Office politics

Advantages and disadvantages of managing a small firm

Managing a small firm is nothing like managing at corporate level with hundreds or even thousands of employees.

Imagine moving from a large metropolitan city to live in the country side, you will miss many services that you were accustomed to. The dry cleaner is not down the road, the major grocery store is about 20 min away, it may take few days before a plumber would show up, the broadband speed may not be at level you feel comfortable with, etc, etc.

The above scenario, may be exaggerated a bit, shows how I felt when I started to work for a small company. Although technology making it easier to work and move around, I found many disadvantages of working for a small firm.

1-Lake of good infrastructure: good infrastructur such as (ample office space, latest hardware and software, well written manuals, long term vision and goals, etc) may not always be available in small firm environment.
2-Constant changes in vision and in goals: in some small firms, change in vision and in goals is so prevailing it makes it impossible for managers to put in place a long term strategy.
3-Limited budget: as a manager in a small firm, you may have to work with a small budget which will limit your ability to solve problems and create new strategies
4-Lake of experience: since you will be working with a small number of people, the total over all experience of the firm may be limited and in certain cases you will have to look outside the firm for help.

After I talked about some of the disadvantages of working for small firm, are there any good incentives to work for a small firm? The answer is yes.

1-Limited hierarchy: decisions can be reached quickly since there is a limited number of people involved in the decision making process
2-Ease of communication: in a small firm, you almost can meet every on the payroll in one day , you will have more time to talk to each of your staff members
3-Your ideas will be recognized: if you come up with a good solution, your idea will resonate throughout the company and you will be recognized quickly.
4-Challenging environment: if you love challenges and want to know what it means to think on your feet, than a small company may provide you with that challenge.

If you like to see dreams come true, than I believe working for small firm may grant you your wish. After all, many multi-national corporations we see today started as a small business.

Managing in a different culture Part 4

As I continue on with my last article on, Managing in a different culture, I need to mention that not every solution that has been introduced so far is working flawlessly, there are still many improvements that need to be made, but after all that what management is all about, “ the continues struggle for perfection.”

The last two items on my to-do list were:

• No company policy: there was no policy regarding (hiring, firing, compensation, vacation, sick leave, tardiness, etc.)
This is one of the most difficult areas to work with when you are managing in a different culture. I am having a hard time understanding the excuses I hear when someone is late or doesn’t show up for work. The norms here in Saudi Arabia with the company I am working for is that when someone is late or doesn’t show up for work is that the company has to call the employee and find out why he didn’t show up for work and than the employee may or may not answer the phone and the answering machines are not widely used. I had to come up with quick fix for this important issue, so I decided to have a quick meeting with the two managers that I work with who I can depend on and we decided to have each of the two managers to handle the work of any late or an absent employee until we find a permanent fix with for issue is we develop more concrete company policy. I realized that developing a policy is a long term process and it can not be done in a short period of time.

• No accounting system: the company had no accounting system, only an excel sheet with expenses and income.

When I started to work on this issue, I was told by the general manger of an accounting software that the company purchased but has not been used since no one had time to learn the software and implement it.
The software is excellent and the interface is both in Arabic and in English and it was developed for the local market.

The software features include:

1-inventory management
2-fixed asset management
3-sales management
4-budgeting
5-account receivable
6-account payable
7-employee’s salary management

The software is very comprehensive and it includes more features than mentioned above.

We already put the software in use.

As I conclude my series of articles of Managing in a different culture, I will continue targeting this issue since it present a unique challenge of management and learning a new culture.

Managing in a different culture part 3

As I continue with my journey of reshaping this IT firm, I gain more understanding of the difficult management issues that faces small firms, which are good materials for another article.

Here I continue with my pervious posts on the changes that I am working on.

• No tracking system: there was no adequate tracking system of the work done by the employees or the type of service delivered to the clients.
• No follow ups: clients would wait extended periods of time waiting to hear back from the staff regarding technical help or a service that was not delivered on time.
• No follow ups on completed work orders: there was an excessive build up of fixed systems that needed to be returned to the clients.

I resolved the above issues by hiring a programmer to design new tracking system for every work delivered by our technicians, completed work orders, and not completed work orders.
The new system covers:

1-Name of the technician
2-Type of service the technician working on
3-Type of service requested
4-Time the repair order came in and the time the service was delivered
5-Service fees
6-Full client contact information
7-The system must enable the management to run queries based on client data or based on technician work performance.
8-Completed work orders
9-Open work orders

The new system will:

1-Will give management bird eye view over daily activities
2-Will help in future marketing and client retention efforts
3-Will help in measuring technicians performance
4-Will contain a database of clients data, work completed, and type of services requested

Although they may be many software programs in the market that will deliver the above needed services, we had to design our own software because when I came to the company we were not able to find any software in the local market that would fit our needs, or we couldn’t fine software in the Arabic language.

Now we are at the implementation stage of this software.

Managing in a different culture Part 2

Since my last blog entry, I am overwhelmed with ever changing circumstances that make having a solid plan to work with a tough task. Since I started to work with this firm about two months ago, I spent most of my time with the staff, learning and leading. The staff I work with is responsive to my inputs and they are willing to take on new challenges, but only if I am constantly pressuring them. Having spent considerable time with the staff, didn’t leave me time to work on more pressing issues, such as (securing new contracts, marketing, budgeting, facing new challenges, quality control, etc.)

In my last blog I mentioned seven areas where I wanted to see changes:

• Absence of general management: I resolved this issue by taking two steps:

1-assigning the duties of the general manager to the most senior and experienced
Staff member.
2-having a weekly meeting (more than once a week if necessary) with the general manager and his immediate assistance.

I have made may expectations very clear to the general manager and his immediate assistance, I have micro managed them and coached them well enough in order for them to handle daily management issues that don’t require the attention of the upper management. As a project Manager, I had to keep in mind to always have my replacement be ready to move in as I move out. Someone in the staff must be ready to take charges of my current responsibilities in order for me to move to the next task where my skills are needed.

• The compensation system was not adequate: the staff members had no clear idea of the compensation system, the pay worked on standards that would change frequently. I had a separate meeting with each employee to hear their point of view on a fair pay system. They didn’t have a clear idea on how they wanted to be paid. With the current system, there was no clear policy on tardiness or no show no call issues nor did they have time reporting system. When an employee is late or doesn’t show up for work, a brief meeting follows with the manager which usually results in a pay deduction from the employee’s salary, the same rules apply for good work or overtime, when an employee does a good work or works overtime, a meeting follows with the manager on duty and usually concludes with extra pay for that work period.

The above system is not practical, it doesn’t have control system built in it, and the management doesn’t have a fair and balanced system to use to reward or punish employees. The employees wanted a pay rise and they wanted to work on per hour pay system. Since the company didn’t have any record keeping system, I was not able to authorize and immediate pay increase. The employees didn’t have a clear idea about how hourly pay system works, they wanted to get paid per hour and at the same time wanted to keep the benefits of the salary based system. In Saudi Arabia, per hour pay system in not widely used, so many workers may have heard about it, but they don’t know the details of the system.

I made up my mind to use the per hour pay system, and on the meeting with the staff, I explained to them how the system will work, I sensed a bit of disappointment of the benefits they will lose with the new system., but I had to stick with my plans since with the old system, there was so much productivity loss due to tardiness and no show for work..

As thank you gesture, I issued a pay rise to all staff in order to ease the transaction to the new pay system.

The new pay system:

1-workers, excluding management, will be paid based on per hour pay.
2-there will be overtime pay for work done outside the normal business hours.
3-there will be performance review every three month and any pay rise will be based on the performance report.
4-there will be bounces giving on celebrated public holidays, in Saudi Arabia and in most of the Muslim world, that would be after the month of fasting (the holy month of Ramadan).

We will see how this new pay system will work. See you later as I continue my work trip

Managing in a different culture

As I get more and more involved in the daily management activities of a foreign IT firm, I feel the constant need to change my plans. At my first meeting with the staff, I made it very clear that things will have to change and our current operation is not even at 20% of what we could achieve.
Everyone at the meeting agreed about the need for a change and the need to move ahead with a new plan and a new attitude. The major issues we discussed in the meeting were:
• Absence of general management: there was no general manager in charge of day to day operation of the company, couple of staff members were acting as part time managers which created good deal of confusion for both the staff and the clients.
• The compensation system was not adequate: the staff members had no clear idea of the compensation system, the pay worked on standards that would change frequently.
• No tracking system: there was no adequate tracking system of the work done by the employees or the type of service delivered to the clients
• No follow ups: clients would wait extended periods of time waiting to hear back from the staff regarding technical help or a service that was not delivered on time.
• No follow ups on completed work orders: there was an excessive build up of fixed systems that needed to be returned to the clients.
• No company policy: there was no policy regarding (hiring, firing, compensation, vacation, sick leave, tardiness, etc.)
• No accounting system: the company had no accounting system, only an excel sheet with expenses and income.
For a moment, you would think “how in the world a company could run with all the above mentioned deficiencies”, will surprisingly enough, the company is doing well business wise, but thing can not run like this if the company want to really stand in the market.
In my next blog, I will go into more details about how to fix the above mentioned points. I will try to incorporate readers’ feedback into my solution

Corporate Greed and Free Internet

Back in 1995 when I got my first internet access account, I said to a business owner “ this internet thing will go big because it’s free” and he reply was “nah, it’s only a game, kids will play with it for a while and it will die.” I guess you know the rest of the story.

What made the internet overwhelmingly popular is its’ free and dynamic nature, for many of us, the internet will be probably the most significant invention we have experienced in our lifetime.

Will corporate greed let us enjoy this free great tool we have at our disposal? The latest news coming from Microsoft states that company, in order to get more market share for its new search engine “bing”, is in negotiations with several news publishers to get exclusive rights to index news on “bing”, basically Microsoft wants to pay to get more news indexed on its search engine instead of Google.

If Microsoft and subsequently Google will have to pay to get news indexed, the end user will eventually end up paying for it.

I hope the internet community worldwide stand up against this move and help to keep the internet free for all.

Read more about this story at:

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/