Sunday, November 20, 2016

Change - Article 2

More than one year back, my employer announced that it is going through merger negotiations with another local bank in Qatar. My bank is the sixth largest bank in Qatar, new to the market, with active retail, corporate and wealth management banking. We have two branches and two-service center, and it is listed in the stock exchange market. On the other hand, the other bank is mainly a retail and wealth management bank, with fourteen branches, and privately owned by members of the royal family and national bank of Kuwait, as well the top management team members were outsourced from NBK. The main aim behind the merger negotiations was to create the third largest bank in Qatar with shareholder’s equity of $2.1 (Arabian Business, 2011).

It worth to mention that Qatari’s government is encouraging companies and bank’s merger lately, and we have seen a successful merger between two big construction companies in 2010, as well the other bank we were supposed to merge with, through the past years had two failure mergers with other banks in the Qatar. Both banks were following two different management styles, two completely different strategies; employee’s salaries were not close to each other for the same position across both banks. In terms of IT strategy, we were following two completely different approaches, my bank from day one were following edge technology, top of line software and hardware were bought, IT employees were outsourced, and management were kept in-house, plans to convert the IT department into a profit center rather than cost center were set. On the contrary, the other bank approach were to lower the cost of IT as much as possible, no data resilience, core banking systems were residing on an obsolete hardware and so on.

After the announcement of starting the negotiations, both parties hired consultants from their side to start the due-diligence and assessment, this period used to be stressful for all employees, the banks started firing people, others resigned. The moral of all employees reached its lowest levels, this led to job uncertainty and insecurity, most of the employees were asked to prepare their resumes for interviews, it was a mess. Everyone started his own rumor, analysis if the situation as if he/she is a financial advisor, especially with lack of information from management. At that stage, management held up a meeting with all employees to try to control things, CEO used to visit each employee and chat with them, but all that didn’t help. The change to happen and its rumors were the main concern for everyone, and the most affected department was IT. That because usually we execute what business requests, and at that stage almost zero requests came form the business.

While Consultants believed that our IT infrastructure was one of kind, and makes it easier for future scalability, their recommendations were to use the IT infrastructure of the other bank, and write-off our infrastructure due to its high maintenance and operations cost, which will be a burden on the new organization. As well, they recommended that the share value should be 60 for the other bank and 40 for our bank. A merger committee was set and included top management from both banks, the CEO of the this committee used to be the other bank’s CEO, they started building the new bank’s strategy.

Mainly all consultants’ recommendations were approved, and the deal was almost approved, until Qatar Central Bank stated a new regulation that limits borrowing levels for local and foreigners, and decreases profitability from retails business (FitchRatings, 2011). At that stage, the board of directors of our bank decided to revisit the recommendations and offered the other bank a 50-50 deal, with an acceptance or refusal without further negotiations. At that stage, the bank refused the deal and this chapter was closed. The merger failed, but the lessons learned form this changed the whole organization, its strategies, mentality, behavior, and changed every single employee.

The merger failed, like 99% of the mergers at its final stages, the reasons behind it were plenty and complex. For instance management style differences, our management is open and any once can reach the CEO for a valid reason, other bank’s CEO is really hard to reach, very strict, and bureaucratic. Disagreement on share value, at the end any investor will decide to go on with a deal or not based on potential business and value of his shares, and this affected the final decision. In addition to that, the recent circulation from QCB changed shareholder’s perspective and appreciation for consultant’s recommendations, as it happened to be not valid anymore.

Merger changes a lot in organizations; regardless of its outcome “succeeded or failed”. After the failure our organization started marketing itself in a better way, such as internal marketing. They made big posters. Presenting organization’s vision, mission and values, posted advertisements for new products and initiated organizational restructuring, to fill the gaps and hire replacements resigned emplyees.

Bibliography


Arabian Business, (2011), ‘Qatar’s Al Khaliji, IBQ end merger negotiations’, [Online], Available from:
(Accessed 28 June 2011)

FitchRatings, (2011), ‘Qatari Banks: Annual Review and Outlook, Strong Economic Growth to Drive Banking Sector’, [Online], Available from:
(Accessed 28 June 2011)



Change

Server Virtualization is considerably new innovation that was implemented by my organization and my team, to increase application performance, achieves better utilization of hardware infrastructure and cost reduction for power and cooling.  The implementation of this technology helped us to reduce server-provisioning time by 75%, and made it easier for the system administrator to manage the huge number of servers we have.

The change will be in migrating physical systems into virtualized ones managed by one interface, and implement additional features that come along with this technology such as High availability and live migration of virtualized servers incase of hardware failure. The change is still in implementation phase, and yet to complete by end of august. CTO, CIO and COO supported this technology as they fully understand and realize its importance and the benefits behind it. We came with this proposal based on a requirement to reduce data center operation cost, licenses cost and personal cost. In addition to that, risk and business continuity department were looking for a fast, cost effective and not risky solution to build Disaster Recovery Site, and to make all business critical and business important application available in DR Site, all those supporters from top management and risk department made the approval process faster.

To achieve a successful implementation, we engaged application vendors to assist us in the migration process and verify that their applications are supported under the virtualized infrastructure. In this stage we faced a lot of resistance from application vendors, the main claim was because their applications were not tested and its functionality were not verified under this environment. For us we were not convinced with this reason because all operating systems we use are supported, in addition to the fact that all development and test systems for those applications already run under virtualized systems, but this showed lack of proper understanding of this technology from their side. However, as we cannot go forward without their official support, we had to create pilot systems for each application that are identical to production systems, to give them a sort of comfort and an environment to check application functionality, performance and reliability. This was an easy to achieve by costly solution, because the hardware infrastructure was available, we didn’t have to purchase new hardware for the pilot implementation. But this took lots of effort from our side to keep duplicate systems and isolate their network completely to avoid data inconsistency.

This approach helped both of us, as it gave them confidence and made them support the application under virtualized environment. At the end we benefited and the ROI was really high, as we able to reduce power consumption in our data center, easier manageability for system administrators, faster provisioning for new servers, systems resilience, and higher utilization and performance for application servers.

Reference:

Hassell, J., (2007), 'Server Virtualization: GETTING STARTED', Computerworld, 41, 22, p. 31, Computers & Applied Sciences Complete, EBSCOhost, [Online]. (Accessed 25 June 2011)

McAllister, N., (2007), 'Server Virtualization. (cover story)', InfoWorld, 29, 7, pp. 20-22, Computers & Applied Sciences Complete, EBSCOhost, [Online]. (Accessed 25 June 2011)



Training and Education

Last year at school is a nightmare for every student in Jordan; he/she has to study really hard to get a decent grade that will allow him/her to study at any university to get a degree, this because without it most probably he/she will be jobless. My father sent me back to Jordan because he wanted me to study at Jordanian universities. Because it’s so important to me in my professional life and it draws my future, our parents did the impossible to engage me at a university.

The situation in Jordan is similar to most of the Arab countries; the university degree is valued more than experience. You have to be university graduate to have a job, and it is rare or maybe impossible to have the chance to have experience without having a university degree. We have certain jobs in Jordan were you are not allowed to work in unless you are member of an association, and this membership comes only by a university degree, like engineering, and medicine. Employees who do not have a university degree are paid less, if they had the chance to work, and a person with five years of experience will get less salary than a fresh graduate, although he cannot benefit the company as much as the experienced does. But in Jordan, there are minimum wages for university graduates and this is another motivation for people to complete the university degree.

In Qatar were I worked for seven years in two different companies, the situation is the same, I as a university graduate used to get more salary than a colleague who didn’t have one, and he used to train me. For that, some people get engaged in online education, as it will help them get a better salary. A friend of mine, he is the guru, whatever I say about him, I wont be fair to tell how experienced he is, once he were asked to do an implementation in Saudi Arabia, he was invited by a company, but the country didn’t give him visa because he wasn’t an It university graduate. But what is really strange about GCC countries in general (UAE, Qatar specially), is that you notice that they are really strict only with Arabs and they are tend to get westerns without university degrees and pay them big salaries, we call them here “foreigner expert”. Those countries as well, encourage local’s without university degree to work and get experience, but this is an exception, as they want their people to start depending on their selves and build their country.

Another exception in all Arab countries is something we call “Wasta”, which is a person who facilitates something. And if you have “Wasta” you can work regardless of your education or experience as well. With “Wasta” you get new business, find a new job, and open all closed doors.

Reference:

Hayfaa, T. &Saleema Kauser, S., (2011) ‘The importance of wasta in the career success of Middle Eastern managers", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 35 Iss: 5, pp.467 – 486, Emerald, [Online]. (Accessed 18 June 2011)

Leung, L., (2006), ‘Work experience vs. certifications’, Network World, vol. 23, no. 25, pp. 44,  EBSCOhost, [Online]. (Accessed: 18 June 2011)


Human Assets

Organizations, webservers, or core banking system don’t build themselves, and the success of any organization, its innovation or excellent business processes are in fact built, and applied by human. Usually when we talk about our data center, we describe it as we have edge technology, very powerful systems and best IT employees in the region. That because we would never had the ability to run this data center without capable, innovative, motivated employees who spend day and night to keep it up.

The main pillar of any organization is the employee, without his efforts and capabilities organizations would never perform. For that human is considered an asset for any organization, this asset is more valuable that any other asset those organizations have, regardless of their business. This valuable asset should be optimized to increase the return of investment, to explain that I will compare my current and former employers and highlight the differences between them. My former employer used to give considerably low wages to save cost on human resources, and consolidate multiple positions into one. This approach made employee turnover really high and the quality of employees used to be less because of their style. Employees were demotivated and stressed out all the time, and this affected the level of service they offer to customers.

On the other hand, my current employer every two years works together with human resources Consultancy Company to evaluate all positions and their wages to compare it with the market. Based on this evaluation, employees get salary appraisals, and promotions. My current employer invests to make sure that what they offer is really competitive with the market in order to retain the employees, keep them motivated and attract talented resources. Employees are considered as the most valuable asset in this organization, and because of this approach, most employees are happy, motivated and employee turnover is really low.

I believe for any organization to succeed, they should pay more attention to their HR department and HR policies. HR executives should be treated as business partners, have a voice about the business strategy and advise in business direction, this because “the HR function is critical to maintaining the staff and maintaining the culture that drives the company” (Henneman, 2005).

Reference:

Smith, P. J. (1997), ‘The 8 practices of exceptional companies: How great organizations make the most of their human assets.’ Human Resource Management, 36: 367–369. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-050X(199723)36:3<367::AID-HRM8>3.0.CO;2-U, [Online]. (Accessed 16 June 2011)


Dickerson, C., (2003), 'Minding human assets', InfoWorld, 25, 3, p. 47, Computers & Applied Sciences Complete, EBSCOhost, [Online]. (Accessed 16 June 2011)

Henneman, T., (2005), 'Diversified assets', Workforce Management, 84, 3, pp. 42-44, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, [Online]. (Accessed 16 June 2011)


Company Culture

Buchannan & Huczynski defined organizational culture as “The shared values, beliefs and norms which influence they way employees think, feel and act towards others inside and outside the organization" (Buchannan & Huczynski, 2010). Organization culture is created and maintained by strategic leaders; the main purpose for having it is to help the organization cope with its environment. Any new strategy that executive management needs to implement will fail if it is inconsistent with the organization’s culture.

Although it is fist set by management, every employee who joins an organization, adds to the organization’s culture, sometimes they try to change it and others grasp it. For that, while recruiting new candidates, one of the important factors to look at is how easy can this person fit within the culture, and how can he positively affect it. Employees, who do not fit within the culture, usually feel like outsiders and cannot last for too long. To insure that employees will adhere with the organization’s culture, usually the organization put all new employees in programs to teach them the culture and emphasize on its importance.

Schein characterized three levels of organization’s culture as “behaviors and artifacts”, “values” and “assumptions and beliefs” (NDU, n.d.), the first level is visible and noticed by externals, it consists of signs, expressions, dress code, and the physical design and layout of the offices. When any one visits our offices, they will notice straight away the open culture we have, and that by the physical layout of our workspace. Regardless of the employee seniority, all employees have same offices, except for C level (executive management); in addition to that all meeting rooms have glass doors and walls.

This open office culture characterizes open communication and transparency, but mainly it is set to help managers to play a role in directing their subordinates and easier to monitor work by management. From my experience, this culture help me to build close relationship with my subordinates and managers, we discuss everything quickly and effectively, we rarely send emails between each other, it’s easier to communicate and work in groups. However, I experienced some drawbacks from this culture, we sometimes get distracted because of the noise, or because someone just grab his chair and starts chatting. I personally find it less productive and distracts attention, but very useful with having a collaborative work. Open office culture removed communication boundaries between employees themselves as well between employees and executive management, we have a very friendly environment were anyone could chat with top management.

Reference:

Buchanan, David A., & Huczynski, Andrzeg A. (2010). Organizational Behaviour. Prentice Hall.

Frank, K. & Fahrabach, K., (n.d.), ‘Organization Culture as a Complex System: Balance and Information in Models of Influence and Selection’, [Online], Available from: https://www.msu.edu/user/k/e/kenfrank/web/papers/Organization%20Culture%20as%20a%20Complex%20System.pdf
(Accessed 11 June 2011).


NDU, (n.d.), ‘Strategic Leadership and Decision Making, ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE’, [Online], Available from: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu/strat-ldr-dm/pt4ch16.html
(Accessed 11 June 2011).


Contemporary Organizations

Organization Design is about aligning an organization’s mission and vision with its structure, it’s about considering relationship between workflow, responsibly, tasks and authority and assuring they support business objectives. The organization’s design affects employee’s productivity, communication between each other, and efficiency. For example, having great people, well studied mission and great leadership are not enough and don’t guarantee well performance, as it depends as well on the an organization’s design, if the organization is poorly designed, it will not perform well. Promotions, employee punishment, business process and information sharing directly affect how healthy the organization is, each of those along with many other aspects are important for organization’s success.

Many might argue that most of today’s organizations are bureaucratic organizations; responsibility and authority are organized in hierarchies, this is true as executive managers are not ready yet to relinquish control. This makes me wonder, were those organizations really designed? Or they just evolved?

The organization design of my previous employer was based on bureaucracy and decision-making was centralized. The chain of command was very strict, I remember as a system engineers I used to visit customers on daily basis and hear complains about the level of our service or system bugs, although I informed my direct manager about those complains, he sometimes used to ignore them. As a reaction I used to send an email to his manager reporting those issues as they affect the image of the company in front of customers, both managers used to dislike such action from my side and asked me to respect the chain of command. As well employees were not involved in the decision making process and the authority was centralized in the hands of executive management who were basically located in the head office. This approach resulted in loosing business opportunities. In addition to that rules and procedures were clear and very hard to change, although each of the employees knew what was expected from them, however the lack of flexibility made employees focus on their own and team goals rather than the organization’s goals.

As this company is an IT support company with offices around the region, I would recommend to follow a contingency model, were management should consider revising the organization design to accommodate with contextual factors, like competitors, customers, and their employees. Authority should be decentralized and employees engaged in the decision making process, this will increase flexibility, innovation and creativity. As an IT company, virtual teams should exist to utilize their team in different branches and share knowledge between the team. As well I would recommend them to become more collaborative and build a page on Facebook were customers can post their queries, this will help in resolving problems faster and give the customer a level of comfort.

Executive managers should always forecast and plan for the best design that suits their organization, this design should be reassessed to ensure its compliance with organization’s missions and goals, single design might not be the best for all times.

References:


Buchanan, David A., & Huczynski, Andrzeg A. (2010). Organizational Behaviour. Prentice Hall.

Marianne Tracy, (2004) "Contemporary issues in organizations: The case for the truth – using Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries’ work as a lens", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 18 Iss: 6, pp.4 – 6, DOI: 10.1108/14777280410564158, Emerald, [Online]. (Accessed 11 June 2011)

McNamara, C., (n.d.), ‘Historical and Contemporary Theories of Management‘, [Online], Available form:
(Accessed 11 June 2011)


MindTools, (n.d.), ‘Organization Design Aligning Organizational Structure with Business Goals’, [Online], Available from: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_95.htm

(Accessed 11 June 2011)

Leader

Character changes and develops by time, its not formed in early stages of our life, other people, environment or special events might help in shaping our character and how we perceive things. Aside from the way I were raised, the environment I belong to and the inheritable traits I received from my parents, I met one person in the last year of my undergraduate studies, who I believe changed the way I think and the way I perceive things.
He is a professor at my university and used to be my instructor for network security module. Unlike other instructors, you can feel his power in convincing and his ability to guide without orders. His style in teaching was not like any other I have ever experienced; it was neither spoon-feeding style which other instructor’s use, nor explaining theories and methodologies. At the beginning of the lecture, he used to write down the subject of that lecture and which chapters to read from the book. After that he asks one of the students a question that is not related to the subject, a question like “what is the worst thing that happened to you?” then he starts discussing the case that student presented, although the question has no relation with the lecture subject, by the end of that class he explains the subject through that story. This style is unique; we never felt bored in his class, he was able to attract the whole class to be interested in the lecture. How is he a leader? Because of his teaching style, we sensed how much educated and knowledgeable he was, after each class we used to sit with him and ask about books to read to become as conversant as he was. His style motivated us not only to concentrate in the lecture and read the notes, but also to read in other fields like phycology and sociology, because that’s how he used to perceive our stories into network security subject.
Every single student used to adore him, even who used to get bad grades, his charismatic personality, and ability to affect others in a good way made him unique as an instructor and a person. I believe he will keep this as long as he keeps the same style, he used to be our mentor, I used to refer to him in any problem I used to face, whether its related to the university or not. Because I trust him, till now, I consult him before taking a major step in my life, whenever I get an offer or any opportunity I request his advise because I believe in the knowledge and his opinion.

Reference:
Buchanan, David A., & Huczynski, Andrzeg A. (2010). Organizational Behaviour. Prentice Hall
Caldwell, C. et al., (2008), ‘Ethical Stewardship – Implications for Leadership and Trust’, Journal of Business Ethics, V 78, Issue 1, pp. 153-164, Springer Netherlands, Issn: 0167-4544, Doi: 10.1007/s10551-006-9320-1
Url: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-006-9320-1, SpringerLink, [Online]. (Accessed 4 June 2011)

Tansley, C. & Newell, S., (2007) ‘Project social capital, leadership and trust: A study of human resource information systems development’, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 22 Iss: 4, pp.350 – 368, doi: 10.1108/02683940710745932, Emerald, [Online]. (Accessed 4 June 2011)