Cailin Maclntyre by Cailin Maclntyre

Your Biggest Source of Trouble and Anxiety

cailinmaclntyre — 2015-09-05 06:05:55 UTC

Meir Ezra - The biggest barrier to a successful career is not a lack of opportunities, the job market or your city. The greatest problem in business is not marketing, other companies or the economy. The greatest source of stress in life is not money or the weather or any physical thing.

The biggest source of business problems, career difficulties and personal stress is other people. Specifically, antisocial people—people who are devious, mean-spirited, cruel, hostile or negative. People who oppose you, treat you with disrespect and cause you trouble.

For example, one of the most famous antisocial personalities was Adolf Hitler. Hitler loved children and pets. He was a vegetarian who neither smoked nor drank. He was kind and considerate to the ladies, secretaries and chauffeurs. Most people thought he was a nice guy. You would never suspect he organized the deaths of millions of people.

Antisocial personalities can be doctors, lawyers, politicians, business leaders, police officers, newspaper reporters, employees, men, women, old, young . . . anyone. They can be family members, spouses and colleagues of any type. You probably know more than one antisocial person.

When the antisocial is openly nasty or critical of you, it is easy to see how they can ruin your life. What is worse are antisocial persons who hide their true intentions. These types are the most destructive as it’s hard to see who is stabbing you in the back.

When you handle an antisocial so he or she can no longer affect you, you feel great! You feel stable, more confident and in better control. Becoming a success is much, much easier.

Your Biggest Source of Trouble and Anxiety (Part Four)

cailinmaclntyre — 2015-09-08 07:04:46 UTC

Meir Ezra - As we have covered in Parts 1-3, the greatest barrier to your success is not the economy, your work habits or your opportunities. Your greatest source of stress is not money or the weather or any physical thing.

The biggest source of business problems, career difficulties and personal stress is antisocial people-people who are devious, mean-spirited, cruel, hostile or negative. People who openly or secretly oppose you, cut you down and cause you trouble.

When you handle or disconnect from an antisocial person, you feel better. You relax. You succeed more than you fail. You have less to fight on your way to your goals.

The first four ways to identify an antisocial person were covered in Parts 1-3. All three parts are posted at our new website at www.tipsforsuccess.org/success-articles.htm

Rating Criteria for RFP

cailinmaclntyre — 2016-05-02 08:47:19 UTC

An overview of rating criteria for evaluating software RFP’s

You can use many different scoring schemes for rating criteria for rfp’s. Whatever you use, however, should be applied consistently across all proposals for evaluation.

Types of scorings

1. Simple Yes or No scores. Quick and easy to use, but omits how important specific features or functionality are to you.

2. Combined weighting and scoring method to indicate to what degree your rfp requirements are met by the vendor/software. Slower to do, but does take into consideration the importance of different criteria within an RFP.

3. Scoring schemes and weighting, may be as elaborate as you require. They need to provide you with sufficient analysis/evaluation, without being too complex, confusing or take too long. Our preference is for something that is quick to use and provides the required information eg both option 1’s below - see the RFP Evaluation Template. However, ultimately the choice is yours. Just ensure you have a written justification for your chosen scoring and weighting schemes.

Scoring schemes include

1. 0 to 3 range, where your requirements are: not met (0), partially met (1), fully met (2), exceeded (3). Straightforward and easy to use.

2. -3 to +3 range, where your requirements are: not met (-3), fully met (0), exceeded (+3), with points in between. More complex, more aggressive scoring, which will separate out the software/vendor’s scores. However, confusingly, a zero score is actually a good score!

3. 1 to 10 range, where your requirements are: not met (1) and exceeded (10), with points in between. Again, will separate out software/vendor’s scores more than with a ‘0 to 3’ range. But because of the wider range, it may be more difficult to agree a consensus scoring.

4. Percentage of points available overall (adding up to 100) eg software functionality (0 to 50%), support and maintenance (0 to 20%), implementation assistance (0 to 15%) and price (0 to 15%).

5. Percentage of points available for each requirement eg exceptional (100%), exceeds requirements (80%), meets minimum requirements (60%), not meeting minimum requirements (30%), unacceptable (0%), with percentages in between.

Weighting schemes include

1. 1 to 3 range where an essential requirement is (3), desirable requirement (2), nice to have requirement (1).

2. 1 to 5 range, where an essential requirement is (5), desirable requirement (3), nice to have requirement (1). Will give greater emphasis towards the essential and desirable requirements.

3. Overall percentage weights eg 50% software functionality, 20% vendor capability and 30% price.

Using scores and weightings

Consensus scores, multiplied by weighting in a matrix provide an unbiased evaluation of the vendor’s proposal. Weighted scores may be summed to arrive at scores for certain functionality criteria or software modules.

Proposals ordered by total weighted scores, form a basic priority list - highest scores first. The results provide a short list of the top 2 or 3 vendors to include within the final software selection process.