CEO

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

Stick to your company’s policy

One of the most important parts of successful management is knowing that your employees respect your company’s policy. The Management would get a great deal of respect and support from the staff members if it sticks to the company policy in a time of crisis.

I have worked at companies where the management would make frequent changes to the company’s policy; employees wouldn’t know what to expect if they violated the company’s policy.

Not having a clear policy and sticking to it will lead to:

1- Degrading job performance since employees will have no clear policy to guide them, they will not know how to re-act in certain situations.
2- Confused clients, not having clear policy in matter such as (invoicing, returns, due dates, etc.) will confuse the clients and it will lead to a poor relations with them
3- Legal complications since not having clear policy on various issues can be used against the company in a case of employee-management dispute
4- Bad publicity for the company, since not having clear policy will make the management and the company look as if they don’t know what they are doing

In my current job, I am facing this issue daily, our company still doesn’t have a clear policy regarding its various dealings, I am working on writing a clear and concise policy.

Not having clear policy is costing our company, on the few issues that I was able to come up with clear policy, performance and customer satisfaction really improved.

One of the fundamental parts of running a good business is to have a clear vision and a good company policy that support the vision.

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.

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.

Pay to get the best employees

One of the greatest challenges that face small businesses and sometimes even the larger corporate world is unskilled or under qualified labor force.

I have worked and visited few countries in the past 12 months from the US to India to Saudi Arabia to Qatar. As a young graduate, I started my career with a small company in TX, USA, most of the labor force of that company consisted of young graduates with very limited experience. The company strategy was, as most small businesses do, is to hire young workers or workers with limited experience to cut costs. The end results were disastrous, the company was not able to carry on with its obligations, many deliverables didn’t meet client expectations and most projects ran over budget and the end result was “a bankrupted company.”

What made me write about this subject is my current experience. Right now I am working in the Area between Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Qatar, this area known locally by “The Arabian Gulf.” Because of the rising oil prices, governments here are spending billions of dollars in all areas of developments, which is great, but most projects depends heavily on cheap labor brought in from South Asia. As I live in this area, I see why the development over the past 20-30 years has been slow although billions of dollars were spent on thousands of projects, the main reason for that is the total dependency on cheap labor, most projects were not executed properly because of lake of experience, many projects were done over and over.

The management tip here is “don’t really on cheap labor; it will cost you down the road.”

Carlos Ghosn and the philosophy of change at Nissan Motor

Many people may have not heard of Carlos Ghosn Nissan’s CEO, this Brazilian born for Lebanese parents turned Nissan around and made it profitable again. There is so much a person can learn from Mr. Ghosn management style but one thing that really got my attention and I am personally a firm believer in it is his idea of “Respect the other party culture, but never to be forced on you.”

In order for Mr. Ghosn to turn Nissan Motor around, he had to break many traditional practices at Nissan Motor that has strong link to the Japanese culture; this made him the most hated man in Japan, but also one of the most successful CEOs.

I always believed that success has no boundaries nor it is a property of a certain culture, successful methods of management can be applied in any culture and in any country.

I always like to take MacDonald as an example of successful company who assimilates well in its local environment without losing its corporate identity and value system.