I will be spending a major portion of my time here in Jeddah this summer, partly by choice and partly due to personal commitments. With our streets bustling with countrymen from all corners of the country, I prefer mostly to stay indoors to keep safeguard my sanity.
With time on my hands I checked out a book titled “301 Great Management Ideas from Some of America’s Smallest Companies.” After having absorbed the material from the book, I felt a sudden inspiration to expand it to our working environment here in the Kingdom and begin working on a book entitled: “13 Not So Great Management Ideas from Some of Our Largest Public Sector Companies.” It is still in its primitive stages. Here is a rough draft of my work so far:
Chapter 1— Invert the Management Pyramid: The Egyptians of 6,000 years ago designed and created a structural masterpiece, but they had it all wrong.
Chapter 2 — Encourage Nepotism: Hire your brother-in-law or your nephew who happens to be a high school dropout. Whether he is qualified or not is immaterial, but his personal loyalty to you will be secured.
Chapter 3 — Discourage Teamwork: The team may discover your incompetence well into the project and some of your over-zealous subordinates may strive to upstage you.
Chapter 4 — Stifle Creativity: After all, creativity is a fuel for growth and dynamism that exists only within the renegades in your corporation.
Chapter 5 — Deflect Inquiries Smoothly: This is an acquired art that is essential study for all entry-level public sector employees.
Chapter 6 — The Customer Is Always Wrong: They have been lulled for too long into believing that they are right, or hold certain rights. It’s time they woke up and smelled the petunias of public service.
Chapter 7 — Misplace Customer Documents: Chase them away with this excuse. By the time the customer gathers and replaces all the “lost” documents, he may give up on his request altogether.
Chapter 8 — Shift the Responsibility: Invent a fictitious employee in the bowels of your organization and blame him to others for your own failures or foul-ups.
Chapter 9 — Blame Upper Management: They are never around or are too busy gaining brownie points with their superiors to notice your foul-ups.
Chapter 10 — Refine Procrastination: Keep putting it off till tomorrow or next week. By then, maybe the task on hand is long forgotten.
Chapter 11 — If That Does Not Work, Re-engineer: Re-organization gives your bosses the impression that you are doing something positive. “Re-engineering” is the buzzword of our corporate culture, and placates your superiors into a false sense of security.
Chapter 12 — Shrug Sympathetically: You’ll be surprised with the effects of this humane gesture. And all this without getting up from your desk.
And finally, Chapter 13 — ‘Bukra Inshaallah’: When all else fails, use this phrase, or “Come back after Ramadan.” That will put an immediate end to those pestering demands. Any more ideas?
