An employee who won’t listen

What do you do with a good employee who will not listen to your instructions? I have a good secretary, she has a pleasant personality and good with clients, but she always make her own decisions on areas where she must not do that. She is not a team player, she likes to take matters on her own hands and move things around without realizing that other people work or schedule would be affected by that.

What would you do in this situation? Do you fire her?

I think people who like to take matters on their on hands could be a good asset to the company if management realized their potentials and give them the chance to prove themselves. These types of employees find it hard to wait for someone to make decisions for them, they like to move fast and finish their work and usually they clash with other employees.

Skills set for Future Managers

Some of the skills I think that will be really valuable for not only future managers, but even for current managers who like to work in a dynamic work place.

IT background
Solid management background
Financial background
Cultural awareness
World affairs awareness
know a foreign language
Team player
Willing to learn new things
Willing to re-locate
Have an entrepreneurial mind

All the above skills set I experienced at one time or another while changing jobs and working in different countries.

Today’s work place is filled with challenges and excitements and for a person to be a successful manager, I think he/she must have the above skills.

Passwords must become things of the past

In a pervious post, I wrote about the growing problems users have with remembering and figuring new passwords for the ever growing websites that require passwords from users.

An analysis of over 32 millions passwords discovered that over 290,000 users have the password of “123456.”

It also found the most popular passwords to be:

1. 123456 - 290,731 users
2. 12345 - 79,078 users
3. 123456789 - 76,790 users
4. Password - 61,958 users
5. Iloveyou - 51,622 users
6. Princess - 35,231 users
7. Rockyou - 22,588 users
8. 1234567 - 21,726
9. 12345678 - 20,553
10. abc123 - 17,542
See the full report at : http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/itdojo…

I think it’s time for a new and creative way to register users on-line without asking the user to chose a new password, re-type the password and the password must be at least 6 characters long and it must includes letters, number and some special characters, that is just too MUCH. I cant recall how many times I closed the browser while registering online when I was not able to come up with password that was good enough for the system to register me.

IT jobs outlook for 2010

IT industry experts predict that 2010 will see some slight improvement in hiring and in spending which I, personally, tend to believe.

I don’t, entirely, base my predictions on experts’ opinions or industry outlooks, but I also take into account my daily work with the industry.

Demands will be strong in the following areas of IT:

1- IT Security
2- Cloud Computing
3- Networking

Why? The growing usage of the internet applications such as (on-line transactions, social websites, on-line collaborations, remote file access, online storage, remote applications access etc) will keep the demand for IT security, Cloud Computing and networking strong.

Fatal Management Mistakes Part one

Working in several small businesses over the years, I became well acquainted with major management mistakes that usually drives these companies out of business or cause them to lose a great deal of revenue.

Mistake number one and the most fatal one is: the owner or the founder of the company has all the decisions making power. In 3 companies where I worked, the owner was not qualified to lead the company, he established the company and put the original idea to work but he was not capable of managing the day to day business activities, many bad decisions were taken by the owner which eventually, in some cases, led to bankruptcy.

Mistake number two is: hiring un-experienced fresh out of collage employees to cut costs. I still remember how my manager in one of the IT startups didn’t even have two years experience in management. Needless to say, that company didn’t survive for long.

Mistake number three is: ignoring employees complaints; since the owner or the general manager have no adequate experience in management, they usually ignore employees complaints and always assume everything will be fine only to find out at the most critical time that some of the best employees are leaving the company.

Mistake number four is: cutting corners, because small businesses are always looking for ways to cut cost, they play it cheap (they buy cheap hardware, host their website and e-mails with un-known providers, don’t have good insurance coverage for their operation, no back up policy, etc).

Fatal Management Mistakes Part two

Mistake number five is: ad-hoc management style, basically, every decision is made on the spot, there is no long term planning, employees and even customers have no clue where the company is heading.

Mistake number six is: having high expectations from employees who are not well experienced in their fields which usually lead to sub-standards quality.

Mistake number seven is: ignoring problems or pretending that they are not there and hoping that they will go away after a while. This may sound really immature, but I have really seen it.

Mistake number eight is: coming up with easy fixes for serious problems or just having temporary solutions, they move resources around to temporary fix a problem.

Mistake number nine: the owner or the management assume that their company is the best company to work for but fail to see the standards of the industry and cant see where their company is positioned.

These are some of the most fatal mistakes I have seen over the years, most of these mistakes can be easily fixed if the owner or the management is willing to accept the changes.

Thoughts in Micro Management

I am a strong advocate of MACRO Management; I believe management role must be to guide rather than to dictate. In a well managed company, management must clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each employee and then let him/her work freely.

In my daily work as a general manager I try to keep some distance from my employees and let them work with little intervention from the management, but this style proved to be hard to implement in this part of the world (Qatar).

Both management and employees are still struggling with the issues of power and trust, the management wants to keep all decision making power and employees feel that there is no trust bestowed on them.

As someone who has been working in this region for almost two years now, I can see clearly that Micro management is the style of management that is hard to change in the near future to two main reasons:

1- Management always feel that employees can not make the right decisions if they left alone
2- Employees (for various cultural reasons) don’t have the confidence to make decisions even when they are giving the chance.

It is hard to establish trust in this type of situations and management can not risk decisions making power to employees who are still look struggling with the issue of self-confidence.

How many on-line security threats average users have to deal with?

I am was reading an interesting and very informative article on “On-line Security Threats” and how to guard your system and your date while online. Even as in IT person, my head got dizzy reading about the all necessary steps one needs to take to have safe browsing.

Some of the phrases on that article:
“Do you know how to guard against scareware? How about Trojan horse text messages? Or social network data harvesting? Shortened URLs, facebook privacy settings, web snooping, lock down your BIOS, rouge WI-FI hotspots, etc.”

How could an average user know what “scareware”or “Torjan horse text messages” are? Let alone expecting the user to know what “Shortened URLs” mean.

Now look at the steps “as the article suggests” users have to take and implement to be safe online.

Use a Twitter client
Install a URL-preview plug-in
Check your Facebook privacy settings
Don’t accept any friend requests from strangers
Share with caution
Beware of scams sent from ‘friends
Do business with companies you trust
Use private browsing
Update your browser
Encrypt your data
Use stronger passwords
Lock down your BIOS
Use a recovery service
Verify the network’s name
Use stronger encryption
Encrypt your backup data
Install all security updates

Can we expect an average internet user to keep up with all above? I think jobs in IT security will be secure for many years to come.

Entrepreneurial Manager

First time I heard this term or really paid attention to it was few days ago when we had a managers meeting, a new manager who is in the process of joining our company suggested that all managers must work as “Entrepreneurial Managers” rather than “Functional Managers.”

An Entrepreneurial Manager is not in it for salary only, he has a vision to take the company forward. These types of managers could fail in companies where there is a strict central management, they would not be allowed to innovate freely.

Management books are filled with stories of companies who made it out of bankruptcy through innovations and through empowering managers with decisions making power.

The Importance of Management-Employees Meetings

Having regular meeting with employees may be a common practice in many companies, but in many small businesses where I worked this doesn’t happen on a regular basis.

I manage a small company and I usually see all my employees everyday, but that is not a substitute for a regular meetings with them. Each time I arrange a meeting and have an open dialog with my employees, I come across various issues that need to be addressed.

Working in a small company and to be able to chit chat with your employees everyday doesn’t mean they will communicate everything to you.

In my last formal meeting with my employees, I found out some serious issues with:

1-Lack of motivations
2-Not happy with pay system
3- Need to have more benefits
4- Need to know more about company’s future plans
5- Need to feel more secure about their jobs

Unfortunately, many small businesses fail to understand to importance of regular meetings with staff. In my last meeting with my staff, I came up with some easy solutions for their problems, but if it was not for the meeting, I would have never found out or I would only find out when someone hands me his/her resignation.