Office politics

Who owns the copyrights to your work?

When I joined my current job as General Manager, I have devised processes and procedures that were un-known to the company prior to my employment with them. I have used company’s resources to build these procedures but the original idea was mine.

Now the question that comes to mind is “who owns the rights to this new knowledge”?
This sounds like the “Chicken and Egg” question, who came first? The company had the resources but no knowledge on how to make a good use of it and I had the knowledge on how to put the resources to a good use but I needed the resources that the company had.

If there was no written contract between the employee and the company on who has the rights to the intellectual property at the end of the employment term, what legal process to follow to resolve the issue?

Break in Communications can cost business a fortune

I called the airlines to make my flight reservation, the agent made my return date on sept 27th instead of sept2th as I requested, either I didn’t speak clearly or he didn’t listen carefully, but it costs me and my company time and money. Another example, I called my secretary to check on a reservation for me, but she didn’t only check the reservation but she actually made the reservation, another costly mistake.

A client of our company was suppose to bring some timely sensitive business documents, but she didn’t, she thought it was our job to remind her and our secretary thought it was the client responsibility to bring the documents on time.

These small communications break down cost our company close to $2000 in fees and late charges and about 4 days of lost work, which could have been easily avoided.

Break in Communications cannot be totally eliminated but it can be greatly reduced.
In my company, I made it a priority for everyone (employees and clients) to communicate via e-mails and not to rely on verbal communications.

This policy doesn’t always work and some communications take place over the phone, it’s the responsibility of all parties involved that the message was understood. Think of the communications that take place between pilots and air traffic controller; both parties have to read back to each other to make sure the message was delivered.

The lack of Females IT workers

Why IT is one of those industries with limited number of female workers? Are female, naturally, are not technically oriented or do most females chose a career away from IT to avoid a male dominated industry?

Public perception of female IT workers is poor, the public in general don’t trust a female IT professional to handle their technical problems. Back when I used to work in a call center, most callers would feel uncomfortable talking to a female technician.

In my years in collage majoring in Management Information Systems, I observed that most female students would not excel in programming and networking classes.

Are females inherently inclined to deal with human and not machine, or is it the society who is assigning roles and responsibilities based on gender?

Management with cultural barriers

Working with a group of people with diverse cultural backgrounds is both exiting and challenging. In my job as manager with international company, I interact and manage people from different parts of the world and each group of people from specific geographical region has their own unique characters that a manger must be aware of.

There are People who are reluctant to accept leadership positions, they brought up in societies where they always told what to do and not use their own judgments, with this group, I have to always monitor them closely and give them clear guidance on what is expected of them. The good thing about this group is that they listen and follow instructions.

There are People who seek leadership positions and willing to make judgments and take risks, with this group a manager has to be a bit careful, since he may end up with people in leadership positions without adequate experience, this group of people can be trained gradually to assume higher positions plus the manager can use them as to fill in on his absence since they require little supervision. These groups of people come from societies where men usually have to assume leadership positions and it expected of them to rise quickly in the corporate ladder.

The last group is of people is those who want to only excel in what they do, they are experts in their professions and willing to learn and advance as long as they remain focused on what they can do best. These groups of people come from societies where “excellent work and professionalism” is expected from every member of the society, they trained to excel in certain fields and remain focused on what they do best.

Of course this is my personal experience and it applies to this part of the world, the Arab world.

Change in Management must be done carefully

Every time there is a presidential election somewhere, we hear contestants call for change, they talk about the change they will bring to the government once they are elected, but change doesn’t happen overnight, it takes years of planning.

We may have read stories about how new management in some large organizations such as (GM, Chrysler, and Nissan), brought sweeping changes to management style and created success in short years, but these are only few success stories otherwise change takes time and years of planning.

In a small business world where I work, making changes is not that difficult since there are only few people are affected, but convincing people to accept the change and embrace is not always easy.

Also changes must be classified into categories, for example, changes in working conditions and better work environment can take place immediately where changes in business process or employee-management interactions must happen gradually over time.

In my current work environment in the Arab world, I came from American education and work background, it is hard and tedious process to convince upper management of the needed change in the organization, in addition, the society is still not ready to accept many changes in the work place.

Change is inevitable and it is part of life and those who try to stop it will be overwhelmed, but change must be managed and steered carefully to get the desired results.

What business are you in, IT or Customer service?

In his book “The Truth about Green Business”, Gil Friend writes about how railroads companies for many years considered themselves in the railroads industry rather than in transportation industry.

When I used to work as help desk support representative for a major hardware manufacturer the emphasis was on providing great customer service rather than fixing technical problems, we were trained to think as service agents rather than technicians.

Unfortunately, many customers cannot distinguish between the customer service rep and a technician. When I used to make on-site visits to fix technical problems, many customers would expect me to help them with customer service related issues in addition to fixing their technical problems.

It’s becoming harder to distinguish between the duties of customer service agent and support technician, especially at first level support, companies usually combine the jobs of the two into one position to streamline operation and cut costs.

I think it’s important for IT companies to define the industry they belong to, airlines, hotels and restaurants can be classified as service industries, but IT is clearly not all about customer service, but rather it’s about technical services.

Improve your employees standards by improving you own standards

I have met many managers who demand the best out of their employees but they themselves fail to live up to those standards or be a role model. What hinders the development efforts in many organizations, especially in the developing world, is the huge gap between management and employees; management demands certain quality of work but without providing a clear guidelines or standards to employees.

In several companies where I worked or where I visited I saw almost no training giving to employees not even new employees were giving an introduction to the company’s operation.

In many countries around the world, the culture of isolation between management and the rest of the employees is still very much alive, managers mostly view themselves as superior who seldom make mistakes and have no need to improve their standards.

A successful manager must always set himself as a role model to the rest of his employees, he must lead by example, he must know that his employees will only have faith on him if they see his standards are continuously improving.

Will you accept lower pay for big job title?

Do salary and benefits have to match the job title? Will you accept lower pay for bigger job title? I know people who are taking more responsibilities at their job in hope to add to their professional credentials and create better network for better future jobs.

I personally think you must be compensated fairly for the position you were hired for, if your job title is CEO or General Manager, then you should be paid as such.

What prompted me to write this article is a trend I have been witnessing in this part of the world, Arab world and the Gulf area, where people with humble educational backgrounds are giving job titles of General Manager or Chief Engineer but their pay scale only matches that of a junior staff member.

Unfortunately, job seekers with the right educational and experience backgrounds have to compete with applicants with less than educate experience for the same job title, this bring down the quality level in the entire industry.

Don’t expect less than what you deserve, and if you don’t find someone who is willing to hire you, then go back to school or write a book instead of giving your skills for cheap.

We always have done it this way

Business survives on innovations and the willingness to try new ideas and new ways of doing things, successful managers are always working on methods to improve business processes, they look for ways to cut cost and improve quality.

In some companies managers are trapped under ceiling that says “We always have done it this way”, a management that is not willing to try new ideas because their current business process is working fine, Japanese companies relentless pursuit for innovations put it ahead of the competitions by many years, take Toyota and GM as an example, Toyota took the lead from GM as the world number one vehicle manufacturer.

It’s true that some companies used business plans that served them well for years and there is no need to change these plans, but that doesn’t not mean those plans shouldn’t be closely examined periodically to look for room for improvements.

Its sad to see, when traveling through the developing world, how people suffer to get the basic services just because no one is willing to examine the old ways of doing business and think of ways to improve old processes.

The power of simple management

What all great CEOs have in common? Besides their clear vision on what they want to accomplish for their companies, they all have simple management style.

Simple management is the ability by managers to communicate effectively with employees using the most simple but meaningful words. Simple and effective communications that produce results requires great deal of communication skills that not many managers seem to have.

With they wide spread us of e-mails, there is an explosion on the amount of information exchanged and managers who fail to communicate clearly spend longer time writing e-mails.

When I first joined my current company, I was shocked by the amount of e-mails that were sent back and forth between the company and its’ clients, it proved one thing to me, “the message is not clear and things were not simple to understand”.

When a CEO or a manager is able to explain company’s goals in few effective words, it demonstrate his deep understating of the subject, great words of wisdom are composed of few “words”, but they guide us in times of need.

In the early years, Microsoft management goal and message were real simple “to put a PC on every desk”, Google’s search engine page only consists of few words, and the idea is clear “to help you search the internet”.

Simple management usually holds behind it greats ideas.