September, 2008

Management by fear

One of the worst management styles is to use fear as a way to make your employees perform. I have seen few Individuals CEOs and few corporate managers who use the fear factor as a tool to keep their employees performing, what a cowardly and unprofessional way to manage!!!!!!!!

Why communism as a system and as a theory failed? In most communist societies, workers were forced to perform, they kept working because they feared their bosses, or even in extreme cases, feared for their lives.

Unfortunately, we still see managers use fear and power to manage their employees. As a manager who held several managerial positions, I have learned that to get the best out of your employees, you must build solid and open relations with them, to let employees communicate their fears and their weaknesses will only lead to a better performance.

I don’t have a bit of respect for managers who use fear as a way to manage their employees, I think that only show their lack of experience, self-confidence and a talent to manage.

What is more important, Experience, Money or the Job title?

How long will you work before you say “ I have gained enough experience, now I need to make more money from my job.” Some jobs will give you the opportunity to assume responsibilities, which are otherwise giving to the most senior staff members. I know a CEO who would tell his employees who complain about the low salaries he is paying them “ I am giving you the chance to get experience that you would not get it at other companies with the type of qualifications you have.”

Some would say, I should get the salary that my position entitles me regardless if I have the total experience and qualifications this position requires.

I know an employee who’s job title is “Finance manager”, his only 24 years old and without significant experience. He would complain about his low salaries and the limited benefits he is getting at his current job, so I asked him why he doesn’t change companies and he said “I cant get the title of Finance Manager anywhere else.”

I know the work of this person very well and the best job title I can give him is “ an accountant trainee”, I have told him few times not to foul himself by thinking he has the qualifications or experience to be Finance manager. I know very well this guy will move to his next job thinking he has what it takes to be a finance manager only to face the reality of the real responsibilities of finance manager.

Under performing employees

What would you do with under performing employee who is constantly doing the same mistakes?

I think we are all familiar with reports that talk about “employees’ mistakes that cause companies millions of dollars in productivity.” As a manager, I see that daily in my work, in the company where I work we could save thousands of dollars each month by reducing employees mistakes.

Although I hold weekly meeting with my employees give support and offer training, some employees are still not performing to the level that corresponds to their job descriptions.

When you draw the line and decide you have exhausted every effort with a certain employee? Firing an employee is the hardest decision for any manager to make but sometimes there are no alternatives.

I am in the process of making that decision, in the next few weeks, I will have to let go of one or two of our employees, I arrived at this decision after so much efforts with these employees, their job performance is causing the company lots of money every month in loss productivity

Must every company give a holiday bonus?

As manager working in a new country (Qatar), I was asked by my employees to give a holiday bonus, a religious holiday is coming up soon (the celebration after the month of fasting (Rhamadn) for the Muslims.)

Our accounting department added the holiday bonus to this month (September) salaries, but the CEO of the company was absolutely against the idea, he said “a holiday bonus is something left to the management to decided on and it should not be included in our accounting records, it should not be a regular practice.”

I have been working as an independent consultant for several years now, and I can’t really recall while working in corporate America if I have ever received a “Holiday Bonus.” I still recall employees talking about getting a bonus, but I am not sure if we received anything or it was a common practice for our company.

I think in many parts of the world, its socially accepted practice, but its not required by law.

Will Windows Vista put an end to Microsoft dominance of Operating systems?

If we look back at the early days of windows based operating systems we can see the huge enhancement Microsoft made to the Desk top operating systems, from DOS to windows 3.1 to win95 to win2000 and finally Win XP.

For many users, win XP was (end still) the best operating system Microsoft ever written, with SP1 and SP2, Microsoft fixed major bugs in the system and the users community was content with winXP.

Only when everything seemed to be working great with winXP, Microsoft released windows Vista, I personally, and I am sure as millions of users, was not ready to let go of winXP and start the journey to learn new operating system with its all new features.

Recently, I had to replace my company’s computer systems with new systems, I wanted to get new systems with XP, but the vendor told me they only can provide us systems with windows Visa. I was not very happy to migrate to Vista yet.

The transition from windows XP to windows vista is not as smooth as it should be, for the average user windows XP is more user friendly than windows Vista. One feature of windows Vista that I particularly find hard to understand for the average user is the Network and file sharing properties in windows Vista.
In its attempt to make windows Vista more secure, Microsoft made setting up network and resource sharing in windows Vista a bit hard to configure, there are many security features the user have to configure.

From a historical point of view, I can tell that Microsoft reached its full potential with windows XP, there was no need to release a new operating system at the time when windows XP was performing real well with the users.

Management –Employees mistrust

Management –Employees mistrust

Imagine walking into an office where each employee confined to his/her desk. No communications, no greeting and no trust. Have you ever lived this type of situation? Have you ever walked into your office feeling as if you are stepping into some type of war zone? I am sure most of us went through this type of situation sometime during our working years.

In the past few weeks, I have been dealing with the issue of mistrust in my company, the CEO is on one side and some of the employees on the other side and I am “ as the General Manager”, acting as a messenger between the two parties.

After working with the company for almost five months now, I can see why there is a mistrust and how to resolve the issue.

CEO point of view and complaints about the employees:
1- We are a small company and every employee need to pitch in time of need
2- I have to, consistently, guide and supervise employees, why can’t they work with little supervision?
3- Other employees with the same situation, but in other companies, are doing better work

The point view and complaints of the employees:

1- We don’t have a clear job description, we don’t know what is expected of us
2- We are not trained to work in each and very task asked from us by the CEO or Management
3- Other companies are paying far more for our type of jobs

My views and complaints:

1- Before I joined the company, the owner (CEO) was in charge of the daily operations of the company and he didn’t give any clear and precise job descriptions to most employees
2- The CEO is trying to run the company as “One man show”, he is trying to make all employees work together without assigning clear responsibilities to each employee, this leads to lot of conflicts between employees and management
3- Employees don’t communicate well with management, when there is a problem, most employees wait for the management to find out instead of letting management up to date on urgent issues
4- To resolve this mistrust, the company must write clear policies regarding employees job duties, management-employees communications, role of the CEO, and the role of management

The core of this mistrust are based on two things:
1-No clear written policies regarding various companies operations
2- Failure from both side, the CEO and Employees to communicate