Project management

Motivate your employees

Nothing is more damaging to a company than unproductive employees. There are many factors that lead employees to be unproductive:

1- Direct manager is not involved on the day to day activities of his/her staff.
2- Company doesn’t have employees’ performance review program.
3- Goals and vision of the company are not clear.
4- Employees don’t have detailed job description; they don’t know what is expected of them.
5- Some employees are just not fit for the job.

From my experience in working with various organizations and with employees from different parts of the world, the above factors are usually the cause for employee’s unproductivity.

What is the solution? Very simple, make sure the above factors are not true for your organization.

1- Manager should have a meeting, even if it very short with his/her staff on daily basis, just to have an idea of what they are working on.
2- You must have employees’ performance review, either monthly or quarterly.
3- Your employees must understand and must believe on the mission statement of the company, otherwise, you will get an employee who’s only motivation for coming to work is to get a pay check at the end of the month.
4- Each employee must understand what is expected of him or her, when I first started to work with my current company, I noticed the office janitor doing nothing all day, so I started my mission with my new company by writing a job description for our janitor. I asked him why he sat all day long doing nothing? He said “ I don’t know what is expected of me.” When I explained to him his job duties he felt as if he was a part of a bigger team and his job performance really improved.
5- Finally, some employees are only working at your company because they have nothing better to do, get rid of these employees.

Pay to get the best employees

One of the greatest challenges that face small businesses and sometimes even the larger corporate world is unskilled or under qualified labor force.

I have worked and visited few countries in the past 12 months from the US to India to Saudi Arabia to Qatar. As a young graduate, I started my career with a small company in TX, USA, most of the labor force of that company consisted of young graduates with very limited experience. The company strategy was, as most small businesses do, is to hire young workers or workers with limited experience to cut costs. The end results were disastrous, the company was not able to carry on with its obligations, many deliverables didn’t meet client expectations and most projects ran over budget and the end result was “a bankrupted company.”

What made me write about this subject is my current experience. Right now I am working in the Area between Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Qatar, this area known locally by “The Arabian Gulf.” Because of the rising oil prices, governments here are spending billions of dollars in all areas of developments, which is great, but most projects depends heavily on cheap labor brought in from South Asia. As I live in this area, I see why the development over the past 20-30 years has been slow although billions of dollars were spent on thousands of projects, the main reason for that is the total dependency on cheap labor, most projects were not executed properly because of lake of experience, many projects were done over and over.

The management tip here is “don’t really on cheap labor; it will cost you down the road.”

Carlos Ghosn and the philosophy of change at Nissan Motor

Many people may have not heard of Carlos Ghosn Nissan’s CEO, this Brazilian born for Lebanese parents turned Nissan around and made it profitable again. There is so much a person can learn from Mr. Ghosn management style but one thing that really got my attention and I am personally a firm believer in it is his idea of “Respect the other party culture, but never to be forced on you.”

In order for Mr. Ghosn to turn Nissan Motor around, he had to break many traditional practices at Nissan Motor that has strong link to the Japanese culture; this made him the most hated man in Japan, but also one of the most successful CEOs.

I always believed that success has no boundaries nor it is a property of a certain culture, successful methods of management can be applied in any culture and in any country.

I always like to take MacDonald as an example of successful company who assimilates well in its local environment without losing its corporate identity and value system.

Male or female employees

This maybe not be politically correct subject, but I want to share my experience working with both male and female employees, keep sexism out, this is purely practical approach.

I haven’t worked in a diverse office environment such the one I am working in now. I have noticed few significant differences when it comes to male and female employees.

I will not say who is better, but I will list areas where I noticed these differences:

1-Attention to details
2-Good listeners
3-Willing to take responsibility
4-Loyalty
5-Fast learner
6-Making suggestion
7-Out spoken

These are the areas where I noticed some significant differences between the genders.

Templates from Microsoft for your small business

I am not a big fan of Microsoft office, but Microsoft owns the world as my professor used to say. Microsoft website is full of productivity tools that are available for free.

There are plenty of templates ready for use by small business owners, below is only a small list of what you can find at Microsoft site:

Business plan for startup business
Bank loan request for small business
Projected balance sheet
Personal financial statement
Four-year profit projection
Start-up expenses
Opening day balance sheet
Financial history and ratios
12 month profit and loss projection
12 month sales forecast
Competitive analysis

You can download these templates and many more at:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx

How to discipline your employees

Employees-management conflict is a complicated and delicate issue. Concerned managers always try to find ways to strike a fair balance between giving employees their full rights but at the same time not losing their authority as managers.

I had a recent incident with one of my employees, I am his direct manager and I try to be to him as a mentor more than a manager, I was shocked when I ordered him to perform a task and his reply was “it can wait till the next week”, his answer really made me re-think my entire relation with my staff.

On my first day on my new consulting job, I have made it clear to my staff, most of them recent graduates, that I will adhere to an open door policy with them and they will get my full support in any efforts they take to gain more experience.

I will continue the open door policy with my staff but at the same time I will have a meeting with this one employee who failed to follow his manager’s order. In the meeting I will make it very clear that he has not respected his superiors and his action will have consequences. I will temporarily relief him from some of the responsibilities I gave him until I feel he is ready again to act in a responsible manner.

The use of abbreviations in business communications

Clear communication is one of the vital elements of successful business management. Traveling and working in few countries, I have seen first hand how the use of abbreviations could lead to a big mis-understanding.

I have seen the use of “u r” which means “you are” in formal business communications, when I started my current consulting job, I would see the abbreviation ‘RP”, in many of my company’s formal letters and no where it was explained what “ RP” stands for, it stand for “resident permit.”.

We are living in a very diverse world, and the wide spread of communications made it easy for businesses to communicate world wide, but that doesn’t not mean that abbreviations used by you locally would be understood by people in another country.

When is comes to important business communication, spell the words out, don’t use abbreviations unless there were for abbreviations that understood and are officially used world wide like WWW, which stands for world wide web or abbreviations that pertain to a certain profession.

Rising Oil prices and cost management

The continues hike in oil prices is not going to stop anytime soon, if your business is directly affected by oil price fluctuations, it would be a wise decision to plan your budget around higher oil prices.

Many businesses, especially small businesses, may psychologically, get affected by hearing the news of higher oil prices and start to worry about their bottom line.

But as a business you got to look at your numbers. As a consultant who uses the internet and the phones extensively in his work, I saw a sharp decline in my communications bill, from almost $1000 a month to below $100 a month, that’s 90% decrease in cost.

This is only one example of how costs are dropping for other services. Having your employees work remotely from home is another example of cost saving method you can utilize, by having your employees work from home, you can cut on many types of costs associated with the office environment such as (office rent, utilities bills, commuting time, etc.)

The costs of few commodities may be rising, but the overall cost of doing business is dropping.

Fleet management tips needed

At my current job, I am facing a bit of a challenge managing our company’s fleet of about 70 cars. I have searched the internet for good fleet management software and I found few good software but I am not sure about the quality of these software.

Does anyone know of a good fleet management software?

Challenges that we are facing with our fleet of cars:

1- Rental history
2- Accident history
3- Maintenance history
4- Mileage
5- Cost of ownership
6- Warranty information
7- Checkout and check records

Of course we have some type of records for our fleet, but I like to have a complete control of our fleet where no part of fleet management is over looked.

Does anyone know of good software for fleet management and also any tips in this subject are welcome

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.