Years Tom

Here are some more information for Years Tom:

Some men are extremely jealous and fly into a rage if someone pays the slightest attention to his wife or girlfriend. Sometimes that jealousy can be intense. When did this jealousy start in his life? It could have been in infancy or later, and for reasons known or unknown.

One man, who we will call Allen, had a loving father but a highly critical mother. When he was eleven years old, he caught his mother in bed with her lover. The boy did not tell his father. Tragically, within one week of witnessing his mother's unfaithfulness, the boy's father died in a work-related accident. When Allen reached the dating age, he was obsessive about his girlfriends and he did not like it if a girlfriend even spoke to another guy. Allen is fifty-seven years old now, and single, and he has gone through a couple of wives and many girlfriends. His story shows that a jealous rage will often drive a woman away.

Other boys may have experienced things that later caused a jealous rage when he became a man. He could have been insecure because of the things he learned in childhood. Perhaps there was sibling rivalry in his family and other children received the majority of parental attention, which promoted intense jealousy in the boy at a young age, and he grew up with this type of competition, vying for his parents love and affection. This insecurity could have led the boy into becoming an insecure adult.

Some parents make the sibling rivalry situation even worse than it already is by intentionally giving more positive attention to one or more children, who become their "favorite children", while giving less positive attention, and more negative attention, to their other child/children. This can cause extreme jealousy in the child/children who crave their parents' attention but cannot seem to get it. As a result, they may start to torment the "favorite children", or break their toys, or even physically hurt them.

Jealousy can rear its ugly head in the teenage years. There was a seventeen-year-old young woman, Jessica, who was dating a nineteen-year-old man, Tom, who was extremely jealous. He did not like her to go into the malls because she might stop and talk to another man. It was a fantasy of his, not a fact, that she did or would speak to other men. Jessica took it all in stride, convinced that when Tom saw that she was faithful and loved only him, he would ease up. That didn't happen. The last straw was when Tom and Jessica were driving around in Tom's dad's truck and there was a man walking along the side of the road. By chance, Jessica looked out her window as they passed the man. Tom hit the brakes and slid to the side of the road, and started yelling at Jessica to get out. He called her names and she resolved not to take him back.

Jealousy is usually in the man's fantasy world and not due to incidents in life. Some people falsely believe that if a man is jealous it is because his wife or girlfriend gives him reasons to be jealous. Insecure men may be jealous. It has nothing to do with real events in a man's life.

Can a jealous rage be overcome? Yes, in some cases, but it takes work from both the man and the woman. They have to learn to trust one another and be honest with each other. He has to overcome his basic insecurity about many things in his life. It is not enough for him to tell her not to look at other men, not to talk to other men, not to have anything to do with other men because men are everywhere. Instead, he must work on his own inner feelings of insecurity and rage, discover where they came from, and take steps to stop his behavior.

If you want to learn more about men, how they think and why they behave the way they do, please visit http://www.understandingmen.ca

Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (sson) Q&a: Tom Weakland

SSON: Briefly, can you outline the future of sourcing as you see it? Where’s it going over the next couple of years?

Tom Weakland: Briefly, wow: that’ll be tough! Over the next few years we’ll see more and more smaller deals; we’re going to see a lot more renegotiations; we’re going to see prices tied to various economic indicators, whether it’s currencies, whether it’s inflation rates; we’ll see this notion of “green outsourcing” with people starting to talk of their outsourcers having a carbon-neutral footprint, or needing to have one; and I think we’re going to see a lot more consolidation, and a lot more not being able to distinguish between the big players at all – they’re all going to look exactly the same, they’ll have the same geographic footprint for offering services, and they’ll recruit from the same places. I think you’ll see a lot of those things in the next couple of years.

SSON: Is that what you’ve described previously as the emergence of “global firms”? Because you’ve predicted increased M&A activities over the next few years; how far can that process be taken? Presumably we’re not likely to see a monopoly, or a duopoly?

TW: No, I don’t think it’ll go so far as a duopoly – but I think when it comes to the big firms there’ll be somewhere between five and 10 giant firms who’ll do everything from system integration to pure outsourcing. And then I think there’ll be a whole bunch of second and third tier firms who become more specialized and offer more niche services. It will be just like it was in the US for a long time. When it came to system integration there were 8 big firms that just about everyone turned to. I think we will see something similar with outsourcing. There’ll be 3 or 4 Indian firms, and 2 or 3 US firms, and maybe a Chinese firm, and maybe a European firm – there’s going to be a small number.

SSON: At a conference a couple of weeks ago you said “India remains unsurpassed – for now” yet you’ve just said you expect there to be just as many US firms involved in future. Can you explain a bit about what you think India’s role is in this ongoing development?

TW: OK, let me clarify. Even the big US firms that are going to be competing with the Wipros and the TCSs, they’re going to have huge Indian footprints. So the majority of their outsourcing will still be done in India for the next few years. India has kind of driven the outsourcing boom, and I think they’re still driving a lot of what I would call the innovation in establishing new locations; a lot of big firms are going into China now to take advantage of the wages and the economy and the education levels, so I think they’re seeing that they can’t stay focused on India forever.

SSON: You’ve repeatedly highlighted what you see as a lack of innovation in sourcing. Can you explain a bit about the institutional obstacles in the way of innovation – and is there any way we can overcome them?

TW: Companies are being innovative in the way they deliver their core outsourcing services; they’re not necessarily being innovative in the business transformation domain. There’re a couple of reasons I think why outsourcing has not led to business innovation. First, the buyers – the people who actually do the outsourcing – can never figure out how to manage it effectively enough to be able to get past the commoditization mindset where they can start thinking about innovation in outsourcing. That’s part one. Part two is the outsourcing firms themselves are not necessarily incented to think about innovation, to think about doing less with more, to think about business transformation because they make their money on scale. And innovation typically runs counter to scale. Innovation helps you to reduce that scale. So they’re not really incented to be innovative.

SSON: Do you think that’s an institutional part of the way we do business now and do you think future developments will force things to change there?

TW: I think sourcing is not going to drive business innovation. I think the poor economy that it feels like we’re in and heading into is going to drive a lot of innovation. Sourcing will be a part of that but sourcing won’t drive it.

SSON: You’ve spoken about green outsourcing and how that’s going to be a driver. Tell us why you think this is going to be important.

TW: It’s not that important today, but I think it’s going to become more and more visible. There’s a trend at least here in the US about green organization: conserving paper, conserving electricity, thinking about how far we commute and travel and just being more green, being more environmental. And as organizations become more green, and start thinking about being carbon-neutral, they’re going to push that thinking into their key relationships and partnerships and start asking the same of them; they already are for example building things into contracts about “How can I be more carbon-neutral? How do I minimize the amount of paper that I use? How do I ensure that I’m recycling?” Things like that.

SSON: And you say this process is already happening in terms of the structure of contracts now?

TW: It’s just starting, yes.

SSON: OK, finally; you produced a paper recently on healthcare and the US election race, so let’s talk politics for a second. What do you think has been the impact on sourcing of the election campaigns so far, if any, and what will be the consequences of a victory by any of the remaining candidates?

TW: That’s a really good question, and to answer it I have to go back four years to the Bush-Kerry election. Senator Kerry came out with a very strong, negative stance on outsourcing – offshoring in particular – he was basically saying that he would tax organizations that sent jobs overseas. That was a big campaign plank and the effect of this was that there was, say, a twelve-month period in the US when companies really really slowed down their outsourcing efforts. They stopped making decisions and took a "wait and see" attitude. Now we haven’t seen in this election outsourcing becoming a big campaign plank on either side, the Republican or Democratic. I think that once on the Democratic side they finalize who the candidate is going to be, I think you’ll start to see that become a little bit of a differentiator. So I think you’ll see Senator Obama – or Senator Clinton – talking about keeping more jobs in America, and saving more jobs – I think it’ll become more of a campaign plank. We’re already seeing a slowdown in outsourcing in the US that I think will carry through the rest of the election – it’ll carry through until January now. People are putting off making decisions, slowing down decisions, certainly not making big announcements; I think that’ll continue through the election.

About the Author

More Articles: Want to receive more articles like this? Have a tip, learning or case study you want to share?
Join our growing community of shared services and outsourcing professionals.
Sign up to our eNewsletters and ensure you receive the latest news, articles and features from our growing global community... Find out more at www.ssonetwork.com or email enquire@ssonetwork.com

What's the average weight of an adult (eight years) tom cat?

I just weighed my cat in a little bit of an unconventional way.

Oh wow. I don't think so.
My cat only weighs 3kgs, or less. But she's a she, and she's nine, and a runt So yeah..
My male cat weighs quite alot though and he's 4, so it could be right.
Not sure.

Hotel School Alum Tom Thomas Advises MSU Students, Named Honorary Faculty
When Alumnus and Visiting Leader Tom Thomas (BA ’78) returned to campus in February to address students in The School of Hospitality Business at MSU, they heard from someone who has done it all.

Thanks for visiting!