June, 2008

Manage with grace

As a manager who is so passionate about his job, I sometimes try to implement changes that are not easy for my staff to follow. I have learned the hard way that change are easy to talk about, but really hard to implement over a short period of time.

When I start any consulting job, I usually start by going over the various procedures that the company uses to run its day to day operations, I try to find ways to speed up these procedures and make them more efficient. I try to find new ways to fix old problems and that requires great deal of commitments for the employees.

Most of the employees will want to see changes and would support new ideas, but they may not be ready for changes if they happen too fast. In order for any new ideas and new procedures to take hold, it must be done slowly and over a period of time that should take into considerations the background and the educational levels of the employees.

I tried to bring quick changes to few companies I worked with, only to see the passion from employees and management fades away as changes start to take over old established procedures.

So, if you want to bring changes to your organization, do not rush, take it one step at a time, give your employees time to absorb the changes and do it with grace.

Change your old habits or lose your business

With all the rapid revolution in the Internet and in technology in general, there is no excuse for any business not to fully or partially utilize what the increasing cheap technology has to offer.

But many businesses are still using the old style of doing business, I have visited businesses in the US not too far ago who are still using Dial up connections to go online, who still don’t use online banking, and who still don’t have a website.

Many businesses are still using faxes as a means of business correspondence instead of using e-mails, many businesses owners are still going to the bank each day to do make transactions that could be easily done online, many businesses still don’t have direct bank deposits for their employees salaries and the list could include many other things that are still done using the old style of doing things.

Of course these persistence habits of doing business the old way is not only in the US, but I have seen it in other parts of the world.

The cost of broadband Internet service is about $25 in most places around the world, the cost of setting up a basic website is around $30-50/month, and online banking is available almost in every country around the world.

What give me the idea to write this article is what I am experiencing at my current position, the company I am working at not fully utilizing technology to improve business performance, at least not till I got here.
We are moving a head, we have website, we have online banking, and we have new file backing system for all our important computer files.

You will be amazed to find how many people and businesses are still behind in this technology game, you would be amazed to hear that a major credit card issuer insisted that I give them a fax number so they can send me the paper work for a claim that I needed to file and they said they can not e-mail it to me since they don’t have it on electronic format.

Few bad habits that kill small business

After graduation from college, most of the jobs that I worked at were with small businesses. I believe I have learned most of my skills in management and organization form working with small businesses.

Almost at every small business I worked at, I noticed the following few bad habits, that in some instances led to the closing of the business:

1- To save money, most small businesses start with not well trained staff
2- Working at small business, some staff members don’t understand that the benefit system at the small business is not like the one they can find at large corporations and many small business owners fail to explain this to the new hires
3- Many small business owners based their business plans on hope more than on facts
4- In order for the small business to survive, each employee will have to do more than his/her share of work, sometimes employees have to go out of their way to make things happen, but some employees don’t understand that and only want to do what they were hired to do
5- Many small businesses were started by successful engineers, IT professionals, investors, etc, but these individuals were not successful at running a business and eventually the business went down

These are the few bad habits or bad signs that I have seen at few small businesses that I worked at.

You are fired

I think most of us have seen the TV show “The Apprentice”, at the end of almost each episode we hear the famous few words of Mr. Donald Trump “ you are fired.” What would you do if you have to fire an employee?

In my current position, I had to make a firing decision regarding an employee, his job performance was weak and he was not able to show any improvements even after repeated training and continues encouragement. He just didn’t want to be here. The firing decision came when he failed on his last job assignment and failed to give any logical explanation on why he failed.

I was faced with little ethical dilemma over the firing issue, after all this employee joined the company from day one nd I only joined the company three months ago. But one of my main job duties is to re-organize the company and make it more productive and one main element of over all productivity is “highly productive employees.”

I made it very clear to all my staff members that we value each of them as a great asset to the company, but at the same time I will not tolerate any weak performers, if anyone needed assistance, my door is always open for help, but there is no excuse not to perform.

Firing this employee was a message to all our employees that the company is very serious about performance.

Sometimes the decision is hard, but to save the whole, you have to let go of few elements.

Will talent crunch create reverse immigration?

With all the problems with the global economy and the soaring prices of commodities, I haven’t seen so much demand for talent as I see it now. Even countries like India, which is historically an exporter of talents, it facing its own problems with shortage of skilled workers.

I have seen this on my visit to India, I have seen it in the Arab world, in Saudi Arabia and In Dubai, and I have seen it in the United States.

Why there is so much demand for skilled labor and why supply is short. Globalization brought many services and products to the masses that once were only available to certain segments of the society, this in return created the need for skilled labor to serve the growing needs for all type of services. When I was in India, I used airlines extensively for my local travel, many new airlines sprung up in India in a quite short time, this created a huge demand for labor in the airlines industry. You can use the airlines industry example and apply it to many other industries that require constant supplies of labor, and the trend is not only in India, but also in many developing countries around the world.

I think this demand for labor and skills will create a reverse immigration in few countries, companies started to have global pay-scale, the pay is the same, doesn’t matter where you work, so now many employees are choosing to work in their home countries or going back to their home countries where they almost get the same pay as working abroad.

What your job title says about you

Recently; I had to fill some forms pertaining to my job skills and experiences, I never really had to do that before, I was always hired for the job based on personal interviews.
On the forms that I have to fill, there are a list of job titles that supposed to match my experience and educational backgrounds. Some of the job titles that I need to choose from and are listed under Information Systems Analysts and Consultants are:

1- IT (information technology) consultant
2- computer consultant
3- computer systems analyst
4- management information systems (MIS) analyst
5- systems auditor
6- systems consultant
7- systems security analyst
8- computer analyst
9- computer consultant

I always referred to myself as IT consultant, my educational backgrounds are on the MIS (Management Information Systems) area and my work experiences is ranging from working as desktop support tech working on various support issues, to working on servers, to software testing, to working on network setup and troubleshooting.

I want to know what other IT Consultant think of their job title and do all the titles listed about fall under on big tile of Systems Analysts and Consultant?

When employees don’t speak out

As manager, you may complain about employees who are constantly demanding, but what about employees who don’t speak out? Do you think just because an employee is not complaining that he or she is content or he or she is a good exemplary employee?

Few years back, I had a job as software tester in a small IT firm in Houston, TX, the company was no doing really well although it had many good projects at hand. The senior software developer was an intelligent and very educated person, he knew about the problems the company was facing, but he would not confront the CEO of the company with that, he was afraid to lose his job, he was a foreign national on work visa in the US and he was afraid that if he confronted the CEO of the company with the tough issues that facing the company, he may lose his job and his work visa. The end results: the company went out of business because no one was brave enough to tell the management about the problems the company is facing and the CEO of the company was not wise enough to come and check things by himself, he thought since no one is complaining, we must be doing great.

What brought me to write this article, is a new employee that we just hired, he is constantly complaining about various issues and he really started to bother me, he walked into my office while I was not ready to talk to him and I was about to get really firm with him but than suddenly something hit me, I asked myself “how may be bringing issues to my attention that I may over looked”, and now I am setting here on my desk and planing on actually go over his complaints and see if I can spot an imminent problem.

The other thing that happened and opened my eyes to the “silent employees” is the feedback I got from employees evaluations, I have received the forms I asked our employees to fill out, on these forms there were questions about their goals and future plans. Again, I was shocked to read the future career objectives our office secretary has. She said one of her objectives were to work with a company with better over all benefits. What this tells me? It tells me that she is not happy with our current pay package. She never complained to me about her pay or about any other work related issues, she is hard worker and very quite. She is the “silent employee” I am talking about. All this time I telling myself she must be the most content employee in the company.

So watch out for the “silent employee”.

When communications fail

In line with my last post, Management and the fear of change, there is another area in the organizational structure where the resistance for change is profound.

The flow of clear communications between various parts of the organization is vital and the flow of clear communications between management in employee is even more important.

At my current company, I am working diligently to improve the flow and the quality of communications between the various departments and between the employees and the management.

When I joined the company, there was no central management, each department worked separately from the other department, the only thing that held the company together was the owner of the company, he made sure each department communicated directly with him. This lake of communication between various departments led to:

1- More than one department in the company contacting the same client with the same request.
2- Employees going on vacation without the rest of the company knowing about it.
3- The owner of the company and the general manager giving the same employees contradicting tasks
4- Huge decline in productivity since the lake of clear communications led to confusion on the part of the employees.
5- Clients not sure with department in the company to call when they have an issue.

At this moment, I am working hard to improve the flow of communications between the central management, the various department and the owner of the company.

Again I am facing the issue of “Management and the fear of change”, the owner of the company is feeling threatened by not having all employees communicate to him directly and the employees don’t have confidence in working on their day to day duties without going first to the owner.

Things are improving, but slowly each day we are moving ahead.

Management and the fear of change

The fear of change is a natural human behavior, as human, we are always afraid of the unknown. Managers and CEOs may face stiff resistance from the stockholders of the company for their “change management” plans.

In the recent months, I have the opportunity to work for two different companies where my main job duty was to implement a strategy to for a change inside these companies to make them more profitable, reduce costs and enhance the image of the companies.

It’s very easy for stockholders to ask for a change, but it’s hard for them to accept it. Most decision-makers are not willing to change the way things are, they are not willing to let go of their power or authority. When the stockholders or the decision-makers call for change inside the company, they want this change to happen without them losing their current positions.

This fear of change doesn’t not only apply to management and companies, but also to nations and people in general. In my trip to several developing countries in the last few months, I have seen first hand how globalization and the wave of change that is hitting many countries around the world is creating fear in the mind of the public.

Many developing countries want to benefit from the wave of globalization and want to offer its citizens better living conditions, but with that, there is a strong resistance to change by the same people who are calling for a change.

So if you are dealing with change management at your organization, you will face a resistance to change, don’t let that discourage you, just be patient and introduce the changes slowly.

Best cities to work and live

As a global consultant, I have been traveling over a year now, from one country to another. I have worked in few cities in 4 different countries, although the ease of communication made me job much easier and I was able to keep my work habits wherever I went, working and living conditions varies from one city to another.

An interesting survey done by Mercer, a firm specializing in Global HR and related services, show how cities around the world rank in term of Quality of living, personal safety. The survey can be found at:
http://www.mercer.com/pressrelease/details.jhtml/dynamic/idContent/1307990
If you are a global manager and your employees travel from country to country on work assignments, there are detailed quality of living reports for over 180 cities around the world available on the same above website.

Doing a thorough research on a country’s or a city’s quality of living standards before sending you employees over must be a top priority for you company, moving to a new country can be a bit of an adventure and full of surprises.