Stable Business Quotes

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever.

I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two -- because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. ... [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, 'Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,' [or] 'I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly.' Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.

Idiot. Above her head was the only stable point in the cosmos, the only refuge from the damnation of the panta rei, and she guessed it was the Pendulum's business. A moment later the couple went off -- he, trained on some textbook that had blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitive to the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomeness of their encounter -- their first and last encounter -- with the One, the Ein-Sof, the Ineffable. How could you fail to kneel down before this altar of certitude?

Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead.

Well, very long ago, on the spot where the Wild Wood waves now, before ever it had planted itself and grown up to what it now is, there was a city - a city of people, you know. Here, where we are standing, they lived, and walked, and talked, and slept, and carried on their business. Here they stabled their horses and feasted, from here they rode out to fight or drove out to trade. They were a powerful people, and rich, and great builders. They built to last, for they thought their city would last for ever.

the stables. “My Lord,” he said, sketching a bow to Britt. “A guest has just arrived at Camelot. A Royal guest—a lady!” the young boy said, looking horrified. Britt held back a groan, but couldn’t stop her expression of disdain. “Inform the lady I am busy with kingly affairs and send Merlin to greet her.” “Merlin already has greeted her,” the page said, his eyes bulging. “She hit him with a club.” “Never mind, I shall meet this curious lady myself,” Britt said, brushing horse hair from her clothes.

Companies should not gamble with leverage. Companies shouldn't gamble on borrowed money. If a company is going to borrow and leverage other peoples money, it should be going toward something profitable, stable and safe. Executives can't predict the future with any certainty, but they can do their research and due diligence. And they can be methodical and strategic as opposed to reckless.

The president-elect loved to gin up the ratings, and was quick to seize on how the presidency could benefit his personal brand and his businesses.

She's a woman. Like a chameleon does, a woman quietly blends into all the parts of her life. Sometimes you can hardly tell she's there, she's so quiet going on about her business. Feed the baby. Muck the stables. Make soup from stones. Make a sheet into a dress. She doesn't count on destiny for anything. She knows its her own hands, her own arms, her own thighs and breasts that have to do the work. Destiny is bigger in men's lives. Destiny is a welcome guest in a man's house. She barely knocks and he's there to open the door. "Yes, yes. You do it," he says to destiny and lumbers back to his chair.

There’s a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork, greatest of Discworld cities. At least, there’s a saying that there’s a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork. And it’s wrong. All roads lead away from Ankh-Morpork, but sometimes people just walk along them the wrong way. Poets long ago gave up trying to describe the city. Now the more cunning ones try to excuse it. They say, well, maybe it is smelly, maybe it is overcrowded, maybe it is a bit like Hell would be if they shut the fires off and stabled a herd of incontinent cows there for a year, but you must admit that it is full of sheer, vibrant, dynamic life. And this is true, even though it is poets that are saying it. But people who aren't poets say, so what? Mattresses tend to be full of life too, and no one writes odes to them. Citizens hate living there and, if they have to move away on business or adventure or, more usually, until some statute of limitations runs out, can’t wait to get back so they can enjoy hating living there some more. They put stickers on the backs of their carts saying "Anhk-Morpork—Loathe It or Leave It.

If order for a currency to be effective, it has to be stable. People can accept varying levels of volatility regarding their investments. But no one is willing to accept volatility in regard to the currency they use.

The night in question, I had put aside my perpetual lavatory read, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, because of all the manuscripts (inedible green tomatoes) submitted to Cavendish-Redux, my new stable of champions. I suppose it was about eleven o'clock when I heard my front door being interfered with. Skinhead munchkins mug-or-treating? Cherry knockers? The wind? Next thing I knew, the door flew in off its ruddy hinges! I was thinking al-Queda, I was thinking ball lightning, but no. Down the hallway tramped what seemed like an entire rugby team, though the intruders numbered only three. (You'll notice, I am always attacked in threes.) "Timothy," pronounced the gargoyliest, "Cavendish, I presume. Caught with your cacks down." "My business hours are eleven to two, gentlemen," Bogart would have said, "with a three-hour break for lunch. Kindly leave." All I could do was blurt, "Oy! My door! My ruddy door!

the complex of seven luxurious homes, swimming pools and lavish stables was surrounded by a twelve-foot wall patrolled by what we believed to be Albanians armed with Skorpion machine pistols. This was strange, given that the family was in the wholesale floristry business. Maybe flower theft was a bigger problem in northern Greece than most people realized.

If you call yourself an entrepreneur but you haven’t created a stable job for yourself in the context of your business - you’re not an entrepreneur, you’re an unemployed person with sporadic sources of income.

Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead.

That's what love is like when you're young. Like spinning, filling you with excitement and joy, losing yourself in the moment. But if you don't have a focus point to keep you stable, you lose your balance and before you know it, you're falling and you can't see who you're taking down with you because you've been too busy spinning to see what else has been going on." (Nora)

My friend Joe Polish uses the analogy of a racehorse. If you owned a million-dollar racehorse, you would take great care in how you treated that horse. You would feed it well, make sure it was well rested, carefully monitor its workouts, give it a clean and comfortable stable, and schedule regular checkups with a vet. In your life and your business, your body is your million-dollar racehorse. Don’t you deserve the same care?

I hate that phrase "the real world." Why is an aircraft factory more real than a university? Is it? In universities I've had in my office ex-cons on parole, young people in tears racked with deep sexual problems, people recently released from mental hospitals, confused, bewildered, frightened, hoping, with more desperation than some of us will ever be unlucky enough to know, that they will remain stable enough to stay in school, and out of hospitals forever. I've seen people so lovelorn that I've sat there praying as only an unreligious man can pray that I don't say something wrong, that I can spare their feelings, that I might even say something that will make their lives easier if only for a few moments. Sad drug addicts too. Not people you usually meet in industrial offices. . . In some ways the university is a far more real world than business.

That’s why time-friendly people tend to make fewer emotional commitments than my friend Bernard does. They have a profound understanding of how much time it takes to be there for someone, so they think, deliberate, and pray long and hard before they decide to invest in a relationship. You might think they’re aloof or uncaring. They’re not. They are, instead, unwilling to write bad checks, emotionally speaking. Another friend, Pamela, recently passed the time test with flying colors. We’ve known each other a long time, and I needed her input on a big decision I was making. I knew she was busy, but I called her anyway, asking, “Can we do lunch?” Pamela lives quite a drive away, but she checked her calendar (another trait of safe people!), and we made an appointment. A few days later, we met, and I told her how much it meant to me for her to take the time out for me. She was genuinely surprised. “Well, I told you I’d be here, didn’t I?” Tears came to my eyes. For Pamela, a relationship means that you’re there for good. End of conversation. Look for people who are “anchored” over time. Don’t go for flashy, intense, addictive types. A Ford that will be there tomorrow is a lot better than a Maserati that might be gone. There are stable Maseratis. But it’s best to drive them awhile, that is, test out the relationship over time, to make sure.

Such threats and promises often succeed in creating stable human hierarchies and mass-cooperation networks, as long as people believe that they reflect the inevitable laws of nature or the divine commands of God, rather than just human whims. All large-scale human cooperation is ultimately based on our belief in imagined orders. These are sets of rules that, despite existing only in our imagination, we believe to be as real and inviolable as gravity. ‘If you sacrifice ten bulls to the sky god, the rain will come; if you honour your parents, you will go to heaven; and if you don’t believe what I am telling you – you’ll go to hell.’ As long as all Sapiens living in a particular locality believe in the same stories, they all follow the same rules, making it easy to predict the behaviour of strangers and to organise mass-cooperation networks. Sapiens often use visual marks such as a turban, a beard or a business suit to signal ‘you can trust me, I believe in the same story as you’. Our chimpanzee cousins cannot invent and spread such stories, which is why they cannot cooperate in large numbers.

Nothing is perfect, final, or fixed in this material world. As soon as we are tempted to believe it is, we’ve probably set ourselves up for disappointment. What we’re truly striving for is the permanence that we can count on, amid all the change and flux. And the most permanent, secure, and stable thing we can possess is a foolproof way to deal with impermanence, insecurity, and surprise. A real connection with some greater awareness of the wellspring of our being and our universe will always provide the ultimate relief and resolution. But, as an Arab proverb so appropriately counsels: Trust in Allah, and tie your camel.

just agreed to buy some decommissioned Saudi antiaircraft missiles for twelve million dollars and is planning to kidnap a racehorse as down payment. “The chrysanthemums are beautiful,” says the woman. “Exquisite.” A kidnapped racehorse was not ideal, as far as Martin Lomax was concerned, but if both sides were happy with the arrangement he has ample stabling by the paddock. He has done business with the Ukrainians before and found them violent but trustworthy. Martin Lomax will get the local Scout troop to run a refreshment stall on one of the Open Garden days. Water and so on. People need water, he has noticed. They go crazy for the stuff.

Yet the very smell of food made her stomach oddly unsettled and she set down the bowl of porridge without taking a spoonful. That infuriated Dragon,still watching from the stable. As though the circumstances were not bad enough,a night without sleep had left him even more on edge. It was all he could do not to stomp out into the yard and demand she swallow every bite. After which he would take her in his arms, kiss her lingeringly, beseech her to tell him he could not possibly be wrong to trust her,and generally make a slobbering fool of himself to rival those great dolts Grani and Sleipnir. No,that he would not do. He would instead have a word with the men on the watchtowers, telling them to keep an eye on his wife and leaving them to make of that what they would while he went off to the river, there to immerse himself in blessedly cold water and cast off the shadows of sleeplessness. When he returned, freshly garbed but not having taken time to shave, he found the day unfolding much as usual. People were coming and going about their daily tasks,now that the barn was rebuilt, apparently determined to ignore the fact that the lady of their manor was tied to a punishment post. Not Magda,though. That stalwart passed him with as close to a glare as she would ever come and bustled out to ask Rycca advice about something or other. The sheer ludicrousness of that struck Dragon and he was chuckling when Magda passed by again,which earned him another stern frown. That was the height of levity for the day.Hours passed and nothing happened. Magda came and went,clucking over Rycca's failure to eat and glaring more at Dragon every time she saw him. Several of the other women began to do the same. He took that as an indication that those who had gotten to know Rycca best held her blameless. His venture into Byzantine intrigue of the previous day rankled all the more. He tried not to think about it. The day dragged on. With the stronghold as busy as ever, Dragon told himself no one would be so foolish as to approach Rycca with intent to do her harm. Yet he found excuse after excuse to be in the yard himself.

Sri Lankan Socioeconomics 101 If people stopped chasing after power and connections and realized that they have all the power they need within themselves, to create whatever they want with their lives: there will be more friendships than contacts, less gold-diggers, more marriages based on love, better family lives, stable and enriched childhoods leading to a well endowed, disciplined and better educated workforce. There will be loyalty and ingenuity and better standards of education. Abundance of well educated individuals => pressure to innovate =>increased entrepreneurship, improved economy.High functioning economy attracting more foreign capital => export surplus. Educated workforce + increased involvement in international business => pressure to improve foreign allies and foreign policy => pressure to improve transparency => decrease in corruption. So stop sitting around complaining about corruption and (with all due respect,) get off your ass and do something for yourself. Stop chasing after other people's power and chase after your own dreams and you will have all the power you need.

You’re worried about Anna?” “Anna and the baby, who, I can assure you, are not worried about me.” “Westhaven, are you pouting?” Westhaven glanced over to see his brother smiling, but it was a commiserating sort of smile. “Yes. Care to join me?” The commiserating smile became the signature St. Just Black Irish piratical grin. “Only until Valentine joins us. He’s so eager to get under way, we’ll let him break the trail when we depart in the morning.” “Where is he? I thought you were just going out to the stables to check on your babies.” “They’re horses, Westhaven. I do know the difference.” “You know it much differently than you knew it a year ago. Anna reports you sing your daughter to sleep more nights than not.” Two very large booted feet thunked onto the coffee table. “Do I take it your wife has been corresponding with my wife?” “And your daughter with my wife, and on and on.” Westhaven did not glance at his brother but, rather, kept his gaze trained on St. Just’s feet. Devlin could exude great good cheer among his familiars, but he was at heart a very private man. “The Royal Mail would go bankrupt if women were forbidden to correspond with each other.” St. Just’s tone was grumpy. “Does your wife let you read her mail in order that my personal marital business may now be known to all and sundry?” “I am not all and sundry,” Westhaven said. “I am your brother, and no, I do not read Anna’s mail. It will astound you to know this, but on occasion, say on days ending in y, I am known to talk with my very own wife. Not at all fashionable, but one must occasionally buck trends. I daresay you and Emmie indulge in the same eccentricity.” St. Just was silent for a moment while the fire hissed and popped in the hearth. “So I like to sing to my daughters. Emmie bears so much of the burden, it’s little enough I can do to look after my own children.” “You love them all more than you ever thought possible, and you’re scared witless,” Westhaven said, feeling a pang of gratitude to be able to offer the simple comfort of a shared truth. “I believe we’re just getting started on that part. With every child, we’ll fret more for our ladies, more for the children, for the ones we have, the one to come.” “You’re such a wonderful help to a man, Westhaven. Perhaps I’ll lock you in that nice cozy privy next time nature calls.” Which

You already know what you know, after all—and, unless your life is perfect, what you know is not enough. You remain threatened by disease, and self-deception, and unhappiness, and malevolence, and betrayal, and corruption, and pain, and limitation. You are subject to all these things, in the final analysis, because you are just too ignorant to protect yourself. If you just knew enough, you could be healthier and more honest. You would suffer less. You could recognize, resist and even triumph over malevolence and evil. You would neither betray a friend, nor deal falsely and deceitfully in business, politics or love. However, your current knowledge has neither made you perfect nor kept you safe. So, it is insufficient, by definition—radically, fatally insufficient. You must accept this before you can converse philosophically, instead of convincing, oppressing, dominating or even amusing. You must accept this before you can tolerate a conversation where the Word that eternally mediates between order and chaos is operating, psychologically speaking. To have this kind of conversation, it is necessary to respect the personal experience of your conversational partners. You must assume that they have reached careful, thoughtful, genuine conclusions (and, perhaps, they must have done the work tha justifies this assumption). You must believe that if they shared their conclusions with you, you could bypass at least some of the pain of personally learning the same things (as learning from the experience of others can be quicker and much less dangerous). You must meditate, too, instead of strategizing towards victory. If you fail, or refuse, to do so, then you merely and automatically repeat what you already believe, seeking its validation and insisting on its rightness. But if you are meditating as you converse, then you listen to the other person, and say the new and original things that can rise from deep within of their own accord. It’s as if you are listening to yourself during such a conversation, just as you are listening to the other person. You are describing how you are responding to the new information imparted by the speaker. You are reporting what that information has done to you—what new things it made appear within you, how it has changed your presuppositions, how it has made you think of new questions. You tell the speaker these things, directly. Then they have the same effect on him. In this manner, you both move towards somewhere newer and broader and better. You both change, as you let your old presuppositions die—as you shed your skins and emerge renewed. A conversation such as this is one where it is the desire for truth itself—on the part of both participants—that is truly listening and speaking. That’s why it’s engaging, vital, interesting and meaningful. That sense of meaning is a signal from the deep, ancient parts of your Being. You’re where you should be, with one foot in order, and the other tentatively extended into chaos and the unknown. You’re immersed in the Tao, following the great Way of Life. There, you’re stable enough to be secure, but flexible enough to transform. There, you’re allowing new information to inform you—to permeate your stability, to repair and improve its structure, and expand its domain. There the constituent elements of your Being can find their more elegant formation. A conversation like that places you in the same place that listening to great music places you, and for much the same reason. A conversation like that puts you in the realm where souls connect, and that’s a real place. It leaves you thinking, “That was really worthwhile. We really got to know each other.” The masks came off, and the searchers were revealed. So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.

I think it’s important to reiterate here that I didn’t start out wanting to be a gardener, or a designer for that matter. It was all trial and error and figuring things out. And sometimes you’ve got to try something outside of your comfort zone to figure out what it is that you truly love. Well, you could say that about you and me right from the start. You were never looking for the loud guy, and I certainly wasn’t looking for the quiet girl. Now I look back and go, “If I would’ve ended up with that quiet guy or that stable guy or that safe guy, I would never have been able to pursue any of these dreams, because no one would have pushed me to these new places I discovered in myself.” Those other types of guys might have allowed me to stay in that safe place. They wouldn’t have drawn you out. That’s interesting. And if I had wound up with some cheerleader who was always the life of the party, I don’t think I would have found my way, either. I needed you for that. Nowadays when I think about the name Magnolia, I think about it in terms that refer to much more than the blossoming of our business. I think about the buds on the three, and how they really are just the tightest buds--they look like rocks, almost. And I feel like when Chip and I met, that tight little bud was me. I was risk averse, and in some ways, I don’t think I saw the beauty or the potential in myself. Then I wound up with Chip Gaines and-- You bloomed? I did. If I hadn’t married Chip, I might not have ever bloomed. I can’t imagine what my life would be if we hadn’t traveled this road. We celebrated our twelfth anniversary recently, and my dad said something that I thought was really beautiful. He said, “Chip, I always thought, when I was out on the baseball field hitting you those grounders, that I was training you to be the next greatest baseball player. But now, looking back and seeing the person you’ve become, I was really training you to be the next greatest dad.

If it were any of the other Sharpes, he wouldn’t balk. But the idea of spending serveral hours in her company was both intoxicating and terrifying. “If you don’t let me go along,” she continued, “I’ll just follow you. He scowled at her. She probably would; the woman was as stubborn as she was beautiful. “And don’t think you can outride me, either,” she added. “Halstead Hall has a very good stable, and lady Bell is one of our swiftest mounts.” “Lady Bell?” he said sarcastically. “Not Crack Shot or Pistol?” She glared over at him. “Lady Bell was my favorite doll when I was a girl, the last one Mama gave me before she died. I used to play with it whenever I wanted to remember her. The doll got so ragged that I threw her away when I outgrew her.” Her voice lowered. “I regretted that later, but by then it was too late.” The idea of her playing with a doll to remember her late mother made his throat tighten and his heart falter. “Fine,” he bit out. “You can go with me to High Wycombe.” Surprise turned her cheeks rosy. “Oh, thank you, Jackson! You won’t regret it, I promise you!” “I already regret it,” he grumbled. “And you must do as I say. None of your going off half-cocked, do you hear?” “I never go off half-cocked!” “No, you just walk around with a pistol packed full of powder, thinking you can hold men at bay with it.” She tossed her head. “You’ll never let me forget that, will you?” “Not as long as we both shall live.” The minute the words left his lips, he could have kicked himself. They sounded too much like a vow, one he’d give anything for the right to make. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to have noticed. Instead, she was squirming and shimmying about on her saddle. “Are you all right?” he asked. “I’ve got a burr caught in my stocking that keeps rubbing against my leg. I’m just trying to work it out. Don’t mind me.” His mouth went dry at her mention of stockings. It brought yesterday’s encounter vividly into his mind, how he’d lifted her skirts to reach the smooth expanse of calf encased in silk. How he’d run his hands up her thighs as his mouth had tasted- God save him. He couldn’t be thinking about such things while riding. He shifted uncomfortably in the saddle as they reached the road and settled into a comfortable pace. The road was busy at this early hour. The local farmers were driving their carts to market or town, and laborers were headed for the fields. To Jackson’s relief, that made it easy not to talk. Conversaing with her was bound to be difficult, especially if she started consulting him about her suitors.

...the centrality of competitiveness as the key to growth is a recurrent EU motif. Two decades of EC directives on increasing competition in every area, from telecommunications to power generation to collateralizing wholesale funding markets for banks, all bear the same ordoliberal imprint. Similarly, the consistent focus on the periphery states’ loss of competitiveness and the need for deep wage and cost reductions therein, while the role of surplus countries in generating the crisis is utterly ignored, speaks to a deeply ordoliberal understanding of economic management. Savers, after all, cannot be sinners. Similarly, the most recent German innovation of a constitutional debt brake (Schuldenbremse) for all EU countries regardless of their business cycles or structural positions, coupled with a new rules-based fiscal treaty as the solution to the crisis, is simply an ever-tighter ordo by another name. If states have broken the rules, the only possible policy is a diet of strict austerity to bring them back into conformity with the rules, plus automatic sanctions for those who cannot stay within the rules. There are no fallacies of composition, only good and bad policies. And since states, from an ordoliberal viewpoint, cannot be relied upon to provide the necessary austerity because they are prone to capture, we must have rules and an independent monetary authority to ensure that states conform to the ordo imperative; hence, the ECB. Then, and only then, will growth return. In the case of Greece and Italy in 2011, if that meant deposing a few democratically elected governments, then so be it. The most remarkable thing about this ordoliberalization of Europe is how it replicates the same error often attributed to the Anglo-American economies: the insistence that all developing states follow their liberal instruction sheets to get rich, the so-called Washington Consensus approach to development that we shall discuss shortly. The basic objection made by late-developing states, such as the countries of East Asia, to the Washington Consensus/Anglo-American idea “liberalize and then growth follows” was twofold. First, this understanding mistakes the outcomes of growth, stable public finances, low inflation, cost competitiveness, and so on, for the causes of growth. Second, the liberal path to growth only makes sense if you are an early developer, since you have no competitors—pace the United Kingdom in the eighteenth century and the United States in the nineteenth century. Yet in the contemporary world, development is almost always state led.

In the wake of the Cognitive Revolution, gossip helped Homo sapiens to form larger and more stable bands. But even gossip has its limits. Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings. Even today, a critical threshold in human organisations falls somewhere around this magic number. Below this threshold, communities, businesses, social networks and military units can maintain themselves based mainly on intimate acquaintance and rumour-mongering. There is no need for formal ranks, titles and law books to keep order. 3A platoon of thirty soldiers or even a company of a hundred soldiers can function well on the basis of intimate relations, with a minimum of formal discipline. A well-respected sergeant can become ‘king of the company’ and exercise authority even over commissioned officers. A small family business can survive and flourish without a board of directors, a CEO or an accounting department. But once the threshold of 150 individuals is crossed, things can no longer work that way. You cannot run a division with thousands of soldiers the same way you run a platoon. Successful family businesses usually face a crisis when they grow larger and hire more personnel. If they cannot reinvent themselves, they go bust. How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination. Churches are rooted in common religious myths. Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins. States are rooted in common national myths. Two Serbs who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian homeland and the Serbian flag. Judicial systems are rooted in common legal myths. Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights – and the money paid out in fees.

THE VISION EXERCISE Create your future from your future, not your past. WERNER ERHARD Erhard Founder of EST training and the Landmark Forum The following exercise is designed to help you clarify your vision. Start by putting on some relaxing music and sitting quietly in a comfortable environment where you won’t be disturbed. Then, close your eyes and ask your subconscious mind to give you images of what your ideal life would look like if you could have it exactly the way you want it, in each of the following categories: 1. First, focus on the financial area of your life. What is your ideal annual income and monthly cash flow? How much money do you have in savings and investments? What is your total net worth? Next . . . what does your home look like? Where is it located? Does it have a view? What kind of yard and landscaping does it have? Is there a pool or a stable for horses? What does the furniture look like? Are there paintings hanging in the rooms? Walk through your perfect house, filling in all of the details. At this point, don’t worry about how you’ll get that house. Don’t sabotage yourself by saying, “I can’t live in Malibu because I don’t make enough money.” Once you give your mind’s eye the picture, your mind will solve the “not enough money” challenge. Next, visualize what kind of car you are driving and any other important possessions your finances have provided. 2. Next, visualize your ideal job or career. Where are you working? What are you doing? With whom are you working? What kind of clients or customers do you have? What is your compensation like? Is it your own business? 3. Then, focus on your free time, your recreation time. What are you doing with your family and friends in the free time you’ve created for yourself? What hobbies are you pursuing? What kinds of vacations do you take? What do you do for fun? 4. Next, what is your ideal vision of your body and your physical health? Are you free of all disease? Are you pain free? How long do you live? Are you open, relaxed, in an ecstatic state of bliss all day long? Are you full of vitality? Are you flexible as well as strong? Do you exercise, eat good food, and drink lots of water? How much do you weigh? 5. Then, move on to your ideal vision of your relationships with your family and friends. What is your relationship with your spouse and family like? Who are your friends? What do those friendships feel like? Are those relationships loving, supportive, empowering? What kinds of things do you do together? 6. What about the personal arena of your life? Do you see yourself going back to school, getting training, attending personal growth workshops, seeking therapy for a past hurt, or growing spiritually? Do you meditate or go on spiritual retreats with your church? Do you want to learn to play an instrument or write your autobiography? Do you want to run a marathon or take an art class? Do you want to travel to other countries? 7. Finally, focus on the community you’ve chosen to live in. What does it look like when it is operating perfectly? What kinds of community activities take place there? What charitable, philanthropic, or volunteer work? What do you do to help others and make a difference? How often do you participate in these activities? Who are you helping? You can write down your answers as you go, or you can do the whole exercise first and then open your eyes and write them down. In either case, make sure you capture everything in writing as soon as you complete the exercise. Every day, review the vision you have written down. This will keep your conscious and subconscious minds focused on your vision, and as you apply the other principles in this book, you will begin to manifest all the different aspects of your vision.

EARNINGS McDonald's Plans Marketing Push as Profit Slides By Julie Jargon | 436 words Associated Press The burger giant has been struggling to maintain relevance among younger consumers and fill orders quickly in kitchens that have grown overwhelmed with menu items. McDonald's Corp. plans a marketing push to emphasize its fresh-cooked breakfasts as it battles growing competition for the morning meal. Competition at breakfast has heated up recently as Yum Brands Inc.'s Taco Bell entered the business with its new Waffle Taco last month and other rivals have added or discounted breakfast items. McDonald's Chief Executive Don Thompson said it hasn't yet noticed an impact from Taco Bell's breakfast debut, but that the overall increased competition "forces us to focus even more on being aggressive in breakfast." Mr. Thompson's comments came after McDonald's on Tuesday reported that its profit for the first three months of 2014 dropped 5.2% from a year earlier, weaker than analysts' expectations. Comparable sales at U.S. restaurants open more than a year declined 1.7% for the quarter and 0.6% for March, the fifth straight month of declines in the company's biggest market. Global same-store sales rose 0.5% for both the quarter and month. Mr. Thompson acknowledged again that the company has lost relevance with some customers and needs to strengthen its menu offerings. He emphasized Tuesday that McDonald's is focused on stabilizing key markets, including the U.S., Germany, Australia and Japan. The CEO said McDonald's has dominated the fast-food breakfast business for 35 years, and "we don't plan on giving that up." The company plans in upcoming ads to inform customers that it cooks its breakfast, unlike some rivals. "We crack fresh eggs, grill sausage and bacon," Mr. Thompson said. "This is not a microwave deal." Beyond breakfast, McDonald's also plans to boost marketing of core menu items such as Big Macs and french fries, since those core products make up 40% of total sales. To serve customers more quickly, the chain is working to optimize staffing, and is adding new prep tables that let workers more efficiently add new toppings when guests want to customize orders. McDonald's also said it aims to sell more company-owned restaurants outside the U.S. to franchisees. Currently, 81% of its restaurants around the world are franchised. Collecting royalties from franchisees provides a stable source of income for a restaurant company and removes the cost of operating them. McDonald's reported a first-quarter profit of $1.2 billion, or $1.21 a share, down from $1.27 billion, or $1.26 a share, a year earlier. The company partly attributed the decline to the effect of income-tax benefits in the prior year. Total revenue for the quarter edged up 1.4% to $6.7 billion, though costs rose faster, at 2.3%. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters forecast earnings of $1.24 a share on revenue of $6.72 billion.

After all, there is in more stable, developed countries like the United States and Britain a quantifiably more vicious culture of child abuse. A report released in January 2010 by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics made clear that sexual abuse in juvenile detention is a national crisis. Some 12.1 percent of 26,550 children represented in the survey by a sample of 9,000 who were interviewed said they had been sexually abused at their current facility during the preceding year,

As much as companies might yearn for a stable environment and employees might yearn for lifetime employment, the world has irrevocably changed. But we also can’t keep going the way we’ve been going. Trust in the business world (as measured by the proportion of employees who say they have a “high level of trust in management and the organization” they work for) is near an all-time low.6 A business without loyalty is a business without long-term thinking. A business without long-term thinking is a business that’s unable to invest in the future. And a business that isn’t investing in tomorrow’s opportunities and technologies—well, that’s a company already in the process of dying.

Bulk Email Sender Software - An Effective Means of Online Marketing With the continuous advancement of internet technology nowadays, the interest of the people also getting rise with it. Today, internet can't be a quiet a piece of the world, individuals can get everything from it from anyplace mean no reason to contact the others to get any information from web. In this advanced era, this is a crucial tool for online business organizations. May be you know about the bulk email sender, If you have enough knowledge and wish to enhance your worldwide existence, then it would be the best choice to get maximum benefits. Now it might be accepted as a bulk mailer tool to promote your business across the world and create a robust, stable and reliable connection with them. There is most likely that the client does not stay in contact for long-time yet this couldn't be with this sentence because this is best element of the business cycle. It has turned into the most effective and reasonable source to create a customer base of millions of people. It makes an entrepreneur to create healthier connection with worldwide customers with unwavering quality. When you are going to use bulk email software then need to pay attention with willingness and create your email message in such a way, that your recipients get good and pleasing experience. Attempt to reach a limited number of customers because sometime a sender may include less vital id in their email list yet when they send mass email to them the greatest part of audience trash the e-mail from their mailbox.

I’ve talked about my belief that balance is a dynamic activity—by which I mean, one that never ends. I’ve spelled out my reasons for not defaulting to one or another extreme because it feels safer or more stable. Now I am urging you to attempt a similar balancing act when navigating between the known and the unknown. While the allure of safety and predictability is strong, achieving true balance means engaging in activities whose outcomes and payoffs are not yet apparent. The most creative people are willing to work in the shadow of uncertainty.

A few facts about China’s manufacturing juggernaut: China is the world’s largest manufacturer with over $2.2 trillion in manufacturing value-added. Its manufacturing base has increased by over 18 times in the last 30 years. China produces 80 percent of the world’s air-conditioners, 90 percent of the world’s personal computers, 75 percent of the world’s solar panels, 70 percent of the world’s cell phones, and 63 percent of the world’s shoes. Manufacturing is 40 percent of the Chinese GDP and directly employs 130 million people, a number that has been relatively stable over the past decades. Within this space, there are a huge number of Chinese companies fiercely competing. For example, there are now over 30,000 building materials companies in China making everything from ceramic tiles to wood flooring.

If your goal is prospects who make rapid yet stable purchasing decisions, you must consciously begin to market to their unconscious minds.

The faster you act, the more stable your company becomes and the higher your chances of success. Perfectionists make lousy entrepreneurs.

How unfair the fate which ordains that those who have the least should add to the treasury of the rich. But that seems to be the fate that the present authorities have in store for us. Taxes are now due to be raised as high as the colonnades on the villas that they are constructing. The only taxes which are due to be rescinded are those imposed by Caesar upon certain luxury goods I have heard. One should be a friend to business, but not to corruption …We must cleanse the augean stables.

Sir Templeton was not feeling himself last night,” said Aunt Saffronia, her eyes flicking from plate to Jane and back to plate, “so Mr. Nobley offered to accompany him to see an apothecary in town, and Colonel Andrews went as well, having some business to attend to there. They are so attentive, such honest, caring lads. I shall feel their loss when they leave.” “I feel it today.” Miss Charming pursed her lips. “Eating breakfast with no gentlemen and that Heartwright girl poaching on my men--this isn’t what I was promised.” She looked at Aunt Saffronia with the eye of a haggler. Aunt Saffronia placed her hands in her lap, a calming gesture. “I know, my dear, but they will be back, and in the meantime…” “I didn’t come here for the meantime. I came for the men.” Poor Aunt Saffronia! Jane felt for her. She put a hand on Miss Charming’s arm. “Lizzy, maybe you and I could go visit the stables and go for a ride or--” “Not today, Jane. My feelings are hurt.” A tear formed in one eye. “I was promised certain things about this place and I can tell you one thing--so far, no one’s made me feel enchanting.” “Oh, my,” Aunt Saffronia said, “I can’t have unhappiness at my table. Spoils the digestion. Miss Charming, what say we call on Mrs. Wattlesbrook? I believe she would be very concerned to hear of any dissatisfaction during your visit.” Miss Charming looked at Aunt Saffronia with her dry eye, like a goose considering biting, then nodded her head and said, “Done.” Jane thought, Mrs. Wattlesbrook will have Mr. Nobley tamed into Charming’s personal pet by sundown. He’d been Miss Charming’s choice from the beginning, though he’d quickly proved too much work to keep the woman’s interest. He was the most eye-catching, no question, and he gave the appearance of having some real depth, if he’d just relax a bit. Jane was curious to see how he changed once Wattlesbrook ordered him to charm Miss Charming. And that would be fine by Jane. So what that he’d come (needlessly) running to her rescue in his shirttails? They way he’d said, “Don’t be a fool, Miss Erstwhile,” made her want to poke him in the eye. He was supposed to be Darcy-adorable, not teeth-grindingly maddening.

Unlike common stocks, whose dividends and earnings fluctuate with the ups and downs of the company’s business, bonds pay a fixed dollar amount of interest. If the U.S. Treasury offers a $1,000 20-year, 5 percent bond, that bond will pay $50 per year until it matures, when the principal will be repaid. Corporate bonds are less safe, but widely diversified bond portfolios have provided reasonably stable interest returns over time.

Isca Livery Ltd are a well established livery stables, reliable and family run business based in Gwent Have a qualified owner and trained staff who have plenty of experience. They have make a happy and satisfied customers known for professionalism, quality of service and impeccable standards.

Planning and forecasting are only accurate when based on a long, stable operating history and a relatively static environment. Startups have neither.

Business might seem riskier than a stable job. But let’s not forget that most of these jobs led precisely Nowhere. An increment every three years, a promotion every decade. That was not good enough

True, they had died in the war, but they had primarily died because they were not stable or self-sufficient, and when the normal business of civilization was interrupted, they had not been able to save themselves.

For a well-defined, standard, and stable process involving hand-offs between people and systems, it is preferable to use a smart workflow platform. Such platforms offer pre-developed modules. These are ready-to-use automation programs customized by industry and by business function (e.g., onboarding of clients in retail banking). In addition, they are modular. For example, a module might include a form for client data collection, and another module might support an approval workflow. In addition, these modules can be linked to external systems and databases using connectors, such as application programming interfaces (APIs), which enable resilient data connectivity. Hence, with smart workflows, there is no need to develop bespoke internal and external data bridges. This integration creates a system with high resiliency and integrity. In addition, the standardization by industry and function of these platforms, combined with the low-code functionality, helps to accelerate the implementation.

In America, democracy had prevailed, and the nation congratulated itself on the strength and durability of its system. Large-scale mass production was creating a large and stable middle class that was the bulwark of democracy. Here, finally, was the society J. A. Hobson had wished for a half century before, in which prosperity was so widely shared that the abundant fruits of mass production could find their market at home. Americans took it as their patriotic duty to consume. According to the chairman of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisers, the “ultimate purpose” of the American economy was “to produce more consumer goods.

The prototypes of professional expertise in this sense are the “learned professions” of medicine and law and, close behind these, business and engineering. These are, in Nathan Glazer’s terms, the “major” or “near-major” professions.6 They are distinct from such “minor” professions as social work, librarianship, education, divinity, and town planning. In the essay from which these terms are drawn, Glazer argues that the schools of the minor professions are hopelessly nonrigorous, dependent on representatives of academic disciplines, such as economics or political science, who are superior in status to the professions themselves. But what is of greatest interest from our point of view, Glazer’s distinction between major and minor professions rests on a particularly well-articulated version of the model of Technical Rationality. The major professions are “disciplined by an unambiguous end—health, success in litigation, profit—which settles men’s minds,”7 and they operate in stable institutional contexts. Hence they are grounded in systematic, fundamental knowledge, of which scientific knowledge is the prototype,8 or else they have “a high component of strictly technological knowledge based on science in the education which they provide.”9 In contrast, the minor professions suffer from shifting, ambiguous ends and from unstable institutional contexts of practice, and are therefore unable to develop a base of systematic, scientific professional knowledge. For Glazer, the development of a scientific knowledge base depends on fixed, unambiguous ends because professional practice is an instrumental activity. If applied science consists in cumulative, empirical knowledge about the means best suited to chosen ends, how can a profession ground itself in science when its ends are confused or unstable?

In the spring of 2017, as aides gathered in the Oval Office one day to brief Trump on upcoming meetings with foreign leaders, they made a passing reference to some foreign government officials who were under scrutiny for corruption, for taking bribes. Trump perked up at the mention of bribes and got rather agitated. He told Tillerson he wanted him to help him get rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. “It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas,” Trump told the group. “We’re going to change that.” Looking at Tillerson, Trump said, “I need you to get rid of that law,” as if the secretary of state had the power to magically repeal an act of Congress.

When you use predictive thinking, by contrast, you’re usually foreseeing events that are considered to be highly likely. It can work well if 1) you are very familiar with the parameters of events likely to occur relatively soon; 2) those parameters are fairly constant, stable, and easy to measure; and 3) you’re able to use established algorithms to make decisions about short-term outcomes. Predictive thinking prioritizes your deductive mind. An example might be the way in which traffic control experts at airports are able to decide when to ground planes and when to allow them to fly. Long-term weather patterns are not easy to anticipate but meteorologists can predict short-term hour-by-hour weather with relative accuracy and thus traffic control officers can use

This chart contrasts predictive and prospective thinking: Predictive Thinking Prospective Thinking Mindset Forecasting, “We expect …” Preparing, “But what if …” Goal Reduce or even discard uncertainty, fight ambiguity Live with uncertainty, embrace ambiguity, plan for set of contingencies Level of uncertainty Average High Method Extrapolating from present and past Open, imaginative Approach Categorical, assumes continuity Global, systemic, anticipates disruptive events Information inputs Quantitative, objective, known Qualitative (whether quantifiable or not), subjective, known or unknown Relationships Static, stable structures Dynamic, evolving structures Technique Established quantitative models (economics, mathematics, data) Developing scenarios using qualitative approaches (often building on megatrends) Evaluation method Numbers Criteria

This chart contrasts predictive and prospective thinking: Predictive Thinking Prospective Thinking Mindset Forecasting, “We expect …” Preparing, “But what if …” Goal Reduce or even discard uncertainty, fight ambiguity Live with uncertainty, embrace ambiguity, plan for set of contingencies Level of uncertainty Average High Method Extrapolating from present and past Open, imaginative Approach Categorical, assumes continuity Global, systemic, anticipates disruptive events Information inputs Quantitative, objective, known Qualitative (whether quantifiable or not), subjective, known or unknown Relationships Static, stable structures Dynamic, evolving structures Technique Established quantitative models (economics, mathematics, data) Developing scenarios using qualitative approaches (often building on megatrends) Evaluation method Numbers Criteria Attitude toward the future Passive or reactive (the future will be) Proactive and creative (we create or shape the future) Way of thinking Generally deduction Greater use of induction

Financial strength and capital structure. The most basic possible definition of a good business is this: It generates more cash than it consumes. Good managers keep finding ways of putting that cash to productive use. In the long run, companies that meet this definition are virtually certain to grow in value, no matter what the stock market does. Start by reading the statement of cash flows in the company’s annual report. See whether cash from operations has grown steadily throughout the past 10 years. Then you can go further. Warren Buffett has popularized the concept of owner earnings, or net income plus amortization and depreciation, minus normal capital expenditures. As portfolio manager Christopher Davis of Davis Selected Advisors puts it, “If you owned 100% of this business, how much cash would you have in your pocket at the end of the year?” Because it adjusts for accounting entries like amortization and depreciation that do not affect the company’s cash balances, owner earnings can be a better measure than reported net income. To fine-tune the definition of owner earnings, you should also subtract from reported net income: any costs of granting stock options, which divert earnings away from existing shareholders into the hands of new inside owners any “unusual,” “nonrecurring,” or “extraordinary” charges any “income” from the company’s pension fund. If owner earnings per share have grown at a steady average of at least 6% or 7% over the past 10 years, the company is a stable generator of cash, and its prospects for growth are good.

signifies they have long-term potential. Current examples of stable or trending up markets over the past five years include markets like “renovation” and “online education,” which have both been stable markets, and “social media,” which is a consistent upward-trending market.

Just because architecture is supposed to be stable, it does not mean that it should never change.

Tens of millions of Americans were angry, feeling forgotten by bureaucrats in Washington, derided by liberal elites, and humiliated by a global economy that had sped ahead of their skills and consigned their children to be the first American generation to fare less well than their parents. Trump crowned himself their champion. He promised them he would “make America great again,” a brilliant, one-size-fits-all mantra through which this segment of the country could channel their frustrations. They envisioned an America in which regulations didn’t strangle the family business, taxes weren’t so onerous, and good-paying jobs were plentiful and secure. Some of them also harked back to the 1950s, envisioning a simpler, halcyon America in which white male patriarchs ruled the roost, decorous women kept home and hearth, and minorities were silent or subservient.

When it comes to establishing your credibility, the more information you can provide upfront about your real estate experience the better. It will make you look steady and stable–in other words, someone they will be able to close escrow with. When you present yourself to the seller in this way, you are making it clear that this is not your first rodeo, and that you mean business. As a result, the seller (and the seller’s agent) will see you as someone to be taken seriously

It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas,” Trump told the group. “We’re going to change that.

Rising S, a Texas-based company, does build bare-bones underground shelters for that crowd. But since 2012, Lynch has been catering to a different group—wealthy citizens who want all the comforts and amenities of home if and when catastrophe strikes. “We’ve revolutionized the bomb shelter,” he told me. “Everybody was building cold and clammy structures, with no color, no nothing, just a storm shelter with some shelves. You could drive to work in a Kia but what if you want a Mercedes and can afford it? Our clients are like that.” Lynch’s upscale clients share the view that society is splintering and fear the consequences for the privileged in a world where the collective trust in public institutions has weakened. It’s a dark take on American society, but one that keeps Rising S’s nearly 100,000-square-foot factory humming with new orders. “We are one unjustified police shooting away from having riots across the United States,” Lynch said. “A lot of people are worried about war, social and civil unrest.” So far, that’s meant building an underground swimming pool for one client, while another ordered a hidden stable to keep his valuable stud horses safe.

All this notwithstanding, the twenties in America were a very good time. Production and employment were high and rising. Wages were not going up much, but prices were stable. Although many people were still very poor, more people were comfortably well-off, well-to-do, or rich than ever before. Finally, American capitalism was undoubtedly in a lively phase. Between 1925 and 1929, the number of manufacturing establishments increased from 183,900 to 206,700; the value of their output rose from $60.8 billions to $68.0 billions.1 The Federal Reserve index of industrial production which had averaged only 67 in 1921 (1923–25= 100) had risen to 110 by July 1928, and it reached 126 in June 1929.2 In 1926, 4,301,000 automobiles were produced. Three years later, in 1929, production had increased by over a million to 5,358,000,3 a figure which compares very decently with the 5,700,000 new car registrations of the opulent year of 1953. Business earnings were rising rapidly, and it was a good time to be in business. Indeed, even the most jaundiced histories of the era concede, tacitly, that times were good, for they nearly all join in taxing Coolidge for his failure to see that they were too good to last.

stable competitive forces—take the time and effort to deeply understand these forces, and voilà, you can create a road map for your other decisions that is likely to last for some time. The emphasis in strategy was therefore analytical: because industries were assumed to be relatively

What happened? A long track record of relatively stable success caused the ambition to hungrily search for new opportunities to atrophy.

A stable organizational environment with transparent values is conducive to employees’ feeling confident that they can take the risks that experimentation requires.

I want all of you to know: genetically itself Hindu women carry this knowledge. This knowledge is in the DNA of Hindu women. Hindu women are the best to make a stable family.Whether as head of the family or a sanyasi, nun, or in business, Hindu women are the best.

It follows, that it must be the business of the guerrilla, and of his clandestine political organization in the cities, to destroy the stable image of the government, and so to deny its credits, to dry up its source of revenue, and to create dissension within the frightened owning classes, within the government bureaucracy (whose payrolls will be pinched), and within the military itself.

I wanted to kiss you,” she said as they waited for Sonnet to be brought out. “When I saw you this morning, whole and healthy. Did you want to kiss me?” In the bright morning sunshine, Louisa’s green eyes sparkled like spring grass wet with dew, and energy fairly crackled around her. And this magnificent, gorgeous woman—who was to be his wife—was confessing to a thwarted urge to kiss him. The grooms were busy in the stable, and the alley was deserted enough that Joseph could be honest. “I find, Louisa Windham-soon-to-be-Carrington, that I am constantly in readiness for your kisses. This state of affairs brings me back to boyhood Christmases, to the sense of excitement and… glee that hung over my holidays. As if delightful developments were always awaiting me.” He

First and foremost, any great empire thrives on movement: stable lines of supply, of trade, of information. This movement must be unobstructed for officials on imperial business, and monitored and restricted for others on a scale that varied depending on the necessity of these functions to imperial strength and the likelihood of such restrictions causing dangerous levels of dissent.

As long as we’re breathing, we have a chance to start over and build a stable future.

If you think IT Operations has nothing to learn from Plant Operations, you’re wrong. Dead wrong,” he says. “Your job as VP of IT Operations is to ensure the fast, predictable, and uninterrupted flow of planned work that delivers value to the business while minimizing the impact and disruption of unplanned work, so you can provide stable, predictable, and secure IT service.

Despite Grumblethorpe's noises of disapproval, Esme knew she liked the family pets.She just did't approve of having so many of them in her mistress's bedroom at once. Still, it was an old battle and one the lady's maid had given up waging long ago. Good thing too, since four of Esme's six cats- who had all started life in either Braebourne stables or as strays she'd rescued- were snoozing in various locations around her room. They included a big orange male, Tobias, who was curled up in a cozy spot in the middle of her bed; Queen Elizabeth- a sweet-natured tabby, who was lounging in her usual window seat; Mozart- a luxuriously coated white longhair who luckily loved being brushed; and Naiad, a one-eyed black female, whom Esme had rescued from drowning as a kitten. Her other two cats, Persephone and Ruff, were out and about, seeing to their own cat business. As for the dogs, Burr lay stretched out on the hearthrug in front of the fireplace. He snored gently, clearly tired after their recent adventures. And joining him in the land of dreams was dear old Henry, a brindle spaniel who was curled up inside a nearby dog bed lined with plush pillows that helped cushion his aging joints. Handel and Haydn, a pair of impish Scottish terriers, were absent. She suspected they were on the third floor playing with her increasingly large brood of nieces and nephews. The dogs loved the children.

Jack? Too young. Terry? She’d never agree to it. The social worker, Lori? Ick, no. So that leaves Vivian. Molly has gleaned some things about her—that she’s adopted, that she grew up in the Midwest and inherited the family business from her well-off parents, that she and her husband expanded and eventually sold it for the kind of profit that allowed them to retire to a mansion in Maine. Most of all, that she’s really, really old. Maybe it’ll be a stretch to find drama in Vivian’s portage—a happy, stable life does not an interesting story make, right? But even the rich have their problems, or so Molly’s heard. It will be her task to extract them. If, that is, she can convince Vivian to talk to her.

On January 21, 1919, Jeu Gong purchased a plot of land next to the railway depot on the east side of Rosedale. The barren lot, scraggled with brush, belonged to the Radjeskys, a family of Jewish immigrants from Germany. Katherine had known the family for most of her life. The patriarch, Jake Radjesky, was something of a real estate mogul in Gunnison, where Katherine had been raised. He was one of the town’s first settlers, buying up property while land was cheap. He owned the town’s livery stable, hotel, and mercantile business.

Yet change is usually stressful, and after a certain age, most people don’t like to change. When you are 16, your entire life is change, whether you like it or not. Your body is changing, your mind is changing, your relationships are changing—everything is in flux. You are busy inventing yourself. By the time you are 40, you don’t want change. You want stability. But in the twenty-first century, you won’t be able to enjoy that luxury. If you try to hold on to some stable identity, some stable job, some stable worldview, you will be left behind, and the world will fly by you. So people will need to be extremely resilient and emotionally balanced to sail through this never-ending storm, and to deal with very high levels of stress. The problem is that it is very hard to teach emotional intelligence and resilience. It is not something you can learn by reading a book or listening to a lecture. The current educational model, devised during the 19th century Industrial Revolution, is bankrupt. But so far we haven’t created a viable alternative. So don’t trust the adults too much. In the past, it was a safe bet to trust adults, because they knew the world quite well, and the world changed slowly. But the 21st century is going to be different. Whatever the adults have learned about economics, politics, or relationships may be outdated. Similarly, don’t trust technology too much. You must make technology serve you, instead of you serving it. If you aren’t careful, technology will start dictating your aims and enslaving you to its agenda. So you have no choice but to really get to know yourself better. Know who you are and what you really want from life. This is, of course, the oldest advice in the book: know thyself. But this advice has never been more urgent than in the 21st century. Because now you have competition. Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the government are all relying on big data and machine learning to get to know you better and better. We are not living in the era of hacking computers—we are living in the era of hacking humans. Once the corporations and governments know you better than you know yourself, they could control and manipulate you and you won’t even realize it. So if you want to stay in the game, you have to run faster than Google. Good luck!

if your business ecosystem seems stable, don't be lulled into a potentially false sense of security. Big changes can happen very quickly. Don't confuse low volatility with low risk. Andy Grove, former Intel CEO, was fond of saying "Only the paranoid survive." These are wise words. Models used in business often do very well in periods of stability, but fail miserably in times of sudden changes. They work well when you don't need them and fail when you need them the most.

One of the most vexing dilemmas that stable corporations face when they seek to rekindle growth by launching new businesses is that their internal schools of experience have offered precious few courses in which managers could have learned how to launch new disruptive businesses. In many ways, the managers that corporate executives have come to trust the most because they have consistently delivered the needed results in the core businesses cannot be trusted to shepherd the creation of new growth. Human resources executives in this situation need to shoulder a major burden. They need to monitor where in the corporation’s schools of experience the needed courses might be created, and ensure that promising managers have the opportunity to be appropriately schooled before they are asked to take the helm of a new-growth business. When managers with the requisite education cannot be found internally, they need to ensure that the management team, as a balanced composite, has within it the requisite perspectives from the right schools of experience.

Eastman Kodak will not be returning. Walmart and its ilk will never provide stable employment. The boom economies of energy exploration might seem more “real” than an extensive interconnected community of food and beverage makers, but any “one-stop shop” of a single corporation or an energy extraction bonanza is ultimately less stable than a mutually reinforcing, geographically unique, and irreplaceable range of businesses.

For most of the past two decades the central goal of energy pricing has been to reduce volatility. Policymakers want to ensure that businesses face a predictable environment, with relatively stable prices for electricity and fuels; in a more predictable environment, businesses are more likely to make large-scale capital investments. The government’s main tools in achieving this stability are state-run firms that convert raw fuel into usable energy: power-generating firms and oil refiners. When fuel prices are high, these companies suffer depressed profits or even losses, because they cannot pass on the full cost increase to their customers. But when prices are low, their profits soar, because they are not required to pass on their full cost savings either. These industries can be thought of as “shock absorbers” that enable the economic car to drive relatively smoothly even when the road is full of potholes.

Your job as vp of it Operations is to ensure the fast, predictable, and uninterrupted flow of planned work that delivers value to the business while minimizing the impact and disruption of unplanned work, so you can provide stable, predictable, and secure it service.

The best approach to team lifespans is to keep the team stable and “flow the work to the team,

we mean a stable grouping of five to nine people who work toward a shared goal as a unit.

Investors still need to ask, how stable is the enterprise, and what are its future prospects? What are its earnings and cash flow? What is the downside risk of owning it? What is its liquidation value? How capable and honest is its management? What would you pay for the stock of this company if it were public? What factors might cause the owner of this business to sell control at a bargain price? Similarly, the pair never addressed how to analyze the purchase of an office building or apartment complex. Real estate bargains come about for the same reasons as securities bargains—an urgent need for cash, inability to perform proper analysis, a bearish macro view, or investor disfavor or neglect. In a bad real estate climate, tighter lending standards can cause even healthy properties to sell at distressed prices. Graham and Dodd’s principles—such as the stability of cash flow, sufficiency of return, and analysis of downside risk—allow us to identify real estate investments with a margin of safety in any market environment.

I very frequently get the question: “What’s going to change in the next 10 years?” And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: “What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?” And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two—because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.2 You don’t need to invent something new to be successful, you don’t need to change the world to make a difference. Think about the things that aren’t going to change—the things that people are going to need consistently time and time again.

On the working-class, multiethnic Upper West Side alone, Moses bulldozed two stable communities of color. One, along West 98th and 99th Streets, he destroyed as a gift to the builders of a market-rate development called Manhattantown (now Park West Village). At a reunion in 2011, a former resident told the Times, “It was a great neighborhood to live in. I remember playing jacks, eating Icees, playing stickball and dodge ball, jumping double Dutch and when it got really hot out they would open up the fire hydrants.” Said another, “It wasn’t a slum; why tear it down?” The other neighborhood was San Juan Hill, destroyed to make way for Lincoln Center. An African-American and Latino working-class community, San Juan Hill was full of theaters, dance halls, and jazz clubs. In the early 1900s, it was the center of black cultural life in Manhattan, where James P. Johnson wrote the song “The Charleston,” inspired by southern black dockworkers on the Hudson River. Still, it was branded as “blight.” While they fought the city in court, 7,000 families and 800 small businesses were removed and scattered.

Long-term competitive advantage in a stable industry is what we seek in a business’. On the subject of For how long should an investor hold the shares they buy, Warren Buffett, in 1988’s Berkshire Hathaway’s letters to shareholders stated, ‘When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favourite holding period is forever.

Moreover, stable prices foster saving and capital formation, because when the risk of erosion of asset values resulting from inflation—and the need to guard against such losses—are minimized, households are encouraged to save more and businesses are encouraged to invest more. (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System 2009)

regulations or restrictions on entry into the banking business. Private banks took deposits and issued their own private currencies backed by gold bullion. As Professor Lawrence White has documented, this system worked well. It was more stable, with less inflation than the more heavily regulated and politicized system of banking and money employed in England during the same period.21 Michael Prowse of the Financial Times summarized Scotland’s free-banking experience: “There was little fraud. There was no evidence of over-issue of notes. Banks did not typically hold either excessive or inadequate reserves. Bank runs were rare and not contagious. The free banks commanded the respect of citizens and provided a sound foundation for economic growth that outpaced that in England for most of the period.”22

didn’t explain much to Karen either. She wouldn’t get it, with her stable accounting career and her new life as a suburban mom. I’d just bury the whole business and try to move on with my life.

An organization’s business capabilities capture what an organization’s business is. They’re generally stable, as opposed to how an organization conducts its business, which changes over time, sometimes dramatically.

creating a culture in which the people naturally pull together to advance the business. And it is the ability to grow one’s people to do what needs to be done that creates stable, lasting success. It is not the genius at the top giving directions that makes people great. It is great people that make the guy at the top look like a genius.

By team, we mean a stable grouping of five to nine people who work toward a shared goal as a unit.

...and it just pisses me off more. Like yeah, I cry when I watch those sad puppy videos too, but Gabriel's not actually a puppy abandoned by his owner. He's an upper middle-class Vermont kid who's parents business beats ours like ten months out of twelve. It's not my fault that emotionally, his about as stable as a cheap styrofoam cup.

With the web uncovered, the intricacies of the belowground alliance still remained a mystery to me, until I started my doctoral research in 1992. Paper birches, with their lush leaves and gossamer bark, seemed to be feeding the soil and helping their coniferous neighbors. But how? In pulling back the forest floor using microscopic and genetic tools, I discovered that the vast belowground mycelial network was a bustling community of mycorrhizal fungal species. These fungi are mutualistic. They connect the trees with the soil in a market exchange of carbon and nutrients and link the roots of paper birches and Douglas firs in a busy, cooperative Internet. When the interwoven birches and firs were spiked with stable and radioactive isotopes, I could see, using mass spectrometers and scintillation counters, carbon being transmitted back and forth between the trees, like neurotransmitters firing in our own neural networks. The trees were communicating through the web! I was staggered to discover that Douglas firs were receiving more photosynthetic carbon from paper birches than they were transmitting, especially when the firs were in the shade of their leafy neighbors. This helped explain the synergy of the pair’s relationship. The birches, it turns out, were spurring the growth of the firs, like carers in human social networks. Looking further, we discovered that the exchange between the two tree species was dynamic: each took different turns as “mother,” depending on the season. And so, they forged their duality into a oneness, making a forest. This discovery was published by Nature in 1997 and called the “wood wide web.” The research has continued unabated ever since, undertaken by students, postdoctoral researchers, and other scientists, with a myriad of discoveries about belowground communication among trees. We have used new scientific tools, as they are invented, along with our curiosity and dreams, to peer into the dark world of the soil and illuminate the social network of trees. The wood wide web has been mapped, traced, monitored, and coaxed to reveal the beautiful structures and finely adapted languages of the forest network. We have learned that mother trees recognize and talk with their kin, shaping future generations. In addition, injured trees pass their legacies on to their neighbors, affecting gene regulation, defense chemistry, and resilience in the forest community. These discoveries have transformed our understanding of trees from competitive crusaders of the self to members of a connected, relating, communicating system. Ours is not the only lab making these discoveries—there is a burst of careful scientific research occurring worldwide that is uncovering all manner of ways that trees communicate with each other above and below ground.

Banks and venture capitalists can be the worst enemies of entrepreneurs. They create doubt in entrepreneurs’ minds, with their insistence on detailed game plans before they lend. They want five-year projections in a world that makes six-month forward planning difficult, even for stable and mature businesses, and they insist on “revenue budgeting” when no one knows what the new product will look like or who’ll buy how much. And worst of all, they think an originator will be helped by their oh-so-insightful views on how he or she should run the new business. Often, they kill off what’s different, special, and full of potential.

Amazon’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, clearly agrees, as a 2012 video interview shows. “I very frequently get the question ‘What’s going to change in the next ten years?’” he said. “I almost never get the question ‘What’s not going to change in the next ten years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two. Because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.

The imagery of Mongol greatness received its clearest statement around 1390 by Geoffrey Chaucer, who had traveled widely in France and Italy on diplomatic business and had a far more international perspective than many of the people for whom he wrote. In The Canterbury Tales, the first book written in English, the story of the squire relates a romantic and fanciful tale about the life and adventures of Genghis Khan. This noble king was called Genghis Khan, Who in his time was of so great renown That there was nowhere in no region So excellent a lord in all things. He lacked nothing that belonged to a king. As of the sect of which he was born He kept his law, to which that he was sworn. And thereto he was hardy, wise, and rich, And piteous and just, always liked; Soothe of his word, benign, and honorable, Of his courage as any center stable; Young, fresh, and strong, in arms desirous As any bachelor of all his house. A fair person he was and fortunate, And kept always so well royal estate That there was nowhere such another man. This noble king, this Tartar Genghis Khan.

We have capitalized on the inevitable short-term fluctuations in high-quality businesses to invest at attractive valuations. However, since these opportunities arise infrequently, we rarely ever buy. We are lazy. 5. After investing, we ignore near-term fluctuations because the fundamental characteristics of stellar businesses remain stable over the long term. We never sell on valuation—we are very lazy.

We want our businesses to mimic the robustness of the living world: to survive and prosper in a dynamic external environment, withstand internal strategic and organizational upheavals, and evolve by taking calculated risks. 5. Hence, we choose to invest only in businesses that are robust at multiple levels. A robust business has high ROCE, minimal or zero debt, a strong competitive advantage, fragmented customer and supplier bases, a stable management team, and is in a slow-changing industry. 6. Just because a business is robust today does not mean it will continue to be so. Our only protection against the loss of robustness of a business is to be price sensitive. We do not invest unless the market offers us an attractive valuation, which happens rarely.

We all need someone to talk to. It’s easy to become isolated. The conversation is based on physical presence, which is rooted in feeling. All our senses are involved. By talking to someone in person we can access to specific senses: appreciation compassion, and love. These are the feelings that connect human beings to reality, which stimulates our intuition and awareness. If we become conditioned to the computer, then we become one dimensional. We are less deep as individuals and more shallow, predictable, anxiety ridden, and irritable. By not having conversations, we are forgetting how to feel. These days some of us avoid conversation altogether because it requires too much attention. We’re accustomed to being distracted and we forget how to focus, so we have trouble listening. We may not have time; we are so busy with school and responsibilities at work or at home. We made the conversation as a superfluous social gesture. And some of us don’t know how to talk to people because we’ve never been taught. At the same time, we’ve become more individualistic an opinionated. Because we want something stable that makes sense in the world, we hold onto themes and ideas that are grounding and meaningful. This fixation crates factionalism and polarity. Identifying strongly with our thoughts and emotions, we mistake them for a solid “me”, and then defend that apparition against the world. Yet by having fewer face-to-face conversations, we are simultaneously disempowering the very source that can delegate our identity: our relationship with other people.