IT managers

Smart management not cheap management

As business managers, we all care about reducing costs and maximizing profit, we look for ways to acquire assets at the lowest possible cost. One of my clients who I do consulting work for have the habit of buying used supplies including computers. He gives me a lot of work trying to fix his network that runs on old used computers. I asked him many times why he keeps buying old computers while by spending few hundreds extra dollars he can get himself new computers? He said “I run an insurance company and most of the time my staff uses the computers only to fill forms online, I don’t need new computers with extra features that I will never use.”

I understand his reasoning, but I also understand that old machines will keep breaking and his maintenance bill will keep going up.

This client has many offices that I do network and computer maintenance work for, so one day I told him “lets start buying new computers for one of your offices and see how this will reduce your maintenance cost”, he agreed and we got new computers for that particular office, and the results amazed him, his maintenance and network support calls for that office went to almost zero, and he was able to recover the cost of the new computers from the saving he made by not losing work hours due to network down time and not having to pay for network troubleshooting.

At my current consulting job, we have the same problem, some off brand computers that breaks every few days and not reliable web hosting company for our e-mail services. Now again, I am starting to clean up this company and show the management how they can save by investing in good equipment and reliable services, even if the cost is bit high, but it will pay-off later.

Fleet management tips needed

At my current job, I am facing a bit of a challenge managing our company’s fleet of about 70 cars. I have searched the internet for good fleet management software and I found few good software but I am not sure about the quality of these software.

Does anyone know of a good fleet management software?

Challenges that we are facing with our fleet of cars:

1- Rental history
2- Accident history
3- Maintenance history
4- Mileage
5- Cost of ownership
6- Warranty information
7- Checkout and check records

Of course we have some type of records for our fleet, but I like to have a complete control of our fleet where no part of fleet management is over looked.

Does anyone know of good software for fleet management and also any tips in this subject are welcome

Be loud, clear and consistent…the problem with miscommunication

We are in the communications age (Internet, e-mails, cell phones, text messages, video conferencing.. etc), but we are still having problems getting hold of people when we need them and still having our message mis-understood by the receiving party.

In my office environment I need to repeat myself few times before my message is understood, I use e-mails and face to face meeting, but still if I am not loud and very clear, my message get lost in the daily office work or at best it get misunderstood.

We rely so much on electronic communications, we usually think once we send that e-mail or leave that voice mail, the other party will get the message and act upon it. In the past, I would rely on e-mails and voice mails thinking that once I managed to send an e-mail or leave a voice mail message, my job was done and I will remove that task from my to-do list. But it seems that with the wide spread of technology and the massive use of e-mails; people are less inclined to treat e-mails with the importance once they did.

So, as a manager, I have to make sure my message understood, I usually have a face to face meeting regarding important issues to make sure my points were delivered and if face to face meeting is not possible, I will request a reply to my e-mail or voice message and If I don’t get a meaningful reply, I will assume my message was not understood.

Management tips…culture and management

As a successful manager, you must pay close attention to people around you, nothing more exciting for a global manager than learning management styles in different cultures.

One of my biggest challenges with my daily work here in Doha, Qatar (a small Arab state), is communicating with my employees and tell them what is expected from them. People here must be told what to do, if I am late to work one day, the office janitor will not clean my office, I actually have to ask him to do so each morning.

An American colleague, himself as a manager with different company, complained to me one time about his office janitor, he said “the janitor would sit there all morning doing nothing, how can I get him to do his work?”

I told him to print a list of duties he is expecting his janitor to perform and hand it to him, and if that doesn’t work, than he will have to order him to do his work. In the American work culture, workers generally don’t like to be told what to do; there is a general understanding between the management and the workers of what is expected from each side.
Working at global level with very diverse groups of people gives me as a manager a better understanding of various cultures and what to expect from my work force.

I found out that, is this part of the world, it’s ok to give orders to your employees and tell them what to do, in fact, in many cases they are expecting to be told what to do.

Are you a slow or a fast decision maker?

Being a manger or a business owner, you have to make decisions on daily basis. What is your strategy on decisions making? When do you delegate the decision making authority and when do you have to make your own decisions?
As a manager, you have to develop a policy where some decisions must be made on the spot while other should be made after careful study.
In my current job as consultant and business manager, I had to come up with a policy for decision making, the company decision making process was real slow and centralized, I had to change that to save time and make things move quicker.

Generally, I sort out the decision making into two categories:
1-Decisions that have minor consequences: you can delegate your staff members to make those decisions that will have minor impact on your company if the wrong decision was made, you will need little efforts to correct the consequences of the wrong decision and if there was any financial lose, it would be minimal.
2-Decisions that have major consequences: these decisions will have to be made by upper management where the consequences of making a mistake are costly.

This is not a real comprehensive guide on decision making process; this is only a little tip to help speed up the decision making process.

Successful managers

Nothing more rewarding in your career as a manager than the feeling of love and respect you get form your employees. Managing is not an easy task, successful managers are like leaders, they are responsible for the well-being of their countries and their people.

Managing is more than a job and responsibilities; it’s about building relations, if you are managing a group of workers it’s real crucial to build in engaging relationship with them.
I have seen real boost in morals and productivity levels when:
1-Managers listen
2-Managers keep their promises
3-Managers treat each employee as a valuable asset to the company
4-Managers are easy to approach and talk to
5-Managers give timely and honest feedbacks to employees
6-Managers take responsibility and remain calm in time of crises
7-Managers participate with employees in social activities out side the work place
8-Managers help employees advance in their careers
9-Managers communicate employees concerns to upper management
10-Managers are polite, but firm on their demands
11-And finally managers are the best at their jobs

This list is not comprehensive, but I have practiced the above points when ever I had to manage a group of employees and it always gave me positive results and in some instance a life-time friendship.

Workers management conflicts at small businesses Part 2

In my last article I stated that I will keep you informed on the problem I am trying to resolve dealing with workers/ management conflict taking place at my current job.

I also stated that currently, I am working in the State of Qatar, a small country in the Arabian Gulf.
There is a large number of expatriates working here, people from Asia, US, Europe and the Middle East. Working with people with diverse cultural backgrounds is interesting and challenging at the same time.

Dealing with workers-management conflict in a country in this part of the world is quite different than dealing with it in the US. I had to prepare myself by:

1- Familiarizing myself with the cultural backgrounds of all parties involved.
2- Familiarizing myself with the current labor laws in the country.
3- Meeting with senior managers in the company to get an idea of current practices in conflict management in the country.

My next step was to meet with all the parties involved to reach to the root of the conflict.
Direct talk was the key to resolve the conflict; the mechanics were worried about their pay and other minor issues regarding work. The Management was not happy with the way the mechanics voiced their concerns, it felt it was intimidating.
In the meeting:
1- All the mechanics were giving a chance to express their concerns which mainly were:
a- Not getting paid on time
b- No contact number where they can call if they have an issue
c- No group leader

2- The management were concerned with:
a- Mechanics not being patient with the pay issues, the management had no intention to delay their pay, but at times, especially with small businesses, things get out of control
b- The management didn’t appreciate the way the some of the mechanics intimidated the office secretary with their demands
c- The management didn’t appreciate nor it will allow the formation of any types of unions

The meeting went real smooth and all the points above were discussed. The mechanics were giving a monthly date (from the 1st to the 5th of the month) where they should receive their pay; they were told they can not have a group leader or from any types of unions and all their grievances must be communicated to management and finally they were giving a number to call in case they had any concerns.

The management acknowledged the frustration felt by the mechanics when they didn’t get their pay on time or when they cant find the right person to call when the faced a problem.
All the above points were translated into an agreement and was signed by both parties

Workers management conflicts at small businesses

As I start with my new work assignment with a new company and in a new country, I will again share my experience of managing small businesses.
Right now I am in the State of Qatar, small country in the Arabian Gulf region and one of the contenders to host the 2016 Olympic Games.

My first assignment as business development manager with my new company is to resolve a labor dispute between a group of mechanics and the management.

As the case with many small businesses around the world, most of the small companies don’t have clear guidelines for new employees nor there a clear job description for the current employees.

The issue I am having at hand is dealing with the mechanics complaining that the company is not providing them with what they were promised and the management complaining that the mechanics demands never ends and they have no respect for the company’s policy or a respect for its staff members.

The firs thing I requested form all parties involved is to have a general meeting with me to hear from everyone involved in the case, I want to start by having a fresh look at the whole problem.

Meanwhile, I have instructed my direct staff to work on the followings:
1-Develop employee’s handbook that details in particular “employee-management relations.”
2-Re-write the current contract with the mechanics to the level accepted by all parties involved.
3-Write complete job description, skills set and duties of every employee. One of the issues that led to the current conflict is that no one is ready to take the responsibility during time of crisis.

This is the immediate steps I took to resolve the current conflict; I will keep posting about any new developments as they happen.

Why we need to align IT with Business?

Lately, I have been following discussions on various blogs about the need to align IT with Business.
In college I have majored in Management Information Systems, a field of study where the focus is in bridging the gaps between IT and Various Units in an organization. But why IT is always the focus when there is a conflict in the Organization? Why there is even a need to align IT with business? Why IT department cannot be a unit in itself? Why there are always discussions at corporate level about the need for IT to align itself with the rest of the Business units?

IT is a separate field of knowledge that has its own standards and procedures. Many articles I have read about this subject suggested the need for top mangers and decision makers to educate themselves about various IT functions within the organization.

IT department can function on its own just like any other departments within the organization. We don’t often hear the need for the Marketing department to align itself with the rest of the organization.

Many none-technical managers and employees feel intimidated by the technical aspects of today’s technical world and they feel as if IT people are not really part of the team so we hear the calls for the need to align IT with Business.
IT is a very dynamic and ever changing field, the call to align IT with business by educating managers and top decisions makers about various technologies is not practical, and it will require constant learning by managers.

IT department head should be a person with knowledge in both technical fields as well as various fields that make up modern organizations. When I majored in Management Information Systems, I didn’t really know what I got myself into; I majored in MIS because it was HOT. Management Information Systems gave me both the technical and business foundations.

Although colleges have been teaching Management Information Systems for over ten years now, many business people are not aware of it. There are actually people out there who have experience in both IT and Management, there is no need to align IT with Business, because it’s not a practical task, what needs to be done is to have IT department headed by a person who has experienced both fields.

Decisions making process…is it facts or intuitions? Part 2

An example where decision making process should have been based on facts and lessons from history is the current conflict in Iraq. From what we know today, it is obvious that the decision to go to war was not based on facts and history lessons learned from that region of the world, the decision was based mostly in intuitions and hopes that everything will just work out fine.
I think it’s not practical to develop a single decision making methodology, because people will always use their intuitions, believes and the sense of adventure to make decision. They will not follow a single pattern to reach the best decision.

Even if we developed the best decision making methodology and everyone in the management team adapted that approach, what assurance we got that the decision we made based on our decision making methodology is actually is the best decision. When we invest in the stock market, we tend to get our investment advices from the best stock traders around but then why people lose billion of dollars when stock market crashes.

I am not suggesting that we don’t develop a decision making process, good life needs good planning which is based on good decisions, but what I am trying to conclude is that: decision will be made using many factors and people will see the outcomes of their decisions, either good outcome or otherwise, but the results of the outcome doesn’t always mean that we got full control of the factors that led to the outcome, there are many other factors that we can not include in our decision making process, because in many instances we are not even aware of the presence of these factors. Just like the example of the stock market crash, who would have thought the market will crash, that factor was not taking into considerations when an investor deiced to invest in the stock market, because no one ever thought that factor ever existed.