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Posts Tagged ‘bureaucratic management’

The Saudi Anti-Corruption Commission; The Fast & Furious

09 May

So by the approval of the Saudi cabinet of ministers on the establishment of the Anti-Corruption Commission, the royal decree that guided, or better to say, sponsored the idea of a national anti-corruption commission comes into effect.

As outlined in this announcement, the commission responsibilities revolve around combating all forms of administrative and financial corruption, following up on plans concerning the public interests to ensure fair execution and compliance to laws, that’s in addition to promoting transparency in all governmental work.

Quite goals to accomplish and objectives to satisfy. Given that the commission is just starting, we, as Saudis, certainly hope that it will reach those nicely put strategic goals. However, strategy won’t move unless carried on tactical wheels, so to speak. If it is legitimate to ask how Saudis are reacting to the announcement of such commission. I would say that they are full of hope, but yet skeptical! Public policies, for some reason or another, are usually doomed with slowness. Once you got caught at the web of bureaucracy, it is extremely hard to break out!

For that, and if they are willing to take my advice, for this commission to establish itself on the scene and to gain credibility and respect, I would say that they should adopt the slogan of ‘Fast & Furious.’

Be Fast: Do not allow much of a time to pass without issuing some kind of comments, reports, or even punishments against those practicing any kind of corruption or misusing power! I agree that the commission is new and it would definitely need some time to create its own organizational structure and culture, and I know that it will be dealing with sensitive cases that need to be investigated independently and thoroughly, but acting fast would give it an immediate presence on the scene and, most importantly, it will be taken seriously!

Be Furious: be furious in the sense of not adhering to normal and usual bureaucratic obstacles. And more importantly, not submitting to ‘Wasta’ and people of power and influence. After all, the King himself got your back! There are many managerial initiatives and techniques that could be used to maneuver obstacles and constraints. They just need fresh innovative minds, and the desire to embrace modern managerial practices!

 
7 Comments

Posted in Communication, Culture, General Management, Saudi business

 

The Friday of Royal Decrees

18 Mar

Beside its religious importance for Muslims, Friday seems to be taking another level of significance for Arabs nowadays. It is the day of change or, at least, cries for change.

For Saudis, this Friday was the day of royal decrees. A series of decrees that touched down on most of the ‘operational’ hot topics currently discusses by Saudis everywhere. And I am saying ‘operational’ just to differentiate those topics from the ‘organizational’ ones that are also discussed especially on the more elite levels!

From where I stand, I see these decrees as another leap forward. They have been strategically thought through and have been designed to give immediate, short term, and long term returns.

These are the most important points which sopped me:

  • According to the analysis of Saudi-Fransi bank (mentioned in this tweet), this Friday’s decrees would need about SAR 350 Billion to be covered. Adding this to the measures taken less than one month ago, about SAR 485 Billion (about 29.7% of the last year’s GDP) is entering the Saudi Economical cycle. That is a huge amount of money that should be looked at by both enthusiasm and caution. Enthusiasm because this amount of money means new projects, stronger infrastructure, healthy flow of cash, new jobs, and new economical opportunities. Caution because such huge amount of money could lead to inflation and commodity prices increase. The Saudi financial authorities are certainly up for a challenge this year; let’s just not open the topic of budget and reserves now!
  • The most important decree, in my opinion, was the one dictating the creation of the governmental anti-corruption committee. It is the committee that is supposed to be fighting both administrative and financial corruption and misbehaving within the governments’ work. I would like to stress on the administrative part of this committee work. It’s just about time we truly think about our project management practices in contracts awarding, quality of work, and I hope they will add the principle of ‘citizen services’ to this committee’s list of duties. Let their slogan be ‘to modern management and less bureaucratic practices.’
  • The health care sector took a lion share of the incentives as well. Again, with the new hospitals and research centers, the principles of quality medical services should be integrated to the formula.
  • The 500,000 housing unites all over the country are a good start. I wish this move would prove itself worthy and can be generalized on a later stage to be a project of citizens housing similar to what is happening in UAE and Qatar.

Now the success of these points, and the rest mentioned in the remaining decrees, are subject to the sincere implementation of those entrusted with the work as ‘public servants.’ This is the time for innovative ideas and creative new ways of getting the job done. Saudi Arabia and Saudis have all potentials to positively change and catch up with the rest of the world.

 
2 Comments

Posted in Culture, General Management, Saudi business

 

Resign before being Hired

16 Mar

I have read this story in the article of Ali Al Zamel published in Okaz on the 20th of February. I have to say that it is one of the strangest stories I have ever came across in my management studies and readings!!

The story could be summarized in few words; before signing the new job contract, you should sign your resignation first!! Yes, you read it right!! This new and extraordinary and innovative hiring method is the brainchild of one of those who thinks that they are true leaders, and Allah only knows how did they reach their positions!

The justification provided by this super-leader is that ‘I will ensure your loyalty and dedication to work, If I did not like your performance at any time, I can easily dismiss you!’ … wow, what an environment that is full of motivation!

I am usually astonished by such kind of managers who for a moment totally forget the responsibilities of their job and start acting as if they are actually owning people and that the work place is their own backyard!

I am quite sure that the work place where this super-manager is controlling is nothing far off a graveyard of souls. I am sure staff are mostly disengaged, live in fear, unmotivated, totally burned, and their performances must lack the basics of quality standards. And I really hope that their job does not involve face to face customer service!

I am inclined to believe that the manager in the story is working in the public field (I guess we got a hint now on why most of public servants are underperforming!!) and I really hope someone would complain and make a fuss about this manager, and anyone similar to him. We really need to clean our managerial environment from those incompetent performers and under qualified mentalities.

 
4 Comments

Posted in Human Resources, Leadership

 

When “More” means “Less”

03 Mar

Let’s start this post by an example, how do you make mobile phone calls? Of course you are not an alien (unless you’re reading this blog from the outer space!!), I am sure you usually pick up the cell phone from your pocket if you’re a man, and from your purse if you’re a lady (or a man using a purse!!), and then you will be searching through your saved contact list, or you will be dailing the number directly from your memory (you lucky ….!!).

Now imagine that, for one reason or another, you are working for me now! I am your new boss and I am bothered by how you cannot compare your actual phone talking time with the monthly bill! Telecom companies could be ripping us off and we are not able to know about it, let alone prove it. So given that I am a brilliant manager, I am going to ask you to take some additional measures so we could compare your talk time to the phone bill. So you might think that I should come to you and discuss the new process with you, you are the one using the phone, right!! You’re wrong, I’m not going to consult one of my staff, I have big bosses of my own to consult and to be friendly with. I just said that I am brilliant and I have to prove it to my own bosses!!

Now check out these genius new procedures:

  • Every time you make a phone call, I want you to record the time you started the call and the time you finished. These records have to be repoerted on an Excel sheet.
  • I want you to always monitor your phone battery and recharge it whenever 25% is remaining of its charge. And do not forget to create a new Excel sheet to record when did you start the charge and when did you plug it off.
  • These sheets should be momentarily updated; whenever I need an update, it should be there!
  • I am not going to tell you what kind of reporting I might ask you to come up with form these sheets, but you have to be ready to prepare those reports on spot. I could ask you stuff like: ‘Who did you call the most during the past month? At which hour of the day do you usually make most of your calls? Do you make most of your calls standing up or laying down?’

So what have I done to you here, the main task is still the same, you are making phone calls, I’ve just added a punch of extra activities around it. The objective I am trying to pursue is somehow justified, but the way I am trying to do it is definitely debatable.

Trying to improve the work and the productivity of any organization are amongst the top responsibilities of any management. But doing that by adding extra practices, new processes, and more rules while keeping the resources the same is a killer move. And unfortunately it is a classical mistake across many managements and many organizations.

More tasks on the same number of staff, physical and financial resources, given that they are already utilized, means less productivity, less motivation, less loyalty, and eventually less profits!

That’s the classical mistake of asking for more and more, that will only lead to less and less!

 
2 Comments

Posted in General Management, Human Resources, Leadership

 

Aramco, again?!

17 Feb

If you follow up on Jeddah and its ‘missions impossible’ projects, you must have heard by now that Aramco, the national oil company, has been brought in to help managing the draining and sewage projects in the city (here)!

We certainly hope that it will succeed in its mission, the city of Jeddah and its people are desperate for any little spark of hope!

But I have to say that I am bit, a tiny bit, restless about this news!

It seems that it is turning into a habit to bring in Aramco whenever the government is facing challenging projects. The expertise and reputation of Aramco as a company that has a powerful and effective project management practice and supporting culture seem to be always the last resort of the Saudi government. They have been asked to look after the construction of KAUST, followed by the supervision of the King Abadullah sports city also in Jeddah.

Let’s try to throw some points around here:

  • Given that Aramco is, in a way or another, a governmental organization, a one may wonder, why is it orbiting in another galaxy when compared to the remaining public organizations? Yes, I do agree that the culture of disciplined professionalism of the organization is rooted in the history of its origin, the question stands still, how come no body thought of transferring its experience and practices to other organizations?? Why no body thought of copying its recruiting and training practices so we could eventually have Aramco in each and every public organizations??!!
  • Stripping some organizations the right to carry on their projects and bring Aramco instead is a clear declaration of incompetency of those organizations! For example, whether Jeddah Municipality likes it or not, the message is clear and simple, they are not entrusted with this project?!! So again, back to the first point, why? Aren’t they both Saudi public organizations?
  • The last point is direct, if the managers of a certain organization are not performing well and cannot be even entrusted with projects in their own field of responsibility, why keeping them? If they cannot be trained or developed, then there is no escape from the inevitable, they should be sacked!

 
4 Comments

Posted in General Management, Project Management, Saudi business

 

The New Middle East

14 Feb

So Ben Ali ran away, Mubarak stepped down, and only Allah knows who is next??

This is the situation in the Middle East these days. It is boiling with talks of freedom and democracy, with hopes and dreams that are flying around in the form of tweets and Facebook feeds, and of course, with fears of turmoil and instability!

Amongst these circumstances, people of Egypt, and most of Arabs, started to celebrate the departure of Mubarak. I cannot even count the number of SMSs, tweets, and Facebook feeds that I have come across these past couple of days which were filled with terms like: victory, power of the people, revolution of the century, tears of happiness and freedom, that beside the usual congratulations!

To be honest, I have to say that I have not been able to join those celebrations. I could not drive myself neither mentally nor physically to be in the mood of celebration. You may want to ask ‘why’?! The answer is that I could not yet find any reason to celebrate!! I can certainly relate and understand the frustration of the Egyptian people, and the breeze of fresh hope they might be breathing right now, but still, there is something missing!!

But that won’t stop me from saying that both Tunisia and Egypt might be leading the wave of change in the area; the area that has been waiting for some time now to be changed. The people of both countries are leading the way toward a brighter future. And they are in a front of a historical moment and a miraculous chance to catch up with the rest with of the world, and let’s hope they will drag us all along!!

Now for a business blog, allow me to share some points with you that I would really like to see in the new Middle East, things that if actualized, and moved from being mere dreams into realities, then I promise you, I will be singing my guts out with happiness:

  • I would like to delete the word ‘bureaucracy’ from our public and private sectors, and to see all the dinosaurs of bureaucracy in each and every public or private office go extinct!
  • I would like to hear no more about bribery stories. No under the table negotiation to pass some illegal papers or to award contracts, no leaked exam papers because of X amount of money, and certainly not to pay for your passport/id card/driving license to be issued faster and without even your presence!
  • You know the word ‘Wasta,’ … you know it, right!! I would like you not to know it. No more employment and education opportunities based on your friendship or kinship relations!
  • I would like people to start appreciating the concepts of quality, professionalism, and management science in general. I would like to see the management practices are actually … practiced, and not only taken in oversees courses and forgotten, or only featured in organizations’ magazines and newsletters!!
  • I would like to see customer services, in private and public sectors, to be customer services, literally! I would like to see them dealing with people in respect, honesty, and integrity.

What would you like to see in the new Middle East?

 
4 Comments

Posted in Personal

 

Want to Blog in Saudi?

03 Jan

I have to say that I have a lot of respect and admiration for Mr. Abdulaziz Khoja, our minister of culture and information, for the educated and the cultural figure he is. And I truly believe that the ministry has become more active on the public scene, as it should be, since he started his tenure.

But the new online publishing law … mmm … naaah … it could turn out to be a black mark on his records!!

I am not going to go through the articles of the law, Saudi Jeans has done a wonderful job in here, but as someone who has an interest in managerial practices, I have some comments of my own:

  • First on the regulation principle itself, I have never heard of any similar law that showed interest in regulating blogs, which is my main concern here, in any country around the world. You may want to exclude the Arabic countries from this generalization, because you know, media around here has many rules, regulations, and blurry explanations that no one understands anyway! The only tiniest closest resemblance to such blog regulating initiative might be coming from the American FCC when rumors started flying around that it might want to regulate paid advertisement reviews written in blogs because they might be misleading to the public. Also, there are some states’ taxation laws on money earned via online advertisements.  Needless to say, such laws are making a lot of fuss among bloggers in the states already!
  • Reading through the law you cannot help but feeling that you are travailing back into time and possibly you would start sneezing from the bureaucratic aroma that will fill your nostrils. For a moment there, I was skipping through lines to look where the infamous green manila folder and the 2 photos requirements will pop up!! I mean come on … this is a law that is intended to deal with Internet savvy users who managed to set up and run a website and you are asking them to provide a high school degree and a certificate of ‘good public behavior.’ (this is something similar to having clean records in the US, in other words, you have not been to jail before!)
  • Generally speaking, I do not mind having the government roaming around the Internet looking for those working in the dark and trying to hurt the country and its people. And I am sure all countries around the world are already doing this, duh!!! But that’s one thing and asking people to register their own online spaces and provide a valid email account is something else. Forcing the registration on blogs, which is not yet a mandatory, will be a disastrous decision by any means related to the freedom of speech!
  • Finally, because this post seems to be running long and I still have a lot of things to say, I would like to quickly touch on the way the law was presented to people, how it was marketed. I can safely assume that about 95% of those read the law were angry, of course after they finished laughing in disbelief! The law has been marketed throughout the months it was still being cooked by the ministry chefs as something that should be presented to make things right. So naturally, those affected by the law will respond defensively toward it, because they are not doing anything wrong that needs to be corrected at the first place! And that is a common mistake in most of bureaucratic organizations, which are the majority of Saudi and Arabic companies and government bodies unfortunately, they just like to throw laws and complicated processes around just to intimidate people! Just check how Asmaa described her reaction to the law in this post to get a glimpse of what I am talking about here.

 
3 Comments

Posted in Communication, General Management, Saudi business

 

How to Burn Your Staff?

21 Oct

If you are ‘that-kind-of-manager,’ then you will must enjoy the following tips on how to burn your staff. And you do not have to worry about what other people would say or think about that, they just do not understand your style and how you think you are driving your staff to be big performers. And hey, you are ‘The-Manager,’ people have no right to question your ways of conducting business … and from there we start:

  • Keep reminding your staff, and everyone around, that you are The Manager. If they are working as your subordinates, then they should better understand it very well because there are consequences (read the next tips). You can remind them of your superiority in various ways: in meetings (e.g. start the meeting with something like ‘as the manager, I have decided’), in phone calls (e.g. you can say something like ‘tell them to do it because the manager said so’), and in emails of course (e.g. send emails saying stuff like ‘I have noticed, as The Manager, that …’).
  • Try to integrate some military practices into your style. Your requests should be treated as orders; do-first-ask-later kind of why (on the long run, they should be trained not to ask at all!).
  • Do not share your strategy, your plans, or the company strategy with them. They do not have the mental capacity to deal with it.
  • Take away these words from your dictionary and pretend that you do not understand them: overloading, logical arguments, and work/life balance!!
  • Do not allow them to discuss or circulate modern management articles; this is a place of work, not a university. And they have to understand that your abilities and experience exceed all that academic mumbo-jumbo.
  • Do not care much about processes nor scope of work. Let there be processes, but they should know that you have the power to overrule them whenever you like.
  • From time to time, ask them to do illogical or irregular stuff. Lists of things nobody cares about, check ups that do not make sense and alike. By doing so you are training them on obedience. You do not have to explain yourself, remember the tip about military practices.
  • Always, and I mean, all the time, give them a very tight time limits to deliver your requirements. If a certain study normally takes 3 days to accomplish, come at the last minuet and ask them to finish it before the end of the day.
  • Keep the sense of urgency and every-thing-is-a-priority way of work. They should know that you do not care about them because there are always bigger picture that they do not, and cannot, see!

So … do you have any more tips to share with us?

 
2 Comments

Posted in General Management, Leadership

 

Let There Be Processes

04 Feb

I had the chance to be in a casual meeting with one of those big guys in one of Saudi companies. There came a discussion about companies’ strategic plans and work procedures. This gentleman said something that really startled me! Unfortunately, I did not have the chance to discuss that idea with him more throughly but to simply put his concept, it is something like : ‘let there be rules, respect them, but do not follow them!!’

Now in my humble understanding, whether it is Google, Apple, or Amazon, they all have some kind of business processes. There is no way a business would be able to conduct its daily activities or long term objectives without setting its work on a clear path … and that clear path is nothing but a group of processes.

However, processes should not be confused with bureaucratic-old-school kind of paper work and hundreds and hundreds of signatures. While such bureaucratic rules are always treated as if they are coming out of holy books, there is a room in modern processes to be flexible and they are always subject to modifications and enhancements.

In todays world, businesses are faced with tough challenges and frequently changing market rules. For that, it is necessary for organizations to have the ability to adapt, change course, and interact with their environment. This cannot be done by letting everybody working on his/her own without any kind of direction and guidance and, of course, it cannot happen by imposing rules that have been around for the past 50 years.

Even innovation and ‘thinking out of the box’ have their own rules that turn them into useful and practical models instead of wasted time, efforts, and resources.

I really hope that I misunderstood this big shot executive and hope that he really has some logical explanation to his strange idea, don’t you think?

 
3 Comments

Posted in General Management, Leadership, Saudi business