and flaunt them. They are you, yours and very special. Let others have their specialness too. The results will not only save time but enrich and free you.
| | SAVE MONEY BY USING A BUYING GROUP?Written by Paul Buisson
Let me give you a brief history of Group Purchasing Organizations (GPO). They have been around for decades. Do you know what types of businesses get best pricing on all of goods and services they purchase? The answer is healthcare facilities. Do you know why? I’ll tell you. Nearly any healthcare facility in nation that is making a profit belongs to a buying group. The average healthcare facility belongs to two GPOs . Thousands of facilities join together to negotiate contracts with their vendors. Vendors aggressively compete to get awarded group’s contracts. As a result each group member saves money on everything they purchase. Annual membership fees range from $250.00 - $20,000.00. The concept is slowly evolving into other industries. Today there are National GPOs for Universities, Engineers, Cable Television/Satellite Installers and one for Small & Medium Size Companies. Smaller GOPs have formed at regional, state and local level for a variety of industries.Pros and Cons of National GPOs The benefit to national buying groups is that their size gives them volume to negotiate bigger discounts with national vendors. But there are many problems with national buying groups. They have gotten greedy and charge their vendors ever-increasing percentage of their revenues generated by their members. This reduces amount of discounts offered to their members. The national GPOs do not backup their annual membership fee with a money back guarantee on member's savings. Some of these GPOs force their members to use their vendors exclusively. This has caused a backlash against GPO's because members maybe forced to use vendors that offer poor products and services. Pros and Cons of Smaller GPO's With exception of a few state GPO's most non-national GPOs are local. A group of businesses in a city in a particular industry get together and form a GPO. The advantage is that each member has say in vendors that are selected by GPO. The other advantage is that GPO is free. The problem is that a few dozen members of a local GPO don't have purchasing power to receive really big discounts from vendors. To get any decent level of volume all of members are forced to use same vendors exclusively. Thus members do not have total freedom to select their vendors. The other major problem it that it takes lots of time and coordination by members to manage GPO.
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