Project management

Nano and cutting costs

The introduction of “Nano”, the cheapest car in the world by the Indian Giant Tata, recived many welcomes and it also created many concerns by the environmentalists.
The supporters of the project see it as a mean of providing a cheap car for the masses, just as Henry Ford did with his T-model, and the environmentalists see it as a new pollutant, especially in the crowded roads of India.

As a manager, who is always looking for tips for better management ideas, I find the Nano project is an example of practical and futuristic thinking. The Nano car has no air-conditioning nor it has power windows, it’s a small car, and has less horse power, but it has a price tag that many Indian consumers can afford. India’s roads are filled with two wheels motor bikes and three wheels (rickshaws), and Nano will be a great alternative for the owners of these vehicles.

By eliminating few extra items form its Nano Model, Tata made a great car that is affordable by the masses not only in India, but around the world.

As far as the environmentalists concerns, well, the new Nano has no air-conditioning, so it well produce less gases and the Indian roads and the roads of many countries around the world are filled with cheap transportations vehicles and the Nano will only by a sophisticated replacement.

Pro labor or Pro Management

Where should the manager stand when there is a conflict between employees and management? Last week at my work, there was a conflict between upper management and the accounting department. The accounting department approved a large cash withdrawal form the company’s bank account for some immediate payments including staff salaries (we are dealing with a small business here, so some of the payments are usually paid in cash.) The CEO of the company was in total disbelieve on how the accounting department approved such a large payment without his approval.

I was in a unique situation, the CEO is not usually around and the accounting department needed the fund but at the same time the CEO instructed the accounting department not to authorize any large payments without his approval.

The accounting department saved the day by withdrawing the money and making payments, but it also violated the CEO policy. I thought parties were to blame, the CEO was not around to approve an urgent money withdrawal and the accounting department didn’t not follow the standard procedures to withdraw funds.

In my meeting with the CEO and the accounting department, I maintained my neutrality, I had to make sure I don’t lose the confidence of either party, upper management must be sure that I will do my best to protect the interest of the company and the staff members must be sure that I will support them in a time of a conflict.

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.

How to deal with diversity at work place

Today’s work place is more diverse than ever, even within the small business setting, you would find employees with very diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. In my traveling throughout few countries, I noticed how different cultures deal with diversity at work place.

In some countries, the locals or the citizens of the country always have an upper hand in the workplace, talent and experience come second, in other, talent and experience determined how employees are evaluated.

Smart and futuristic managers always treat diversity as an asset to the company. In today’s ever connected world, your work force will be compromised of people with various backgrounds and learning how to deal with such diverse work force is both challenging and exciting.

In my current job, I am dealing with Asians employees, most if not all of them are on their first international assignment in a foreign country (currently I am working in the Arab state of Qatar.) What did I learn working with this diverse group of people?
The first thing I noticed, the how they write their resumes (CVs), the usual resume has so much personal information that I found it bit more than what I need to know about the employee. Most resumes contain information such as (birth city, martial status, passport number, how many kids and religion.)

Most of the employees are not out-spoken and they don’t communicate their objectives clearly, so when I started to work with my new company, I really had to sit with my staff few times to learn more about their objectives and also to find more about their skills.

Usually, the employees won’t take initiatives on changing the work environment, the initiative must always come from the management, so as a manager, I learned not to wait for my employees to come to me with their ideas and problems, but I have to go to them.

Although the employees require close supervision, which makes it hard on the management, they are hard working and usually do what they asked to do.

The work environment and local laws here give so much power to the management, although that is changing now, which may intimidate some employees, as a manager, I am trying to strike a balance between employees rights and responsibilities.

I am dealing with a work culture that I have not experienced before, but with little patience and good coaching, I am able to get a lot from my employees.

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.

Reduce costs…take an inventory of your business

It’s amazing how much money a business can save by taking a detailed inventory of the business. By taking a detailed inventory I mean analyzing each aspect of doing business.

Areas where you can save money and reduce costs:
1-Employees job performance and job description reviews: having a regular meeting with employees to go over job performance and day to day activities will reveal so much to a manger, you will find what actually people doing at your company, you may think you know your employees well, but having short timely meeting with your employees will reveal to you areas which are usually overlooked in today’s dynamic work environment. You will find employees who are not doing what they were hired to do, you will find the same job done by several people, you will find abuses of company resources.
2-Renegotiate contracts with supplier and service providers: you will be surprised by how much you could save by renegotiating an old service contract. Many contracts never get regular review by management, by reviewing and renegotiating contracts on regular basis, the company could save a bundle.
3-Find cost generating areas in your company: have an intense regular review of your over all operation and watch for cost generating areas, even small cost cuts will add to savings, look for hidden areas that are usually overlooked such as (office supplies and utilities bills.)

The list can go on and on, but the general idea is to have a regular review of business operation to find areas where costs could be cut or reduced.

Small businesses and the lost productivity

One of the most of challenging aspect of running a small business is to have a dedicated staff, at many small business that I worked with, there was a lost of productivity due to the staff not knowing what is needed from them. There was no dedicated staff or the staff members did not know what was their jobs description.

It is typical in a small business setting to see jobs responsibilities overlap; you would see human resource doing the job of accounting and marketing trying to work with IT issues and so on.

Because of the nature of small businesses where resources are limited, the above scenario is typical, but from my experience, management must come up with a quick plan to assign job responsibilities to improve productivity.
On my last consulting job with a small IT firm, productivity really improved when I clearly defined job responsibilities to each staff member, I explained to them that working at small business, you may have to work in other areas not related to your job, but that’s only when we need an extra hand.

Most small business are owned by either a single person or few partners, and the owner(s) is usually doing marketing and public relations work outside and he/she is not available each day to oversee day to day activities, I saw this first hand in few countries I worked in.

Most business owners that I have worked with complain about staff members not being productive and he/she has to do everything. The fact is, staff members are productive and welling to work, they just need little guidance and direction, after all they are not the decision makers.

As an owner of a small business, you should schedule timely meeting with your staff, this may sound basic but believe me not many business owners meet regularly with their staff members, in this meeting you must assign tasks, make decisions, listen to problems, make plans and show support to your staff members. These meetings can be only once a week for an hour or so, but it will be a great tool to energize your employees and you will see the results almost immediately.

Tips to Enhance your small business image

You don’t need to have a big budget to improve the image of your small business, just some creativity. In today’s technologically advanced world, you can give your company real professional image without spending a fortune.

Many small businesses cannot afford to hire a professional secretary or have a prestigious business address, a company called HQ, www.hq.com, resolved this issue for many small businesses and independent consultants by offering, among other services, a prestigious business address and secretarial services for a fee of $100-$200/month. They offer these services in many cities around the world.

Another service a small business can use without spending a fortune is the services of VOIP, I have been using Vonage services for several months now, www.vonage.com, the service is great and I can carry the phone with my any where in the world without my clients noticing that I am out of my office. The basic service is available for under $30/a month.

And the last thing, if you want to hire a professional in almost any filed, from writers to lawyers to computer programmers, try www.guru.com, here you will find talents from around the world with very competitive rates, you don’t need to a hire a full time employees just use these freelancers as you need them.