Catchy title?  It’s sure to attract attention.

I’m just about finished a great book called the “Assent of Money” by Niall Ferguson.  An excellent read if you want to understand how the financial system works – including your credit card, your home mortgage and your pension – if you have one.

It’s a history of money, how it works, what it means and really what it is! He paints a very straight forward explanation for why the current shifting in economic power is from the west (in particular the USA) to the East (in particular China).

He also identifies key fractures in the current financial system (particularly credit default swaps – a notional USD 62 trillion worth presently in the market – that’s 78 times the size of the TARP bail out package released last year by the Obama government, and about the same as the entire World’s production, our GDP)

The origins of the financial system, in one place.  No such book exists previously to this book.

4,000 years of the What and Why and When and How and Where and Who on money.

Don’t miss it!

Watch the video (where did they get that music?!!  I remember that music from the games on the Commodore 64 from the early 80’s!!)

Here’s more of Niall speaking on the net: Niall Videos

Jeremiah Josey

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Samir puts out a weekly email to staff working at Amec – around 20,000 people work for this company.

He has 6 good pointers for success:

We all learn quickly that we each have different talents and strengths and need to work hard to overcome our weaknesses. Leadership does not always come as a natural ability to all of us and we must seek out mentors to help us create opportunities to fine tune our skills. Throughout my career I have learnt those elements that make a good leader and create success. Like a chemical reaction – if you know what elements you should mix and when different combinations are needed – success is inevitable. Through my experience, I strongly believe that the foundations of leadership are as follows:

Have a vision of success – without this you will lose your way and your direction. Without aspiring to success, there is no point in having a vision – we all want to be successful at what we aim for.

Know your purpose – define why it is that you are putting the effort in. In my role I continually ask – how are we creating jobs? Creating value to our customers? Improving returns to stakeholders? And most importantly are we doing this in a sustainable and meaningful way?

Build the best teams – your team is a reflection of your leadership. It cannot be taken for granted – you need to develop them, trust them and empower them. The more we practise these leadership qualities; which sound easy but take a lot of commitment and determination; the more we will develop the most effective teams in the world.

Develop a clear strategy – you need a roadmap that paves the way for you to achieve your vision. It is crucial that this is clear, action driven and honest. You need to embed milestones and measurement throughout and align your team to the strategy.

Stay focused – do not get distracted with non -priority issues. Plan your short-term, mid-term and long- term objectives. Be honest with yourself and stay committed to what you need to achieve today; tomorrow; in the week; in the quarter; and the year to achieve your vision and strategy.

Have fun – you need to feel excited and inspired every day. This involves recognising when you and your teams are fatigued, when it is time to rest and rotate your people.

This is a “top down” approach, not truly encompassing of a participation management style, however I like the concepts because they can be implemented quite easily across an participative organisation.

Like I telling people working with me (and often looking to me for an answer!), 10 brains working on a problem is much better than 1!

Jeremiah Josey

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I often think about what is coming next, with instant world wide communication, and access to information from anyone, anytime, anyhow. Personal choice and satisfaction is now more than ever the key question for everyone in all countries, people are seeking – and obtaining – answers from all around the globe.

I think what is next is that marvelous final bastion of time consumption for the majority of us on this little blue planet: not sleeping… employment: trading our time for money.

This is being questioned more than ever – just talk to your parents about getting a “safe secure job”. Perhaps we feel that being gainfully employed means more than money, like “something to do with our time”, but recent studies show that employee disengagement is the epidemic of the 21st century: 6 out of 7 employees have switched off. We are running in neutral; idling; bored; tuned out; not interested; keen to move on.

That’s 86% of the work force not happy to be there / here / anywhere!!

H1N1 has nothing on the misery and suffering caused by that amount of disengagement.

That’s why I’m excited. With all this untapped human potential, just sitting in idle, what does it take to re-engage, re-motivate and obtain excellence from them? That’s exciting: that potential. I know the answer and it’s straight forward: once you get your ego under control.

A friend of mine is doing her MBA in Kuwait and I was helping her prepare for an exam and a group assignment on leadership and organisational management. Great stuff. I was enthralled by a case study about BMW I was reading. It clearly identified the democratic, participative management work environment that clearly explained why BMW is so successful right now, whilst other car manufactures are faltering. As an example BMW has engaged 12,000 new people since 2000, whilst GM and Ford have sacked similar numbers. BMW does not have workers and managers, they have associates and leaders, but there’s more to it, and what they are doing is not important. It’s why and how that counts. And it’s all about engagement. This web page is not the case study, but alludes to BMW’s practices a little.

I explain it to my colleagues and my teams like this: the traditional method of business is like a school class room. [It's really based on the military model, as is school, but relatively few of us have military experience, but "all" of us have been in school. I'll use the term "us" as the students here, because we know it so well ;o) ]

In a typical school there is a teacher and there are the students. The students are a bunch of individuals being told what to do by one person: classical management style theory. The teacher dictates the rules and the students work to our own limits – on our own – to reach our own level of achievement: our grades. That’s it. Students can’t wait to leave. The teacher can’t wait to leave. There’s very little group work, in fact working in a team can get you expelled (it has a special term: “cheating”).

Consider what happens when the teacher leaves the room? What do we do? We all know: we’ve all been there before. We bumff off, goof off, focus on anything and everything but the subject matter.

Something else very interesting is happening that is the essence of participative management: we group together into little collections to discuss stuff, all kinds of stuff. Do we talk about the subject matter of the class? Unlikely. We talk about what interests us at that time.

Imagine if those little groups could be harnessed to drive outcomes? Self driven, enthusiastic, motivated…

That’s exactly what companies like BMW and Google have done. They have worked it out. They work as dynamic, organic groups, openly and in plain sight.

It’s so much fun to do to as well! People come alive in my groups when I employ the strategies and tricks to engage and motivate a team: to form a participative group. Quite people suddenly contribute. Bullies and those who can’t manage their egos become quite, and they either get with it or leave the group. It’s magic to watch it working. Just watching the outcomes and achievements of a self motivated, self actualized group of people is wonderful.

Have a look at this very good web site: WorldBlu.com. Traci Fenton, the founder, has decided to recognize “democratic” work places and on her web site there are 40 companies that qualify for her 10 point checklist as a democratic company for 2009.

Here are her 10 points:

The WorldBlu 10 Principles of Organizational Democracy™

1. Reflection + Evaluation
Democratic organizations are committed to continuous feedback and development and are willing to learn from the past and apply lessons to improve the future.

2. Purpose and Vision
A democratic organization is clear about why it exists (its purpose) and where it is headed and what it hopes to achieve (its vision). These act as its true North, offering guidance and discipline to the organization’s direction.

3. Transparency
Say goodbye to the “secret society” mentality. Democratic organizations are transparent and open with employees about the financial health, strategy, and agenda of the organization.

4. Dialog + Listening
Instead of the top-down monologue or dysfunctional silence that characterizes most workplaces, democratic organizations are committed to having conversations that bring out new levels of meaning and connection.

5. Fairness + Dignity
Democratic organizations are committed to fairness and dignity, not treating some people like “somebodies” and other people like “nobodies.”

6. Accountability
Democratic organizations point fingers, not in a blaming way but in a liberating way. They are crystal clear about who is accountable to whom and for what.

7. Individual + Collective
In democratic organizations, the individual is just as important as the whole, meaning employees are valued for their individual contribution as well as for what they do to help achieve the collective goals of the organization.

8. Choice
Democratic organizations thrive on giving employees meaningful choices.

9. Integrity
Integrity is the name of the game, and democratic companies have a lot of it. They understand that freedom takes discipline and also doing what is morally and ethically right.

10. Decentralization
Democratic organizations make sure power is appropriately shared and distributed among people throughout the organization.

Apply these principles and just watch what happens to your organisation.

I believe that the essence of a successful democratic process, is captured by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Tipping Point from 2000. That is: “Peer pressure is much more powerful than the concept of a Boss. Many, many times more powerful”. (You’ll find this little gem buried on page 186).

Think about the teacher/student concept. How much power does the teacher have? Very little really. It depends on their character, but it is a doomed, decaying system. The stronger and more controlling the teacher is with the class, the more the class will work against the teacher when the teacher is absent: it’s a system bound to fail. On the other hand, peer pressure does nothing but enhance the values and achievements of the group – the only thing to do is guide the group in the desired direction.

But this is not new is it??

Of course not.

Here are some very interesting events of world note that were affected to some degree by the amount of engagement of the participants:

• The Dutch East India Company founded in 1602 experienced stable consistent share price growth for nearly 200 years, paying an average annual dividend of 18%,
• British South Sea Bubble and crash of the early 1700’s,
• French Mississippi Company another early 1700’s crash,
• Erlanger Cotton-backed bonds of the US Civil war great in theory but doomed the entire war effort.

And to bring it back to the future: GE/Durham. One engine per day, total control by the employees: perfect balance of people and workplace harmony.

So what does all this mean? We’ll it means that a company can limp along on a net profit margin of 0% to 5% using traditional management processes (stressed out managers and tuned out employees) or a company can achieve 20 to 30% returns in an environment with very little turnover, where everyone wants to be there.

The new frontier is Workplace Democracy.

I’m going to end with two beautiful quotes from Sir Richard Branson he made on 13th October 2007 when being interviewed on TED. The video is called “Life at 30,000 Feet“. Richard left school when he was 15. He was told by his headmaster that he will either be a roaring success or he would go to prision: he’s done both.

“A company is all about finding the right people, inspiring those people and drawing out the best in people.” @ 1 minute, 45 seconds

“I don’t actually think that the stereotype of a business person treading all over people to get to the top generally speaking works. If you treat people well, people will come back and come back for more. All you have in life is your reputation. It’s a very small world. I actually think that best way of becoming a successful business leader is by dealing with people fairly and well, and I like to think that’s how we run Virgin.” @ 21 minutes, 20 seconds

Be well.

Jeremiah Josey

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Know your army before declaring War – Jamal Al Ajmi, Kuwait, 2009

Created by Karl Fisch in 2006

This is a letter I sent to US President Barack Obama today.

I had just watched a couple of his weekly radio address, in particular the one from 28th February 2009 where he is about to release the US federal budget, containing two key elements: health care reform, and support for the green energy industry.

This budget puts him in direct conflict with two of the largest industries (and the billions they spend on protecting their businesses) health insurance companies, and the oil companies.

My message to him: he needs to stop using a teleprompter – it kills the passion in his message.

Dear President Obama,

I just watched your one of February 28, 2009 weekly speech on Youtube.

My advice: Stop using the teleprompter. You loose all the power of your message.

You may have the brightest minds around you, logically telling you that a perfect speech is a perfect result.

It is not.

There’s no soul, there’s no heart.

This was the message in which you said “…I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this: So am I.”

Great words, and exactly the position I know you are taking and what needs to be taken in a time like now. A time when it appears that most sensible people have taken to the sidelines to merely watch the increasing parody and charade of greed and gluttony devour the world around us.

But you said these words, especially “So Am I” without any depth. There was no passion. There was no soul.

Stop using a teleprompter – it takes the passion out of you. Have paper notes in front of you… Become real again. (Move from being in your head to being in your body, if that makes sense to you).

Become real in a world where plastic news readers read plastic lines to an audience which is becoming increasing more and more short term focused, more plastic?

Keep using the teleprompter and you’ll become like a news reader: plastic. And you will loose credibility as a man who can take action; as one who can make things happen.

You are championing long range, long term strategies. Real strategies that live long past last week’s Dow movement or the weekend’s baseball results. Strategies that live into the coming decades. In fact strategies that I believe will mark your term in office as the turning point for the America, and as a result the rest of the world. You need to come across as a person who is real and can carry out these strategies.

This is what I watched. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNzDdXcXaGU&NR=1

May you have the best success imaginable.

Warm regards

by Jeremiah Josey, September 2009

Do you operate a fear based work culture or a collaborative work culture?

It’s easy to tell: just take a break, have a holiday. Come back to your work place and if it based on fear you will find work has slowed to a standstill.

A collaborative work culture and you’ll wonder why came back – performance may have actually improved!

Now we humans are a learning animal – we learn from each other – for good or for bad. Having the experience I have in the engineering business (the consultancy or working for hours business – see my presentation on how to measure business performance here) I have seen the effect of focus on maximising revenue alone: training falls by the way side.  Or if it does occur, it is focused on technical, task related skills. That leaves us in the least desirable learning environment: informally from each other!! In an environement like this leadership and managerial skills are taken for granted and left to “brew” in the culture of the company. Managers modeled their styles on the only thing they have – their own managers. And if their own managers were promoted engineers – technically orientated, not people orietnated – well that “brew” will be interesting indeed.

What’s new? Most companies actually run like this: focusing on short term imediate results, deferring training and improvement to a another day, “when things get quiet”. I suppose the confusing element with selling hours for a business is that you are actually trying to buy and sell the same “thing” you need to manage: people.

Confused… How is this related to the culture?

Well consider where fear usually comes from? It’s a fear of something? In business, as an employee, it is a fear of what?  Loosing that job of course, and that comes if the boss perceives you as not performing (whether you are or not is a diferent matter). And there will be fear of being found out that you really don’t know what you are doing.  Because for a technically trained person to have the wrong answer, is to be a failure.  It’s black or white, pass or fail.

From what I have just described – a work team where there’s no formal training in how to lead, how to manage, even how to communicate, the fall back position is to manipulate people like inanimate objects – you can expect that fear will be a natural outcome. Getting promoted into a position you’ve never been trained you will naturally be fearful. And worse, being fearful of anyone finding out that you don’t know.

By the way, don’t bother hiding – it’s always obvious to your team and your managers if you are struggling. It’s how you deal with that struggle that your managers are interested in.   With your team, lie to them and you loose their respect. Loose their respect and you loose your team.

That’s why I enjoy collaborative cultures the most: continual feedback, formal, informal, positive, negative, eliminates the fear.

A culture where the leader recognises that a shortfall in team member is a shortfall in their ability to lead.  A culture where the leader knows that to improve their team they must first improve themselves.

But it does take courage.

Courage is not having no fear – that is fool hardy. Courage is acting despite your fear.

This is the basis behind the collaborative work culture instilled by Ricardo Semler.

Here’s a great lecture by Ricardo at MIT.  He says something very fundamental about the predominant way of working in the 21st century: collaboration.

A meritocracy is another word for it.

by Jeremiah Josey, August 2009

I was recently watching “An Inconvenient Truth” by Al Gore again.

Again I was reminded of the large amount of doubt and misinformation wandering about the world on the topic of global warming.  Like a bunch of frightened deer, the lights of the oncoming truck have frozen us to our armchairs and into inactivity.

Al Gore explained this very well: out of a study of 928 scientific journals over a 10 year period all 100% documents concurred that man was causing climate change, principally by CO2 emissions.

In the face of this evidence, the objective of a small, well funded group was to “Reposition Global Warming As Theory rather than Fact” (from a leaked internal document).

Are they succeeding?  Simply, Yes.

A public survey of popularist non-scientific articles (636 over 14 years) showed that a massive 53% throw doubt on whether global warming is an issue or not.

Has anything changed in the 3 or so years since this film?

It appears not.

I wondered what was happening with the melt rates on Greenland in recent years, since the film.  A quick search of the web revealed that the highest rate ever recorded was in 2007.

Then I came across this article dated 27th May 2009.  Here’s an excerpt: http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/sealevel.jsp

…To assess the impact of Greenland ice melt on ocean circulation, Hu and his coauthors used the Community Climate System Model, an NCAR-based computer model that simulates global climate.

They considered three scenarios: the melt rate continuing to increase by 7 percent per year, as has been the case in recent years, or the melt rate slowing down to an increase of either 1 or 3 percent per year.

If Greenland’s melt rate slows down to a 3 percent annual increase, the study team’s computer simulations indicate that the runoff from its ice sheet could alter ocean circulation in a way that would direct about a foot of water toward the northeast coast of North America by 2100.

This would be on top of the average global sea level rise expected as a result of global warming. Although the study team did not try to estimate that mean global sea level rise, their simulations indicated that melt from Greenland alone under the 3 percent scenario could raise worldwide sea levels by an average of 21 inches (54 cm).

If the annual increase in the melt rate dropped to 1 percent, the runoff would not raise northeastern sea levels by more than the 8 inches (20 cm) found in the earlier study in Nature Geoscience.

But if the melt rate continued at its present 7 percent increase per year through 2050 and then leveled off, the study suggests that the northeast coast could see as much as 20 inches (50 cm) of sea level rise above a global average that could be several feet. However, Hu cautioned that other modeling studies have indicated that the 7 percent scenario is unlikely.

In addition to sea level rise, Hu and his co-authors found that if the Greenland melt rate were to defy expectations and continue its 7 percent increase, this would drain enough fresh water into the North Atlantic to weaken the oceanic circulation that pumps warm water to the Arctic. Ironically, this weakening of the meridional overturning circulation would help the Arctic avoid some of the impacts of global warming and lead to at least the temporary recovery of Arctic sea ice by the end of the century.

Now what exactly is going on here???  Confused? Wondering what the point is?  7%, 3% 1%, levelling off? Meridional shifts??

Reference to the recent melt increase rate of 7% per year is obfuscated in paragraph after paragraph of scientific gobbledygook.  The key fact: melt rates in Greenland have been increasing at 7% per year.  Why do they focus on less alarmist scenarios of 3% and 1%??  Less alarming I assume!

Then at 7% they assume that by 2050 it “levels out”.

Why exactly would it do that?

Aren’t CO2 levels at all time high??  They aren’t decreasing and there is no expectation of them to reduce to below pre 1900 levels for many 100’s of years.  So why would the melt rate reduce from 7%.  One would expect it to increase!!

Let’s look at some facts a little more clearly.

In 2006 the estimated melt rate was 239 cubic kilometres per year.

In 2007 the melt rate was 592 cubic kilometres per year.

There are 2.85 million cubic kilometers in total in Greenland

The 7% increase per year was determined by looking at the change in earths gravity.

Articles like this one from the Science Daily (is that because their basic science, like gravity, changes on a daily basis, or is it some watered down shmuk chunked down for popularist, non-alarmist consumption).

With an opening comment like this one:  “In the past, the Greenland ice sheet has grown when its surroundings cooled, shrunk when its surroundings warmed and even disappeared completely when the temperatures became warm enough.” ; it kind of says, “ho-hum, what’s the problem.  This stuff happens all the time”.

Well there’s no problem really.  Just a few extra meters of sea level, no fresh water in central Asia and extreme arid conditions in what are presently bread bowls of the world.  Not much when you look at after all.

This does happen, but the natural cycles are every 10,000 years or so.  Plants and animals (including us) can adapt over that time frame.  But over a decade?  They – and we – cannot.

Al Gore portrayed the equivalence of humans very well with the image of the frog in the warming water…

Unfortunately I don’t expect any helping hand to come from the sky to pull us from the rising waters.  We’ll just have our equivanlent “boiling alive”, well most of the human race will anyway.

Major climate change is here to stay.  CO2 levels, like that of CFCs are at highest levels ever recorded or measured in the last 650,000 years.

Melt rates are measured to be increasing at 7% per year.

And with the Antarctic showing clear evidence of beginning the melt process as well…

Buy a boat!

On a less alarmist note, I created my own “climate change model” to predict sea levels dependant solely on melt rates from Greenland.  I assumed all ice cap melt water goes into the sea, and I assumed no make up from snow.

Being an exponential relationship, nothing really happens until towards the end, which is kind of the scary thought – lots of nothing for many years, and then wham! Meters of water in only a handful of years.  In the early years it’s all nice and small incremental change, but as rates increase faster and faster the power of compounding (quoted by Einstein as the 8^th wonder of the world) kicks in.  In less than 39 years, sea levels rise by 7.2 meters.

That’s ignoring the huge increase in melt rates from 2006 (195 cubic km per year) to 2007 (592 cubic km per year).  If one uses that exponential relationship, then Greenland ice cap and the sea levels will rise by 7.2 meters by 2021 – only 11 years away.  I’ll be keeping an eye on what the melt rates are doing in Greenland!

Here’s the results:

It all happens in the last few years – as the last of the ice slips off the land, and sea levels rise exponentially.

And I haven’t even looked at the West Antarctic ice sheet (another 7 meters of water if it melts).

I am bemused by the non-logical arguments from some of those still unfortunately stuck in the headlights.

I’ve seen a few less informed – or rather paid by others – parade the Global Cooling myth, but I think for little more than ego aggrandisement and their hip pocket.  I like this succinct summary:

“This hypothesis never had significant scientific support, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of press reports that did not accurately reflect the scientific understanding of ice age cycles, and a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling.

Then have a look at the most vocal proponent Don Easterbrook

Just follow the money.

Hey, I’m going to grab a nice book or three, find a nice place and watch what happens over the next 10 years.

The last 10 have been a ripper for change across the planet.  The next 10 will be a rip snorter!!

“The study also shows that seas now are rising by more than 3 millimetres a year — more than 50 percent faster than the average for the 20th century. Mernild and researchers from the United States, United Kingdom and Denmark discovered that annual precipitation decreased between 1995 and 2007. The ice sheet also shrank at a higher rate.”

Depending on the source, Albert Einstein referred to compound interest as the eighth wonder of the world, the human race’s greatest invention, or the most powerful force of the universe.

The sad fact is that for the next 30 years or so, the “measured” rate of increase will be small.  It is only the last 5 years where the water level rises dramatically.  Boiling the frog?  Absolutely.

That’s what this is all about.

There are solutions but that’s not what this blog was about, now was it?

Post by Jeremiah Josey

These were posted on an Australian Tourism Website and the answers are the actual responses by the website officials, who obviously have a great sense of humour

__________________________________________________

Q: Does it ever get windy in Australia ? I have never seen it rain on TV, how do the plants grow? ( UK ).

A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.

__________________________________________________

Q: Will I be able to see kangaroos in the street? ( USA )

A: Depends how much you’ve been drinking.

__________________________________________________

Q: I want to walk from Perth to Sydney – can I follow the railroad tracks? ( Sweden )

A: Sure, it’s only three thousand miles, take lots of water.

__________________________________________________

Q: Are there any ATMs (cash machines) in Australia ? Can you send me a list of them in Brisbane , Cairns ,Townsville and HerveyBay ? ( UK )

A: What did your last slave die of?

__________________________________________________

Q: Can you give me some information about hippo racing in Australia ? ( USA )

A: A-Fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe ..
Aus-tra-lia is that big island in the middle of the Pacific which does not
…. Oh forget it. Sure, the hippo racing is every Tuesday night in Kings Cross. Come naked.

__________________________________________________

Q: Which direction is North in Australia ? ( USA )

A: Face south and then turn 180 degrees. Contact us when you get here and we’ll send the rest of the directions.

_________________________________________________

Q: Can I bring cutlery into Australia ? ( UK )

A: Why? Just use your fingers like we do.

__________________________________________________

Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys’ Choir schedule? ( USA )

A: Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is ….
Oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys Choir plays every Tuesday night in Kings Cross, straight after the hippo races. Come naked.

__________________________________________________

Q: Can I wear high heels in Australia ? ( UK )

A: You are a British politician, right?

____________________________ ______________________

Q: Are there supermarkets in Sydney and is milk available all year round? ( Germany )

A: No, we are a peaceful civilization of vegan hunter/gatherers.
Milk is illegal.

__________________________________________________

Q: Please send a list of all doctors in Australia who can Dispense rattlesnake serum. ( USA )

A: Rattlesnakes live in A-meri-ca which is where YOU come from.
All Australian snakes are perfectly harmless, can be safely handled and make good pets.

__________________________________________________

Q: I have a question about a famous animal in Australia , but I forget its name. It’s a kind of bear and lives in trees. ( USA )

A: It’s called a Drop Bear. They are so called because they drop out of Gum trees and eat the brains of anyone walking underneath them.
You can scare them off by spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.

__________________________________________________

Q: I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth. Can you tell me where I can sell it in Australia ? ( USA )

A: Anywhere significant numbers of Americans gather.

__________________________________________________

Q: Can you tell me the regions in Tasmania where the female population is smaller than the male popula tion? ( Italy )

A: Yes, gay night clubs.

__________________________________________________

Q: Do you celebrate Christmas in Australia ? ( France )

A: Only at Christmas.

__________________________________________________

Q: I was in Australia in 1969 on R+R, and I want to contact the Girl I dated while I was staying in Kings Cross*. Can you help? ( USA )

A: Yes, and you will still have to pay her by the hour..

__________________________________________________

Q: Will I be able to speak English most places I go? ( USA )

A: Yes, but you’ll have to learn it first

__________________________________________________

Posted by <a href=”http://www.JeremiahJosey.com” target=”_blank”>Jeremiah Josey</a>

Quotes from Colin Powell

The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve.

Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity.

An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people.

As you grow, your associates will change.

Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want you to stay where they are.

Friends that don’t help you climb will want you to crawl.

Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream.

Those that don’t increase you will eventually decrease you.

Consider this:

• Never receive counsel from unproductive people.
• Never discuss your problems with someone incapable of contributing to the solution, because those who never succeed themselves are always first to tell you how.
• Not everyone has a right to speak into your life.
• You are certain to get the worst of the bargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person.
• Don’t follow anyone who’s not going anywhere.

With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it.

Be careful where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life.

Wise is the person who fortifies his life with the right friendships.

If you run with wolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, you will learn how to soar to great heights.

A mirror reflects a man’s face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses.

The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you closely associate – for the good and the bad.

Note: Be not mistaken.
This is applicable to family as well as friends.
Yes…do love, appreciate and be thankful for your family, for they will always be your family no matter what.
Just know that they are human first and though they are family to you, they may be a friend to someone else and will fit somewhere in the criteria above.

In Prosperity Our Friends Know Us.
In Adversity We Know Our Friends.

Never make someone a priority when you are only an option for them.

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.

These quotes are from Colin Powell, a recent United States Secretary of State.

Posted by Jeremiah Josey