Help! I’ve been outsourced

by Richard L. Weaver II

 I was aware of the problems of outsourcing in general, and I had used call centers in Mumbai regarding computer problems.  I had never had any problems with the contacts I made; in all cases, the assistants there solved the problems I had accurately and quickly.  They were well-informed, cordial, respectful, and incredibly efficient.  In general, however, the problems that have been discussed in articles on outsourcing had to do with the reliability and quality of the information. 
 
When you read articles on outsourcing, you get an idea about some of the problems that occur.  At the web site Outsource2India, for example, the unknown author of the essay, “10 Biggest Concerns of a Customer While Outsourcing,” makes the problem clear in the opening paragraph: “The key is to choose a service provider with integrity, honesty, efficiency and great communication skills.”
    
In my case, there was no choice.  The selection of an outsourcing service was determined for me by my publishing company, McGraw-Hill.  The reason for McGraw-Hill outsourcing book production to India are simple.  According to Prisca Rollins in an essay at eHow titled, “India Outsourcing Problems,” Rollins says, “Businesses in America began heavily outsourcing work to India in the 1990's.  It was a way to save on overhead and production cost.”
    
Satish Jacob, in an essay titled, “India's Outsourcing Boom Runs Into Trouble ” located at the web site ABC News /International makes the problem about outsourcing to India very clear. Why should anyone be concerned?   “India employs about 350,000 people in the outsourcing industry and adds 150,000 new jobs each year,” writes Jacob, “But filling those vacancies is proving to be a nightmare. At this moment [December 24, 2005], the industry needs to hire around 9,000 people but can't find them.”  Think about it, the outsourcing industry needs high-quality, well-educated, English-speaking workers.  In India that is a bigger problem than it is (or would be) in the U.S., and in the U.S. it is a problem as well.
   
Let me explain my experience with outsourcing.  With the exception of my computer questions/problems and dealing with assistants in Mumbai, this was certainly my first experience, and it lasted about 11 weeks.
   
In the previous 9 editions of my textbook, Communicating Effectively 9th ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2009), all of the production was handled in the U.S..  Not only that, with the exception of the 9th edition, the process of manuscript development included reading galleys in hard-copy first, having those developed into hard-copy pages, and then the production, from page proofs, into the final textbook. 
    
With the tenth edition, it was not only an adjustment to outsourcing, but also not having hard copy at all, skipping the entire galley stage, and working entirely with electronic copy.  For me, this was not just a surprise but a giant step into the technological age.  I thought giant steps were only supposed to take place when stepping on the moon for the first time!
    
Full service for the tenth edition, once my developmental editor completed her work with me in preparing the manuscript for publication (raw new material, new footnotes, changes within chapters, new chapters added, rearrangement of existing chapters, etc.) was turned over to a company in New Delhi, India, called Aptara Corporation, and I was introduced to my new project manager, Antima Gupta, who I thought all along during the development of the manuscript was a male.  This makes no difference whatsoever, but I was shocked to see her picture when I Googled her name in January, 2011, after work on the manuscript was complete. 
   
Incidentally, as an aside here, all of the editors with whom I have dealt over my 36 years of work on this book have been female.  Why should I have even thought that my new editor would be male?  Yes, it makes no difference whatever; however, when you are working with someone (as a colleague) intensely for 11 weeks — even if it is over the Internet — you form a picture of the person, and my picture was not accurate.
    
It was October 20, 2010, when I received my first message from Gupta: “McGraw-Hill has outsourced the project management of your book to Aptara Corp., and I am the project manager at Aptara who will be your contact for all production-related issues.  You will be working directly with me on this project, so please feel free to email me if you have any questions or concerns about the production process."
    
To show you how much of the production process was outsourced, Gupta writes, “During production we will copyedit your manuscript, prepare the artwork, and arrange for typesetting and printing.”
    
Besides her name, there were several indicators in her initial email to me that she was not a Westerner nor did she have a Western education (at least, as it appeared in her letter).  At one point she said: “A request!  If you deem okay, could you please forward me your contact number . . . ,” and at another point, she was explaining the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader and said: “It is a simple process and I can walk you though [sic] steps over phone.”  Also, at still another point, she said, “I shall look forward to hear from you.”  Otherwise, her English was perfect.
    
At the end of October, 2010, Gupta established the schedule for reviewing the page proofs: 3 chapters per week with my responses due one week after receiving each set.
    
In response to a message from my editor at McGraw-Hill Higher Education in New York, which read: “We are very close to finishing up the production for Communicating Effectively, 10e. I hope you have been pleased with the production.  Please know that your feedback concerning the full service project:  management communication, the quality of the copyediting,
proofreading, & paging, & the schedule are beneficial and welcome for future editions.”
    
My response to her request for information read: “Things have proceeded smoothly and on schedule.  I have, indeed, been pleased with the production process --- copyediting, proofreading, and paging.”  The formatting, pictures, charts, graphs, marginal boxes, front matter, and back matter all looked superb.  Indeed, Aptara Corporation and Antima Gupta should be commended for producing a high-quality, attractive, competitive textbook.
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At TechRepublic, Anthony Tardugno has a great essay, “Ten keys to successful outsourcing,” in which he says toward the beginning, “If your company is contemplating or pursuing outsourcing, these 10 keys can help you develop a successful outsource partnership.”

Johanna Rothman has a wonderful essay, “11 steps to successful outsourcing: A contrarian’s view” (September 15, 2003), at the web site computerworld.  She begins her essay saying: “During the past few years, we've been bombarded with news of outsourced call centers, help desks, testing, development, projects and entire IT infrastructures. It sure looks as if outsourcing is the way to go.  Before you jump on the outsourcing bandwagon, ask yourself this question: What's the value of the knowledge your staffers learn in the work you're planning to outsource? That's the value you give up when you outsource”

In his short Ezine essay, “Dealing with outsourcing issues,” Ben Thurman begins by saying, “Outsourcing sounds great in theory but you may find it a bit frustrating. When you run into less than stellar performances when you're expecting to get excellent value for your dollars, you begin to question whether inferior quality is the price to pay for paying less and expecting more. Quality assurance is perhaps the biggest of the outsourcing issues you will encounter in the global outsourcing arena.”
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Copyright February, 2012, by And Then Some Publishing, L.L.C.

Men Should Not Marry

by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.

It may not make much sense to you at first, but hear me out.  Allow me to make the argument, and then you be the judge.  The point of this essay is simply that for men, marriage goes against every natural and learned trait they possess and, thus, marriage is (and should be, considering everything) a foreign, unnatural, and improper act, and anyone who expects a marriage between a man and woman to work is dreaming, fantasizing, idealizing, romanticizing, or simply stupid!
   
Let’s begin with the basics — the natural (congenital or inherited) traits men possess.  You can consult the studies, read the books, or simply base your judgment on observation, but the conclusion will likely be the same.  Men are, by nature, unemotional, active, rugged, strong, dominant, leaders, crude, bigger, spontaneous, independent, unwilling to share (uncooperative), adverse to communicating, and have a need to be right.  Women, on the other hand, tend to be emotional, loving, empathic, accepting, positive, quiet, nurturing, loving, attached, respectful, listeners, who are smaller and weaker than men.
   
Now, answer the question: how would you expect those who are naturally strong, dominant, crude, independent, uncommunicative, unwilling to share (uncooperative), and with a need to be right, to be the kind of people who would or even could make a marriage work?  Marriage, for it to work, demands cooperation and communication.  It could even be said to be a sharing existence.  Further, marriage is like a showcase for women’s traits: positivity, empathy, commitment, acceptance, love, and respect.
   
For men, without making major changes or offering significant concessions (“selling out”) or simply learning and demonstrating new traits (it won’t happen!), marriage, for men, cannot work.
   
Turning now from the discussion of “natural traits,” the romantic notion of marriage, of husband and wife sharing ideas, talking out problems, doing things together, and getting along seamlessly, is just that: a romantic notion.  It is fantasy, a delusion.  Let’s take this romantic idea of marriage to a practical, applied level.  It is, I am certain, a romantic notion to have a beautiful wife, smart, attractive, active, healthy children, a home that fulfills every possible dream (or fantasy), and a job that brings in more than enough money  (as well as happiness and fulfillment) to satisfy every need, accommodate every desire, cover any emergency, and provide a life free of difficulty and distress of any kind.  I’m right, aren’t I?  That is truly a romantic notion.
   
And yet, as romantic as that notion is, it is insufficient to make some who possess it happy enough to remain married.  Can you believe it?  Men, basically, are unfit to be married!
   
There are other reasons, too, why men should not marry.  Let’s look at marriage from a very practical, down-to-earth point of view.  It’s an old, tired, well-worn cliche  that when driving men never want to stop and ask for directions.  The underlying cause for this behavior is, 1) a need to be right, 2) a need to do it by themselves (independence), and 3) a need to avoid dependence on others.  All of these underlying causes, when extended to relationship behavior, argue — at their base — against everything a marriage stands for or should be:
    1.    How can you solve problems mutually when men always need to be right?
    2.    How can you make mutual decisions when men always want to do it (make decisions) by themselves (independence)?
    3.    How can you operate on a daily basis with men who have no interest in being dependent on others (any others!)?
   
There are, too, other reasons why men should not marry.  Men are control freaks!  No marriage can last long if the man controls everything.  Unless women are willing to give up total control, unless women are willing to be doormats for all of men’s wants, desires, and needs, and unless women are willing to be totally submissive, marriages cannot work.  Does that sound like any kind of marriage you would want to be part of?  Does that sound like any kind of marriage at all?
   
It is, too, a cliche  that men do not like to communicate — especially when it requires a show of emotion or when it is about a relationship.  If you closely observe male-female relationships in informal settings, you will discover females do most of the talking.  At the PBS (Public Broadcasting) home page, a quotation from the book, Language Myths (Penguin Press), states, studies reviewed by Deborah James and Janice Drakich, conclude that, “Women, it seems, are willing to talk more [than men] in relaxed social contexts, especially where the talk functions to develop and maintain social relationships.”
   
Women’s talk treats subjects that draw people together, promote relationship harmony, and enhance and encourage communication.  Men tend to talk about matters that are not relationship oriented: events, objects, and things.  Just from their conversations alone, it should be clear that men are not naturally oriented to having close relationships with others, becoming emotionally involved, or communicating their feelings.  There is nothing here that would suggest that men are marriage material.  They want partners for sex, but the desire for sex alone is insufficient to sustain a marriage and, too, does not even require marriage.
   
In addition to everything else discussed in this essay, in relationships men are weak and insecure.  If women are unwilling to massage and stroke men’s egos, relationships are unlikely to last.  Can you imagine marriages in which women must spend their time involved in and dealing with men’s feelings: whether they are depressed or hurt, whether they are getting the respect they think they deserve, whether their partner really loves, trusts, needs (you fill in the word here) them?  Such behavior is immature, unnecessary, petty pampering, and yet, men (with their insecurity) require this sort of “affection.”  It is like dealing with babies unable to stand on their own two feet, dependent on silly nurturing, and requiring childish coddling.  Men are not fit to be married.
   
Whether you look at it from the side of male traits, or whether you look at it from the female side and what is necessary on their part to make marriages work (because you cannot depend on men to participate in a marriage!), marriages make no sense for men.  There is nothing that make men compatible with or well suited for the true concept of what marriages are and should be!
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“Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D., is assistant professor of government at Patrick Henry College and President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. His book, Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family, has just been published by Cumberland House Publishing.”  Baskerville has written an essay, “Advice to young men: Do not marry, do not have children” in which he offers another reason men should not marry: divorce (and the divorce laws).

“Top Ten Reasons Not to Get Married” offers these reasons: 1) Marriage is forever, 2) Marriage is the end of taking risks, 3) Marriage often fails, 4) Marriage is the end of sex, 5) Marriage is constant compromise, 6) Marriage is the end of spontaneity, 7) Marriage is just paperwork, 8) Marriage is expensive, 9) Marriage is the end of options, and 10) Marriage will make her let herself go.

My essay, "Women have superior leadership traits" (December 2, 1010) reinforces much of what I have said in this essay with respect to men and women traits. The very characteristics that make women better leaders than men are similar to (if not the same as) those that make them better at relationship maintenance and sustenance. (When you get to the andthensomeworks.com website, click on the "Blog" icon in the top navigation bar.)

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Copyright February, 2012, by And Then Some Publishing, L.L.C.

Motivate your life

by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.

    
I am often asked, “how do you write so much?  Or “how do you come up with so many ideas?” or “what is it that keeps you going all the time?”  My answer is one that I tell fifth graders when I give my talk to them on the topic “Writing.”  As much as you can, whenever you can, you move as fast as you can, to capture the emotion of the moment.  We are all filled with emotions (they are omnipresent in our lives), and they often occur rapidly and sometimes intensely.  To go with the flow (the existence of the emotion) makes sense for that is the key to motivation — that is the stimulus, the inducement, and the inspiration that creates the enthusiasm and determination to do something.  It is, basically, what moves us to action.
    
For me as a writer, I simply try to capture in words the feelings I have.  Often, that is why I must write essays soon after (or even when) having the actual experience.  For example, I try to write my travel essays while on-the-go — traveling.  Not only in that moment do the words flow more rapidly, but the intensity of the feelings produce more and better adjectives to describe and explain the actual experience.  In other words, intense feelings produce a larger number of language choices which not only makes writing easier, but it makes my writing more vivid as well.
    
Now, I realize that most people are not writers.  And it may be, too, that most people do not have the wide range of experiences I have.  Nonetheless, most people do have an interest in motivating their lives — that is, they have a need to get their lives off dead center.
    
One of the keys to self-motivation is a change in attitude.  I often talked to my students about being the teacher.  That is, instead of taking the position that learning occurred to them as a result of an outside stimulus such as a teacher or a textbook, they should adopt a new attitude that learning occurred as a result of self-pursuit, self-stimulation, self-determination, and self-discovery.  The teacher, indeed, was inside of them not outside of them.  This simply means that the teacher is within them, and it puts the responsibility on their shoulders for the learning that takes place.  What they received from any experience was totally up to them!
    
There are many writers who offer suggestions for motivating your life; however, if the key just discussed (putting the teacher in yourself) is not adopted, it doesn’t matter what the suggestion is, it won’t work.  This can be an incredibly important awareness because it opens up the doors of knowledge, education, enlightenment, understanding, and even wisdom.  It makes you a student of life and a student of this world and everything in it as well.
    
At the web site Motivation and Money, the essay, “What Motivates Your Life,” (September 19, 2009), lists the five most common of life’s motivators: 1) Guilt: “[People] live their entire lives running from regrets and hiding their shame.” 2) Hatred and anger: “[People] hold on to hurts and never get over them.”  3) Peer pressure: “[People are] always being disturbed by what others might think.”  4) Materialism: “[People’s] desire to acquire becomes the only motivation of their lives.”  5) Fear: “[People’s] fear may be a result of a traumatic experience, unrealistic expectations, growing up with extraordinary strict parents, or even genetic predisposition.”
    
Fortunately, there are important positive motivators as well.  Certainly one of the ways to help erase or overcome guilt, hatred, anger, peer pressure, materialism, and fear, is through positive action and behavior.  For example, for me, I always focus on the end of a project.  Much of what takes place during the production of a college textbook can only be characterized as tedious, dull, and boring.  But, knowing the influence that my ideas can have on students, knowing what a beautiful and useful product McGraw-Hill delivers, and knowing how satisfied instructors are after using my textbooks, I focus on that result to keep me going.
    
When I don’t have an ongoing project, another way I have to motivate myself is to choose a goal.  For me, any goal works.. I recognize my own needs, limits, and aspirations. The point is simply that I want a goal to focus on now.  Many of these are lifted directly from my “to do list” (or my “honey-do” list!).  Maybe it’s cleaning my study or organizing the garage.  It could just as easily be losing ten pounds in a month, avoiding junk food, working through a new activity added to my regular exercise routine, or anything else I have a need or desire to attain.  
    
Once I have selected a goal, I break it into steps.  When I taught this process to my students, I would break the process of developing a speech (the final goal) into steps for them. For example, as the first step, I had them select the topic.  They would choose three, and I would then select the best one. Their next job was to frame their topic as a proposition. Next, they had to collect evidence to support their proposition.  Following their research effort, they had to organize and outline their speech.  The final step was to present me a complete, fully-written-out manuscript for the speech as they came before the class to deliver it.   
    
Someone choosing to lose weight, would break their exercise routine into daily units and even map out their healthy eating habits.
    
At the end of every successful project, I invent an appropriate reward.  Often, it is time off for good behavior, engaging in another likable project, going to the library, reading (and reviewing) another book, taking a short vacation, or having an extra beer at the end of a long day.  Everyone has his or her own desires that can be used for rewards.
    
I have always found that one of the joys of keeping a “to-do” list is checking things off that I’ve accomplished.  Often, that check mark alone is sufficient reward.
    
Nobody on earth has the same interest in your success as you do.  Motivating your life is a result of habit.  Bad habits such as procrastination and laziness stand in your way, but the best way to break bad habits is by replacing them with clear goals and careful planning.  Every reasonable thing you want in life is possible if you change your attitude.  Capitalize on your positive emotions.  You will gain confidence from small victories, and small victories lead to larger ones.  Remember that the most successful people in the world are not always the brightest, or the best looking.  It will be your success over both small and large tasks that will motivate your life, give you confidence, and allow you to move forward with perseverance, strength, determination, and conviction.
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Erin Falconer, has a great essay, “How To Motivate Yourself – Self Motivation,” at the Pickyourbrain web site, in which she says that the primary reasons we lose motivation is lack of confidence, focus, and direction.  She claims: “There is no simple solution for a lack of motivation. Even after beating it, the problem reappears at the first sign of failure. The key is understanding your thoughts and how they drive your emotions. By learning how to nurture motivating thoughts, neutralize negative ones, and focus on the task at hand, you can pull yourself out of a slump before it gains momentum.”  I loved her emphasis on emotions; hers is a terrific essay.

At Lifeorganizer, Donald Latumahina has a great essay, “Self-motivation: How to motivate yourself,” says, “If you want to excel in life, self motivation is essential. You must know how to motivate yourself. You must be able to keep your spirit high no matter how discouraging a situation is. That’s the only way to get the power you need to overcome difficulties. Those who are discouraged in difficult times are certain to lose even before the battle is over.”  He offers six methods: 1) Have a cause.  2) Have a dream. A big dream.  3) Be hungry.  4) Run your own race.  5) Take one more step.  6) Let go of the past.
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Copyright February, 2012, by And Then Some Publishing, L.L.C.


    
    
    
    
   

Life is a game

by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.

  
The first thing I think of when a game (any game) is mentioned, is “fun.”  Games are fun.  And to think that a game (any game) can be an accurate metaphor for life is mistaken.  There are times, it is true, when life is pure fun, but much of life is not — more of life is not fun.  It is serious business and not to take it seriously can sometimes be disastrous.   It was Thomas L. Holdcroft who said, “Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us.”
    
At the Counseling Resource web site <>, Gordon Shippey has an essay titled “Life is Not a Game (But Maybe It Should Be),” in which he says: “My point is not to say that everything in life needs to be as fun and engaging as a game. Rather, that we have choices of how to structure our schools and our workplaces to make important work easier or harder. Remembering how important feedback is to the gaming experience, could we not make more regular feedback a part of our work and school life?  When we realize that high-risk situations work against creativity and challenging ourselves to go further, would it make sense to reevaluate the high-stakes testing in our schools?  Knowing that narrative flow fosters engagement, what are we to make of a disjointed school day or a job riddled with interruptions and requiring high levels of multi-tasking?  If being able to control the pace of an experience is important, why do we walk students lock-step through their lessons when self-paced alternatives like the Kahn Academy exist?  In the long run, harnessing the engaging properties of games may become a serious productivity driver.”
    
There is a book by Cherie Carter-Scott, If Life is a Game, These Are the Rules.  Blaine Greenfield, from Belle Mead, New Jersey, reviewed the book at Amazon, and since I have not read the book, I cite Greenfield’s distillation of Carter-Scott’s rules (condensed even further here): 1) You will receive a body.  You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your life on Earth. 2) You will be presented with lessons.  You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called "life."  Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or hate them, but you have designed them as part of your curriculum.  3) There are no mistakes, only lessons.  Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that work.  4) A lesson is repeated until learned.
Lessons will repeated to you in various forms until you have learned them. When you have learned them, you can then go on to the next lesson.
    
There are five additional rules.  5)  Learning does not end.  There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.  6) "There" is no better than "here."  When you’re "there" has become a "here," you will simply obtain a "there" that will look better to you than your present "here."  7) Others are only mirrors of you.

You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.  8) What you make of your life is up to you.  You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you.  9) Your answers lie inside of you.

All you need to do is look, listen, and trust. 10) You will forget all of this at birth.  You can remember it if you want by unraveling the double helix of inner knowing.
    
Now, here’s the point.  Those are, indeed, basic rules, but they don’t come close to proving, establishing, or in any way suggesting that life is a game.  There is far more to any game than rules alone.  An effective game includes competition, alternative choices, problem-solving, risk-taking, built-in surprises, rewards, winning and losing, and a final goal — among other things.  If anyone thinks that life is a game, just think about how many characteristics exist in most games.      So much of life does not involve any of this.  More often than not, life is composed of typical, common, ordinary routine.  I would suggest that for many people in the world, it is more about merely surviving — finding enough to eat and seeking the finances to support themselves.   For others who have enough to eat and finances enough to support themselves, they just want to exist — quality of life is what they have and nothing more.
    
There is no question that there are parts of our lives that mimic games in some cases, like job seeking, project completion, and, perhaps, dating.  But I would contend that much like Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs," when life truly becomes a game, you have raised yourself much higher on “the hierarchy” — whatever the hierarchy is.   Although Cherie Carter-Scott’s book (mentioned above) is a basic (some reviewers said “elementary”), interesting read, the “rules” she writes about are close to the bottom of the hierarchy.
    
What I have discovered throughout my life has been to consider the comment “life is a game” as a cliche — a trite expression that has little meaning.  There is no doubt that when I was a university professor, I felt intense competition — for tenure, promotion, and merit.  The “publish or perish” impetus necessary to further my academic career supplied the motivation; however, more than anything else the motivation was internal since it was well honed throughout graduate school.  Even though there was competition, alternative choices, problem-solving, risk-taking, built-in surprises, rewards, winning and losing, and a final goal, I considered all of this an extension of my graduate training.  Yes, it could have been considered “a game,’ and there are many who do; however, for me, it didn’t change anything.  The elements were the same, and the needs wouldn’t change either.
    
Do you consider life a game?   That’s perfectly fine.  Remember what Gordon Shippey said near the beginning of this essay: “In the long run, harnessing the engaging properties of games may become a serious productivity driver.”  The real determiner of success for your life is in the quotation by Abraham Lincoln: “In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”
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At Scott H. Young’s web site, “Get More From Life,”  Young has an excellent essay, “Life as a Game,” and his last paragraph explains how important the “life as a game” metaphor can be: “The metaphors we use to describe life will decide how we behave and feel within it. Viewing life as a game can be incredibly freeing in seeing all our obstacles and problems as adding to the experience. By understanding that the game of life operates from a common sense set of rules we can understand these rules then utilize them to our effectiveness. Finally, by understanding that the game of life is about experiencing the journey with a purpose we can be successful and happy. Viewing life as a game isn’t without its fallacies, but you may want to try this perspective to see if it improves your own quality of experience.”

At the “Freedom from the Known,”  ivan campuzano web site, Campuzano has an essay, “Life is a Game: How Are You Playing It?” (April 27, 2011).  He gives readers of his blog instructions for how to create their own game.  He ends his essay saying, “I am assuming you will choose to play a game that will be full of joy and balance. This is your life, learn to play with it. Thank you for reading my post, be well. Your friend Ivan Campuzano.”
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Copyright February, 2012, by And Then Some Publishing, L.L. C.