Performance Appraisals Gone Wild

December 7, 2014 By Sabah al-Binali in HR Tags: Fun, Management, HR

Performance appraisals are a great idea usually badly implemented. Early in my career a new Head of HR showed up and implemented a complete overhaul of HR not only without input from the rest of the company but with no transparency as to what the new HR systems were. Then the time came for performance appraisals and the madness began. On a 1 to 5 scale we were instructed that 3 was good, 4 was excellent and nobody should get a 5.

I diligently went through the appraisals with my team and submitted them to HR. They requested a meeting. Present at the meeting were the Department Head of HR, we’ll call him Rajesh, and a mid-level HR person who we’ll call Asha. Finally there was a Divisional Head present who had nothing to do with HR. We’ll call him Simon. I was a Divisional Head.

So, now that we set the scene, Asha of all people opens the discussion. The company wide performance average was a little over 3 and the average for my division was well above 4. HR felt that this was not fair. The tremor in her voice belied her nervousness. Quoting a well known joke (later immortalised in a Dilbert cartoon) I asked if Asha wanted me to reduce my team’s scores or their actual performance. Nobody laughed. It was going to be one of those meetings. Continue reading →

Leaders are the Drivers of Corporate Change

November 18, 2014 By Sabah al-Binali in Leadership Tags: Corporate Governance, Management, Decision Making

The Change Management industry is doomed. Change means uncertainty. Uncertainty means risk. Risk means danger. Humans are genetically coded to avoid danger. Therefore they will always resist corporate change.

Change management consultants (‘CMCs’) will advise that winning employee buy in is critical. But how do you do that? How do you convince employees that an unknown future is better than a known present? Maybe if the present is really bad, but by then things are usually too late. Continue reading →

Monetising Business Opportunities

November 11, 2014 By Sabah al-Binali in Entrepreneurship Tags: Entrepreneurship, Management, Risk

عربي

The ups and downs of a professional life, either as an employee and even more so as an entrepreneur, are quite often blamed on luck. If something positive happens it is good luck and if something negative happens it is bad luck.

his language is unfortunate as it implies that large portions of a person’s professional life are out of his hands. Although there are external events that are always out of a person’s hands, this does not mean that one has no control. Indeed, how one prepares for, recognises and responds to these events can alter the outcomes completely.

A helpful change in language can go a long way to improving one’s ability to manage unforeseen external events. Instead of calling them good luck and bad luck it is useful instead to call them opportunities and challenges. This small change immediately reframes the issue in a way that accepts the randomness of external events but still allows for the possibility that although the event is uncontrollable the outcome can still be influenced if not managed. Continue reading →

Successful Project Management at the Executive Level

November 10, 2014 By Sabah al-Binali in Project Management Tags: Management, Project Management

The dream: A management team meets to deal with an opportunity or challenge. After some discussion a decision is made. Goals are decided. A project leader is appointed. A short number of weeks later the project leader calls a management meeting to present his deliverables. Management agrees that the deliverables have been met. The project is closed.

The reality (you know where this is going, don’t you?): A management team meets to deal with an opportunity or challenge. After some discussion a decision is made. Goals are decided. A project leader is appointed. Time passes. Nothing happens. The opportunity starts fading, or the challenge gets worse. More management meetings are called. The team leader gives his excuses. Management update the goals. This cycle is iterated until the opportunity disappears or the challenge becomes a crisis. Continue reading →

Building an Effective Working Relationship with the Human Resources Department

October 31, 2014 By Sabah al-Binali in HR Tags: Management, HR

One of the challenges faced in writing about management is that it can be difficult to differentiate between what might seem like platitudes and genuine advice. For example in terms of managing one’s human resources the idea of succession planning seems like a great idea, but what does it actually mean? It is like advising a sick person to just get better. Great advice, but useless in terms of actionable information.

How comfortable are managers with their HR skills? A simple, but valuable, proxy for an answer is the number of results for books matching the keyword “human resources” on Amazon: 209,344. Assuming a lack of authors and publishers with a fetish for publishing human resources books in the absence of any demand, it would appear that managers have an unslaked thirst for solutions to their HR challenges. So how to solve this epidemic? Perhaps the answer lies not so much in generating new concepts or recycling old concepts but in explaining in better detail well established concepts.

Continue reading →

Standard Chartered UAE: Mishandling the SME Issue or just Misunderstood?

October 21, 2014 By Sabah al-Binali in SME Tags: Management, SME

The National is reporting on customer backlash to Standard Chartered’s decision to shut down their SME business in the UAE. The fact that the bank is, according to The National, “provoking fury among customers” brings into question Standard Chartered’s commitment to its clients. The article by The National reports on the bank’s excuses for its behaviour. It also reports that the bank’s clients do not accept these excuses. So what is going on? Continue reading →

Initiating Confrontation is Good Leadership

October 20, 2014 By Sabah al-Binali in Management Tags: Corporate Governance, Management

A good manager learns how to manage conflict when it arises, as it invariably does in any organisation. A good leader learns how to initiate confrontation. This seems counter-intuitive to many people but that is because there is an incorrect presumption that confrontation is bad. I blame tree-hugging hippies for falsely promising a corporate utopia free from confrontation. Continue reading →

Corporate Governance Part 2: Operational Governance

October 13, 2014 By Sabah al-Binali in Corporate Governance Tags: Board of Directors, Corporate Governance, Management

The second part of the Corporate Governance series focusses on effective governance of management. There are broadly three areas: information disclosure, strategic direction and operational governance. For the board to discharge its duties in these areas it needs to take a proactive and consistent approach.

The foundation of any decision making process is information. Although it is the responsibility of management to assemble information it is imperative that the board leads the way in deciding what information is collected and how it is presented. The reasons for this are not only to avoid dishonesty but also to minimise the natural selection bias present in nearly any human endeavour. Examples of such information might include presentation of quality of revenue. Diversified, sustainable revenue generated from ordinary operations is considered high quality whereas a one time profit from the sale of a non-operating asset would be considered poor quality.