July, 2008

Telehealth, telemedicine and broadband

The advancement in Internet connectivity and the wide spread of broadband Internet use brought with it many advantages to the masses. As in IT person, I always believed that the Internet will improve communications to the degree that it will have a profound affect on many people lives.

One area where the internet is being used to help people is the medical filed, technologies such as telehealth and telemedicine are being developed to help doctors interact with patients who are hundreds of miles away.

Doctors and researchers at the AT&T Center for Telehealth Research and Policy at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, have been working for few years now on health care application where they use High-speed Internet connections to provide appropriate diagnosis and care remotely via telemedicine

This technology not only helping reach patients in remote areas, put it also cutting the cost associated with transporting patients from one facility to another and saving time as well.

For a complete report on this technology and its current uses, please visit:
http://attcenter.utmb.edu/presentations/The%20Telehealth%20Promise-Better%20Health%20Care%20and%20Cost%20Savings%20for%20the%2021st%20Century.pdf

Your most valuable employee, your secretary

Can your business ever run smoothly without your hard working, know it all secretary? I don’t know when is secretary’s week, but I am sure I will take my secretary to lunch on that week to show her/him how much I appreciate what they do.

Our company’s secretary is out sick today, hope her the best, and we can not find certain files and certain phone numbers. Since I joined my current company and was giving the job to re-organize the company, I have stressed over and over the need for good back up plan in case of an emergency.

Here are few steps you can take to minimize productivity loss while your secretary is out of the office:

1- Have a reliable filing system; this system must guide you to the location of all company’s file. The guide should be easy to understand and follow.
2- A complete phone list of all company’s employees, clients, vendors, etc.
3- A reliable phone and answering system that you can switch to in case there is no one to answer the phones.
4- If you are a small business, make sure all your employees know how the filing system works, how to use the phone system and how to access the phone list.

Some of the above step my sound elementary and you may think every business would already have such plans, but believe me I have seen many many businesses that have no filing system of any type.

Your secretary will always be one of the most valuable employees, if only for the warm and friendly greeting your clients hear over the phone, but while he/she is out, have a plan to keep the office run smoothly.

Don’t walk in a straight bath, but listen to the world

The above title is from a book I was reading written by the former French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin. The book doesn’t not discuss management issues, but it talks about how an individual must be aware of the world around him, that a person must turn as the world turns around him, he must be ready to adopt to new ways of doing things.

As a manager, I find this to be a very interesting aspect of successful management, managers must always observe the world around them, spot trends and apply changes when necessary. Many corporations and even many countries have used one style of management for decades, which eventually led to market share decline, productivity loss and lower quality products.

In today’s ever connected world, you never now where is your next client is located, doing business as usual may not proof to be the best management decision, you must listen to the world and turn as it turns.

Global Peace Index 2008

An interesting index that groups together a number of interrelated initiatives focused on global peace. The index is published by a group that identifies itself as “Vision of Humanity groups together a number of interrelated initiatives focused on global peace. It brings a strategic approach to raising the world’s attention and awareness around the importance of peacefulness to humanity’s survival in the 21st century.”

The index ranks countries in some very interesting areas:

Level of distrust in other citizens

Number of homicides per 100,000 people

Ease of access to weapons of minor destruction

Respect for human rights

Potential for terrorist acts

Aggregate number of heavy weapons per 100,000 people

Number of visitors as % of domestic population

Net Migration (% of total population)

The extent of regional integration

Hostility to foreigners/private property

Importance of religion in national life

Willingness to fight

Number of paramilitary personnel per 100,000 people

In this age of globalization, it’s important to know the world around you.
You can find the index at: http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings.php

Can Globalization and Diversity Co- Exist?

Although many people can, rightfully, argue against it, Globalization has changed the lives of millions of people around the world to the better. Globalization has made fast amount of resources available to the masses; millions of people around the world now can afford air-travel, clean water, better education and better health care.

But Globalization brought with it diversity and new culture that many societies are not willing to accept. To be part of the global village, communities must be willing to accept new ideas, new faces, and new ways of doing things.

Globalization brought with it global work force, today, people not only change their job frequently, but also change the country they work in. Global work force bring with it experience that otherwise was not available to many communities, but unfortunately, we still see resistance to diversity, we still see people who are not willing to work with people from other race, color, or religious background.

Its sad when national pride or religious and cultural intolerance deprive many communities of widely available resource that globalization makes it possible

A CV or A Resume

What format should a job seeker use? In North America, the resume is the common format job seeker use to tell about their job experience and education. The Resume usually dose not includes so much personal information as the CV does.

Being in India and in the Arab world for the last few months, I have seen many CVs per my job as development manager. What I really didn’t like about the CV format is the personal bio data, most of the CVs that I have read contain so much personal information, in one CV, the applicant included the name of her mother and father and their occupations in the CV and its not unusual to see the applicant passport number listed in the CV too.

I have always wondered as a manager, why do I need to know this much personal details of the applicant, my major concern is the applicant actual experience.

One of my employees asked me to review her CV, there was almost half page of information about her bio, so I told her, any busy manager will not be interested in your bio, he wants to know more about your job experience and if he needed more bio information, he will ask for it.

I don’t know if it’s a cultural issue or not, but mostly in the US, its almost illegal to ask so much bio data of your employees, but in this part of the world, privacy is still not a big issue.

HP learning center-free online classes

During my early days as on-site tech, I was giving access by HP to their Tech-zone area, an online resources for various type of training offered by HP. Now HP is making these online classes free for everyone. This online courses are great tool for continues education.

They have classes in:
Software and Technology
IT professional
Business skills

You can enroll in any of these classes online, and you will be sent weekly or b-weekly study materials via e-mails, you will have a class instructor and you will also have an option to download the full class content on PDF format.

These are some great classes that are useful for a wide range of professionals; you can see the full list of classes at:
http://h30187.www3.hp.com/all_courses.jsp

Finish what you have started

What is the distinguishing character of the most successful people? They finish what they have started.

Good business plans are only good if they are fully implemented. Many businesses started with great ideas only to see these businesses fail, they had a plan, they started to work on the plan, but they didn’t follow through.

When the management fails to emphasize the importance of following through, employees will not follow through on their job performance.

In the past few months, I had several incidents where I didn’t get excellent customer service support. In one of my international flights with a world class airlines, I had to change my destination after I checked in my luggage, only to find out later that my bags didn’t not arrive with me on the same flight. I have talked to the airlines customer agent and explained to him in full details about my intentions to change my flight routes and he re-assured me over and over that my checked in luggage will be with me on the same flight, but later on I found out that this agent didn’t not do his job thoroughly and he didn’t not rely the message to the ramp agent to pull the luggage from one flight and load into another.

In another incident, I had a tech support issue so I called the tech support line, only to talk with half trained technicians who kept giving me different answers for the same issue, a very simple problem that kept going on week after week which eventually took less than one minute to fix.

If these customer support representatives were told in their training that once they take an ownership of an issue, they must follow it through until it has been resolved, they would have paid better attention to the customer who is waiting on the other side of the line and they could have save their companies time and money.

Finish what you have started and follow through with your commitments and you will see how success will follow.

Poorly skilled worker will cost your company

No doubt every business in the world is trying to increase profit and cut costs. Cutting costs and improving productivity is what CEOs and managers get paid to do.

In my traveling and working with various businesses around the world, I have seen this killer mistake over and over again “Businesses hire low-skilled workers to save money.” In my current job, I am working in the country of Qatar, in the city of Doha; I am having some serious performance issues with some of my employees.

The policy of my company is to hire low skilled workers so the company doesn’t have to pay high salaries. This policy has no wisdom in it or any sign of long term planing. As a manager, I am trying to change this policy, which is not an easy task. My job is to work with more important issues than to tell my employees how to perform their day to day job, but some of my employees need constant supervision and I can not take the risk of them not doing their job well.

Living in this part of the world for almost a year now, I have noticed that it’s the general policy of most of the countries in this region to depend on low skilled workers for most of their labor needs. This policy led millions of talented workers to leave these countries and migrate looking for better wages which left these countries with a large pool of low skilled workers who actually don’t have the right skills and experience that these countries need for its ambitious development plans.

When you hire a new worker, look for quality of work first than look to save money, the quality work produced by competent worker will save you the money you will otherwise have to spend in training and supervising low skilled and low paid workers.

The fear of Technology

Have you ever faced with users or CEOs who are afraid of technology? What you do as an IT consultant when your plans for better systems for the company are faced by total resistance by the management?

In a real life example, I was updating all the systems for my company and we migrated from windows XP systems to Windows Vista, this migration caused few changes in how users would go by doing their daily tasks. The CEO of our company was in a business trip and when he got back and saw the new systems, he complained why his outlook express is not there anymore, he said he couldn’t use Microsoft outlook.

I tried to explain to him that outlook express is an old technology and Microsoft outlook is the closest e-mail client in features to his old outlook express. The CEO started to look for his Old IT guy who installed outlook express and wanted him to fix the problem he is having, this made me laugh.

Another example with my CEO, I wanted to have total online solutions for our banking needs where we can pay bills, issues checks and manage our accounts without going to the bank or using the phone and again he refused and said “ I don’t trust this online services, I want to write all my checks with my hands.”

The fear of change or the fear of the unknown is normal human behavior, but this can be a real problem when it stops you from completing your job or from giving the best consultations to your client.

How would you deal with clients who have fear of Technology? The best approach to use is to show them how much money they could save by having the latest technology and how employees’ productivity would improve.

Although I am facing resistance to change at my company, I managed to improve many business processes by using the right technology and the immediate reaction from the employees and clients was really encouraging