Diversity

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.

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.

Male or female employees

This maybe not be politically correct subject, but I want to share my experience working with both male and female employees, keep sexism out, this is purely practical approach.

I haven’t worked in a diverse office environment such the one I am working in now. I have noticed few significant differences when it comes to male and female employees.

I will not say who is better, but I will list areas where I noticed these differences:

1-Attention to details
2-Good listeners
3-Willing to take responsibility
4-Loyalty
5-Fast learner
6-Making suggestion
7-Out spoken

These are the areas where I noticed some significant differences between the genders.

How to deal with diversity at work place

Today’s work place is more diverse than ever, even within the small business setting, you would find employees with very diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. In my traveling throughout few countries, I noticed how different cultures deal with diversity at work place.

In some countries, the locals or the citizens of the country always have an upper hand in the workplace, talent and experience come second, in other, talent and experience determined how employees are evaluated.

Smart and futuristic managers always treat diversity as an asset to the company. In today’s ever connected world, your work force will be compromised of people with various backgrounds and learning how to deal with such diverse work force is both challenging and exciting.

In my current job, I am dealing with Asians employees, most if not all of them are on their first international assignment in a foreign country (currently I am working in the Arab state of Qatar.) What did I learn working with this diverse group of people?
The first thing I noticed, the how they write their resumes (CVs), the usual resume has so much personal information that I found it bit more than what I need to know about the employee. Most resumes contain information such as (birth city, martial status, passport number, how many kids and religion.)

Most of the employees are not out-spoken and they don’t communicate their objectives clearly, so when I started to work with my new company, I really had to sit with my staff few times to learn more about their objectives and also to find more about their skills.

Usually, the employees won’t take initiatives on changing the work environment, the initiative must always come from the management, so as a manager, I learned not to wait for my employees to come to me with their ideas and problems, but I have to go to them.

Although the employees require close supervision, which makes it hard on the management, they are hard working and usually do what they asked to do.

The work environment and local laws here give so much power to the management, although that is changing now, which may intimidate some employees, as a manager, I am trying to strike a balance between employees rights and responsibilities.

I am dealing with a work culture that I have not experienced before, but with little patience and good coaching, I am able to get a lot from my employees.