Office politics

When conflict of interests de-rail good projects

One of the main reasons I left corporate world and started to work for myself or for small businesses is the issues of “office conflicts and inside politics.”

Right after graduation from college I have worked with a promising startup company in Houston, TX, they company patented a powerful website application to help users save money on their loans and find better deals.

The project had a very good start with a great hardworking team but office politics and conflicts in upper management killed the project and eventually led the company out of business.

I always sit down and wonder, how many great projects and ideas never saw the light because conflicting interest of various individuals or groups involved?

Think outside the box, but not always

The first lesson we learn in management 101 is to “Think outside the box”, which is a valuable lesson. But thinking outside the box can’t not go forever, I mean in some companies you see the management struggling to come up with one solid business plan.

The management in these companies consistently struggling with new ideas but they don’t seem to settle down on one idea or business plan and focus on it. Exploring new ideas or trying consistently to improve your business process is great, but at some point you must chose a path for your company and follow it.

Thinking outside the box must stop at some point and you need to focus inside the box and work with what you have at hands.

Human Resource Development

As a professional, nothing excites me more than working with small businesses and helping them develop their business process: to cut costs and improve quality is what drives me to be more creative and more observing.

In the last two years, I have been working in what it called “the developing world”, working with people with various cultural and languages backgrounds. Working here always leads me to ask the same question: Why “the developing world” is always struggling although many countries have spent billions of dollars in development?

If I take the small business setting I work with as an example, I can clearly see the much needed work in Human Resource Development. Although the workers I work with are hard working, they don’t have the needed “skills” that would make them excel.

I can give few examples:

1-Not taking initiatives: most companies here have the centralized management systems “micro management” employees are not trained nor are encouraged to take their own initiatives to resolve work problems. In my current job, I try to encourage my employees to take actions to resolve problems on their own but I am having difficult time doing it since their minds don’t work that way.

2-No strong desire to move forward: I have given my employees many chances and give them suggestions to improve their skills to make them more competitive in the job market, but their response was disappointing.

3-Not taking pride on their jobs: they easily admit mistakes and don’t stand by their actions. This is one of the most difficult aspects of my job as manager when I have a staff that I can’t depend on.

The above examples are just a small part of a larger and more complex problem that faces the developing countries, there is a still a very complex relation that exist between the management and employees, this relation is governed by many factors that are not related to the business environment such as religion and culture.

Set high standards and lock in your customers

What keeps Microsoft profitable? Microsoft, among other things, locked in customers by having its applications, either by choice or otherwise, accepted worldwide. Most Businesses and even the general public cannot pass one day without using some of Microsoft products.

How can you use this concept in your business? I don’t like people using my services or products just because they have no alternatives, as many think of Microsoft products, but I want my customers use my service or buy my product because they can’t live without the quality I provide them.

Setting a higher standard of service or having a superior product is what will lock in your customers. As we witness the growing demands for Apple products, this is not due to apple ability to have businesses persuaded to buy its products but it’s due to apple ability to have superior products in the market.

City in Montana wants job applicants’ passwords to social websites

As reported by the associated press: “Job applicants with the city of Bozeman are finding that their private Internet discussions and pictures may not be so private after all.
The city is asking job seekers for the user names and passwords to Internet social networking or Web groups to which they belong. The decision is sparking an outcry from those who say the policy goes way too far.”

Why would an employer ask for such information? What benefits an employer can get from knowing your online habits? Do they want to know your personality by analyzing your online habits?
I am sure many of us, including myself, are outraged by hearing such news, but wait a minute…..aren’t companies already using such practices? Many employers want to check your credit history, your martial status and even run a background check on you.
This news created a negative publicity for the city and strong objection by the public, but it’s a clear sign of how the internet and social websites are shaping our lives.

Yes to customer service, but set the limits

I am an avid advocate of a great customer service, your customer deserves the best, but you must sit the limits. Over the past couple of weeks, I hit a road block with one of our most important customers. We were not able to complete a service request on the promised time because of some government regulations which keep changing, the customer would not accept my explanation and threatened me that he will take his business somewhere else.

What to do? I know that our company could have used its social network and we would have resolved the customer issue at this time, but that would have set our limits too high and the customer would expect that each time. I thought this was a bad policy.

So, I sat with the customer and explained to him the importance of his business to us and we strive to give his company the best customer service for his money, but there will be limits to what we can deliver and I want to make that very clear.

The customer didn’t feel very good about that, but I had to stand my ground and make sure I don’t promise what I can’t deliver.

At the end, the customer was able to digest what I said and he felt more confidence in our service.

So, don’t promise what you cannot deliver.

The Impact of Unions on Business

I have never been a member of a union nor have I been member of the management team negotiating with union members. But recently, as a manager, I had few incidents with a group of employees in my company who formed un-official union group.

Each time I request them to do something, they would all band together and refuse to comply and they would only comply after intense negotiations with the management.

This behavior caused me to cancel few plans that I had in mind that would have benefited these employees and I told them openly that the time I spent negotiating with them took me away from working on some programs that would have benefited them.

I am not taking sides here, but in my short experience in dealing with union like groups I found out that management looks at unions demand as “an arm twisting” strategy which usually doesn’t work.

Business Model that based on LOVE

Few months ago I was working on a class project where I had to do field visit to some local companies where I currently live in Doha, Qatar. My task was to analyze the business model and the marketing strategy of the company.

Our team members picked a local hospital to study, we chose this hospital because it was a great success story.

In our meeting with the CEO of the hospital, we asked him the secret recipe behind the success of this hospital and what was his management philosophy, and he only replied with one word “LOVE”, his idea behind success it to show people love.

He said we want our patients to feel that we love them and we are here to serve them with great love. He also stressed the need to share this love among the working staff in the hospital that was his secret recipe for success. He was able to turn the business around and make it more profitable by showing people a lot of “LOVE”.

This was the first business model I have seen that was based on LOVE.

Keep the entrepreneurial minds in your company

Who wants a computer on every desktop? This was IBM reaction to Microsoft business model of having a computer on every desktop. This was way back in the early 70’s or so.
With the fierce competition we face today as the global scale, can companies afford not to listen?

In your company, you may have the guy who is consistently suggesting new ideas and he is often frown upon by his peers or even by the management. Some managers look at this type of employee as “trouble maker”, big mistake.

In my own job as manager, my over all productivity got have tripled have I had an innovative minds in my staff. I want my staff to stop me down the hallways and throw ideas at me, but that is not happening.

A famous quote by someone “Innovate or die”, it’s very true to our global economy today, each day pass on you where you don’t make that step ahead, millions of people around the world would have taken it and gotten a step a head of you.

Manage like basketball coach

If you ever watch the last 10 to 15 seconds on crucial basketball games, you would always see coaches making last second changes to their plans to win the game. Most of the time, the last seconds changes in the plan cause the team to win the game.

Last week, I had, with my team, to do round of presentations in front of panel of judges. Our project was a class project I was taking for the last 9 months. There were total of 12 teams. It was a two days event where we had to do a series of presentations and at each stage few times would be eliminated.

My team consisted of 3 members, 2 of them were doing the presentations and one (myself) was setting in the back watching their performance. I told my team members to think of this as a basketball game, I would watch them perform and as soon as they finish, we would discuss the weak parts and change our plan and re-think our approach for the next round.

This approach worked real well for us, and our team made it to the final round.

The lesson: as you manage, you may have to change your plans consistently, if an approach doesn’t work, don’t scrap the project, but re-think your strategy and change your approach, you will be surprised by how many new ideas will hit your mind as you move on.