March, 2008

Think Big by thinking small

As I enjoy working with and managing small businesses, I see a great deal of opportunities within the small business communities.
Many small business are flexible and ready to explore new ideas, one of the most powerful elements of the United States economy is within its small business community.
Developing countries started to realize the important contributions small businesses make to the local economy, although some are still far from providing the real support small businesses need.

In countries like Japan, various electronic parts manufacturing is giving to small businesses by giant corporations, this step helps in supporting the local economy in addition to creating more jobs at local levels.
Some of the benefits local communities can get from supporting small businesses:
1- Boost the entrepreneurial spirit within the local community which lead to more innovations
2- Small business owners are aware of their local communities problems and how to solve them
3- Since setting up and operating small business takes shorter time, the creation of jobs is almost immediate
4- World’s most successful companies started as a small business

So if you have the spirit to innovate and the desire to make it on your own, start as small business, you may get lucrative job offers from the corporate world, but your ideas may not take off in the corporate environment, only at small business level you will have the flexibility and freedom to innovate. If your local environment is not supporting, than fly with your ideas to more supporting environment.

Cut and Paste Customer Service

Have you ever experienced cut and past customer service? This is what will you get if you try to e-mail a company or a government agency asking for more information. The advancement in websites use led many customer service departments to refer their customers to the company’s website for more information.

No doubt the web is a great tool for customers to get answer for many of their questions about a service or a company. But as customers are encouraged to send e-mails if they need any more information that are not available on the website, the customer service representative are relying more and more on sending cut and paste replies back.

Recently, I have sent few e-mails to some government agencies requesting specific information on certain issues, I stated in my e-mails that I am requesting more information because I couldn’t find the information I wanted on their website or I needed more clarification on what I have read on their website.

Although I have sent detailed e-mail requesting very specific information, all I got is either automated e-mail replies or cut and paste replies. The customer service agent just cut and paste what he or she thinks is the answer for my questions from their website.

The reply basically sent in a way that makes you feel stupid, you feel like they are telling you “go and check our website stupid.”
I became certain that they don’t read the e-mails when I sent few e-mails where stated that I visited their websites, but I didn’t find the information I was looking for.

As the world moves closer each day to information and service based economies, we still have some customer service gurus who think everyone out there is stupid and doesn’t read instructions…very sad…

Customer service ….will it ever improve!!!!!!!!!

I am a person who, by his profession and life style, has to deal a lot with different types of customer service agents, either in person or on the phone. Because of my traveling, I came to deal with many customer services representatives in few countries.
Dealing with customer service representatives could range from simple inquiries such as asking about flight information or asking for directions to serious matter such as asking information about investment and immigration laws.

As a professional, I would never consult with a customer service representative on serious matters, but what a person could do when the only way to reach for a higher ranking official in a company or in a government agency is through a customer service agent.

While traveling, I needed to get some information about investment laws in a certain country plus I needed to get information about immigration laws of another country. On the first instance, I walked into the office of the investment authority to get first hand information about their new investment laws. Unfortunately the ill-trained agent was talking to 2-3 people at the same time about important investment laws; he talked to me briefly and gave me his number to call back if I needed any help. Honestly, I never called him back although the information that I needed were crucial, but the way this agent was dealing with the clients didn’t not encourage me to seek him for any professional advice. On the second instance, I needed to apply for a certain type of visa for a particular country, before I apply for the visa, I have called the country’s embassy few times asking for information and each time I talk with a customer service representative I get a run around and when I requested to talk to a visa official, the answer is always “that is not possible.”

Why would a company or a government agency hire customer service representatives and not train them well or give them enough authority to make decisions?

Dealing with customer service agents in various industries and being a customer service agent myself at one point in my life, I can tell that customer service agents’ job performance could never improve beyond certain level. Unfortunately, companies are not welling to invest more in training of their customer service agents, nor the job has the appeal and future job security that would encourage the agents to focus on improving their job skills.
When the customer service agent gives the client the wrong information, who will be responsible of the consequences? It happened to me few times!!!!!!!

Teaching quality management in schools

As I continue with my traveling, I keep asking myself the same question over and over “why people can not use simple quality management skills to improve their lives?” I am not talking here about quality management at corporate level, no I am talking about quality management in everyday life, how people can use simple life management skills to relief their sufferings.

Why people cannot understand that by respecting traffic laws, they will get to their destinations faster and with less energy used. Driving in some cities in the developing world is a nightmare, a daily struggle for the commuters. No one respect traffic laws, no police or the police force is not sufficient to enforce traffic laws. As I commute daily in some of these cities I ask myself “why they cannot see what I can see? why they cant see the obvious?”

Struggling with traffic is only one of the difficulties people in major cities in the developing world face in their daily lives. Watching how people live in this part of the world, led me to make one conclusion, spending millions of dollars or even billions of dollars in projects to improve the lives of the people in the developing world will lead to limited results.

While in most of the developed countries, school age children learn the first basic skills in quality management, “to form lines, to respect traffic laws, to keep their school and neighborhood clean, to eat healthy food etc.”, I have never noticed these types of skills being taught at schools in developing countries, or at least even if these skills are taught to the children, they have no place to practice them nor they are encouraged by the outside world to practice these skills.

So the governments and people in general need to understand that to improve their quality of life, quality management skills must be start at early ages with school children and than it must be reinforced by the society at large. Spending billions of dollars in building better infrastructures must be accompanied by developing quality skills in school children.

Is America losing its competitive advantage?

Is America really losing its competitive advantage? What is the real advantage America has over other nations of the world? Many concerned politicians and business leaders worry about the possibility of America losing its competitive advantage in science and in technology to other nations, they talk about the need for the American educational system to lure more students into majoring in science and in technology.

Does America’s competitive advantage really stem from America’s mastery of science and technology?
As an individual who lived and experienced three different cultures (including the American culture), I can say that America’s competitive advantage stems from the ingenuity of the American people and the ability of the American people to invent and tackle challenges.

The spirit to innovate is what gives America its competitive advantage and as long as this spirit is well woven into the American culture, America will lead the world in innovations and in technology.

Quality Management…..a hot filed in India

Before my current visit to India, I have read, as most of us, about the rapid growth of India. The mood here, for both government and people, is happy and optimistic. Development is taking place in every corner and people have more money to spend.
This is a great time for any consultant/firm looking for global opportunities to enter the Indian market.

I saw many opportunities within the service sectors that can be taken by even small firms:

1- Professional cleaning and sanitary services: in most places and cities that I visited in India, there is a huge problem with cleaning. Building and street cleaning is a major issue in India. The initial investment to start such a business is really small; the business blue print can be based on US cleaning services.
2- Independent technical support service: as the middle class grows in India, so does its purchasing power. The demand for computers and other electronic devices will be strong for years to come and with it will come the demand for quality customer and technical services. A vast and populous country such as India will offer limitless opportunities for all sizes of businesses, from small independent consultants to big service firms.
3- Educational consulting: again with the rapid growth of the middle class in India, the demand by parents to get their children the best education is at its peak in India. Most parents and perspective students are really not aware of education opportunities available to them.
These are few business opportunities I have noticed almost immediately while visiting India.

Why we need to align IT with Business?

Lately, I have been following discussions on various blogs about the need to align IT with Business.
In college I have majored in Management Information Systems, a field of study where the focus is in bridging the gaps between IT and Various Units in an organization. But why IT is always the focus when there is a conflict in the Organization? Why there is even a need to align IT with business? Why IT department cannot be a unit in itself? Why there are always discussions at corporate level about the need for IT to align itself with the rest of the Business units?

IT is a separate field of knowledge that has its own standards and procedures. Many articles I have read about this subject suggested the need for top mangers and decision makers to educate themselves about various IT functions within the organization.

IT department can function on its own just like any other departments within the organization. We don’t often hear the need for the Marketing department to align itself with the rest of the organization.

Many none-technical managers and employees feel intimidated by the technical aspects of today’s technical world and they feel as if IT people are not really part of the team so we hear the calls for the need to align IT with Business.
IT is a very dynamic and ever changing field, the call to align IT with business by educating managers and top decisions makers about various technologies is not practical, and it will require constant learning by managers.

IT department head should be a person with knowledge in both technical fields as well as various fields that make up modern organizations. When I majored in Management Information Systems, I didn’t really know what I got myself into; I majored in MIS because it was HOT. Management Information Systems gave me both the technical and business foundations.

Although colleges have been teaching Management Information Systems for over ten years now, many business people are not aware of it. There are actually people out there who have experience in both IT and Management, there is no need to align IT with Business, because it’s not a practical task, what needs to be done is to have IT department headed by a person who has experienced both fields.

An MBA from Harvard….you may have lost your chances !!!!!!!!

While addressing one of MBA graduation ceremonies at Harvard, Larry Allison of Oracles shocked his audience of the new graduates by telling them they may have lost their chances to be innovative and independent thinkers. I don’t recall the exact words he used, but that was the gist of what he said. Business leaders such as Larry Allison and Bill Gates were collage drop outs; they were successful because they were thinking out of the main stream, out of the box.

What was Larry Allison referring to is, by obtaining an MBA degree from such a prestigious school as Harvard, the students thought process was locked. By Obtaining an MBA from Harvard, the students are no longer independent thinkers when it comes to creativity and innovations, their thought process and problem solving skills are already set by Harvard standards.

The students’ minds are ingrained by Harvard ways, as these students hit the corporate world, their ability to think out of the box will be limited, and their problems solving skills will be limited to those that were taught at Harvard.

Is that means an investment in an MBA degree from Harvard is not worth the money and the efforts? I don’t have an answer to this question, but I know that creativity requires an independent mind with the least amount of influence to think freely.

Environmental Management

The idea of getting a master degree in environmental management sounds a great idea if I only have the time. On the latest issue of Forbes magazine there was a list of the world’s dirtiest cities (what a horrible title for a city to have), I happen to visit two of those cities. I can’t blame Forbes on coming up with such a list, it’s about time people around the world care for their communities.

If I were ever to mange one of these dirty cities, I would start a cleaning program that is real simple and easy to implement. Being around these cities, I noticed how easy it’s to design a mechanism to keep these cities relatively clean with efforts from both the government and the people.
I will share with you factors that are making these cities not real clean:
1- No adequate public restrooms
2- Not enough or ,in some instances, no public trash cans or waste dumpsters
3- Freely roaming animals (dogs, cats, cows etc.)

Of course there are many other factors that contribute to the city being not clean, but the above are the most obvious and easy to fix.
How to fix them? Simple

1- Hire a private company whose responsibility is to install clean and easy to set public toilets. The project will pay for itself; charge each person who wants to use the service a small amount of money that is affordable by most of the people in the community. When the project is up and running, charge any person caught using the streets as “toilet”, a hefty fine, it will act as a deterrent. We can think of Singapore in this matter and how it managed to clean itself.
2- Make it mandatory for each house and business to have a trash can, yes believe me, I have been to countries where I was not able to find even a trash can on the whole business strip.
3- Search around and see if you can find companies, organizations, even countries who can make better use of these roaming animals and give them full authority to roam the streets and capture them. I have seen this done in Saudi Arabia. Years back, major cities in Saudi Arabia were full of roaming wild dogs, the local authorities made contact with some Korean firms (in Korea, they eat dogs’ meat), and in no time, all the dogs disappeared from Saudi streets.

These ideas and solutions may sound so simple and even naive, but I have seen it work.
Simple management, that all it takes.

Go Green …Save the environment….spot new trends..Part 2

I am not sure how large corporations contributing to “Go Green” movement. I know almost all credit cards and other utilities companies in the US offer electronic statements and billing, but they still use papers in many other areas. Few months back, I had an issue with one of my credit cards companies and in order for them to investigate the matter; they faxed me about 18 pages of paper work to read and then sign. I really thought they could have done a better job communicating via e-mail and phone, 18 pages of paper seemed a lot to me, most of it were instructions.

I am not sure which company or country is number one on the “Go Green” list, but I know there are lots of efforts been taking be American companies to be reduce waste.

Currently I am in India, and as I go around I see so much use of papers everywhere. At one hotel where I was staying, I asked the manager who was busy filling guests information in a very large record keeping book while his assistance was entering the same information in a computerized database, “why do you have to keep some much paper work?” and he said so we can keep a permanent record. I told myself “that why we have electronic databases and database backups.”

The manager in the above example may need to be told that keeping his records in an electronic only format not only a safer and more secure method of securing his data, but it will save him space and money.
In these two articles on “ Go green”, I was trying to talk about very simple steps that anyone can take to help in reducing waste, I didn’t want to get into complex environmental issues related to the climate change etc. Just simple tips that the average person can use.