Tips for a successful team

Please find below tips to form a successful team.

Attributes of a winning team:
1. Common goal.
2. Self-belief.
3. Collaboration.
4. Creativity.
5. Role balance

By recognising specific personality types and skill bases, a random group of individuals can be structured to become a highly effective team that delivers much more than the sum of its parts. Successful teams combine the right mix of people with complementary skills. At the same time, individuals in a balanced, successful team will feel more motivated and will perform more effectively.

Some studies suggest eight essential roles are needed to form an optimum team:

1. Explorer Networker: keeps in touch with new thinking, inquisitive, excited by ideas/challenges, enjoys people, spots opportunities, uses initiative.

2. Leader Co-ordinator: encourages people to participate, offers co-ordination and control, resolves differences of opinion, averts and defuses conflicts.

3. Driver: energises people, pushes for action, asserts views on what needs to be done, challenges alternative opinions.

4. Completer Achiever: approaches tasks in an urgent meticulous manner, maintains standards, meets deadlines.

5. Specialist: a technical approach, specific area of expertise, maintains a specialist role.

6. Analyst: demonstrates analytical rigour in thinking, decisions are considered and educated.

7. Team Coach: attentive to people's needs and welfare, listens to concerns, explores feelings on a particular issue.

8. Innovator: source of creative thinking for strategies and problems, break-through approaches, original ideas.

What team member role do you fulfill?

Love and freedom.

Tips to achieve success

No success is achieved without trying. Yet fear of failure is as important a cause for procrastination as fear of pain.

Skillset is absolutely necessary for people to reach an average level; however, it's mindset what turns average people into successful elite.

Motivation, focus, and positive physiology make people believe in themselves. Confidence is the key to success. If you aim at the target and follow through, you will likely get through.

None the less, please do not belittle skillset because if we motivate a monkey, what do we get? Just a motivated monkey!

Love and freedom.

Lingüistas por el "-ente"

Me cuenta L., una amiga lingüista, que en español existen los participios activos como derivados verbales. Por ejemplo:

- el participio activo del verbo "atacar", es atacante;
- el de "sufrir", sufriente;
- el de "cantar", cantante;
- el de "existir", existente.

¿Cuál es el participio activo del verbo "ser"?
El participio activo del verbo "ser", es 'ente'. El que es: el ente, que tiene entidad.

Por ese motivo cuando queremos denotar que una persona posee la capacidad para ejercer la acción que expresa un verbo, adjetivamos el nombre usando el participio activo conveniente posponiendo la terminación 'ente' a la raíz del verbo.

Así, a la persona que preside se le dice presidente, no presidenta, independientemente del sexo que tenga la persona o del género que tenga el nombre. Más aún:
- se dice la capilla ardiente, no ardienta;
- se dice la o el estudiante, no la estudianta;
- se dice el o la adolescente, no la adolescenta;
- se dice la o el paciente, no la pacienta.

Lean en voz alta un ejemplo chirriante de este mal uso del español:

La vicepresidenta era una estudianta adolescenta, sufrienta y poco pacienta, que quería ser eleganta para que la nombraran representanta y además llegar a ser integranta de la asamblea constituyenta. Ahora por fin es la vicepresidenta presenta, pero llegará el día que la veremos sonrienta en una capilla ardienta por ahora inexistenta.

¡Qué mal suena esta retahíla, Vicepresidenta, política dirigenta y miembra contenta!

No se debe llevar la política de igualdad hasta el absurdo (o la absurda ;-).

Love and freedom.

The Terminator Turns into a Spendinator

Cato Institute fellow Danny Mitchell said, California is the "France of America". Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has turned from Terminator into Spendinator.

Obama's America and Gordon's UK are following California's unsustainable spending path and they will all pay the consequences later (I mean, the taxpayers will pay the consequences later). Increasing government spending means extracting wealth from the market economy either by taxation or by borrowing which will have to be paid in the future by taxation again.

As Milton Friedman said today's style of democratic government is not a government of the majority, but a government of sufficient coalitions of special interest minorities:

La mayoría gobierna. Pero es un tipo bastante especial de mayoría. Está formada por una coalición de minorías con intereses especiales diferentes. El método para conseguir la elección para el Congreso consiste en reunir grupos de, digamos, el dos o el tres por ciento de los electores, cada uno de los cuales está muy interesado en un tema especial que difícilmente preocupa al resto de los votantes. Cada grupo estará dispuesto a votar a un candidato si éste promete apoyar este punto, sin considerar lo que haga respecto a otros temas. Si juntamos un número suficiente de estos grupos, alcanzaremos una mayoría de un 51 por ciento. Este es el tipo de mayoría que dirige el país.

Love and freedom.

Huerta de Soto explica la crisis en 30 minutos

Esta crisis financiera de 2008 ha demostrado que la economía intervenida no funciona. Hay que dejar paso al mercado libre.

J. Huerta de Soto, Entrevista para la Universidad Francisco Marroquín de Guatemala

El catedrático de economía Jesús Huerta de Soto de la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos de España explica la crisis financiera y económica en una entrevista concedida a la Universidad Francisco Marroquín de Guatemala. Disfrútenla y aprendan.

Love and freedom.



Update 29/07/2009.

Les regalo la segunda parte de la entrevista concedida por el catedrático de economía Jesús Huerta de Soto de la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos de España a la Universidad Francisco Marroquín de Guatemala.

City A.M.'s editor is aware of Huerta's free banking view

I want to share with you the continuation of my correspondence with Allister Heath, editor of London morning paper City A.M., on free banking. The first issues of this correspondence can be read here and here.


From: Borjabrela
To: Allister Heath
Date: 6 May 2009 01:57
Subject: Re: Comment to "Time running out for dollar dominance"

Dear Allister,

Thanks for replying to my email. I did not expect you were going to have even a minute for this humble reader. Much appreciated.

In Spain free-marketeers are fortunately gathering together around associations such as the Austrian-school Juan de Mariana Institute (http://www.juandemariana.org/en/) to promote the ideas of freedom, individual rights and the free market. (Note: I am member of no association yet).

Spanish free-marketeers like to consider Professor Huerta de Soto's economic cycle theory as the best explanation of the perspective on money, banking, and the law of the Austrian school (beating that one by R. Garrison) and definitely the best explanation of the economic issues. It seems that some people at the Mises Institute agree.

Please find Professor Huerta's main work at:
http://www.mises.org/store/Money-Bank-Credit-and-Economic-Cycles-P290.aspx

I am very interested in learning your opinion on Professor Huerta's theory. I believe it very accurate and I think it should be promoted.

Many Thanks and Regards


From: Allister Heath
To: Borjabrela
Date: 6 May 2009 16:11
Subject: Re: Comment to "Time running out for dollar dominance"

The key is whether you support fractional reserve banking but backed by a commodity standard; or whether you want to get rid of fractional reserve banking entirely, as Huerta wants to do. Of the two approaches, I prefer the Garrison-Larry White-George Selgin view.
Best wishes
Allister

xxxxxxxxx

I have just read that Juan Ramon Rallo (member of Juan de Mariana Institute) has published a Entrevista con Albert Esplugas sobre la banca libre (Interview with Albert Esplugas on free banking, only available in Spanish) in his blog, where he argues against (precisely) the view of Larry White and George Selgin.

Huerta-Rallo v Garrison-White-Selgin: that is a very exciting debate!

Love and freedom.

Back to the Future Recession

From: John Mauldin [mailto:wave@frontlinethoughts.com]
Sent: 25 April 2009 06:01
To: Borjabrela
Subject: Back to the Future Recession - John Mauldin's Weekly E-Letter (Excerpts)

MV=PQ. This is an important equation, right up there with E=MC2. M (money or the supply of money) times V (velocity -- which is how fast the money goes through the system -- if you have seven kids it goes faster than if you have one) is equal to P (the price of money in terms of inflation or deflation) times Q (roughly standing for the Quantity of production, or GDP).

So what happens is, if we increase the supply of money and velocity stays the same, and if GDP does not grow, that means we'll have inflation, because this equation always balances. But if you reduce velocity (which is happening today) and if you don't increase the supply of money, you are going to see deflation.


We are in the middle of a Great Experiment, the one truly great experiment of this time; so the economists are fascinated. We have Keynes versus von Mises versus Irving Fisher versus Friedman, and they all have theories about what you should do after depressions and what works.

Let's get back to our discussion of the Great Experiment. Von Mises said there is nothing you can do about a deleveraging cycle, you basically just let it all go to hell and then pick up the pieces. The hair-shirt economists, I call the Austrians: just let it drop, take your medicine, take your 15-20% unemployment, and just deal with it, because you'll be able to come back faster from the lower base. By the way, to von Mises, the velocity of money was a meaningless concept. Gold was where you should have had your money to begin with.

Then there is Friedman, who produced his great work that says inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. He had his studies to prove it. But when he did his studies, in the 30 years that he analyzed, the velocity of money was remarkably stable. So of course, inflation had a 1-to-1 correlation with money supply.

Fisher says, "The velocity of money is important." For Fisher, debt deflation controlled all other economic variables. It was the driving economic force. You're going to have to rationalize all your debts. There's nothing you can do about it; but what you do is, do as much as you can to provide a soft landing for the people who lose their jobs. Do whatever you can to get them along and to keep the system working, but you are still going to have to go through a credit reorganization. We are going to find out in 5-6 years who was right. That is the experiment we are living through. My bet's on Fisher, just for the record.

So how did we get it so wrong? How did we get here? Let's go back to first principles: Ideas have consequences. And bad ideas tend to have bad consequences. We've taught two generations of financial managers theories that were patently absurd. Rob Arnott is going to be here later with us for the panel discussion. Rob recalls standing in front of 200 academics, professors in schools that teach economics. He asked them, "How many of you believe in the efficient market hypothesis?" Something like two or three raised their hands. "How many of you teach it?" All of them raised their hands.

The future is going to look different, yet we think we can model it. The models are bullshit. (That's a technical economics term that requires advanced degrees to use.) They just are. Now you can take some comfort from them, and you have to try and figure stuff out, and you look for correlations. That's what I do, and we all do that. I confess I use models every day.

Good letter from John Mauldin.

I disagree with the bashing of the efficient markets hypothesis. In my opinion the Market (which is the grouping of all people who can enter into voluntary transactions) is the largest group of human beings that can be formed and achieves optimal efficiency in the LONG RUN. The issue is to try and model the short future with the efficient markets hypothesis because the behavioural markets hypothesis (carrot and stick markets) may work in the SHORT RUN.

MV = PQ formula seems correct. The solution to the current economical problems is accountability as usual. No one wants to be responsible for the wrong amount of M and lots of hypocresy exists around the increase of P (the largest theft in History). So let private suppliers of money which pay for their own mistakes supplying money (excessive credit or random price movements) and you will most likely get a stable P and an appropriate M.

Love and freedom.