October, 2007

Skills….skills…skills, how to keep them?

One of the challenges faced as a manager in any firm is how to find and
retain employees with the right combination of skills.

The global demand for manpower is overwhelming. Countries such as the US,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the European Union are competing for the
same combination of skills. One of the major providers of manpower, India, is
facing its own shortage of skills in certain areas and many Indians are
opting to remain at home where they are now receiving greater salaries than
previously.

Gone are the days when a manager or a firm has the final word in an
employee’s career. Today, an employee with the right skill mix, can compete
for positions at a global scale, where the demand is high and the
remuneration is competitive, as in today’s climate of employment suggests
that people can now map and forecast their own career path.

Countries who fail to retain their work force will face the challenge of
sustaining its growth.

As managers, you need to learn how to retain your top performers. These are
some of the areas you could focus upon, to give your employee a sense of job
security:

1- continuous job training
2- continuous job performance review
3- immediate pay raise for good performance
4- if you have any foreign employees within your team, ensure that you action
any legal matters in a speedy manner, as one of the top reasons for a high
worker turn-over, is that the employee does not feel secure about their
future in a new country
5- we are living in a world where borders are disappearing and we now discuss
manpower on a global market rather than a local one. The world employment
market awaits the talent you are willing to forego, it is in your best
financial and technical competitiveness to cultivate and educate your
existing employees in the culture of your firm, as you have already invested
in their future. It makes good business sense to hold on to the talent you
have created.

What is Business Process Management?

According to the free encyclopedia site, Wikipedia, Business Process Management is “a field of knowledge at the intersection between management and information technology, encompassing methods, techniques and tools to design, enact, control, and analyze operational business processes involving humans, organizations, applications, documents and other sources of information.”

Why is the field of Business Process Management important? According to an article on an IT trade site techrepublic.com, the field of Business Process Management will be one of the hottest 10 careers choices in 2008.

For Business managers, like myself, with a background in IT, Business Process Management is an interesting career choice. It combines my passion for management with the latest tools in the field of IT to deliver the best solutions for my client.

From my experience working for various IT companies, some tech managers had difficulty understanding the business process. They would deliver technical solutions that had little or no business value.

I recall working for a firm which went bankrupt due to the CEO although having a heavy background in IT had little knowledge of the business process, and another firm that lost contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and the opportunity to enter a new business market, for the same reason.

So if you are in the field of IT, investing time in learning business and management skills will be time well spent.

Major Management awards

As managers, we strive for excellence in our work, we look for the best ways to deliver the final product and our daily struggle to come up with new ways to manage keeps our job exciting and challenging.

With my daily routine to browse the net looking for new methods and ideas to supplement my experience in management, I came across few management awards which are awarded for excellence in management.

I believe it’s a good practice tool to pick on one of these awards and go into more details about the criteria of achieving such award and compare your company readiness for such award.

1-MALCOLM BALDRIGE NATIONAL QUALITY AWARD.

This is the only award that I had time to visit their website and look closely at the idea behind the award and the requirements to qualify to enter to win the award.

I am thinking about implementing their quality management review at the small firm where I work, no intentions about wining any prize but use the award site as learning tool.

You can visit their website at: http://www.quality.nist.gov/

2-THE EUROPEAN QUALITY AWARDS.
You can visit their website at: http://www.eoq.org/SMEAwardsMoreInfo.html

3- THE DEMING PRIZE.
You can visit their website at:
http://www.deming.org/demingprize/index.html

4- THE CANADA AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE.
You can visit their website at:
http://www.nqi.ca/caeawards/

5- AKAO PRIZE.
You can visit their website at:
http://www.qfdi.org/akaoprize.htm

For more information about these awards and many more, you can read the full article at: http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Log-Mar/Management-Awards.html

Advantages and disadvantages of managing a small firm

Managing a small firm is nothing like managing at corporate level with hundreds or even thousands of employees.

Imagine moving from a large metropolitan city to live in the country side, you will miss many services that you were accustomed to. The dry cleaner is not down the road, the major grocery store is about 20 min away, it may take few days before a plumber would show up, the broadband speed may not be at level you feel comfortable with, etc, etc.

The above scenario, may be exaggerated a bit, shows how I felt when I started to work for a small company. Although technology making it easier to work and move around, I found many disadvantages of working for a small firm.

1-Lake of good infrastructure: good infrastructur such as (ample office space, latest hardware and software, well written manuals, long term vision and goals, etc) may not always be available in small firm environment.
2-Constant changes in vision and in goals: in some small firms, change in vision and in goals is so prevailing it makes it impossible for managers to put in place a long term strategy.
3-Limited budget: as a manager in a small firm, you may have to work with a small budget which will limit your ability to solve problems and create new strategies
4-Lake of experience: since you will be working with a small number of people, the total over all experience of the firm may be limited and in certain cases you will have to look outside the firm for help.

After I talked about some of the disadvantages of working for small firm, are there any good incentives to work for a small firm? The answer is yes.

1-Limited hierarchy: decisions can be reached quickly since there is a limited number of people involved in the decision making process
2-Ease of communication: in a small firm, you almost can meet every on the payroll in one day , you will have more time to talk to each of your staff members
3-Your ideas will be recognized: if you come up with a good solution, your idea will resonate throughout the company and you will be recognized quickly.
4-Challenging environment: if you love challenges and want to know what it means to think on your feet, than a small company may provide you with that challenge.

If you like to see dreams come true, than I believe working for small firm may grant you your wish. After all, many multi-national corporations we see today started as a small business.

Managing in a different culture Part 4

As I continue on with my last article on, Managing in a different culture, I need to mention that not every solution that has been introduced so far is working flawlessly, there are still many improvements that need to be made, but after all that what management is all about, “ the continues struggle for perfection.”

The last two items on my to-do list were:

• No company policy: there was no policy regarding (hiring, firing, compensation, vacation, sick leave, tardiness, etc.)
This is one of the most difficult areas to work with when you are managing in a different culture. I am having a hard time understanding the excuses I hear when someone is late or doesn’t show up for work. The norms here in Saudi Arabia with the company I am working for is that when someone is late or doesn’t show up for work is that the company has to call the employee and find out why he didn’t show up for work and than the employee may or may not answer the phone and the answering machines are not widely used. I had to come up with quick fix for this important issue, so I decided to have a quick meeting with the two managers that I work with who I can depend on and we decided to have each of the two managers to handle the work of any late or an absent employee until we find a permanent fix with for issue is we develop more concrete company policy. I realized that developing a policy is a long term process and it can not be done in a short period of time.

• No accounting system: the company had no accounting system, only an excel sheet with expenses and income.

When I started to work on this issue, I was told by the general manger of an accounting software that the company purchased but has not been used since no one had time to learn the software and implement it.
The software is excellent and the interface is both in Arabic and in English and it was developed for the local market.

The software features include:

1-inventory management
2-fixed asset management
3-sales management
4-budgeting
5-account receivable
6-account payable
7-employee’s salary management

The software is very comprehensive and it includes more features than mentioned above.

We already put the software in use.

As I conclude my series of articles of Managing in a different culture, I will continue targeting this issue since it present a unique challenge of management and learning a new culture.

Managing in a different culture part 3

As I continue with my journey of reshaping this IT firm, I gain more understanding of the difficult management issues that faces small firms, which are good materials for another article.

Here I continue with my pervious posts on the changes that I am working on.

• No tracking system: there was no adequate tracking system of the work done by the employees or the type of service delivered to the clients.
• No follow ups: clients would wait extended periods of time waiting to hear back from the staff regarding technical help or a service that was not delivered on time.
• No follow ups on completed work orders: there was an excessive build up of fixed systems that needed to be returned to the clients.

I resolved the above issues by hiring a programmer to design new tracking system for every work delivered by our technicians, completed work orders, and not completed work orders.
The new system covers:

1-Name of the technician
2-Type of service the technician working on
3-Type of service requested
4-Time the repair order came in and the time the service was delivered
5-Service fees
6-Full client contact information
7-The system must enable the management to run queries based on client data or based on technician work performance.
8-Completed work orders
9-Open work orders

The new system will:

1-Will give management bird eye view over daily activities
2-Will help in future marketing and client retention efforts
3-Will help in measuring technicians performance
4-Will contain a database of clients data, work completed, and type of services requested

Although they may be many software programs in the market that will deliver the above needed services, we had to design our own software because when I came to the company we were not able to find any software in the local market that would fit our needs, or we couldn’t fine software in the Arabic language.

Now we are at the implementation stage of this software.

Managing in a different culture Part 2

Since my last blog entry, I am overwhelmed with ever changing circumstances that make having a solid plan to work with a tough task. Since I started to work with this firm about two months ago, I spent most of my time with the staff, learning and leading. The staff I work with is responsive to my inputs and they are willing to take on new challenges, but only if I am constantly pressuring them. Having spent considerable time with the staff, didn’t leave me time to work on more pressing issues, such as (securing new contracts, marketing, budgeting, facing new challenges, quality control, etc.)

In my last blog I mentioned seven areas where I wanted to see changes:

• Absence of general management: I resolved this issue by taking two steps:

1-assigning the duties of the general manager to the most senior and experienced
Staff member.
2-having a weekly meeting (more than once a week if necessary) with the general manager and his immediate assistance.

I have made may expectations very clear to the general manager and his immediate assistance, I have micro managed them and coached them well enough in order for them to handle daily management issues that don’t require the attention of the upper management. As a project Manager, I had to keep in mind to always have my replacement be ready to move in as I move out. Someone in the staff must be ready to take charges of my current responsibilities in order for me to move to the next task where my skills are needed.

• The compensation system was not adequate: the staff members had no clear idea of the compensation system, the pay worked on standards that would change frequently. I had a separate meeting with each employee to hear their point of view on a fair pay system. They didn’t have a clear idea on how they wanted to be paid. With the current system, there was no clear policy on tardiness or no show no call issues nor did they have time reporting system. When an employee is late or doesn’t show up for work, a brief meeting follows with the manager which usually results in a pay deduction from the employee’s salary, the same rules apply for good work or overtime, when an employee does a good work or works overtime, a meeting follows with the manager on duty and usually concludes with extra pay for that work period.

The above system is not practical, it doesn’t have control system built in it, and the management doesn’t have a fair and balanced system to use to reward or punish employees. The employees wanted a pay rise and they wanted to work on per hour pay system. Since the company didn’t have any record keeping system, I was not able to authorize and immediate pay increase. The employees didn’t have a clear idea about how hourly pay system works, they wanted to get paid per hour and at the same time wanted to keep the benefits of the salary based system. In Saudi Arabia, per hour pay system in not widely used, so many workers may have heard about it, but they don’t know the details of the system.

I made up my mind to use the per hour pay system, and on the meeting with the staff, I explained to them how the system will work, I sensed a bit of disappointment of the benefits they will lose with the new system., but I had to stick with my plans since with the old system, there was so much productivity loss due to tardiness and no show for work..

As thank you gesture, I issued a pay rise to all staff in order to ease the transaction to the new pay system.

The new pay system:

1-workers, excluding management, will be paid based on per hour pay.
2-there will be overtime pay for work done outside the normal business hours.
3-there will be performance review every three month and any pay rise will be based on the performance report.
4-there will be bounces giving on celebrated public holidays, in Saudi Arabia and in most of the Muslim world, that would be after the month of fasting (the holy month of Ramadan).

We will see how this new pay system will work. See you later as I continue my work trip

Managing in a different culture

As I get more and more involved in the daily management activities of a foreign IT firm, I feel the constant need to change my plans. At my first meeting with the staff, I made it very clear that things will have to change and our current operation is not even at 20% of what we could achieve.

Everyone at the meeting agreed about the need for a change and the need to move ahead with a new plan and a new attitude. The major issues we discussed in the meeting were:

• Absence of general management: there was no general manager in charge of day to day operation of the company, couple of staff members were acting as part time managers which created good deal of confusion for both the staff and the clients.
• The compensation system was not adequate: the staff members had no clear idea of the compensation system, the pay worked on standards that would change frequently.
• No tracking system: there was no adequate tracking system of the work done by the employees or the type of service delivered to the clients
• No follow ups: clients would wait extended periods of time waiting to hear back from the staff regarding technical help or a service that was not delivered on time.
• No follow ups on completed work orders: there was an excessive build up of fixed systems that needed to be returned to the clients.
• No company policy: there was no policy regarding (hiring, firing, compensation, vacation, sick leave, tardiness, etc.)
• No accounting system: the company had no accounting system, only an excel sheet with expenses and income.

For a moment, you would think “how in the world a company could run with all the above mentioned deficiencies”, will surprisingly enough, the company is doing well business wise, but thing can not run like this if the company want to really stand in the market.

In my next blog, I will go into more details about how to fix the above mentioned points. I will try to incorporate readers’ feedback into my solution