via Michal Marcol/freedigitalphotos.net

I have been to after hours meetings, and I have sent and received emails at midnight, and let me tell you, I felt good about myself, It gave me the illusion of being important, especially when one of my family or friends calls at 9:00 PM and I ignore the call and send a message ‘I am at work!’

Maaaaan was I so wrong!!

Such kind of culture exists, you cannot deny it, the worse is that it, somehow, stereotyped; you work late, you send after hours emails, means you are a dedicated and loyal staff. In simple words, that’s a total nonsense.

This is not to ignore reality that sometimes work demands such dedication and long hours, whether for an established high rank manager or a start up entrepreneur, it’s normal, but when it becomes a culture, an organization way of living and a performance indicator, then it’s just a disaster.

Contrary to popular belief, long hours in the workplace is an indicator of lack of proper planning, over-utilization of staff, and no work/life balance. The outcome of this poisoned combination is not hard to predict; burned out staff, no motivation, and low productivity.

If the COO of Facebook can leave office at 5:30 PM, I wonder why can’t you (read this as well)?! Or why demanding your staff to respond to emails at 10 PM knowing that global companies are now banning after hours emails (here & here)!

For those managers wasting time judging staff on their after hours work, they better utilize that time in better management skills to increase the real productivity.

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Related posts:

1. Retire the Cubicles
2. It is Not All About Money
3. Vacations and Job Satisfaction

via Ambro/freedigitalphotos.net

The next time your manager calls you in his office and asks you to wear a badge to monitor your and your team performances, do not start laughing, it is not a joke!

Researchers at MIT ‘s human dynamics lab have come up with a badge a person can wear to collect data that after analyzed, could determine if his team is high performing or not.

I know it sound like a science fiction, but believe it or not, it is there, and the badge is in its 7th version!

The idea behind the whole research is simple; high performance team tend to have certain characteristics in the way their members communicate and interact; energy, engagement, and exploration are the secrets here. Does this work in all fields, you may ask, according to the research, yes, because the content of the team’s interaction does not really matter. That’s why the data collecting badge does not even record conversations, it is sensitive to a different kind of input, it collects the tone of voice, body language, whom the team members are talking to and where!

Having studied this for some time now, the researchers believe that high performance teams share these common behaviors:

• Team members talk and listen almost equally, everyone participates in ‘short and sweet’ manner.
• Members face one another and talk energetically.
• Members interact with each others, not only with the team leader.
• Members engage in side conversations amongst the team.
• Members go exploring outside the team and bring feedback and share it with the rest.

Go ahead and read this article for more information and examples about how this new approach is implemented.

The approach of this study is very interesting and it gives some empirical evidence to a lot of theories that dealt with team building. There are also a lot a leader can conclude from such a study. One of the most important conclusion and the central idea of this research is COMMUNICATION. Encourage it, develop it, nurture it, and you would end up with a very engaged harmonic team.

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Related posts:

1. Conflicts Are Here To Stay
2. That is what Great Leaders Do
3. Team Work

via David Castillo Dominici/freedigitalphotos.net

Let’s start this post by playing a game; let’s say you want to buy yourself a pair of jeans, and let’s assume that you headed to a store you are visiting for the first time, meaning, you do not already have preferred styles in that store. Which of the following situations you would find more appealing:

• If the store provided you with about 20 different styles of jeans to choose from.
• If the store provided you with only 6 choices.

Think …

There is a chance you leaned toward the more options choice because you thought it would give you more room for considerations and making a better, well informed buying decision. Sorry to break this to you, more choices means less buying!

Although it has dominated the consumers’ behavior understanding for so long, giving your customers more options does not mean you will guarantee more sales. You are skeptical about what I am saying , go ahead and read this research paper. In one of its experiments, a free tasting booth have been set up in a grocery store. In the first week, 6 different jams were presented for testing, on the second week, 24 jams were presented.

In the week of the few choices, 40% of customers stopped for tasting, while on the week of the huge number of choices, 60% stopped.

Before you start saying ‘Ahhaa … more choices are better’

The surprise came after analyzing the buying decisions. In the week of the few choices, 30% decided to buy jam, on the week of the huge choices, 3% only decided to making the transaction.

Now that’s a considerable difference.

Simply put, giving many options is overwhelming, confusing, and sometimes paralyzing. Customers may feel that they no longer can decide which option is better, and even if the buying decision is made, there is a huge chance of a ‘buyer’s remorse’  to occur, it is when a customer feel that he made a mistake taking the buying decision. He will start second guessing his choice, wondering if there was a better one!

However, sometimes, more choices make a lot of sense. Researchers call such situations the ‘preference matching’ contexts. That’s where customers are looking for something they are already familiar with. Something like going to an Italian restaurant, you already love the Italian cuisine and you would like to see more options to choose from.

So businesses out there, more is not always better. Limit your choices and make them more approachable and easy to understand. I cannot help but thinking about the telecom industry in Saudi. They are offering huuuuuge variety of options that are really hard to wrap your head around. You do not believe me, write down what you do think are the features of your current subscription contract with the your telecom provider. Now compare them to its website. I can bet that you will find a lot of differences!

Simplicity is good.

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I have been honored to take part of this episode along with @Hning of (Hning’s Asia), @TheReal_Q of (Qusay Today) and @Soumz of (Purple Headphones) and hosted by the awesome @nessreen of (Diana Writes) to talk about blogging in Saudi.

It is a funny, light episode where a group of friends talk about their approach to blogging, the difference between a blogger and a writer, and how it is to write under your own name among many other topics.

Enjoy and add the podcast to your RSS feed, or you can sync it to your library through iTunes, it is always funny and informative

Enjoy …

Related posts:

1. Welcome To the New Home

via Jeroen van Oostrom/freedigitalphotos.net

Hello all, a new post by a new guest is coming your way. Today we have @Lymoon (lemon in English). You may know him from his always smart and funny Twitter account. @Lymoon is a dear friend of mine and a man with quite an experience in the fields of engineering and management.

In this remarkable post he is talking about a skill we all need, on professional and personal levels alike, he is talking about how to ‘listen’ … truly listen!

I am sure you will enjoy this post, and hey, if life gives you @Lymoon, you better read his post carefully

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Does the guy in front of you keep talking! Repeating himself/herself over and over again! You think he/she is stupid! Well, it’s a possibility, but most probably they didn’t feel that they have been listened to. That is why I wanted to talk to you about empathic listening. Empathic listening will help you with the employees you supervise, your boss, your talkative friends, and even with your wife.

Empathic listening is conveying the message to whomever talking to you that you actually heard them, you already paid attention to what they were saying. It is simple, just practice it, this is what you have to do:

1. First let them speak about the situation.
2. Identify their feelings.
3. When they are done (yeah I mean don’t interrupt), reframe what they said stating their feelings.

Ok ok here are some examples:

• Sentence: I am fed up with my work - Empathic: So, you are upset because things have changed at work.
• Sentence: I am so not going out in this streets of Jeddah - Empathic: You feel angry when people do not drive in an organized manner.
• Sentence: I felt so alive after the seminar I gave - Empathic: you felt valued and satisfied because the seminar added value to many people.

Yep it is that simple. To make it easier for engineers (my beloved geek universe savers) here it is in a formula:

Sentence = “You feel” + F + “because” + S + A

F: feeling; angry, upset, energetic, happy, …

S: subject; work, traffic, spouse, boss, sister, …

A: action done by subject; environment changed, not organized, ignores you, satisfies you, respect you, …

However, I have to warn you about the don’ts: do not be JUDGMENTAL and do not ask questions, just repeat. It might go like this: oh you lose your temper in the traffic! Then, of course you start unsolicited advice; control yourself man!

One more thing, empathic listening is really hard when you are under attack. The fight-and-flight mode kicks in and you start defending yourself, if not attacking back. At this situation my advice is to remember that it is about the speaker not about you and focus on the process (listen, repeat with feelings). Basically, shift your focus from defending yourself to thinking of how to reframe what you’ve heard. For example, attacking wife: you don’t know how to plan your drive! Empathic husband: it upset you that I got you lost on the way, which will make you late for your friend’s party. How sweet is that :”)

Steven Covey pointed that out in his book of the seven habits; seek first to understand then to be understood. Empathize with others first then they will listen to you.

Finally, this is just an appetizer, more ways can be found on the web, knock yourself out with these references:

http://www.franklincovey.com/blog/empathic-listening-tips.html

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/5-tips-for-empathetic-listening.html

http://www.empathymagic.com/images/downloads/Empathic%20Listening%200061.pdf

*Image source

Related posts:

1. Staff Comparison

from google/culture

One of the weirdest conversations I have had recently was with a friend of mine who started the topic with something like this:

• I am thinking about Googlizing the office!
• Ohh … this sounds interesting … how are you going to do that?
• I will equip some rooms with beds so the staff can rest and relax!

Maybe to put you in a better position to understand this conversation and give you a better chance to judge the situation, you need to know that this friend of mine is working in a crappy company; I knew it, he knew it!

The problem with his approach is that he is assuming that the whole culture of Google, or any other company with an empowering culture, is based upon these accessories. A big … big … mistake!

I do not think Google executives woke up one morning saying ‘let’s have fun offices so our employees could relax and play,’ no, there are subtle culture and internal values in Google that led to such open, fun environment. BBC once described it as “The unconventional design of the office represents what Google hopes is a free flow of information through all parts of the company.” In other words, Google would not be what it is now without its ‘values’ not its offices’ design.

In a tough market, Google wants its employees to be creative, to think different, to team up, to share ideas and resources, to distinguishably serve clients and users, and all that to be sustainable on the long run. Think about these elements of Google culture before thinking about their lave lamps, free food, firearms poles, and sleeping pods. Michal Lorenc, a Googler, commenting on their office design once said “[it] aids our culture. It doesn’t represent our culture.”

So you want to change, fine, it is a good idea, but think about change in its core, try to renovate your internal values and practices to match your strategic goals. Trespass the conventional thoughts to look beyond your current status, reshape your culture to suite your goals and environment.

New decorations won’t solve your problems buddy!!

What do you think?

p.s. to get a glimpse of the life inside Google offices, check out this link.

Related posts:

1. Retire the Cubicles
2. Let’s imitate Google
3. It is Not All About Money

Via: freedigitalphotos.net/jscreationzs

Hello everyone; I am brining you a guest today. I am delighted to share with you this post written by Hanan Al Ghamdi (@HananAlGamdi) about ‘Buying Time.’ Have you ever seen managers complaining about how their schedules are full and how they cannot find time; Hanan seems to have a solution!

Coming from an economical background, Hanan is adding value to the national economy by working in the private sector (as she likes to say). Her dream is to be the ‘Minister of Planning’ … one day …

Enjoy the post …

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Coaching in business is a quite recent topic. While we might read theories telling us that ‘coaching’ is a very effective leader skill, yet when it comes to implementation, a lot of managers would feel hesitant coaching their staff.

It can be clearly seen in such a “rising professionals labor market” like the one we have in Saudi. The pioneering corporations that are willing to develop their staff are still few compared to small businesses that are usually doing their best to recruit individuals with high-quality experience, and usually, from those pioneer companies.

This managers’ behavior could be explained by their fear of loosing their qualified employees and/or of being replaceable by their own staff. If they were smart enough, they must have read somewhere in one of those business publications that great leaders are best described as ‘replaceable’; those are the ones who their teams wouldn’t fall apart and go astray once the time comes and they leave work.

Only smart companies realize that coaching people will benefit them on the long run because it would give them the chance to truly explore their staff abilities.

As per http://www.businessballs.com

Coaching  is “not concerned with delivery and specilaised training – it focuses on enablement and reflection, so that the individual decides and discovers their required progression themselves.” For me, I’ve always believed that the turning point to maturity comes when individuals start to better understand themselves . And as long as business concerned, maturity is a necessary factor.If you come to think of it, work on a managerial level is more about monitoring and planning rather than doing the work itself.

if time was being sold in units, then coaching manager can buy more and more units from others’ free time. At end of the day, this exchange will benefit both parties; the coach would have more units to invest in planning and monitoring while the staff would be motivated by taking more responsibilities and authorization in return.

So are you interested in buying more time units in your hectic schedule?!

*Image Source

Related posts:

1. That is what Great Leaders Do

via Paul/freedigitalphotos.net

Let’s start this post by a question; what do you think is the single highest driver of employees in the workplace?

There could be many answers to this question, each one of us has his/her own magical potion that drives him/her to shine, to produce, and to engage.

The most famous driver, the one that I hear a lot of times whenever I am in a discussion about motivation and engagement, is money. I cannot even recall how many times I heard managers repeating phrases similar to ‘What do they want? – referring to their employees -  they are having good pay checks, good bonuses, what do they need more? why are they not motivated?’

If you are reading this form Saudi, there is a huge possibility that you are familiar with such arguments.

However, many researches showed that money is not, and actually cannot be, the highest motivator, there is even a complete theory that puts money as a possible path to dissatisfaction (google ‘Frederick Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory’). Now, according to the worldwide study conducted by Towers Watson, as mentioned by Tony Schwartz (see here), the single highest driver of engagement to employees is feeling that their managers are truly interested in their wellbeing. The surprise is that less than 40% of employees felt engaged!! I can bet that a higher percentage would yield from the same study if conducted only in Saudi!

So why employees are not feeling that their managers are interested in their wellbeing? Schwartz returns this to what he calls “the lack of fluency in the language of positive emotions.” Most managers know how to stress targets and how to huff and puff about deadlines. Being harsh and negative seems to be within reach of their communication language. While on the other hand, using positive feedback usually feels awkward and gawky.

That is why employees in less engaging workplaces look emotionally drained, out of touch, and the pay check is what mostly occupying their minds. Due to the lack of positive feedbacks, they don’t know how do they fit in the big picture, they keep wondering if their work makes any difference and how, and in such environments, there are usually huge gaps between the different levels in the organization. In another interesting study by Marcial Losada (also mentioned in Schwartz’s article), he found that in high performing teams, the expression of positive feedback outweighs that of negative feedback by a ratio of 5.6 to 1, while in low performing teams, the ratio is 0.36 to 1 (meaning, about three negative feedbacks to one positive).

So … Ask yourself, what kind of manager are you? Can you fluently give positive feedback compared to negative ones? What kind of organization are you building or being part of? Are you promoting positivity and engaging your staff instead of driving them away mentally and emotionally?

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Via freedigitalphotos.net/Ambro

If I ask you if you prefer to watch your favorite TV shows with or without commercials interruptions, you most probably would say “of course without the commercials.”

I have a bit of a surprise for you, according to the study of Leif Nelson (its results published in Harvard Business Review, Oct. 2010), people enjoy programs that have commercials interruptions more!

Interestingly, the study also shows that the type of commercials is not responsible for the additional enjoyment, it is all about the interruption itself, it is a phenomenon called adaptation.

To understand adaptation, think of it in this simple way: when you do something you like, you get used to it, you adapt, but once interrupted and went back to it, you re-trigger that initial enjoyment.

The same goes into watching a TV show, a movie, or even beyond that; it is a universal phenomenon. We are all used it without even noticing, think how riding your new car felt different and special at first, and then, it just another car. Think how that long trip felt so exciting at the first few days, and then, it is the same hotel, same places, same people!

Moreover, as starting over something you enjoy would re-trigger the enjoyment, starting over something you do not like would re-trigger the same annoyance you felt at the beginning. Think of that dull 90 min. meeting that kept running longer because of the so many interruptions!

The point I want to emphasis here is that these findings of this study could collaborate to the findings we already know about commercials. If we established that interruption could participate in increasing enjoyment, why don’t inject those interruptions with something enjoyable yet valuable to advertisers too, say more targeted or personally tailored ads as a starter. I see this very interesting and yet challenging to marketers and advertisers everywhere!

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Related posts:

1. Time’s Top TV Commercials of 2010

This is exactly what Philippines’ Cebu Pacific Airlines did!

They started it in 2010 (first video below) and repeated it just few days ago before the Christmas (the second video).

These videos are not merely about the dancing and fun, they are about the unconventional branding opportunities the Internet is providing for all of us; It is about the power of social networks.

It is really mesmerizing how much such viral videos can contribute to the brands behind them. At least for the exposure and awareness; I would personally have never heard of Portuguese Airlines or Cebu Pacific Airlines because I am not usually on their flights routes. But for those on their routes, the rewards are even more. Such publicity fosters an image of  fun, full of energy, dynamic, can be related to, and have a high sense of customer service and understanding brand!

I guess there is no need to mention Saudi Airlines, right?!

Enjoy the videos …

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2. Sexualizing Ads; Nothing to Hide
3. Ignoring Your Customers