Thursday, July 23, 2009

Work911 Ezine - Updates, New Free Stuff, Newsletter Changes, Articles

July 24, 2009 Updates, New Free Stuff, Some Newsletter Changes

It's pretty amazing how fast things move when you get older. I keep
promising to do these newsletters much more frequently, and
then...well, I don't. But here we are and hoping you are having a safe
Summer (or season of you choice). In this issue we have a number of
updates, and then some information on what's new and interesting on
our websites.

The Big News: Free2Thee.com

Those of you who have been with us for a long time know that we (as in
my company, Bacal & Associates) has been hunting down and making
available the best freely available articles on the web through our
various subject specific sites (e.g. conflict911.com, performance-
appraisals.org, smallbusiness411.org, and others). For the most part
the evolution of the net suggested that we spend less time on those
types of resources and more effort on tracking down free ebooks,
ecourses, whitepapers, audiobooks and/or anything substantial that
will help you, our visitor, learn.

The result is http://free2thee.com, a site that contains summaries and
links to material we feel is promising or useful in the support of
learning. We concentrate on business, but we won't be leaving out
other topics like personal development when and as we find really good
free stuff.

It's relatively new and we will be adding new stuff as often as we
can, but I'm fairly sure you should find something that interests you.
It's in a blog format, so you can rate and/or comment on the offerings
to help others, AND, in future, we'll be allowing visitors to add
their own favorite AND LEGITIMATE offers.

You can keep up with the offerings at the website at http://free2thee.com,
follow us on twitter (@free2thee or http://twitter.com/free2thee or
use the available rss feed. I want to stress: We are only including
real substantive offers, and not junk, spam, get rich quick stuff,
MLM, or those "free ebooks" that consist of five pages.

Check it out for yourself. I'm thinking you'll like it.

Changes at Both Our Training Related Site and Our Small Business Site

Essentially, what we are doing for both of these sites (http://
thetrainingworld.com and http://smallbusiness411.org ) is put our
development resources into the blog sections. There's still good
stuff, and articles, but all of our new articles, offers and materials
will be in the blog areas at:

http://thetrainingworld.com/wp/

http://smallbusiness411.org/wp

We've done this for several reasons. The first is to allow more
interaction, dialogue with and between our visitors through the
comment sections, and ultimately, to allow others to contribute
articles, while obtaining some free promotion and marketing "juice".
The second reason is ease of adding new material.

I think you will enjoy both of these blogs. You can keep up with any
new posts by visiting the websites, of course, by using the rss feeds,
or by following the associated twitter accounts:

http://twitter.com/trdev (that's for the training site)

http://twitter.com/smallbizIQ

You should also know that the title of the blog at our training site
has been changed from The Curmudgeonly Trainer, to The Happy
Curmudgeon to reflect a shift away from talking only about training
issues, and towards a general workplace topic blog.

A Newsletter Change:

SInce we're creating all kinds of new articles and resource links,
we'll be limiting our inclusion of complete articles in this
newsletter to shift towards providing some summaries of material we've
added, or we think has merits. We'll still include occasional articles
that might be of general interest, but that will be less frequent. We
are also going to start using "shortened" urls rather than long ones.
This is to ensure that the long links don't make it difficult for you
to access features. So, let's see what we have.

Featured This Issue:

How to Make Training and Development a Power Agent for Change

In this article, Jo Ann Kirby shares methods to get a decent return on
investment for training, and to use training and development to serve
required organizational change. It's not rocket science, but for those
making decisions about training (e.g. HR, Managers), it's useful. Long
link:

http://www.thetrainingworld.com/wp/2009/07/20/how-to-make-training-and-development-a-power-agent-for-change-for-managers/

Short Link: http://bit.ly/UZF0M

A Well Deserved Poke At Adult Learning Principles and Styles

Have at it trainers. In this article I provide a bit of a critique on
both adult learning principles and styles, two elements of "modern"
training that are essentially worthless to trainers and learners
because they don't add anything to actually help make learning more
efficient. Long Link:

http://www.thetrainingworld.com/wp/2009/07/20/a-well-deserved-poke-at-adult-learning-principles-and-styles/

Short Link: http://bit.ly/VfEV8

Productivity, Excellence and Giftedness by Gregorio Billikopf,
University of California

This piece was originally posted on HRNET by Gregorio Billikopf of the
University of California. It has some excellent thoughts, but even
more important it's a great stimulus for thinking and discussion
around many HR, training, performance and learning issues. Gregorio
has kind given permission to reprint here on our blog. Also added in
the reply section is Robert Bacal's reply, also from HRNET. Long Link:

http://www.thetrainingworld.com/wp/2009/07/11/productivity-excellence-and-giftedness-stimulating-article-by-g-billikopf/

Short Link: http://bit.ly/3b6H5


Free Whitepaper: The Pillars of Performance Management

This is a 20 page whitepaper that I quite like. It's rarely available
so if you want a copy, presuming you are interested in the topic, go
to http://free2thee.com . Info about how to get it is in the first
summary. But do it now. The offer will be withdrawn shortly.

Do You Believe Learning By Doing is a Superior Learning Method? Is
Your Hamster Smarter Than You? I'm at it again, puncturing some of the
"wisdom" that is accepted as truth in the training field. Enjoy, and
be sure to read the comments made on the article.

Finally, Playing Our Discount Game

If you go to http://busylearners.com (that's our store), you'll notice
that when you arrive, you will see an animated banner at the top that
says: "congratulations". If you pay attention, you will receive UP TO
a 50% discount on your purchases of Bacal & Associates products. At
minimum you will receive 10% so pay attention.

If you let the animation finish it will give you your discount code.
Make a note of it since you'll need it when you check out of the
shopping cart after choosing your helpcards or books. Enter it when
you see the space for it. Your discount will be automatically applied.
Offer ends without further notice at any time.

YOU WILL ONLY SEE THE DISCOUNT OFFER ONCE per day.

Our Sites:

Just a quick summary of our sites that have information on the
following topics:

Free Learning Stuff: http://free2thee.com

Small Business Resource Center: http://smallbusiness411.org

Small Business Blog (new material): http://smallbusiness411.org/wp/

Leadership Resource Center: http://work911.com/leadership-development/index.html

Communication Resource Center: http://www.work911.com/communication/index.htm

Conflict (both workplace and family) http://conflict911.com

Business, Strategic and Personal Planning: http://www.work911.com/planningmaster/index.html

Performance Management & Appraisal: http://performance-appraisals.org

Customer Service: http://customerservicezone.com

Our Main Site: http://www.work911.com

Multi-Purpose Articles Database: http://www.articles911.com

To new subscribers: The work911 newsletter is published no more than
once a week and contains articles on all things work related, and
contains other work related resources, and updates about our sites,
and their contents. Past history indicates we publish about every ten
days. Subscribe at http://work911.com/newsletter.htm

Don't forget that you can access free, useable previews of over twenty
of our books and helpcards at:

http://busylearners.com

and that we continue to offer special freebie offers and discounts to
our newsletter subscribers! (and our toolbar owners!)
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Work911 Ezine" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to Work911-Ezine-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Work911-Ezine
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Work911 - Special Alert - Another chance to get free The Pillars of Performance Management

We have an upcoming issue of our newsletter due shortly, focusing on
free offers, but I didn't want you to miss out on this free mini e-
book because it's very good, and it will only be available for a
limited time -- Pillars of Performance Management

When I first came across this small e-booklet, I was extremely
impressed and I know a bunch of people grabbed it when it was
available before. It's back, and I'm telling you that it's an
excellent summary of the basics of performance management AS IT
SHOULD BE DONE. This is time limited so if you are interested, get it
now.

It meshes very well with my books on the topic, but the nice part is
a) it's free and b) It's only about 25 pages, and I think we are all
really busy.

Here's the summary info, and the url to grab your copy. Registration
is required.

"The Pillars of Employee Performance Management"

eBook & strategy manual for leveraging Employee Performance
Management in your organization.

Does your organization consider Employee Performance Management a
laborious, tactical annual practice, or is it a strategic, business-
critical cycle? Maybe it's time to reassess. Now more than ever, HR
professionals like you are tasked with optimizing Employee
Performance Management processes across the board to ensure the most
efficient use of corporate resources. Employee Performance Management

has the power to accelerate time-to-revenue, reduce risks, and help
your organization proactively address threats and opportunities.

What you will learn:

* How to derive real value from Employee Performance Management
* How HR can help align an organization's goals &
* Best practices for successful competency management &
* Five costly succession planning errors to avoid &
* How to manage compensation during the economic crunch

Grab it at: http://bit.ly/QF41C

Or, if you want to access our new free2thee project (which I'm rather
fond of) you can go to http://free2thee.com


--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Work911 Ezine" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to Work911-Ezine-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Work911-Ezine
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---