#we were told to rank potential employee benefits and apparently they think being given a free t-shirt counts as a benefit

[uncanny-tranny]

The most recent thing to have further radicalized me was the insult of being directly told that healthcare, transportation coverage, and a potential retirement plan were as much a benefit to my employer's eyes as a free fucking t-shirt. A t-shirt.

[sinrau]

Since this article was published in the Tampa Bay Times ( 5/28/20 ), the average daily number of new Covid-19 cases in Florida has risen nearly tenfold.

In the second half of June, the story of the United States’ coronavirus pandemic began to shift dramatically, as a massive surge in new infections took hold, particularly across states in the South and West that had previously been spared the worst of the outbreak. Media reports abruptly switched gears from declaring that reopening was proceeding with few ill effects ( Reuters, 5/17/20; Tampa Bay Times, 5/28/20 ) to expressing alarm that health officials’ warnings against lifting social distancing restrictions too soon had been proven right—a cognitive dissonance perhaps most dramatically depicted in Oregon Public Broadcasting ’s headline, “Oregon’s COVID-19 Spike Surprises, Despite Predictions of Rising Caseloads” ( 6/10/20 ).

Increasingly, the big story has been the litany of state moves to halt or roll back reopenings: A typical roundup in the New York Times ( 6/26/20 ) included closing bars in Texas and Florida, a full stay-at-home order in California’s Imperial County, and putting beaches off-limits in Miami-Dade County for the July 4th weekend.

“This is a very dangerous time,” declared Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, where new cases began rising on June 15, just over a month after the state allowed stores and businesses to reopen. “I think what is happening in Texas and Florida and several other states should be a warning to everyone.”

But a warning of what? While the question of how quickly to reopen will affect potentially millions of lives, equally important is asking what science can tell us about how to reopen. Health experts point to many lessons we can learn from the pandemic experience, both in the US and elsewhere, that can help inform which activities are safest (and most necessary) to resume—a discussion that is more useful than the media’s inclination toward simple debates about whether reopening is good or bad ( LA Times, 5/14/20; New York Times, 5/20/20 ) .

Among the most important conclusions:

1. Types of reopenings matter

While the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 at first seemed like an all-powerful threat that could be carried by everything from cardboard boxes to cats, public health officials have long since determined that infection is overwhelmingly via person-to-person encounters. This means that reducing face-to-face interaction time—or ensuring that it’s at least conducted while wearing masks, or in outdoor or well-ventilated spaces—is key to reducing risk, as spelled out in a diagram by University of Massachusetts/Dartmouth infectious disease researcher and blogger Erin Bromage:

Infectious disease experts have attempted to reduce this equation to simple mnemonics that will be easy to remember; Tulane University epidemiologist Susan Hassig has cited “the three D’s: diversity, distance and duration” ( Business Insider, 6/8/20 ), while Ohio State’s William Miller created the rhyme “time, space, people, place” ( NPR, 6/23/20 ). These were featured in the increasingly common articles attempting to rank which activities were riskiest, including some that assigned weirdly specific point scales to behaviors for anyone wondering whether they should go bowling or for a pontoon boat ride ( MLive, 6/2/20 ).

A mass outbreak in a South Korean call center showed how easily the coronavirus can spread in an office environment; workspaces of infected employees are marked in blue (Business Insider, 4/28/20 ).

But most of those articles entirely ignored one of the most widespread reopening activities: going back to work in shared office spaces. Infectious disease experts say that offices can be the perfect petri dishes for viral spread, involving gatherings of a large number of people, indoors, for a long time, with recirculated air. As one study ( Business Insider, 4/28/20 ) of a coronavirus outbreak at a Seoul call center showed, the virus can quickly spread across an entire floor, especially in a modern open-plan office. In fact, the call center was doubly prone to viral spread, because its workers were all talking constantly, which previous studies have found to spread respiratory droplets just as effectively as coughing ( Better Humans, 4/20/20 )—a warning that was heavily noted in media’s coverage of the risks of chanting protestors ( Washington Post, 5/31/20; Politico, 6/8/20 ), but notably missing from articles on the reopening of workplaces.

“They’re pretty high-risk spaces,” Boston University School of Public Health epidemiologist Eleanor Murray tells FAIR. “What we would like to see with offices, if people have to be there for the function of the office to work, is to keep the minimum number of people in at any given time.” (She also urges consideration of the risk to office cleaning workers, who are seldom included in back-to-work safety debates.)

This is especially key, adds Tulane’s Hassig, in office environments where co-workers are breathing the same air. Workers can safely unmask if they’re in a private office where they can shut their door, she tells FAIR; however, “if you’re in an open office space with little four-foot cubicle walls, everybody needs to be wearing masks all the time.”

Yet most states have limited themselves to following CDC guidelines for reopening offices, which mandate wearing masks only when within six feet of a co-worker. But as Bromage ( 5/6/20 ) has pointed out, “Social distancing rules are really to protect you with brief exposures or outdoor exposures.”

In fact, former Arizona Department of Health Services director Will Humble told Newsweek ( 6/9/20 ) that one reason his state became the nation’s leader in new infections per capita was that local officials did not go beyond CDC mandates to impose “performance criteria such as required business mitigation measures, contact tracing capacity or mask-wearing.” Hassig worries that the CDC’s guidance may have been “far less prescriptive than they would like it to be from the scientific perspective,” noting that “we’ve got plenty of evidence that distance is not enough if you’re in a shared space with lots of people.”

All of this would have been good for US workers returning to their jobs to know, but very little of it has made it into media coverage of reopenings, whether before or after the recent virus spikes. And the rare exceptions often left much to be desired: When CBS News ( 5/28/20 ) devoted time to investigating the dangers of reopening offices, it was solely in terms of whether plumbing systems left stagnant during closures could lead to the spread of Legionnaires’ disease.

2. Let science, not political power, guide health decisions

Because it takes at least two to three weeks for case numbers to noticeably rise in response to a change in social distancing rules, Hassig says, states should start slowly, and wait to see if numbers rise before moving on to the next stage of reopening. “If your reopening timetable is preset, that’s somewhat of a folly,” she says. Ideally, she says, after each change in policy, states should “wait at least three weeks to make a decision before you move on, which would mean that probably you’re really looking at a month in each phase. And that is not what Texas did.”

Do you need to know whether independent health experts think this is a good idea? Apparently not (Austin American Statesman, 5/1/20 )

It’s also not how the Texas media presented reopening plans to the public. The Austin American Statesman ( 4/27/20, 5/1/20 ) dutifully listed types of businesses that would resume operations under Gov. Greg Abbott’s reopening order, but never cited any independent health officials on the risks each activity would entail. When the Dallas Morning News ( 4/30/20 ) ran answers to reader questions about the reopening, the only potential negative consequence it mentioned was whether Texans who refused to return to work could still get unemployment benefits. And the Houston Chronicle ( 4/30/20 ) declared, “No more stay-home. Just stay safe”—though the only “safety” measures it mentioned were those still being recommended by Abbott, such as wearing masks in public and limiting the size of gatherings.

The New York Times ( 5/1/20 ), meanwhile, chose to both-sides the issue with a story headlined “A Texas-Size Reopening Has Many Wondering: Too Much or Not Enough?”

In doing so, the media largely followed the lead of elected officials, who in many cases let concern over profit-and-loss statements take precedence over whether the data indicated it was safe to resume business as usual. In Ohio, state officials went so far as to allow guidelines to be written by the businesses seeking to reopen themselves ( Columbus Dispatch, 6/29/20 ), something health experts suspect helped lead to a tripling of daily new cases in the state between June 14 and June 25.

3. Learn from places that have done better

Some hard-hit European countries have had much more success with reopening than the United States, as a comparison of per capita average daily new cases shows (orange: Italy; green: Spain; red: Germany; blue: France; purple: US). (Chart: 91-VIDOC )

The Covid curves in many European and Asian nations that were hit the earliest and took the first and strongest action have remained low, despite reopenings in those nations: Italy, for example, once the world epicenter of the virus, currently has under three new cases per day per million residents, according to Johns Hopkins data —about half the infection rate for the least-hard-hit US state, Vermont.

Those nations, however, took very different approaches to reopening than the US. First off, they waited until case rates were much lower before reopening: When Italy first reopened restaurants on May 18, its daily new-case rate, averaged over the previous week, was 14.4 per million residents; when Florida did so on May 4, its average daily rate was 31.7 per million. “Where you start in terms of your case burden will probably wind up being one of the best predictors of how well your reopening went,” says Hassig.

In addition, the measures the European nations took to get cases down that low were much stricter than those ever implemented in the US—something that was largely overlooked in rundowns of nations imposing and lifting lockdowns ( New York Times, 6/10/20; CNBC, 6/25/20 ). “What we were doing in the US compared to what Europe was doing in terms of lockdown are completely different things,” says Murray:

I have friends in France, and you had to have a permit that said what time you were allowed to go to the grocery store. So even the places in the US that did a gradual opening were already starting from a much more open place than places in Europe.

US residents can also learn from areas of their own country that have done comparatively well under reopenings. Hassig notes that New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish have provided an unintentional controlled experiment—albeit “a sample of one”—in the efficacy of wearing masks: “The mayor of New Orleans made masking mandatory in indoor spaces, which empowered businesses to put up signs like ‘No mask, no shoes, no shirt, no service.’”

The city, which had been an early Covid hotspot, also established a hotline to report violators, kept casinos closed longer, and kept tighter restrictions on such things as church gatherings—with the result, says Hassig, that Orleans Parish currently has less than half the new-case rate of the similarly sized Jefferson Parish. (On Monday, Jefferson Parish announced its own mandatory mask order— New Orleans Advocate, 6/29/20.)

4. Every reopening is a tradeoff

Even before most US states had shut down, Siva Vaidhyanathan (Guardian, 3/26/20 ) was warning that pitting health against the economy was a false choice.

When media outlets posit the decision facing states as balancing the economic needs with public-health needs, it not only ignores that an out-of-control pandemic would be an economic catastrophe ( Guardian, 3/26/20 ), but overlooks another important point: In reopening, governments have a limited amount of risk they can safely spread around without losing control of an outbreak. As a result, reopening decisions don’t just impact public health and the economy now—they also could end up undermining your ability to reopen other things down the road.

“It’s not ‘open’ or ‘shut’—there’s a whole spectrum in between,” says Murray. “We need to be thinking about what are the high-priority things that we need to reopen from a functioning point of view, and not an enjoyment point of view.”

If the goal is to prevent the kind of explosive surge in Covid cases that many states saw in March and April—and which are now being repeated in new hotspots in June and July—that means picking and choosing carefully, not just which activities are the safest, but which are the most urgent for a functioning society—which, it bears emphasizing, is not the same thing as what’s best for businesses’ bottom lines.

“We need to be getting dentists’ offices open and getting childcare open and getting elective medical treatment open; bars are not as important,” advises Murray. “It may be that we have to give up on some of those things to allow the risks that some of these other activities take.”

That’s a discussion that will require informed public debate on the conditions of reopening, from what should stay closed to whether to require masks. It’s a debate that will be much easier if the media spends less time on who is “winning” or “losing” in the struggle to reopen, and more on why people are getting infected—and how they could not be.

What mainstream media isn’t telling you about the risks of reopening

[prosperopedia]

Are You a Taker or a Giver?

Several years ago, I had a conversation with a friend of mine who was struggling with his career, his finances, and other elements of his life. As we drove home from a meeting we had attended together with a non-profit organization, he vented about all of the issues he had been having.

He told almost the same story about three different client relationships that had crashed a burned. For each story, he had more than sufficient evidence that he was in the right, that he had lived up to his part of the bargin, and that his clients should have been nothing less than happy with his work and with the relationship. The subplot to each story was consistent. For some reason, these client were unhappy with his work, and for some reason felt like they had been charged too much for what they considered to be lack of performance, lack of results.

As I listened to these several stories, I couldn’t help but wonder to myself, “Despite all the excuses you have, and all the evidence you’ve given about why you cannot be held to blame: being fired not once, not twice, but three times, do you not see a very distinguishable trend?”

From everything he told me, it was clear that he was not giving nearly as much as he was taking in payment from each of these clients. I had recognized that same behavior with him as a neighbor, constantly asking for and even demanding favors, but rarely reciprocating.

In my attempt to give subtle advice and slightly critical feedback to this friend of mine, I simply suggested that I’ve made it a personal goal to give much more than would be expected whenever I’m hire to do work for people so that there is no question about whether I’ve at least fulfilled their requirements or expectations. I mentioned that having that particular approach had worked really well for me throughout my career.

When it became apparent that he had no intention of internalization or applying to himself and his situation, I chose to just drive and listen.

Many people I’ve seen struggle with finances, relationships, and general happiness, often exhibit this same persona as what I just described. They seem to feel like they can get ahead by constantly scraping to make sure that they get everything that is what they consider to be their due and fail to pay attention to a universal law that is followed by those who are typically more prosperous, have better relationships, and are ultimately happier. The essence of the law boils down to this: if you have configured yourself or developed a habit to consistently take more than you give, ironically you will end up with less than if you took the opposite approach.

There’s a spiritual foundation behind this principle. Jesus, the ultimate giver, described the principle in many different ways including this one in Matthew 23: 11, “ But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.” The only man who was ever considered to be perfect advised on many occasions that the accumulation of power, strength, and bounty are ultimately obtained not through a selfish demeanor that is associated with pillaging and looting, or even taking material things at other’s expense. The Golden Rule taught in the Bible, which forms the social foundation for prosperous societies, is another interpretation of the principle that it is best to priorities giving over receiving.

Giving and Taking in Marriage

Probably the most appropriate application of giving more than taking is a marriage relationship.

In a speech that I attended at church several years ago, Lynn Robbins, a highly successful business man and co-founder of Franklin Covey, pointed out that people make the mistake of thinking that a marriage relationship is supposed to be 50/50.

Instead, he pointed out, for a marriage to be truly successful, the husband and wife must expect to give 100% each. In a situation where a couple attempts to give only half of their effort to keeping the relationship healthy, the very nature of trying to balance the needle in the middle creates destructive outcomes, more often than not ultimately leading to divorce. On the other hand, in marriage relationships where both spouses are 100% committed to serving the needs of the other, the marriage thrives.

The increasingly hedonistic modern society being experienced by most people in the United States and throughout the world, whether on purpose or incidentally, strongly influences a collective mentality based on selfishness and the pursuit of pleasure at the expense of things that have much more lasting value.

Everything She Wants – Wham

The 1984 popular song from Wham,”Everything She Wants”, provides a perfect illustration of the failing of this negotiated 50/50 approach to a marriage relationship. The song accuses a spouse of demanding too much and giving more than she takes. The perspective demonstrated in the lyrics make it obvious that the author of the song himself also has a lot of improvement to do. One section of the song in particular stands out:

They told me marriage was a give and take. Well, you’ve shown me you can take. You’ve got some giving to do.

These lines are becoming a representative of too many of the marriage relationships that exist in contemporary society as social media and other influences constantly remind us that selfishness is more desirable than sacrifice. The impact this is having on marriages and family relationships is highly detrimental.

The idea of giving 100% to someone else in a marriage without being so concerned about what that person is giving in return isn’t to say that a person in a marriage relationship that’s abusive should continue to indulge the insatiable selfishness of a marriage partner who has proven incapable of doing anything besides taking. Situations like that should certainly be corrected through divorce if counseling and other attempts to make the relationship healthy are not viable. In the majority of these marriages that are ending in divorce, that problem could be solved if each spouse (in their commitment to make the relationship work as it was originally intended) was willing to continuously make at least marginal gains towards giving 100% to their companion.

Being a Giver In Your Career Will Take You Places

During the years I’ve spent in the workplace, which includes experiences ranging from owning and operating my own small businesses to being a member of teams in larger organizations, I’ve seen the advantages of being a giver.

Consider the interaction between a prospective employee and someone doing a job interview. It’s natural for people, men especially, to overstate their abilities and demand so much from employers in terms of compensation, benefits, and other components of a job that it becomes a turn off. Whenever I’ve interviewed someone who has this mentality, regardless of how impressive their skill set and experience, it’s an automatic veto.

When interviewing for a job I want, I’ve found it very helpful to present to a potential employer the authentic demeanor that says, “How can I use my skills and motivation help this company accomplish its objectives.” While it’s important to make sure that you’re being compensated fairly for your contribution, it’s just as important (even for your own sense of contribution) for someone to feel like his work has been a net positive to a company, and that his compensation is not a subsidy or a sort of hand-out.

When employers decide trim down their payrolls, whether it be to make the company more efficient or out of economic need (such as a recession or company downturn), it’s almost always those who have proven to be takers who are on the chopping block first rather than those who have demonstrated a spirit of giving, contributing at least enough value to the company to cover the costs of employing them.

If you make a habit of being a giver with those you work for, it’s much less likely that you will lose your job, and it’s much more likely that you’ll be promoted, and that you’ll generally find prosperity in your work.

There are certainly exceptions to this standard, especially in those environments where climbing the corporate ladder involves falsely claiming credit for things you haven’t done, being a sycophant, and pursuing other false methods of leadership. However, even in those situations, success is usually short-lived and comes with the stress associated with achievement that goes against the “law of the harvest”, which says that each person ultimately reaps what he sows. It is better to find career success as a giver, a bonafide leader, than through the other alternatives.

Choosing Business Partners From the Ranks of Givers

As I’ve graduated in my career from being an employee to being a successful business owner, I’ve had many “opportunities” to partner with people. Some of these are people who I’ve met through teaching courses about starting online businesses. Often, people will opt for asking to partner with me on a business instead of starting from scratch on their own. That logic seems reasonable. However, there is more often than not a flaw in the approach I’ve seen. In most cases, there is an attitude manifest that says, “What can you do for me?” In fact, it’s been apparent in almost all of the offers I’ve had that the person simply wants me to build the business for them to benefit from, and that there is little or no interest on their part to contribute significantly to the business’ establishment and the difficult work required to get the business off the ground and making money.

In fact, several years ago I had a relative, who’d seen the success of the online businesses my wife and I built, tell me this: If you’ll get the business going to the point where we can both be paid well, I’ll jump in and be a partner. His expectation was that he’d be a 50/50 partner in a business that he made almost no sacrifice to launch.

No, thanks.

Another such person I met at church asked me several times over the course of a couple years I I would consider being partners and building a business with him. Each time he asked, I gave him some homework he could do to demonstrate his work ethic and to show that he had the propensity to build an internet business. Each time we had the conversation, he didn’t follow through. I also observed that his wife, a mother of several young kids, was required to work as much or more than he did to provide financially for the family. Those things were clear evidence that he was not interested in giving, but only taking. Naturally I declined each of his offers to partner.

Benefits of Being a Giver In Other Relationships

Although we may not be aware of this unless we’re paying close attention, in all of our most meaningful relationships (more than just acquaintances, although much of this applies on a smaller scale even with the people we don’t interact with as much), a culture of giving and taking is established. Relationships with friends, family, neighbors, and others involve a flow of giving and taking attitudes and behaviors that can either help relationships or damage them. People want to be around people who give more than they take. People tend to not want so much to be associated with people who take more than they give.

Here’s an example. My daughter took violin lessons from the same teacher, an excellent teacher who was highly trained and certainly qualified in many ways, for almost 8 years. My daughter learned a lot from this teacher, who helped her work her way through the process of becoming an excellent musician.

However, after years of having our daughter learning from this teacher, it became increasingly obvious that there was a damaging relationship that had formed, not just between my daughter and her teacher, but between my wife (who attended each lesson and who oversees our daughter’s music development) and the teacher. There was so much manipulation for my wife and daughter to do things, to pay for things, to attend things that were only beneficial to the teacher that it became obvious that the relationship was almost entirely one-sided. Even the successes my daughter achieved in developing her violin expertise seemed to be regarded as the teacher’s own tribute to herself. Requests were made by this teacher in the form of demands for things that placed an unnecessary amount of inconvenience and stress on my wife and our entire family.

Ultimately, it became time for us to separate our daughter from this woman’s studio entirely. In addition to teaching our children to be givers, we also want to make sure they understand and recognize when abuse is happening so they can intentionally separate themselves from harmful situations.

For this teacher, the addiction to taking more than giving has had a toll. A divorce from a husband who seemed to me like a very patient man, but who’d finally had enough preceded our departure was followed by being fired from an orchestra program that she founded years ago. As sad as this woman’s situation is, it could easily have been remedied by developing habits related to being a giver instead of a taker.

In millions of relationships that follow a similar path to the one I just described, those who give in to the natural tendency to consistently look after #1 instead of being considerate of the needs and expectations of others end up doing almost the exact opposite of what they intend to do. In their quest to secure things, including money, power, and recognition, those who are takers generally lose out on real prosperity.

Which Carpet to Put in a Home for Sale

During the time I’ve been writing this article, my wife and I were faced with an interesting and ironic decision to make. We are selling our home to move back to the South. In our preparations to sell the home, we’ve determined that it’s in dire need of new carpet even to make it presentable to potential buyers.

My wife requested and received quotes from several different carpet companies, including a contractor that works for Costco. The carpet from the Costco contractor ended up being a great deal on premium carpet that has a 30-year warranty, but it’s about $5,000 more expensive than the other bids we received for carpet that, although it’s also very good quality, is simply not close to the quality of the more expensive carpet.

Our thought process went like this…

We will likely be able to get the same price for our home, no matter what kind of carpet we purchase. Purchasing carpet that costs $5,000 more will most likely not contribute directly to being able to get a higher price for our home. However, if we were in that situation, purchasing a somewhat expensive home (in the $700,000 range), we would appreciate it if someone had installed carpet that was at a quality level that matched the rest of the home.

Understanding that it’s best, when possible, to consider what someone else might want (someone who, in this case, we have likely never even met before) and to be generous in making a financial decision, we decided to install the higher priced, better quality carpet, a decision that comes with the satisfaction of knowing we did our best to be generous and considerate of total strangers. In making that decision, we are also confident that in one way or another, that generosity will somehow make its way back to us at some point, maybe a long time in the future, possibly even when this life is over.

The Value of Being Generous

Back when I was a starving college student, working at a $5/hour job for which I was highly under-qualified, and for which I was constantly afraid of being fired because of my lack of technical capability, I often though to myself how nice it would be to not have to scrape by and to be financially stable, even wealthy. I also remember thinking that if I ever became wealthy, how great it would be to share that wealth through being generous with my time and money.

Fast forward 20 years since that time. I’ve had a lot of success as a business owner. I also recognize that none of my businesses were built by my own work ethic (combined with my wife, who is my business partner) alone, or without an infinite amount of help from others, including people who contributed directly and going as far out of the influence circle as those who have made contributions to the development of modern day computers, the internet, Google, social media platforms, and other elements that comprise most of the structure of my online businesses.

Recognizing that I have many people to be thankful to for my own financial success, I often feel the need to be generous. I’ve found that instinct to be very rewarding. Over the years, as it became apparent that the models I’d discovered for building wealth were legitimate, and that they worked well, I’ve had the chance to mentor lots of people who have sought for the same income opportunities, along with the flexibility I’ve had to work from home, to travel with my family, and to ultimately create my own prosperous version of the American Dream.

Every time I am generous, even in situations where I know that the generosity won’t be appreciated or even recognized, I have seen blessings (financial and in other currencies) follow. I believe that the very act of generosity shows God that you’re grateful for and recognize His hand in your life, and that there are lots of intangibles for which it is difficult to measure cause/effect relationships, but that are certainly handed down as a bundle based upon one’s commitment to being generous.

The financial realization of one of these came to me just this past week. Several weeks ago, I received a notice from a former partner and fellow owner of a tech startup called Nanobox that the company was being sold to a larger company (Digital Ocean) that I needed to provide some information to him relative to the sale so that my ownership could be purchased as part of the transaction. I left working for Nanobox two years ago after spending nine months as their Chief Marketing Officer, essentially for free.

When I left the company, I essentially wrote off my ownership (about 1% of the shares of the company) as being worthless, and I never expected to see anything come of it. In fact, in the back and forth exchanging data as I responded to his requests, I asked if he could tell me how much my percentage of the deal would be so that I could determine whether it was worth my time and effort to gather what was needed. [I happened to be on a vacation with my wife at the time the information was being requested.] I was surprised to find out that I’d be receiving $35,000 to $40,000 out of the sale. What a surprise!

I told my wife that things like that experience tend to happen to us undoubtedly in part because of the commitment we’ve made in our family to always give back, to be generous with our time, our talents, and our wealth.

Can a Person Change from Being a Taker to a Giver?

All of this talk about the benefits of being a giver and the hazards of being a taker would lead one to ask the question, “Is it possible to change from one to the other?”

I believe the answer to that question is undoubtedly, “Yes!” Just as anyone can use their free will and the gift of choice to change from poor habits, bad behavior, and a negative countenance into a better person, changing your nature from being a taker to a giver is possible.

I’m the first to admit (my kids and wife would be the second through eighth) that there are too many times when I take more than I give in various situations. Becoming a giver is a continuous process, but it requires a person to first of all recognize poor habits of taking and consciously determine to change from those habits. In religious terms, we call this repentance. It starts with feeling godly sorrow for consequences of the bad we do, in this case specifically taking instead of giving, and determining to make a change.

Finding a mentor who can help you change your behaviors and modeling the example of one who is a giver are ways of making that change.

I have found that assertively becoming more religious, more prayerful, more thoughtful will also help make the change.

This quote, written by James Talmage in a book called Jesus the Christ, describes the observant behavior of the one Giver who we could all stand to emulate:

He lived the simple life, at peace with His fellows, in communion with His Father, thus increasing in favor with God and men. As shown by His public utterances after He had become a man, these years of seclusion were spent in active effort, both physical and mental. Jesus was a close observer of nature and men. He was able to draw illustrations with which to point His teachings from the varied occupations, trades and professions; the ways of the lawyer and the physician, the manners of the scribe, the Pharisee and the rabbi, the habits of the poor, the customs of the rich, the life of the shepherd, the farmer, the vinedresser and the fisherman—were all known to Him. He considered the lilies of the field, and the grass in meadow and upland, the birds which sowed not nor gathered into barns but lived on the bounty of their Maker, the foxes in their holes, the petted house dog and the vagrant cur, the hen sheltering her brood beneath protecting wings—all these had contributed to the wisdom in which He grew, as had also the moods of the weather, the recurrence of the seasons, and all the phenomena of natural change and order.

This quote is one that I’ve referred to many times as I check myself and take personal assessments in regards to my progress at becoming more of a giver and less of a taker.

I hope my experience and advice here help you in your journey as well.

The post Are You a Taker or a Giver? appeared first on The Handbook for Happiness, and Success, and Prosperity Prosperopedia.

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[vincentvelour]

Interview with Martijn Tel of SiriusDecisions: International Expansion Made Easy

Interview with Martijn Tel of SiriusDecisions: International Expansion Made Easy

11/1/2017

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        Martijn Tel is chief financial officer at SiriusDecisions, a research and advisory company that helps B2B organizations grow intelligently. Prior to joining SiriusDecisions, he held financial leadership positions at McGraw-Hill Education, Archipelago Learning (now Edmentum) and Reed Elsevier.

  Martijn has deep experience managing international expansion and operations with his current and prior employers. Our managing editor talked to him about some of the reasons why SiriusDecisions expanded into the APAC region and about some of the benefits of using an experienced third-party to facilitate global payroll, accounting, HR and other services.

      I understand SiriusDecisions decided to expand into another country to better serve your customers. Could you outline the situation, including the process you used for vetting and approving the expansion?

  Our customers are global companies, and they told us they needed us to serve them in APAC. We initially accommodated them by flying back and forth to the region, but it soon became apparent we needed to follow them, or at least seriously look into the prospect of opening an APAC office.

  We began with the APAC expansion’s economic potential. I should add here that this wasn’t our first expansion — we’d had existing activities in the UK for years. We knew from that experience that our global business model worked and that our software IP was capable of serving clients around the world.

  That positive UK experience, along with our APAC-related research and requests from our customers, made the decision to expand into Asia relatively straightforward.

  How did you settle on an APAC target country?

  After an initial round of vetting we narrowed down our targets to Australia and Singapore, in part because of our customer base. Singapore eventually emerged as the clear winner for a number of reasons. To start with, it’s compact and gives us the ability to serve a large number of local customers. In addition, it’s in the middle of the APAC basin and is well-known as an excellent place to establish a hub to serve clients and to market to prospects across the region. It also has a favorable tax climate and always seems to be at or near the top of the World Bank’s ease of doing business rankings.

  Finally, Singapore’s workforce is highly appealing. As in Australia, there are no language barriers in Singapore for English speakers. Furthermore, local workers are not only educated, they’re used to working with European and US companies. For Singaporeans, it’s not a big deal to get on a video conference at midnight local time. This is a personal bias or simply based on my own observations, but asking for that kind of availability in Australia can be on balance a little more challenging. The bottom line is that in my current role with SiriusDecisions, and in some of my former roles, I’ve had great experiences with Singapore-based staff.

  Could you describe some of the formal aspects of SiriusDecisions’ due-diligence process?

  To start with, we made sure that the critical stakeholders and subject-matter experts were involved, from finance to legal. I’m in finance and took the lead on the Singapore expansion, but I partnered with one of our HR leaders. It’s essential to include all interested parties, not only for communication but also to minimize the risk that certain obligations or considerations will fall through the cracks.

  Obtaining accurate budgets during the planning stage is also critical. When we looked at the cost of setting up APAC operations, Radius was instrumental in providing us with sound cost estimates based on their long experience. Budget items included potential expat costs, the cost of renting office space, of fulfilling employer and tax obligations and more.

  This is the fourth time I’ve expanded to Singapore with an employer, so I knew what questions needed to be asked. If you don’t have that kind of experience, a third party expert like Radius is even more critical to understanding your options and what you’re getting into. My ultimate recommendation to expand to Singapore had to be approved by our board, so I needed a sound rationale and to get the budget right, and Radius was very helpful for that.

  Are there any other points you think might be helpful for organizations considering expanding internationally?

  I’ll start with a little context. At SiriusDecisoins, finance works out of our headquarters in the US, and we do all our IT and invoicing from here for our global operations. Given that most software is cloud-based now, most companies will find they can duplicate this model if they want to.

  When we expanded to Singapore, we used a law firm to establish our local legal entity. When it came to everything else, we decided to keep our operations as simple as possible, which is where Radius came in.

  Our Singapore operations are essentially a cost center for us. Radius handles our Singapore payroll and accounting. My thinking is: Why do those things yourself when operating abroad? A third party knows local GAAP, and we don’t have the scale to justify the hiring of a full-time employee knowledgeable in local GAAP, it’s too expensive. It’s more efficient and cost-effective for Radius to take care of that. They also deliver our financials translated into US GAAP and handle our GST [indirect tax] filings in Singapore.

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  The second area where Radius helps is the HR side. Every country has its own payroll withholding obligations, immigration requirements for expats and the like, and we don’t want to hire in-house experts for those. Again, it makes sense to hire an experienced third-party to manage those obligations. Not only does it save you employee costs, it also saves you the considerable burden of keeping up with local labor and immigration laws.

  It’s a little like having your cake and eating it too: You have the operations abroad, and you’re comfortable that the foreign accounting, HR and taxes are being managed right. You’re also getting accounting translated to US GAAP, so consolidated reporting is seamless. If you don’t use a third party, you’ll create a lot of inefficiencies and risk-making mistakes.

  I’ve found that you can make international expansion as hard or as easy as you want. Basically, when expanding, you want to use your strengths and also use the strengths of trusted, experienced third parties. If you think about expansion like this — very practically from the outset — then planning and implementation can be a gratifying experience.

  For us in the finance department, expanding to Singapore was almost a non-event, which is of course how you want it to be. I’m confident our HR team would say much the same thing. We did what we do well, and Radius handled everything else.

  How are your Singapore operations going? Are you pleased with the decision to expand there?

  Things are going extremely well and we’re very happy about the decision. SiriusDecisions has a positive corporate culture, and there’s ample dialogue between our Singapore office and HQ. We’re actually hosting a big customer event in Singapore soon, which will further amplify the importance of our operations there.

  That reminds me of another positive aspect of using Radius: If your expansion doesn’t go as planned, you can always cut the cord and your wind-down costs will be minimized. If you build a complete target-country infrastructure to handle back-office functions by hiring your own employees, by contrast, you’re in a much riskier situation. If things go the other way, and you’re highly successful in the target country, it may make sense to bring some or all of the back-office functions in-house at some point. That’s a big consideration for growth companies.

  For SiriusDecisions, Radius continues to be a great partner, and we’re very pleased with their help. It really does feel like a partnership.

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