IT managers

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.

Decisions making process…is it facts or intuitions? Part 1

Decisions ..Decisions..Decisions..What is the right methodology to make a good decision?
When a manager doesn’t make a good decision, he may be blamed that he didn’t get all the facts before he took that decision; but does having all the facts at hand leads to a good decision making? We also hear the phrase “I just had a good feeling about this”, or “I just had a bad feeling about that.” Managers do make their decisions based on guts feeling.
As a manager in charge of decisions making, how do I make my decisions? Do I use facts alone? Do I mix my feelings with that? Do I wait for a good sign before I make my decision? Do I wait for a happy day?

There are three schools of thoughts when it comes to decisions making:
1-Don’t look back just think about the future; basically make your decisions as you go.
2-Don’t look back, but make sure you make what happened in the past a guide to your future decision making process.
3-Look what happened in the past; learn from history, “never again”, this school of thoughts depends heavily on what happened in the past to make any future decisions.

Which three schools of thoughts have the most credible decision making process? Which decision making process is the most successful at arriving at the right decisions? Each of the three above has their won success stories to tell.

You may hear many managers claim that their decision are based only on facts in front of them, but I don’t find that to be entirely true, there are always emotions, intuitions, believes, characters..etc, that are involved in the decision making.

If you read the history of the great pioneers, we find one thing common in their decision making process “they didn’t have a past experience or much information at hand to use as a guide to their new endeavors”; they had to make their decisions as they moved along. As they paved their path to the new frontiers, they wrote their own history. One great example of this decision making process is the space exploration program…

To be continued…