Business Success in a Multi-Dimensional Changing World

TransformingOrganisations.com

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 12:26:00 +0000

Dear loyal readers,

I am gradually shifting to my new wordpress site called TransformingOrganisations.com. It is the sister site for my company Scholar Consultants.

Here is what the purpose of this website is:

We are dedicated to the positive transformation of businesses, organisations, entities, individuals and communities. Our purpose is to create engaging dialogues and introduce new thinking to leaders who believe in the power of effecting change deeply, quickly, and more efficiently.

We are a group of thinkers who have studied Psychology, Philosophy and other subjects in the Humanities. It is our immense honour to use these disciplines in the transformation of businesses that creates new cultures, increases stakeholder engagement levels, and impacts customer behaviour and profitability among other operational benefits.

We believe that the role of Transformation and Change Consultant needs to change. Consultants are no more the expert. We seem to have forgotten that you as a leader know your market, your customers, your competitors, your industry, and most importantly your organisation’s assets and the behaviour of your human capital. Many leaders today hire consultants and get no Return on Investment because the so-called expert Consultant simply looks at the leader’s watch and tells them the time.

I hope you will join me there and keep the conversation going!

Yours sincerely, Mubeena Mohammed.

Employee Retention Ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:13:00 +0000

Found this concept paper I wrote for a client a couple of years ago. Indeed it is a huge issue here in the UAE. Have a look at some thoughts I penned down.

EMPLOYEE RETENTION: CAUSES

What are the most common causes of low employee retention rates in the UAE? Here are some common comments from employees who plan to leave their organization from interviews in employee engagement studies and exit interview data:

“I am not leaving the organization. I am leaving my boss.”
“Nobody ever says thank you around here.”
“I was told to do X but I was expected to do Y.”
“My supervisor persistently looks over my shoulder. I do not feel trusted.”
“The only way to move up is to move out.”
“When I wanted to be challenged, he told me P.A.s are not supposed to think.”
“I was hired for my talents but I never had the opportunity to utilize them.”

EMPLOYEE RETENTION: STRATEGIES

You might want to try the following strategies:

Employee Loyalty Schemes. Many organizations in the U.S. offer profit-sharing schemes to employees for them to feel ownership of the company. Quarterly vouchers for outlets and other places of interest such as stress-busting activities go a long way to make employees feel rewarded.

Appreciation Programs. This is more than your regular ‘employee of the month’. Appreciation schemes must include rewards that are customized to employees’ personal tastes, uses, personal interests. They also must come as a surprise, so employees are not expecting it at a particular time, and must happen immediately after excellence is demonstrated in the job or an incident that reflects company values.

Health Schemes. Go beyond your normal offerings of gym memberships for senior level management and medical insurance. A bright mind is connected to a fit body so an investment in getting employees fitness levels up will make them feel valued not just for their skills, but for them as individuals.

Work-Life Balance Schemes. There is an untapped resource of potential employees in the UAE and this group is part-time women employees. The UAE still lags behind in providing facilities that would allow employees to maintain a work-life balance, especially for women who want to contribute to organizations but are not available full-time. This is surprising in the UAE where family values are so high but corporate environment is still rigid about work hours. If more flex-time and work-from-home options are available, more employees would want to make that organization their employer of choice.

Employee Retreats. This is where it all comes together for employees. This is a 3-day offsite event that engages employees to provide feedback to results of employee engagement surveys and creating collaborative action plans on their suggestions on priority areas of workplace issues. There is no substitute for listening to people’s feedback on what would make them perform with more intensity and dedication.

EMPLOYEE RETENTION: CAUSE ANALYSIS QUESTIONS

Analyze your current employee retention trends by investigating the following.
What is the average time an employee at your company chooses to stay employed for?
Are there particular departments that witness a migration of employees?
Are there particular job levels that witness a migration of employees?
Were most of your employee resignations expected or surprising?
Do most resignations occur at certain times of the year?

Analyze internal/external factors surrounding the underlying causes.
“People do not leave organizations. They leave their boss.” Does this sound true in your organization?
What is the current strategy in your organization to retain employees?
Are you a market leader, follower, or lagger in terms of compensation/benefits?
How do you show appreciation to employees?
How do you reward employees for excellence?

Analyze employee feedback.
What have ex-employees said on their exit interviews?
When interviewing prospective candidates what do they say about their ideal work environment?
What are main results in your employee engagement studies? Have actions come out of the studies? Do results vary every year?
What do the most loyal employees say about reasons for working in your organization?

Analyze organizational culture.
Does the workplace accept people of different work styles?
Does politics and favoritism affect employee morale?
Are ideas openly heard and encouraged?
Does the organization let employees express their personal style be it workspace design, flex time, dress code?
Does the organization emphasize effort (long hours) or results?

What are you doing to retain your best talent?

FAQ on My Consulting Business Model

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 21:30:00 +0000

Here are a bunch of frequently asked questions (FAQ) about me and my work as an independent Consultant contracted by consulting firms. Hope this saves interview time for potential consulting associates who are considering hiring me for their next client. Some of the commonly asked questions will be clear when my business website is up and running. If there are any additional questions please add them in the comment box! Here goes..

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ)

1. What is your way-of-doing-business model?

Currently based in Dubai (UAE), I am an independent a.k.a freelance Consultant in the field of Organisation Change and HR Development. I work with local and global consulting firms that outsource project assignments for me to lead and execute for their clients. My consulting services are geared toward business organisations but my "client" or "associate" is the consulting company that contracts me for project work. In addition to on-site corporate consulting, I independently manage web-based virtual consulting services geared toward overseas-based clients and consulting agents.

Many consulting companies hire independents such as myself for reasons of cost-effectiveness, specialist expertise, client location, and the need for an extra pair of eyes and hands! This unique business model is based on my career growth strategy, which is predominantly about the quality of management consulting experience I am looking for. It has been hugely successful for both my clients and myself ever since I started my consulting practice in 2003.

2. Why have you chosen to stay independent rather than work full-time for one consulting firm?

Based on my career growth strategy, my goal is to do high-quality work where I can make a significant difference to organisations and enhance the reputation of firms I work with. I receive full-time job offers from companies on almost a daily basis but I do not accept this style of traditional work for many reasons. My core beliefs as a person make me have quite a unique set of motivations. For me, it is not as much about securing a steady income as much as it is about:

Deliberately choosing the kind of work that excites me as a professional; Utilizing all of my skills and competencies as a change agent to full effect. Working with a few exclusive consulting firms has allowed me to do those projects that I freely choose to be involved with. The option to be able to choose my projects is invaluable to me because I need to offer my total attention, dedication, and commitment to work and for that to happen I must love what I am doing. And so by associating with a range of consultancies I get to broaden my assignment pool and select how and where I can offer my special skills. Also, many consulting requests by clients sadly set you up for failure. Therefore I make sure that the client is 100% into the change process with me and the consulting team. If they are not, I do not take up the project. Due to this work ethic, the range and significance of my consulting practice has grown exponentially in a very short time.

Bringing variety in terms of people, environment, and situational challenges. I thrive on experiencing variety and diversity with many types of work styles, cultures, and team members. Working with different clients and consulting teams gives me a new perspective every single time I am engaged in a project. New learning always enhances my consulting methodology and practice, and will continue to do so for years to come. Operating independently has directly contributed to my ability to flow with clients / associates of highly variable structures, policies, decision-making processes, and work arrangements. I want to be available for the best work that comes my way, creating the biggest impact I can for organisations that are ready to receive transformation. I choose 100% quality and enjoyment in my work experience as a direct result of this belief.

Managing my calendar to pursue my personal interests. Developing my sense of self is one of my highest values, and as a freelancer I take the liberty to invest my own training and development. I strive to be a well-rounded person and choose not to let work consume the other parts of my living. Devoting time to pursuits such as painting, karate, spiritual practice, and reading impacts my work to bring change to organisations. My status as independent creates options for me to invest in myself more so than if I was committed to a Company full-time. Many of my colleagues ask me how I manage to sustain myself financially and emotionally being an independent. It's a fairly simple formula. I have goals for the year and manage my work around those goals. When I first started out it was tough, but fortunately over the years as I've built up my credibility I rarely find myself out of project work. And if I am on a natural sabbatical, I embrace that time and maybe take a vacation, catch up on reading, paint away on lazy days, connect with friends and family, spend more time at the gym, update my websites and blogs, and anything that brings me to a state of time-flying bliss. There is never a dull moment with or without work.

3. Do you market the products/services of your associate consulting firms?

No. I am not a sales or marketing professional. At most, my associates might bring me to prospective client meetings or presentations if they feel I have an edge for securing a consulting gig. I have however advised my associates on networking strategies, market pricing, website content, proposal/presentation design, and brand logos as benefits of my artistic skills. I do not make revenue out of this advising but if any of it proves to be beneficial to the associate's bottom-line results, they are free to add to my performance bonus if they so choose.

4. What is your working arrangement with the firms you represent?

My contracts with consulting associates are usually for a specific time-period to complete deliverables based on process steps in a consulting proposal. Contracts usually include the following items between myself and the consulting firm:
a. Consulting role and scope
b. Timeline of assignment
c. Process steps
d. Workspace allotment
e. Payment amount, method, time
f. Confidentiality clause
g. Contingency clause

Some associates require me to be at their office full-time, others allow me to work from my own office (except when there are client interactions), many require me to be stationed full-time at the client's project office, some are very happy for me to work virtually through Skype. Any of these conditions suit me fine as long as the work mode does not interfere with the success of the assignment. I do not ever intend to go direct to clients due to the nature and size of consulting assignments I receive. I always need a team for back-end support as well as assistants and throught partners to execute the work. When I associate myself with a company offering services to a client, rest assured that I become part of its culture and adapt my workstyle so that I am responsible to maintain the company's reputation, values, and client confidentiality.

Financial terms with my associates include the following options: 1) per day rates for assignments lasting less than 30 days, or 2) per month retainer for multiple clients/assignments, or 3) lump sum for long-term assignments lasting more than 3 months. The only terms I have is that I would be directly involved in proposal writing, get back-end support, would be allowed to add the projects to my CV and website in exchange for a link to the associate's website, expect to be heard if working with a team, and do not want to be offered a full-time position with the consulting company or client.

5. How do you ensure that there is no conflict of interest between various firms that outsource work to you?

In addition to signing a confidentiality agreement, there are several conditions under which consulting firms may sign me up for contract work. Common conditions include:
a. I do not go direct to clients seeking consulting projects
b. I do not work with clients that come through 3rd party associates for at least one year after an assignment has been formally signed off
c. I do not represent more than one consulting associate at any point
d. I work on multiple assignments with more than one client only if it comes through from the same consulting agency
e. I forward and copy all project communication between me and a client to the consulting company's owner
f. I agree to provide a copy of my mobile phone records if required pertaining to contacts in the client organisation for verification and billing purposes
g. I reserve the right to accept the best offer in case where I am approached by more than one associate bidding for the same client and assignment, if I am not under a per-month retainer contract with any associate
h. I withhold and do not transmit confidential data regarding client contacts, findings, deliverables, and consulting associate details to other associates and clients

6. What is your consulting process and approach?

I have developed a unique process working with established mentors in the OD field and through research and experience, having tested what works in the region with its cultural dynamics. In the Middle East, there is a propensity to consider the external consultant to be an "expert". The definition of Consultant for me does not fit that mould as I consider myself to be a guide and facilitator first and foremost rather than someone who is hired to come in and dictate do's and don'ts. If you have downloaded my Services pdf document from the homepage, I list out a set of guiding principles I abide by during any engagement. Every consulting engagement must support the organisation's major bottom-line goals of profit, customer satisfaction, and sustainability. That is why my consulting approach starts and ends with top management but dives deep in the middle to involve key employees.

Specifically, the approach I am known for involves in-depth facilitation to elicit the feedback of key organisational members representing all layers, and jointly creating solutions in a safe way. In this regard I see myself as a messenger between top management and employees to bring them onto common ground and eventually toward a unified vision and strategic direction. Many consultants prefer to work only for top management benefit in the form of improving business process or creating employer-oriented policies rather than involving those who have to be hands-on no matter how improved these processes and policies become. The world of psychometric testing, surveys many of which are poorly designed, and all sorts of tools that create boxes to label employees with are very popular. In my opinion these off-the-shelf tools would work better with qualitative data collection through an independent source that gets into the hearts and minds of your people who have life goals of their own.

Working on your organisation's quality and efficiency through business process, market research, new technology is wonderful and essential. But the cycle is not complete if your people, customers, and vendors are not valued during the execution of processes and policies. My approach in a nutshell is to complete this cycle for organisations in their quest for business excellence by helping them create fair, valid, effective, and profit-building people management strategies and systems.

7. What industries do you specialize in?

I specialize in people and their interactions at the workplace. This could be any workplace, any industry, any corporation. Any entity that employs human beings to support or conduct business transactions with target customers can approach me. As an external consultant I get asked the "what industries?" question a lot. Continuing on from my definition of what a Change Management / HR / Organisation Development Consultant is, I am not an expert in the trends of every industry. Industry experts are out there, so feel free to listen to the top gurus at your next industry-specific convention. The client is the expert and specialist in their industry. Why have most clients forgotten that they already possess industry-related knowledge? I believe people basically operate from the same plain of emotional and reward-seeking behavior in any workplace, so the industry a client belongs to is pretty irrelevant for the value I create with my service.

If you must know, I have worked with clients in the following industry sectors: agriculture, financial auditing, foods, electronics, property, avionics, education, civil engineering, information technology.

8. How do you manage web-based consulting without personal contact with the client?

My online web-based service is not devoid of personal contact. If the client is present in the UAE a face-to-face kick-off meeting takes place to discuss scope and results required. With overseas clients I have run meetings via Skype and web conferencing so there is always personal contact where clients have instant access to me for project issues. Many of my online services involve deliverables created on MS Office and "shipped" via email. Other online services include individual consultation or group interaction and moderation either through phone or web conferencing. As with my on-site services, I make it a point to schedule regular status meetings with all clients every week to inform them of progress and challenges with project goals.

9. Can I use the free tools and templates with my own clients and/or in my organisation?

Yes. I only ask that you credit me on the tools with: ©2010 Mubeena Mohammed www.mubeena.biz.

10. What psychometric and established survey tools do you use in your consulting practice?

None. I am not a fan of psychometric assessments because they do not capture unique intelligences that every person possesses. I do not believe people need this kind of testing to assess their worth. My focus is on bringing people together to generate their own solutions that are fit for their work environment. Working on the basis of individual only is a slippery slope because at the end of the day people are social beings that need to operate in the context of groups and teams. Assessing individual skills is fine as long as the results are used to compliment the skills and work styles of those they interact with.

Many psychometrics focus on individual "gaps", an orientation I do not encourage as it concentrates on limits and expects an individual to come "in line" with a test's ideal profile. To understand my concept of human intelligence and why psychometrics do not cut it for me, I suggest reading "The Element" by Ken Robinson which talks about the unlimited creative capacity of human beings. The book relates stories of real people who were put into a certain "will not amount to much" type courtesy of popular intelligence/personality/ability tests and how did they actually end up? Take a guess. The point is not about overcoming the barriers of a test but rather how the people in these stories made it in their chosen line of work with a unique self-discovered intelligence undetected in most psychometric and standardized testing today.

With regards to survey tools, I custom-design survey and data collection tools for the client using their cultural lingo and the questions that need to be asked after identifying areas of priority impacting the organisation. I may use established tools as a reference point. And I also do not use surveys as a stand-alone solution for data collection. In my practice, it is a must to include a qualitative methodology in order to generate a story behind the numbers and bar graphs that surveys deliver. I do not recommend creating action plans based solely on survey number data.

11. What HR-related certifications do you have?

None. Surprised? I get this question a lot as you can imagine. What knowledge or experience would HR trainings and certifications provide me with that I do not already have from my Masters' degree in Organisational Psychology and the past 10 years of intense consulting practice? My motto has always been "the knowledge is out there" and I highly recommend reading and researching professional journals on the latest findings rather than investing in certification programs that are somehow supposed to boost the credibility of a Consultant. If you would like to assess my credibility and quality, please feel free to ask me for references who would be happy to speak to you about specific work deliverables, results, and processes I've used to achieve client objectives.

12. What is your personal background?

Born in Mumbai, grew up in Dubai, college in New York. After 6 years of college in the U.S. I returned to Dubai and started looking for jobs in the Human Resource and OD arena but was offered personnel and payroll administration, and Personal Assistant roles. Refusing to get stuck in the administrative world, I fearlessly plunged head-on into the consulting river and thus have never had a permanent job. Personally I am a self-proclaimed philosophy junkie, painter, writer, 1st Dan Black Belt in Karate, total foodie, a die-hard Bollywood and cricket lover, an all-round happy woman who detests daytime TV, avoids news channels, follows everything Google and Apple, and has a hard time resisting apple deserts. Thinker. Dreamer. Spiritualist. Meditation addict. Believer in the idea that we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Time, Place and Productivity Myths

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:38:00 +0000

So an interesting statement came to me from a prospective client at an introductory meeting: "Employees would never be able to show commitment or maintain productivity levels in their work if they are not present in our company offices from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m." Does being physically present in an office environment create the necessary motivation to ensure high productivity? I am still surprised at hearing such statements from some Managers today in our age of digital media and online capabilities.

I do understand that there are many corporate issues that lead Management teams to create policies around employee work hours and location. These issues range from intellectual property risks to increased customer service demands for a more personalized buying experience. However, can't we look at what we might be doing to employees by overstaying their physical presence and having them work awfully crazy hours on site? Let me take this opportunity to remind the world that employee engagement is directly proportional to trust, flexibility, a focus on results rather than effort, and most of all being individually valued. Let's look at the top 3 myths I come across in my consulting work here in the UAE and how this has actually affected bottom-line productivity.

Myth 1. More time spent means more output. C'mon folks, this is simply not true. The harder you work does not mean you get better results. Your employees need to be doing the right things in the right doses directed at the right recipients. 80% of productivity is achieved by focusing on 20% of the right effort through the right people. In fact, studies have shown that employees who stay beyond 5:30 p.m. at their offices do not have best use of their minds, which means making mistakes is a high probability. I also know of plenty of companies here in the UAE that still require their employees to attend work 6 days a week. This has shown to create significant retention challenges as well as being undervalued as a person especially for those who value family time.

Myth 2. Being physically present in the office increases organisational commitment. Coming to a dedicated workspace might be necessary for certain industries where workspaces are specifically designed. But in order to attract the best talent, corporations must offer flexible options of a work life. For example the UAE still struggles with the concept of part-time jobs, (flextime and daycare centers are a long way to go). There are many special interest groups such as women, students, employees with physical disabilities that would love to have a career part time and make significant contributions to the organisation. With at least 2 of my past clients, employees have indicated that the only reason they are made to stay in the office even after working hours is that there is a lack of willingness on the part of higher-ups to trust that enough has been done in the day. This is a clear symptom of the organisation not having laid out performance and results objectives and criteria. Judge your people on performance and results folks, not if they are still in the office at 9 p.m. They might in fact be managing their time badly!

Myth 3. Women with family responsibilities are prone to be less effective. In the UAE, it is perfectly legal to ask a woman on an interview whether she is married with children and if she would be dedicated enough to concentrate on her job as a result. Elsewhere, this question about marital status is downright illegal because the science proves that being married does not take away from job performance. In fact, the latest studies show that women are better managers than men due to the various responsibilities they are gifted to handle. They are adept at multi-tasking, and are generally more sensitive to people issues which makes them an excellent choice for managerial posts. So please, the next time you come across a woman applicant know that she holds a vast reservoir of skill and temperament. I would instead advise recruiters to ask men and women alike, "What is your magical formula for maintaining a healthy work-life balance?"

There you have it. I hope I have planted the seed of thought a little bit and managed to dispell some very prominent myths so entrenched in our part of the world.

School vs. Life

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:28:00 +0000

I have just started reading a book called "The Element" by Ken Robinson. I haven't even gotten through the first chapter yet and I need to blog about it. He talks about how traditional school education will actually stifle your potential genius if it isn't recognized and channelized individually. I resonate with this message a whole lot due to my own school experiences.

I was considered "dumb" in school, I didn't make the 90% that would've classified me as "the future doctor, engineer, or lawyer". Instead I loved to read sci-fi stories, study English and the arts, and had a flair for language and poetic expression. Many of my school teachers expressed to my parents that I would be a problem child growing up and that my future isn't so bright because I could not count and wouldn't memorize mathematical formulas very well. I even heard stories going around that I was only kept in school because I would win them swimming championships. I often wondered in my later life why the physical sciences meant so much in my society and the humanities was of lower value in our school system at the time. It came down to a simple belief that said, "Well you won't get a real job studying poetry and there's no money in drawing sketches." I and many of you might have consistently received this message growing up, and in the meanwhile our talents went unnoticed.

What positive correlations do school grades have with life achievements? I've truly come to believe that school is great for one thing only: reading. If you know how to read, the whole world can be in your hands. But 10 years of traditional schooling did not tell me where my talents are. On the contrary, my natural abilities were more subdued and repressed with significant guilt and shame attached to not conforming to institutionalized intelligence. My love for art and writing were looked at as cop out ways to escape studying for challenging exams in Physics and Chemistry (although I absolutely loved Physics as it intuitively introduced me to Philosophy and questions about reality that I now apply to people in my consulting practice).

Isn't it ironic that the world's foremost leaders are either high school or college dropouts? What separated them from the rest of the school-going sheep? These words come to my mind when thinking about a Bill Gates, a Steve Jobs, a Paul McCartney and countless others who defy the prevailing social system - non-conforming, creative, risk-takers, pure self-belief, trusting their gut, creators of their own destiny against any and all odds. I also believe what shaped their futures would have to be special teachers in their life who saw a spark in them for an ability that was out of the ordinary and individually unique. I also had 2 teachers that brought the best out of me and shaped my career to what it is today and what it will be tomorrow. So watch out for who your true teachers are!

When the student is ready, the teacher appears. I am so lucky and glad that I didn't internalize the negative messages of my school instructors, because they weren't really teachers. They were just being paid to write on a blackboard and make us repeat things like we were parrots. I am grateful that my true teachers found me when I was ready to give up old thinking, and saved me from doing something I wouldn't have loved at all.

I always talk about bottom-line impact, and I wanted to let the world know that doing what you love will surely make you money. It may take a while, or it may be overnight. But there is no option for us to work in an area that we hate to wake up to, no matter how good the world thinks we are at it. Talent is when you do what you absolutely love with all your natural instincts. A talent cannot be forced into coming alive by others who might be living their dreams through you, or others who think you ought to follow the bell curve to stay safe in the world. I personally am proud of calling myself an outlier, a skewed statistic, someone who laughed at the predictions of people who saw me as a one-dimensional entity back in school.

Don't let school tell you what you should be doing later on in life. Only you can answer that for yourself. Work should be play! That is when you are in your element.

Personality Test

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 06:51:00 +0000

My Personality


Neuroticism	5
Extraversion	31
Openness to Experience	88
Agreeableness	1
Conscientiousness	59

You very rarely feel depressed and are usually in a good frame of mind, however high levels of stress can lead to you feeling panic or confusion, but usually you cope with day to day pressures. You get overwhelmed by too much noise and commotion and do not like thrill-seeking activities. You like the security of tradition, but sometimes have a desire to bend the rules and challenge conventional thinking. You do not enjoy confrontation, but you will stand up for yourself or push your point if you feel it is important, however you do not particularly like helping other people. Requests for help feel like an imposition on your time. You take your time when making decisions and will deliberate on all the possible consequences and alternatives.

Free Poll

promise rings

Consulting for the Current Economy

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:03:00 +0000

I am so pleasantly surprised that I have been flooded with consulting work all throughout this global recession. With the talk on the news about the Dubai debt crisis, I was bracing myself for a lull in my professional life. But lo and behold I am getting more phone calls now than I have in a long time. To what do I owe this honor? It has to do with the most obvious request related to the current economy: organizational restructuring.

My latest project, just completed this week, involved organization-wide restructuring and optimal manpower needs. It was an interesting assignment and raised quite a few questions in my mind, particularly ethical questions. As an "expert" I was asked to assess current employee numbers in terms of how they contributed to core business. Then I had to come up with an organization structure to reduce current inefficiencies, leading to increased transparency and effectiveness. The client as a deliverable wanted an ideal organization chart with ideal employee numbers. Of course I understood this as a genuine request as a result of the current economy. But by 'ideal' they really meant 'reduction' in employees. On what basis would I cut people? What sort of an expert does one have to be for that?

So I set about studying the organization's core business and observed key processes and watched key people executing them. It wasn't rocket science. But somebody had to do the dirty job of deciding who had to go. I felt a little unsettled personally because I'd been hearing that HR Departments were the last people being cut because they had to do all the cutting first. How ironic. Anyway, I managed to salvage my personal feelings by finally recommending the following:

1. Bring Technology into the Picture. Lucky for me, there were enough people in the organization that just didn't use basic technology to communicate. Bring in basic technology training and you don't have to get rid of everybody. Find technology that saves time, energy, and manual headaches.

2. Redesign Jobs. If the structure of an organization goes through a revamping process, jobs must be redesigned. What people do will change exponentially under a new workflow. You can't be doing the same things when the organization's layout becomes flatter and the communication lines are altered forever.

3. Assess People Competencies. Newly designed jobs means identifying the competencies required to fulfill the new job needs. Anyone not exhibiting those competencies in terms of behaviors, skills, knowledge, and mindset will most probably see the axe coming down on them. It is imperative that an organization have a competency model that supports any structural changes. They need to ask themselves, "What competencies are needed at our current economic climate for us to stay above water?" and "Who has them and who does not?"

4. Rethink Strategic Business. I suggested before restructuring that the organization would have to rethink their business lines and services to start offering customers what they are desperate for at this time only (Ever wonder why the movie business always does well no matter what the economy? They provide escape from the real world). This also means that if you find that your current crop does not have the competencies required for new job roles as a result of restructure, then look at current strengths they DO possess and leverage them by introducing services that can be offered based on applying those strengths. This one idea actually saved a lot of people from being cut because skills that were underutilized before, are now at the forefront.

Sometimes you have to work backward in order to keep up with a backward economic trend. And that is why organizations are reaching out to independent professionals like myself in the current climate, especially in the Government Sector, as they face unexpected trends.

I am proud to be an unexpected source of help even though it may feel conflicting at certain junctures. And the client was so extremely happy with the solutions I suggested that I am now booked up with work till July of next year purely with word-of-mouth referrals. People are asking where they can find me so I got on the Twitter bandwagon MubeenaMohd. Credibility is a charm that never fails to work.. even under our current economic woes. Remember that always!

What Online Millionaires Say

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:21:00 +0000

This weekend I had an ironic tryst with fate. My new business website is about to get launched (primarily by word of mouth), and then I got invited to attend an internet marketing event for 2 whole days where I got to listen to millionaires who've made it big in the online world. The stories of how these millionaires went from being caught in the rat race for what seemed like forever to spending all their time with their family and loved ones while they make money as they sleep and relax on the beach.. caught my attention.

How many of us think that websites are just for disseminating information that visitors might find useful? At the most I used to think that websites were a way of personal expression, advertising for your company's services, or creating awareness about a cause. Of course then along came ebay.com, amazon.com, and alibaba.com the online retailing giants. We simply can't ignore the effectiveness that comes with a perfect online marketing strategy and what Google Adwords has done for it. But as simple as it sounds to get online and start selling your products and services, acquire new and old broken websites, and generate revenue from thousands of websites offering something for everyone, how did these online millionaires actually do it? One of the speakers at the event was a blind chap who said "If a blind guy can do this, someone who doesn't even know what HTML stands for, anyone can." Ok, how.. just by clicking and typing away?

The world of internet marketing has a very low barrier threshold. This means that anyone with a computer, a camera, and an internet connection can potentially become a millionaire in a couple of years if they are smart and take action. I found it really interesting that all of the millionaire speakers at this 2-day event hardly talked about actual "how to". All spoke about their stories of success, their humble beginnings, and how much money now comes into their bank accounts while they are asleep, with a few website resources thrown into their speeches. Then they went on to spend some quality time selling their product offerings to the audience. Don't get me wrong. They were actually brilliant. Let me tell you why.. they all talked about principles critical to personal performance, which is what I strive to provide to my clients.

Twelve speakers over two days gave us tips on how to market your self, your products/services, and how to sell other people's products/services as if they were your own creations. All of the people on stage outsourced everything they "do".. from website building, to writing books, to designing logos for their online companies. One guy made a killing online by starting to sell a 'Bulgaria Property Guide' and the fact is that he has never physically been to Bulgaria to this day. Am I to believe that I can be an expert about something I have no clue about? Apparently in this day and age the answer is a whooping "Yup". Now I still wouldn't go about this route for me personally, I still like to write my own stuff! But inherent in all their successes, each and every one of them asked us to follow these principles:

Work on your Vision: All those great speakers stressed time and again that you need to have a full-length feature film in your mind of what your dream life looks like. There is no substitute for dreaming, believing you can do it, and not being surprised when you achieve the life you always wanted.

Take Action: Every one of those millionaires up there told us to TAKE ACTION. No action leads to no results. If you don't do something different right now, you'll always get what you've always got. Then when you become a millionaire, you can be your lazy self 95% of the time with 5% of your time spent in outsourcing what you "do".

Make Mistakes: All the speakers told us to jump right in, go ahead and make as many mistakes as you possibly can (without hurting anyone intentionally). It was truly amazing to hear inspirational stories of those guys getting bankrupt, being heavily in debt and using those circumstances to break through and shine. As one speaker said, 'confusion' is nothing but an opportunity to learn and the motivation to get out of the cloudy mist.

Invest in Yourself: Everyone of those millionaires told us to invest in our education. They didn't mean university degrees. They mean learning by conversing with the people who have done this before, getting a mentor, reading the latest research in your field, building your own business model, and taking risks by experimenting with new strategies.

Aim for a Passive Income: These gurus have an average of thousands of websites they own and generate revenue from. The online marketing world has a lot to offer a person who can spend some time out of their day creating, innovating, generating multiple revenue streams online. The idea that you do something once and get paid for it for the rest of your life is awesome. So get out of the mindset that you have to work and then get paid, then work again and then get paid..

Now the vested interest for all the internet marketing gurus is for you to become an internet marketer so that you can hire them or buy their products to help you make your first $1 million online. But the principles with which these guys work off are universal and applicable to any profession whatsoever, as long as you LOVE doing what you're doing, stay totally committed to your vision, and are dedicated to providing genuine service to your customers rather than just making a sale.

I'll leave you today with a quote from one of the speakers at the event which sums up business success for every organisation and every entrepreneur, not just online marketers: "Provide valuable solutions to desperate proven buyers with problems you can solve in the largest market you can easily access."

Organisational Values

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:25:00 +0000

Values. Loaded word! Everyone talks about values like they are some fancy designer label. What do values have to do with an organisation's business success and impact on the bottom line?

Let me cite a relevant quote from Peter Drucker, one of the most respected Management gurus of our time, "Yes, I'll do that. But this is the way I should be doing it. This is the way it should be structured. This is the way my relationships should be. These are the kinds of results you should expect from me, and in this time frame, because this is who I am." (The Essential Drucker, pg.224, Peter F. Drucker, HarperCollins, 2008) Now substitute the words "I" and "me" with "our organisation" and therein lies the source of organisational values.

I offer you some realistic, practical channels for discovering values that are already present in your organisation you might want to make yourself aware of to tap into unused potential, and help you create a value-system to enhance what is already there:

1. Values arise out of what the organisation desires for itself in business, sustainability, its people, and for a perceived image in the eyes of the external world.

2. Values in an organisation get constructed through behavior and actions of its members, what the top management decides to focus on and decides to ignore, and external factors including competitors, societal culture, legal requirements, and resource availability.

3. For values to remain genuine, they must be reflected in company culture, HR practices, workplace norms, internal and external relationships, strategic business plans, and in a vision that clearly shows where and what the company desires to be.

4. Values in an organisation are based on assumptions made by the top management. These assumptions need to be tested and questioned continuously by top management as they steer the organisational ship.

5. For a value to be considered great, each value must reflect a vision to achieve, a reality-check while executing goals, an ethical standard of behavior, and the courage to act. This is probably the most important definition of "value" which I get from studying the work of Dr. Peter Koestenbaum and his Leadership Diamond Model®.

Everybody understands that the motive for every for-profit organisation at the end of the day is the business of making money. What do these lofty ideals in the name of values have to do with this? You don't have to look too far, when we have the current financial crisis at our doorsteps. Most of the institutions that created this mess lacked any sense of core values. They operated on a vision but chose to ignore reality, ethics, and their courage to act was based on this faulty vision. They did too much, too soon, without any concept of individual responsibility or consequence. If values don't drive your organisation, it is impossible to achieve a distinction in the market and stand out in this competitive world, because you would not be standing up for "who you are".

I have been approached to create a value-system for an organisation in an upcoming assignment, and here's how I broadly propose to do that:

I. Assessment of the organisation's future and current strengths, influence of external uncontrollable factors, what the organisation wants to be for its customer and society.

II. The organisation must discover what values are shared between management and employees at all levels.

III. Alignment of management and employee values by creating awareness, acceptance, and link common values to the organisation's business strategy.

IV. Cascading of value-system to processes, systems, and workflow so that they are reflected in the organisation's culture.

Training Needs Analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:07:00 +0000

Dear readers, I haven't blogged for a while and I'm sorry about that! I've been super busy doing exciting projects in the OD arena, plus working on a second business venture at the moment. For the curious followers of my blog, by popular demand I've finally decided to offer my paintings for sale, something I've resisted with my heart in the past.

Here is another topic dear to my heart and mind, related to my current consulting assignment: Training Needs Analysis. Tell me how many organisations especially here in the UAE budget for a Training and Development System and find out that it is simply failing to improve overall employee job performance. Now I've always believed that failures are opportunities for real success, but most organisations do not act on this principle. Instead of getting to the root of low job performance, many Companies act impulsively and "hire and fire" their people, hoping they will get the right person at the right competence level for the right job.

I have news for you. There is a more scientific way to ensure this happens, without relying on chance or luck! It's called a Training Needs Analysis, and it will tell you what critical knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors required on the job are missing in your employees. This enables the organisation to take sustained action toward the development of their employees and maximize their potential and performance. Here's how I would do a Training Needs Analysis. These are broad steps only, so please contact me for specific step-by-step details if you are interested to learn more! The story starts with what the organisation as a whole needs, desires, and has.

1. Conduct an Organisational Analysis that will examine system-wide components of the organisation that may affect the design and effectiveness of a Training and Development System. This would include the following activities:
- Specifying organisational goals
- Determining the organisational training climate
- Identifying external constraints
- Assessing organisational resources available for training

2. Conduct a Requirements Analysis based on results of the Organisational Analysis. This will determine the specific scope of the TNA based on organisational goals in terms of identifying and selecting the following:
- Priority job groups and target jobs in all departments
- Existing documentation and data on priority jobs
- High-performing and high-potential employees
- Participants and subject-matter experts (SMEs) for the Job Analysis phase
- Appropriate method and protocol to be used for the Job Analysis phase
- Points of contact that will assist in administrative support as a liaison team
- Challenges that could hinder subsequent phases of the project

3. Conduct Job Analyses for priority and target job groups. The Job Analyses will examine job content in terms of the following:
- Work activities performed on the job
- How frequently tasks are performed
- How critical are the tasks to job performance
- How easy/difficult it is to learn critical work activities
- What knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors are essential for each task

4. Conduct a Person Analysis with subject-matter experts (SMEs). This phase assesses gaps between high-performance indicators and current employee performance in terms of knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors that are essential for success on the job. The following are intended results:
- Developing performance indicators for target jobs
- Determining gaps in knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors (KSAs) in your employees
- Creating approaches to resolve the KSA gaps

The Training Needs Analysis is just one component of a successful Training and Development System in an organisation. Once you know what your employees need in terms of training, training programs need to be designed to meet those needs. This is again a very meticulous process as it needs to take into account learning theory and instructional methods. Post training, programs need to be evaluated for how effective they have been in helping employees meet their performance objectives. So the story does not finish with a Training Needs Analysis! But I've given you a start, and here are just some of the reasons why this first and foremost step is so important:

- A Training Needs Analysis (TNA) helps an organisation examine whether its current training system is developing relevant competencies needed to perform a job, and focusing on skills that are hard to learn on the job.

- Designing job-relevant, accurate, and reliable post-training assessment instruments would be more valid if it they are based on the results of a Training Needs Analysis (TNA). The information obtained from a TNA provides input into designing performance-appraisal instruments to test trainees at the end of training.

- Results from a job and task analysis, which is part of the Training Needs Analysis (TNA) process, will provide significant value in designing employee selection tests such as Assessment Centers. It is important for an organisation’s employee selection process to identify and hire employees with competencies required to perform the specific job, and this in turn affects how training programs are designed based on what knowledge, skills, and abilities hired employees already have.

- A Training Needs Analysis (TNA) gives input on whether the organisation has the resources at its disposal, and the necessary climate and environment for making a training program as effective as possible so that the trainee applies what is learned.

- Data from a Training Needs Analysis (TNA) directly impacts how training programs are designed, what instructional method is used, and why different learning methods may be required for diverse employees.

So before you hire and fire, consider what you as an organisation might be able to provide that your employees are missing.

Launching Mubeena.Biz

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 07:59:00 +0000

Hello to all my friends, colleagues, and professional associates! It has been a while since I wrote a post on my professional blog and I plan to be in full swing again when the new site gets up! Yes that's right, I am officially announcing the launch of my new business website mubeena.biz.

I've been working like crazy, getting important client names on my project portfolio, traveling, and developing my consulting business with associate consulting firms here in the UAE and abroad. I have had many learnings over the past year and I am excited to share them all with you in the coming weeks through the blog. I've also been doing a lot of reading including science fiction, classics, and I'm reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead at the moment. There are a lot of philosophical principles I am exploring again and how to apply them to my practice in Organisation Development. I've also been writing for local magazines here and will be sharing those articles on the new site. The biggest thing I've done over last year is research existing OD models and came up with my own OD Model. It is simple, has a non-problem solving approach, and considers the environment organisations operate within down to each individual who contributes to the organisation. The new site will have a white paper on this model which you can download for free.

The current mubeena.net site will now be my personal website and will still be active as I keep hearing from folks all over the world about how much it has inspired them to follow their own dream. The new business site will have in-depth explanation of my consulting services based on my original Organisation Development Model, which I will now test out next year in my client work. I will be blogging (and bragging) about its validity in assessing where organisations are and what they need to do for increased efficiency and success. It will also have my updated professional activities and projects I am working on, my updated profile, and finally an academic paper on my Organisation Development Philosophy which I've been asked about by many of my visitors to the site. I'll also have some new stuff like additional resources, diagnostic tools you can use with your top team, and other practical solutions. Is there anything specific you'd want to see on the new site? If so, please let me know and I will consider it.

Bookmark the new mubeena.biz now and get your organisation to its highest potential. Please feel free to send me feedback on the new site when it gets online! I expect it to be up before New Year's Eve. Happy Holidays everyone!

Accountability from Freedom

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 10:02:00 +0000

I've just started reading 'Freedom and Accountability at Work' by Dr. Peter Koestenbaum and Dr. Peter Block. The first few pages are so deeply entranched in my mind that I have to share the message in the context of our business culture here in the United Arab Emirates. I'm afraid that the UAE's claim to advancements in technology and business scope is just a bubble ready to burst. With the dawn of the new year, I am more determined than ever to relay a deep conviction about how to bring about genuine business growth through accountability in the workplace.

My conversations with a potential client bowled me over as I contemplate my own vision for year 2007. A top-level manager of a multi-billion dollar local company approaches me in desperation because the owners simply don't want to face the fact that their organization will cease to exist in 5 years. The ownership believes that the company is doing fantastic because of the sheer bottom-line numbers and quantities of product they sell. The feedback from the managers who run the show fall on deaf ears, even after numerous reports are handed over to the owners about issues of losing talent, unethical practices with stealing, no systems that support the business, and absolutely no succession plan for the future. These issues do not sound important to the owners because shockingly, they had closed down another company before and simply started up this new one as a result of the very same issues. Now the Managers are traumatized by the thought of this ordeal happening all over again.

Koestenbaum and Block in their book offer a thesis that states (this is not verbatim) "True accountability comes from realizing that you are truly free to choose, and that blaming your family, culture, or environment happens when you want to escape your freedom, and with it escape your accountability." My question to these two wise men would be in the context of this situation I came across, which is all so common here. The top-level manager came to me with his concern that the owners gave the people too much freedom which lets them do whatever it is they like. If this is truly the case, why aren't these people accountable for promoting positivity in the company? Although I haven't read much into the book yet, I bet the answer lies in the fact that the owners do not harbour any sort of vision or direction for the organization. Freedom without any vision is quite wasted, which then absolves the employee of any accountability whatsoever.

Indeed it is difficult to consult with such an ownership team, who believe that they will never have to pass the baton on to the next line of leaders. I've always maintained that top support is crucial to any change effort. Even so with this situation, I resolve to be optimistic and believe something positive is always possible. The fact that this Manager approached me with the hope that something could be done is proof enough, and when I ask him what makes him stay on in the company he says "The hope of change".

Now for the practical 'what next' in this situation, I have come up with the following proposed actions not in any particular order.

1. An external consultant, myself, facilitates a strategic meeting with the owners and the group of 3 top-level managers who believe radical change needs to be made. The outcome of the meeting will be a clear vision and direction for the company around where it wants to be in 5 years. Sounds simple but this meeting could go on for hours and has the most difficult of all goals, that of changing a mindset.

2. With a team of people, we conduct a confidential feedback study from all line managers and select employees. The results will be presented by myself as evidence to the ownership team of the organization's current state of affairs. The consultant presents crucial themes running across the data (for eg. we lose many talented employees who take their entire customer network with them), simply stating what employees, managers, and customers are saying. The key would be to present in such a way that impacts business (even though for this company's ownership business just means 'how many orders have we bagged').

3. Conduct a large-group meeting that involves all employees to provide their feedback. This would be an open interactive session at first, and institutionalize this practice just to create a buzz with the ownership team and get their attention.

The goal is to get the owners to accept hard realities about where their organization is heading. Sometimes the most natural thing in the world, such as thinking about your company's vision, is overshadowed by an illusory bottom-line number game.

In the business context of the UAE, this situation is very common. Top ownership perceives employees as replaceable entities "just get another person in there tomorrow" kind of thinking, with no conscience as to how the system gets affected. The common blame-game explanation is that "Dubai is a hub, people come in and out all the time just to make a fast buck." That may be true but there needs to be a realization that organizations are nothing more than the actions of the people in them, and different people committ to different actions which certainly affects the organizational system significantly.

You are condemned to be free to act and make choices. Unfortunately for this particular corporation, the ownership team will likely choose to shut down when things get out of control and simply start a new company the day after like nothing ever happened.

Business Process Re-Engineering. Successful?

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 07:56:00 +0000

I was recently approached by a fellow consultant professional to talk about how best to implement Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). BPR focuses on the efficiency of processes in business transactions and has similar roots with the Total Quality Management (TQM) movement. It attempts to investigate quality levels in each process within your entire system as defined by efficiency, smoothness, and flawlessness with the intended result of reducing costs and increasing customer satisfaction. The BPR attempt appears very noble and full of common logical sense. However the truth of the matter is that it has only been successful 30% of the time with most re-engineering efforts failing, resulting in drastically negative after-effects. Why?

The historical roots of BPR lie in Fredrick Taylor's Scientific Management theory and the time-motion studies which explored the question of "What is the best possible way to execute an action so that it is most efficient and effective?" The picture that comes to my mind is that of construction workers labouring away with their shovels timing themselves to perfection with each shovel action. I recall a moment in university when a friend who was in a wheelchair came up to me and joked that my profession was about "Watching assembly-line workers in their robotic routine and then asking them if they needed any bandaid." Although the proponents of BPR do argue that the effort is about high-level strategic processes, if you were to peel all of its layers like an onion you'd find that the term 'process efficiency' has a dangerously high resemblance to what I call 'humanized robotics'.

That said, I still believe that Business Process Re-Engineering is needed in our world of intense competition because competent individuals cannot function if the Set-Up in an organization is not strong (See my Strategic HR Success Model). More important than even a strong financial standing, Set-Up is about having a strong physical infrastructure where competent leaders can be free to innovate and perform. BPR can play a significant role in ensuring this aspect of a successful organization.

So why has it not been as effective as it is meant to be? Here are some thoughts accompanied by simple (but not easy) suggestions:

1. Adaptability is Capability. An increase in set processes is linked with a decrease in intelligent adaptability. We've all heard about how important it is to adapt personally to situations that current processes might not handle. Don't get caught up in detailing every business process when you train your staff members. Instead, train them to adapt based on guidelines centred around your organization's performance values. The key to a smooth and flawless environment is not just clean processes but rather the flexibility people use in adapting around them to meet the need of the hour.

2. Want to Dominate? Then Innovate. The most common negative after-effect of a business process re-engineering effort is the loss in innovation and creativity. This goes beyond adaptation and into the realm of continuous innovation, which I consider to be the one sure factor that will get your organization where it wants to reach. If you must re-engineer your business processes it would be wise to leave room for your employee's creative insights to come through them. Creativity is often stifled with the chances of increased bureaucracy and top-down management styles as a result of bad process re-engineering.

3. Documentation is Not Communication. Another misnomer is our naturalistic business tendency to document A to Z of what goes on in the company. The concept of business processes directly gets translated to more paperwork, filing, signatures, and a wastage of much needed spatio-temporal territory! With an increased risk of a high power-distanced top-down bureaucratic organizational structure as a result of BPR, two-way communication goes out the window. So why waste time on typing up that customer feedback report that has to get signed by all 15 board members? Have the conversation and type up those next action steps instead.

4. Big BPR, Big Expectations. Here is the no.1 reason BPR is only mildly successful to an organization's bottom-line. Most managers get so excited about the prospect of changing their company's business process infrastructure that they don't care to run pilot tests. "This is big!" they exclaim, and set out to drastically alter the company's systems (as with ERP systems) once and for all as a panacea for an organization's ineffective areas. Big expectations are almost always shot down when leaders realize that their BPR did not account for important human dynamics where diverse individual capability is irreconcilable with drastically new protocols because employees who are affected by them were not asked for their input.

5. From Process Deployment to People Development. I saved the most important point for last so that it would be most salient in your minds. Before thinking about how your business process can be improved, give a thought to how your people can be improved. Excellence is beyond a process efficient transaction in our ever-changing multidimensional world. Develop excellence in your people, and they will develop excellent business models that are efficient, adaptable, and allow for innovation, transparency, and dynamic action-oriented dialogues in place of process-oriented dogmatic documenation.

I have always maintained that businesses have a duty to contribute to the national economy of their nations, and this translates to the empowerment of people across gender and ethnicity. This may seem like a farfetched idea when one talks about BPR but I truly believe nothing exists in isolation. It is people who should drive processes but the research has shown that people are enslaved by them instead.

Hiring the Google Way

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:50:00 +0000

When Google was a young start-up company, founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin did not follow the common hiring trend. They refused recruitment agencies and external manpower consultants and opted to do their selection in-house. They attribute their phenomenal growth to this very decision of doing as much as possible within the organization. They thought big even when they were not that big.

Their hiring system is the most unique I've heard of. The company went from a dozen employees to 40 in its first year and grew to 150 by the year 2000. Even at the early stages in the company's growth, the founders were very picky and had high standards about who was to join. Page and Brin formed hiring committees to review every open position. This prevented mistakes others had made through the 'hiring spiral scenario' where the founder would hire a competent person, who in turn hires others, and those people hire more people and so on. The common mistake was that employees would hire others who wouldn't challenge them due to the nature of general organizational politics. This left other Google contemporaries slave to dogmatic, hierarchical management games. (The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, 2006, John Battelle, Nicholas Brealey Publishing)

With Google's hiring committees, it wasn't only one employee's opinion that counted. In the early days, every employee interviewed potential candidates and the group argued endlessly over who would fit the bill. As the company grew, hiring committees were expanded to form groups focusing on various specialty areas of the business. With a group of people responsible for selecting employees, individual bias was taken care of, top management did not have to get involved, and competence of the candidates was emphasized due to the group's specialty area. (The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, 2006, John Battelle, Nicholas Brealey Publishing)

Most importantly, hiring the Google way has kept its unique graduate school-like culture intact blending employees' academic freedom to implement strategy with getting real world education, and all the while maintaining team alignment. There is absolutely no substitute for doing things right within your organization itself, as opposed to relying on external recruitment consultants who can't afford to give your needs the individual attention it requires.

Its all about in-house strategies and creating the innovation and time to implement them as part of your leadership practice.

Job Purpose

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 07:17:00 +0000

Facilitating focus groups for employees to write their own job descriptions is not as easy an assignment as one might think. I bet a lot of managers believe that these job descriptions are nothing more than static documents the company needs for its image and face value. Job Descriptions indeed can be more than merely filling out a form detailing employees' job responsibilities. As a matter of fact, most attendees of the focus group sessions I facilitated recently were not clear about the very first and foremost element of their job: its purpose.

Every job must have a purpose, an objective, a reason it exists. Otherwise, the job has no direction, no motivation, and no sense of achievement on the part of the job holder. Now the key point is that the employee who does not know the purpose of his job is not to blame. Purpose is a mandatory philosophical and foundational element for any organization, and it should be defined and cascaded down to the rest of the organization. The managers of an organization have a duty to define the purpose for each employees' job, which should soundly reflect the purpose of the organization's existence.

Most of the focus group participants defined their job purpose as something like "to make profit for the division". While this is always an obvious purpose for any job, this statement does not distinguish one job from the next. It can be argued that one job is all that is needed to achieve the above purpose. But in reality, there are many jobs that have been created within the organization, and each one should have a distinct purpose that assists the organization achieve its vision. Think about your own job: what is the purpose of your job and how does it help the organization achieve its strategic vision and objectives?

A job purpose should be specific to include all the domain areas you are responsible for, should not be vague or generalized, and most of all, should contain some element of emotion that helps link an employee to his/her job. A doctor's purpose might be "To help save the lives and increase the quality of life of men, women, and children who are under the care of our hospital." Wouldn't you get excited if your purpose was to save lives?

The most important factor when you write your job purpose is to link it to the internal or external customers that will benefit from the work you do. Reach out to your employees/community/customers/stakeholders with your job that makes it indespensable. If your job wasn't there, how would the organization and its customers suffer in terms of their satisfaction and needs? This purpose will define an employee's work so that he/she will be better able to prioritize and get rid of things they shouldn't waste their precious time on, so that they can better serve their organization and its customers.

Individual vs Group Change

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 06:07:00 +0000

I have worked with many established consultants as their right-hand assistant over the past years. Keeping in mind my goal of arriving at an ever-dynamic theory of organization development and combining it with my love for philosophy, I've realized that all my mentors have subscribed to one way of thinking. When you've been in business for 30 odd years, ego is bound to set in, with the belief that "my way always works". Sometimes, brilliant professionals may not want to admit that their ways are no more applicable in the new world, and that 30 years of experience may have been the wrong kind. I do not want to digress from the main idea of discussion which is how positive change in organizations can be brought about.

Two schools of thought stand out in this discussion. One of them believes that positive change in organizations only comes about through large group processes, where the minds and hearts of the team members become aligned through an interactive large group intervention. Achievements of goals will not be accomplished in the little meetings of departmental heads. Every employee who is going to be affected by that goal needs to be in on the managerial strategic meetings. I like this whole idea because it increases employee involvement and participation in the organization, and motivation levels are heightened ten-fold.

The other school of thought centers around personal philosophy of individuals. Here, individuals are inspired by personal goals, rather than a corporate group process. Every employee is a leader, and maintains personal responsibility to deliver the best in their work. Position titles do not mean much to them.Change comes about through individual belief and dedication to their organization. I also like this idea, because unlike the group process above, I do believe organization change is a result of the individual changing first. However, the group process might be an easier and more realistic route to take because of the general human nature of resistence to any change. It is highly unlikely that people who have served their organizations for 30 years would change themselves, their outlook, their beliefs, and their work styles. In addition, personal leadership seminars might also not be effective in personal change due to rudimentary lecture-type formats.

So what is the best way to bring about effective change? The large-group processes that I have facilitated along with Mr. Sullivan, one of my mentors, has been a truly unique and inspirational experience for all those involved. It seemed like all the individuals involved in that 3-day offsite meeting came out changed and renewed, as if they went through a transformation tube of some sort. As a group, they were motivated and believed they could take their organization to new heights. However, the long-term effects of this change process have not been established and cannot be guaranteed. The short-term burst of excitement dies down with time, and the action plans that come out of the large-group interactions might not even be implemented. That's why individual change is so crucial at this juncture of an organization's changing nature.

Individual employees must change their entire outlook to life, and their relationships with each other, if organizational change has to occur in a truly genuine way. Connecting to the self, why they've chosen to do the work they do, and what they want for their organization needs to be worked out in individual hearts and minds for the large-group interactive process to be effective, with the result that the organization never comes back to its original state. It is important not only to think about how you can serve the organization, but how one's work serves one's life.

Therefore, I would add a mandatory 'Connect your Work to your Life' piece at any transformational 3-day offsite meeting. Ideal implementation of the resulting organizational action plan depends on this very facet of individual leaders.

An Organization's Model

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 19:17:00 +0000

The title of this post may have misled you into thinking that I'm about to lay out a profoundly structured model for assessing an organization or system. Unfortunately 90% of the world's Managers are still held captive in "the matrix" when it comes to explaining away organizational behavior. Its time we broke free from this, and realize that organizations can never be explained away or brought in line with a structured model. Here I am about to rock your foundation again as I always do, but I believe its my job to free you from the illusive matrix of structured organizational assessment models that blindfold you from the truth of a reality that is far from being structured and organized.

If you work with a set model in mind, you might risk the loss of meaningful information that might be critical to your business. So the first step in setting yourself free from this matrix is to believe that there is more to what meets the eye when you look at a structured model. Top-down analysis has been the traditional method of organizational structures, assessments, and intervention processes. It is indeed natural to approach situations in a linear logical fashion because it is simpler this way. However, a linear approach is no more valid in today's complex environment. Chaos theory is replacing systems thinking with more frequency.

More than chaotic, the new term is "chaordic" taken from the words "chaos" and "order". Everyone hears of how complex the world is today which leads to the idea that systems are not self-correcting once they are formed. Systems thinking is getting more irrelevant by the day because the traditional linear cause-effect framework is simply losing its applicable value. With numerous advances in technology, theory, and the state of the world, systems no longer come back to their main functional origins if things spiral out of control. Traditionalists in management rely on self-correcting systems to come back to their original state if they stray once in a while. This is surely changing with time, due to the inability of managers to bring back their organizations to some original pristine value. Change is exponential in that there is not even a trace left behind.

Chaordic theory however still puports to detect some underlying order in random chaos. The order refered to here though is not a traditional cause-effect scenario. This is precisely why research in Organization Development has been so sparse. There is no way of knowing basic relationships between variables in an organization.
a scary thought but realistic nonetheless. I predict that organizations will have to let go of their precious pretty models that seem to embed all the answers. They are not going to sustain themselves in the future with pure orderly top-down approaches.

Choosing a Consultant

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 13:42:00 +0000

How many of you are frustrated managers fed up of meeting more consultants who promise results they don't deliver? I bet you've been a victim of poor consulting, where your company has had to scrap entire efforts after wasting its time, energy, and precious resources on things like lengthy surveys, endless formatted documents, and intricate measurement systems. Who should you go to next time? Will you have the courage to try again?

I would like to draw your attention to a universal principle I always keep in mind: situations will recycle if you haven't learned the lessons that need to be learned. In other words, you will go through the same vicious cycle if you repeat the same mistakes over and over. So if you find yourself failing effort after effort in any action plan or intervention, you need to step back and evaluate what went wrong, why, and whether others contributed as they were expected to. Or else, you'll face the lack of success again. The good part about realizing failure in an intervention, is that you will increase your chances of success on your next attempt.

How you choose the consultant you work with is the most important step in your effort. This is compounded by the fact that you have only yourself and your team to make that decision. Once the right consultant is on board, you have an extra resource at your disposal.

Here are some guidelines when choosing an external consultant:

1. Make sure you are instinctively comfortable with the candidate. If the candidate starts reccomending strategies immediately, he/she probably has chosen the consulting career because of a power trip. Consultants are not there to tell you what to do. Rather, they must be hired primarily as a coach to guide the client system. So if the candidate shows that they know more about your company than you do, be cautious because the client should always be the one in control.

2. Observe the pace of the candidate. He/she should respond with quality, not speed. Don't be impressed if a potential consultant gets back to you with a full proposal after one meeting the next day. This type of consultant usually will expect you to come back with an uninformed, hasty "go ahead". A good consultant of the 21st century will offer to structure a proposal with you after an initial couple of meetings to narrow down the focus areas. In other words, a documented proposal is not so effective if it comes as a surprise to the client. This point is related to Point 4.

3. Get to know the consultant's philosophy. Ask the candidate about what they think a successful organization means, what model they operate on, what they think would be required for companies to survive and thrive in the future in general. I suggest that you do this in person, and not as a questionnaire over email. You'd want to observe a candidate's body language and confidence while they respond to these very important questions. See if you agree with the candidate's responses, and visualize whether you'd be able to work with him/her long-term.

4. Scrutinize the consultant's proposed process. Nothing is more important to successful implementation than the process you will use. Question the validity, timeliness, and pros and cons of each process step. Another red flag would be if the consultant seems hesitant to share the process details with you. The client must expect that the company's management team and a select group of employees will be highly involved in the effort. You will have to make sure that the consultant you hire will not be let loose to implement as he/she chooses, because any results must evolve before your own eyes. An ideal candidate would edit and adjust his/her proposal based on your viewpoints, feelings, and judgement as many times as it is needed to get it right.

5. Ask yourself whether you enjoyed reading the final proposal. If the proposal has common spelling and grammatical errors, and the points seem too complicated, do not hesitate to stop reading it further. Your proposal should be simple to understand, have no surprises, and most of all, should inspire you to go forward with it. If the proposal is something you have heard 100 times before with other consultants who failed, you know you have to proceed with caution. An important aspect is the issue of price. Here in Dubai it is almost an absolute rule that a "quotation" is given upfront in black and white in the proposal document itself. My personal and professional opinion is that price should be discussed verbally beforehand and negotiated in a trustworthy way. Like I said before, there should be no surprises.

6. Assemble a panel to shortlist and decide who you want to go with. Even if you are the CEO that makes all the decisions, do not make this decision alone. It is vital to gather the input from people you value, who are going to be affected by the work this consultant will do for you, and those who are going to be directly involved in the effort. Establish your criteria for choosing a consultant to work with as a group based on your past mistakes. Discuss with your group each candidate's performance based on the above points, and always aim for a clear consensus.

7. Test your consultant with a pilot project. It is always best to go slow and test your consultant's capabilities, ethical practice, and the depth of his/her connection with your team. A pilot project on a small scale is a good starting point to assess your working relationship. Do not make the common mistake of getting over-excited and contracting your consultant for a major organization-wide effort. Observe how the consultant manages his/her time, how he/she goes about garnering support from various sections of the team, the level of his/her patience, and whether he/she gives you constant updates on the next phase of the process.

Remember one last point. A good consultant expects support as well as work from the client. Most competent consultants will not go forward with a project unless there is adequate support and motivation from the client system. For your intervention to be a success, you must work with your consultant in a joint effort, and be mindful of not treating your project as something that is purely outsourced.

Good luck with your new consultant!

Emiratisation Solution

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 18:57:00 +0000

An event courtesy of the Dubai Human Resources Forum had the Minister of Labour of the UAE as a guest today. The event was meant to be a constructive dialogue between His Excellency and the HR community of Dubai on the topic of nationalization/localization of HR jobs in the workforce. It was an interesting evening, but I wouldn't call it a constructive dialogue. As usual, the Dubai community was uptight, the meeting structured to a T, a dialogue did not happen. Nevertheless, some very relevant questions were posed to the panel of Government officials, who answered them as diplomatically as can be.

"Emiratisation" is a national government initiative that aims to bring in UAE nationals into the workforce. His Excellency the Minister of Labour responded to questions from the HR community related to concerns of expatriates who face the challenge of training local Arab men and women to take over the duties of Human Resource Managers. The government believes that HR positions are the key to bringing in more locals to the national workforce. They are absolutely right. But I wonder and doubt whether the vision of the Emiratisation drive is in the right place. The effort is definitely well-intentioned for the people and economy of the UAE. However, the right lessons from failures of the quota system in the private sector are still yet to be learned. After all, an HR Manager isn't just for staffing and recruitment. HR must be a business partner and resource for the organization. These lessons are not superficial in nature. I believe the success of Emiratisation depends on one factor: the depth of every individual.

Lessons to be learned are deeply connected to people's personal outlook of what they want out of life. Here's my thought process:

1. The Assumption: "Emiratisation" is not about a nationality or culture. It is about getting people like you and me into the workforce where they have the equal opportunity to showcase their capability and make a difference to their country. The ethical leader will support this cause based on humanitarian grounds, because it is logical and profitable for everybody if people contribute to the economy.

2. The Need: There needs to be an equal committment from UAE nationals as well as organizations for this cause. The local people, for the most part, have been granted every aspect of life for free by their national leaders. Thus historically they have never needed to work in order to survive, thrive. The challenge now is that very few of them want anything more out of life, other than their government pensions.

3. The Action: The true solution is to really ruffle some feathers in their local community. Change of this deep nature will not come until there is a radical shift in an individual's philosophy of life. The UAE comes from a lovely blend of traditional Islamic values and the mindset of an open-minded homeland where expatriates are welcome to live the life they choose. When His Excellency mentioned that he thought there is a requirement for a large-scale training program, I hope he also meant for individual thoughts to be refined during the training initiative. I'm afraid that training to install high-end skills is just not going to do the trick for the Emiratisation cause.

Executives of the Emiratisation drive must think about how to develop leadership mindsets. Skill-based training is not going to instill the local people with the mind and heart of a true leader that they have all the potential to be. Leaders struggle. Leaders push themselves to the limit. Leaders give of themselves. Leaders genuinely care about the people around them. Leaders manage contradictions with awe and excitement. Leaders believe in taking risks nobody else would dare. Leaders are realistic and visionary at the same time. Leaders help. Leaders do things because it is the right thing to do. Leaders realize that profit is the by-product of ethical management.

The practical starting point to developing leadership mindsets is actually from home itself. However from a government standpoint, it could stem from the education system. Not enough emphasis is laid on practical application of knowledge imparted at schools. Students should have to fight for their free scholarships from the government. This creates a sense of purpose for kids right from their first social interaction. Excellent performance should be rewarded, creativity should be showcased, and personality should be developed for long-lasting impression with the world. The most important facet of this process is for individuals to be able to express their perspective, be in the classroom, at home, or at the workplace. Critical thinking must be encouraged in this way so that innovativeness is inculcated in the minds of youngsters and carried throughout their career. Schools must enforce the action of connecting with students' dreams, their aspirations, and let them know that there is a whole world out there for them to shine in.

I couldn't agree more with the Minister of Labour when he stated that there is enough room for people to enter this country and find job satisfaction. I don't believe expatriates need to feel threatened by the Emiratisation initiative. In fact, this should be a positive challenge for any HR professional if they are true leaders.

The goal is to coach the local people (NOT train) to develop their philosophy of life. Human beings, no matter where they come from, must connect with their individual beliefs and value system to be able to change their destiny. The following are questions we could explore in coaching the local people:

1. What does happiness mean to you?
2. What sort of difference can you make in your organization?
3. What are you afraid of?
4. What is the purpose of your existence in this world?
5. How can your work contribute to developing yourself as a person?
6. What would your plan be if you were deprived of your current financial state?

Let's start developing leadership minds, and we might have something far more positive and transformational than just an Emiratisation drive.

The Implementation Question

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 13:35:00 +0000

An appointment with the Director of Finance to document his responsibilities, daily tasks, objectives, and purpose of his job for the value he creates for his company. He started talking with preconceived notions of "nothing will ever work here because everything in the past has just gotten filed away" and "what will all this accomplish for me personally?". Very genuine questions from an individual who's worked in the same company for 30 years.

So what is the answer to the million dollar question of how best to implement a new system? Here are some ideas, in no particular order:

1.Each individual's support is essential, but beyond that the input of each individual while the system is being created is what would make the implementation challenge that much easier. Involve everyone who will be affected by any decisions to share their input in a structured way. Do not make the mistake of creating a system without adequate input to save time and announcing it in a memo.

2. Select an implementation team/panel/force comprising of individuals who possess high levels of organizational committment and personal values of work ethic, accountability, and personal responsibility. If you do not have members with these qualities, implementation will fail and get filed away. So start building these qualities in the culture of your organization, where every employee thinks like a leader and is not conscious of hierachical structure and titles. Nothing works magic like genuinity does.

3. Communicate your implementation plan to everyone involved in a group interactive process. This is so essential. Do it in an offsite 3-day meeting if necessary, in order to invite buy-in and total support fot the new system. The most important aspect of this is that the group needs to know that the system operates like a democracy and is subject to the people's receptivity. Nail down who is responsible for what actions by what time and hold the group accountable as a group instead of individuals. The group needs to be self-correcting.

4. If things slip during implementation, go back to basics with the group. The implementation team must connect with everyone as individuals and create a way to instill motivation by linking the new system with personal benefits. As the Director of Finance asks, "What's in it for me?" The answer lies in what he values as a person in the first place. Once you find that out, make sure you create that personal link in your rewards scheme.

5. Reward the group for success in all phases of the implementation process. I'm not just talking about overtime. I'm talking about real benefits for the person individually. Think about unique ways to compensate them for their efforts. Pleasant surprises always work. The key is to be unpredictable in your rewarding structure.

I have been asked whether penalizing individuals for failing to do their part is an effective method. In all honesty, it is not a good idea because it can lead to more resentment that is sure to surface and affect your process negatively. The world-class organization of today is positive and inspiring, driving individuals to want to complete the job by their own free volition. So select self-motivators, nurture their personal goals, and offer them a platform in your department/team/organization to carry them out.

Leadership Philosophy

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 10:50:00 +0000

I am halfway into one of the most profound business books I have ever read. Authored by Dr. Peter Koestenbaum, his book titled 'Leadership: The Inner Side of Greatness' is about true leadership beliefs and behavior that could make an organization distinctively stand out in our far too competitive world.

Apart from touching me personally on a philosophical level (will talk about this in my personal philosophy blog), the ideas in this book are beautiful, but challenging for the average employee. Koestenbaum hit the nail on the head when he says "Leaders are condemned to Philosophy" even if they might not be interested in this discipline on the surface.

Here are some of the most incredible leadership ideas I've read about in this book so far which I'm trying to internalize in my work with organizations. You need to read this book to grasp their full meanings, so these points may seem abstract and esoteric upon reading them for the first time:

1. Leaders think whole and think specific at the same time. Their minds have been trained to exist outside of realms that have been created by man and place themselves on entirely universal laws of nature. They have mastered the art of parallel processing where multi-thinking becomes second nature.

2. Leaders know the purpose of their life. They fight for a cause they believe in, and manifest this cause in their chosen field of work. The cause of a true leader is always for the benefit of others, and is dedicated to the success of the customer. The purpose of a leader's work is tied to welfare and profits are a natural result.

3. Leaders have a different concept of time. They "make" time in the true sense of the word. They take themselves out of normal time and are not controlled by the clock. Time always passes by quickly for them due to the fulfillment in their work. In fact if there is no personal fulfillment in your work, you will never solve your perpetual time-management and scheduling problem.

4. Leaders subscribe to deontological philosophy of "doing what is right". They follow the highest standards of ethics possible, and seek to grow on their own merits rather than comparing themselves to competitors. They do things because it is the right thing to do, which usually translates into higher levels of quality for optimal customer loyalty to you and your company.

How can these principles be practically applied in organizations?

As a top-level manager: you can create your organization's culture based on these tenets, which your competitors can never copy (they can copy your products but not your culture).

As a line manager: you are the most important link between organization strategy and effective execution for the company. In your position, these principles might get you motivated to train your subordinates to increase awareness in quality of your products and remind them of why they have the job they do. You also have the intuitive power to affect your organization's strategy and bring it to new heights using these leadership ideas.

As a young employee: you are a leader in your own right. Your individuality can be effectively enhanced by adopting a leadership mindset from a very young stage in your career. It will surely improve your chances of receiving opportunities in higher positions when your management starts to take notice of how your behavior oozes of wanting to make that all-important difference.

At the start of his book, Koestenbaum says that you would be cheating the world and yourself if you don't live up to the potential you have been gifted with. Deep thought and integrated action are essential to moving yourself and your organization forward to the place it needs to reach.

A Traditionally Modern Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 14:25:00 +0000

I have just completed individual job descriptions for 80 employees, part of the organization's Trading Business Division, using a structured interview process.

The company is one of the oldest in the region, and many if not most of its employees are middle to elderly aged males who have provided service for 30 odd years or more. Most of them have a highly traditional view of the world with statements such as, "The Managers might not notice, but God notices", "What sort of ideas do you expect from a man who has spent his whole life doing the same thing?", "I am happy even though my pay packet is extremely low, because this company always pays on time so I feel secure." The question that boggles my mind is that how do these people manage to love their management, have the most high levels of organizational committment I've ever seen, despite the fact that they have had absolutely no career or financial growth in the company?

The laws of this land are geared more towards the employer rather than the employee. I found that in my conversations with these employees, observing their body language, and listening to their unflinching loyalty toward the company's stakeholders, was deep-seated fear. Fear of the law turning against them if they decided to wake up and leave for a higher pay. Upon probing, the very people who have served the company for 30 years have succumbed to "guilt-based" retention tactic on the part of the organization, specifically about what would happen if the company put a visa ban on them. However, more than the legal irriatations of leaving, they feel they wouldn't have opportunities outside of their company because of their age. This puts me in an ethically charged situation, because they are depending on my report to the Management. This position is also a very positive one to be in. A chance to promote positive change in a traditional organizational culture is why I choose to do this work.

I need to paint a realistic picture to the Management about what their employees have been going throughout the last 30 years. The Job Description Interviews were an obvious starting point to capture the realism behind the paperwork. Now some of these employees are about ready to retire, and have no interest and aspirations for further career growth. For those in the organization who are looking to grow in their competence and contribution, I need to help the Management surface a culture where that is encouraged. The only way for them to encourage this, is to link it with bottom-line results for the company.

Times are changing, and so will the laws. As employees go on their way to get more legal protection for themselves, employers will have to create ways for employee retention beyond the threat of a visa ban. Visionaries must be aware of what the reputation of their companies would be in the future looking back at the track record of how they treat employees now. The survivors and thrivers in the global scale will be those companies who are taking adequate steps to satisfy their employees' needs based on the high standard of living in this city, and develop employee competencies that serve organization-specific goals... and they'd better do it now rather than wait for times to change.

The Job is Key

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Tue, 02 May 2006 09:27:00 +0000

I am now onto an exciting project with one of my long-time clients. Creating a compensation structure that justifies increments for employees. I started off with designing their compensation strategy according to the goals of the company, and always keep this in mind for ultimate deliverables. Although this strategy is considered the core purpose and frame of reference of the new resulting system, it may change depending upon the immediate core foundation of any HR system: the job of the employee.

Everything starts with what the employee is currently doing. A properly documented Job Analysis is the most essential starting point for any HR Management system, be it selection, training, performance appraisal, and compensation. When this compensation system of the company is finalized, it will undoubtedly change other systems in the company. So my current activity involves spending an intense amount of time, sitting with incumbents one-on-one and documenting daily tasks, their frequency, and importance level related to the effective performance of their job. There are indeed many tools to conduct Job Analyses. However, I would not skip the qualitative interview process which covers those little intracacies and competencies needed for employees to be the best at their work. An HR system can topple if jobs are not accurately documented in an objective, fair manner (hence the need for an external agent!).

Many additional benefits will come about, besides accumulating data for creating a new pay structure based on external market information. Talking with employees gives them a sense of motivation and being appreciated for their contributions. One employee was overwhelmed that he was finally asked about what he is doing after 9 years at the company. Besides, this process identifies critical gaps in expectations between management and employees, increases the chances of talent retention, and identifies issues before they blow up in management's faces. These critical issues are the reason why I always recommend individual interviews that are confidential and aspire to seek the whole truth.

Grand Success

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 13:13:00 +0000

Wow, just completed a 3-day offsite retreat with a large enterprise here in Dubai. It was an experience of a lifetime. They all came in as individuals and they all left as a team. I can't imagine how much skill it takes for an external consultant to make something like this happen. But here are some helpful hints at achieving transformation in 3 days:

1. Develop trust with the entire system. You can't just take your client offsite somewhere without knowing them and them knowing you. We talked to everyone individually and had constant contact with the system for a month prior to our transformative retreat.

2. Don't be an expert. You will be rejected if you go into a client system and start telling them what to do and how to get effective. We must install self-confidence in the system by making them aware that all the answers lie within them.

3. The client is not the CEO. Never believe that the client is the top guy of the organization. As external consultants, we have a duty to ensure that even the CEO is accountable for his/her performance. So we work for the system as a whole.

These are just some principles that would help get the organization unleash its potential.

New Client Work

noreply@blogger.com (Mubeena Mohammed) — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 09:39:00 +0000

People change just by participating in a revolutionary process itself. I just started work with a new client who is experiencing dramatic effects only because an external consultant is exerting positive energy in their office all day long. We are on a tight schedule with this client which has us in their office all day to meet our agenda.

We just finished interviewing members of the top team and are now getting a sense of what is important to their organization. I've always believed that all the answers are in the system and within the hearts and minds of the key individuals that make the decisions for the company. The Organizaiton Development consultant is no more an expert who gives advice. He/She is a guide who elicits the right answers to the right questions that organizations must ask themselves. Organization Development and Philosophy go hand-in-hand as they ask themselves what they truly stand for.

A comment we got from one of the team members is that she already sees changes in people and we aren't even done with our work yet. The HR Manager says that some people have started coming in at 8 a.m. sharp which never used to happen before. This is the beauty of a process that is participative and interactive. People change as they go along. The CEO of our new client said it best, "Our people are going through a tube, and when they come out of it they will be like new." As a consultant, I take great pride in being able to influence great change in little steps.