Office politics

Della, Have a man product color it pink and offer to women, no DELL

In my daily reading of the local newspapers, I came across an interesting article on the purchasing power of women in countries like China and India. The article focuses on the growing purchasing power of women in these countries, but also brought up an interesting point on how companies target female buyers. They either take a man product and color it pink and offer it to women (Michael Silverstine, of Boston Consulting group) or assume that women are not tech savvy as men. Both of these examples can be applied to dell computers website for women buyers “Della.”

I did search on dell website for “Della” but was not successful in reaching the main page for Della, the URL: www.della.com would take you to some wedding website.

This is an interesting subject. Women in general gave negative feedbacks on Della, women liked to be treated as tech savvy as men but companies focus more on color and styles when designing products for women rather than focusing on the actual needs for women.

Don’t Return my phone calls and you will lose my business

Today, I decided to call off a new business deal with an old supplier why? Basically, their marketing and sales manager doesn’t return my phone calls. Some businesses, in their think pursuit for new clients forget about their old clients. A business relation is just like a personal relation, if each partner doesn’t not give enough attention to the relationship, there is always an alternative out there.

The market is filled with competitors who are working hard to steal your customers, if you don’t have enough time to return your customer call, there is a competitor out there who will only return calls but will take the new customer to lunch.

The hardest part of running any business is to win loyal customers, it may take years to have solid relation with your customers, but it will very little to break this relation.

Employee Suicides at French Telecom and IT job Stress

It is a sad thing when a job stress gets so sever that an employee had to take his or her own life to direct attention to the issue, it is beyond me to understand how the French Government and the company’s officials let the number of employees committing suicide reach to 25 without taking any drastic measures to address the issue.

I still remember my first IT job as a tech support representative, on our job orientation, the director, in his efforts to make the job attractive to us said “this is the job where you can leave office and there is still sunlight outside”, he was talking about the many years he worked in IT fields and he seldom left office while the sun is still up.
No doubt, that IT related jobs are demanding and stressful. The fact that IT is one of the most dynamic industries, IT personnel must continuously update their skills. Look how, in a very short time, the world had to move from WinXP to WinVista and now Window7.

In my own journey in IT world, I started as tech support representative in 1995, where we were told that “you will leave work each day while the sun is still up”, to working as application tester where we never left office at 5PM, there was no compensation for over-time and some of us had to work on weekends. The pay was good, but the stress level was high but on those years, we were young and were looking for job security and experience so most of us did not mind long hours.

Sometimes in the middle of 2001, I decided to make a career shift to management, I realized the importance of having a balanced life, a life which is not centered around my job, then again in 2002, I left the corporate world entirely and started my own small IT consulting firm where my focus was and still on small business owners, I work less hours and make less money, but I spend more time with family and friends and I still do the work that I love to do.
So yes, IT-related Jobs are demanding, it is the nature of the industry that is continuously evolving and penetrating every aspect of our lives.

My advice to any new comer to IT would be “Spend few years working on hard-core IT jobs then move to management or consulting where you can have more free time to spend away from job.”

Indian and Chinese Students are returning home from US in Larger numbers

Silicon Valley was and still the tech heaven for technology workers, either for inspiring entrepreneurs or for the young and talented but in recent years, many reports came out on reverse brain drain to new hot destinations such as India and China.

Several factors are adding to this reverse brain drain out of the US:

• Complicated and lengthy visa process in US, it could take years for a foreign worker to get his/her permanent residency status.

• Besides India and China, there are few other hot destinations are emerging for IT workers, such as (Chile, Brazil, and parts of South America and Southern Europe.) This new destinations are on direct competitions with the US on talents.

• The on going campaign on “foreign workers are taking American jobs,” this campaign is being going on for years and resulted in many anti-immigration laws. I personally know an IT company’s owner who had to leave the US because he could not get his visa extended and he had to let go of two of his American workers.

There is a recent and very interesting article on this subject here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/17/beware-the-reverse-brain-drain-to-india-and-china/

Who owns the copyrights to your work?

When I joined my current job as General Manager, I have devised processes and procedures that were un-known to the company prior to my employment with them. I have used company’s resources to build these procedures but the original idea was mine.

Now the question that comes to mind is “who owns the rights to this new knowledge”?
This sounds like the “Chicken and Egg” question, who came first? The company had the resources but no knowledge on how to make a good use of it and I had the knowledge on how to put the resources to a good use but I needed the resources that the company had.

If there was no written contract between the employee and the company on who has the rights to the intellectual property at the end of the employment term, what legal process to follow to resolve the issue?

Break in Communications can cost business a fortune

I called the airlines to make my flight reservation, the agent made my return date on sept 27th instead of sept2th as I requested, either I didn’t speak clearly or he didn’t listen carefully, but it costs me and my company time and money. Another example, I called my secretary to check on a reservation for me, but she didn’t only check the reservation but she actually made the reservation, another costly mistake.

A client of our company was suppose to bring some timely sensitive business documents, but she didn’t, she thought it was our job to remind her and our secretary thought it was the client responsibility to bring the documents on time.

These small communications break down cost our company close to $2000 in fees and late charges and about 4 days of lost work, which could have been easily avoided.

Break in Communications cannot be totally eliminated but it can be greatly reduced.
In my company, I made it a priority for everyone (employees and clients) to communicate via e-mails and not to rely on verbal communications.

This policy doesn’t always work and some communications take place over the phone, it’s the responsibility of all parties involved that the message was understood. Think of the communications that take place between pilots and air traffic controller; both parties have to read back to each other to make sure the message was delivered.

The lack of Females IT workers

Why IT is one of those industries with limited number of female workers? Are female, naturally, are not technically oriented or do most females chose a career away from IT to avoid a male dominated industry?

Public perception of female IT workers is poor, the public in general don’t trust a female IT professional to handle their technical problems. Back when I used to work in a call center, most callers would feel uncomfortable talking to a female technician.

In my years in collage majoring in Management Information Systems, I observed that most female students would not excel in programming and networking classes.

Are females inherently inclined to deal with human and not machine, or is it the society who is assigning roles and responsibilities based on gender?

Management with cultural barriers

Working with a group of people with diverse cultural backgrounds is both exiting and challenging. In my job as manager with international company, I interact and manage people from different parts of the world and each group of people from specific geographical region has their own unique characters that a manger must be aware of.

There are People who are reluctant to accept leadership positions, they brought up in societies where they always told what to do and not use their own judgments, with this group, I have to always monitor them closely and give them clear guidance on what is expected of them. The good thing about this group is that they listen and follow instructions.

There are People who seek leadership positions and willing to make judgments and take risks, with this group a manager has to be a bit careful, since he may end up with people in leadership positions without adequate experience, this group of people can be trained gradually to assume higher positions plus the manager can use them as to fill in on his absence since they require little supervision. These groups of people come from societies where men usually have to assume leadership positions and it expected of them to rise quickly in the corporate ladder.

The last group is of people is those who want to only excel in what they do, they are experts in their professions and willing to learn and advance as long as they remain focused on what they can do best. These groups of people come from societies where “excellent work and professionalism” is expected from every member of the society, they trained to excel in certain fields and remain focused on what they do best.

Of course this is my personal experience and it applies to this part of the world, the Arab world.

Change in Management must be done carefully

Every time there is a presidential election somewhere, we hear contestants call for change, they talk about the change they will bring to the government once they are elected, but change doesn’t happen overnight, it takes years of planning.

We may have read stories about how new management in some large organizations such as (GM, Chrysler, and Nissan), brought sweeping changes to management style and created success in short years, but these are only few success stories otherwise change takes time and years of planning.

In a small business world where I work, making changes is not that difficult since there are only few people are affected, but convincing people to accept the change and embrace is not always easy.

Also changes must be classified into categories, for example, changes in working conditions and better work environment can take place immediately where changes in business process or employee-management interactions must happen gradually over time.

In my current work environment in the Arab world, I came from American education and work background, it is hard and tedious process to convince upper management of the needed change in the organization, in addition, the society is still not ready to accept many changes in the work place.

Change is inevitable and it is part of life and those who try to stop it will be overwhelmed, but change must be managed and steered carefully to get the desired results.

What business are you in, IT or Customer service?

In his book “The Truth about Green Business”, Gil Friend writes about how railroads companies for many years considered themselves in the railroads industry rather than in transportation industry.

When I used to work as help desk support representative for a major hardware manufacturer the emphasis was on providing great customer service rather than fixing technical problems, we were trained to think as service agents rather than technicians.

Unfortunately, many customers cannot distinguish between the customer service rep and a technician. When I used to make on-site visits to fix technical problems, many customers would expect me to help them with customer service related issues in addition to fixing their technical problems.

It’s becoming harder to distinguish between the duties of customer service agent and support technician, especially at first level support, companies usually combine the jobs of the two into one position to streamline operation and cut costs.

I think it’s important for IT companies to define the industry they belong to, airlines, hotels and restaurants can be classified as service industries, but IT is clearly not all about customer service, but rather it’s about technical services.