Like many people who have experienced it, especially when working in the Middle East, managers enjoy micromanaging departments and their people to the point where employees find their jobs frustrating and redundant. Company leaders tend to make all the decisions in all departments due to a lack of trust in their staff, even though they are more than capable of making sound decisions. This may be due to the fact that many are private family businesses that have a long history of passing the reins of the business to family members who have little or no experience or enthusiasm in running the family business, but when they do, there is a disability. trust any of its employees to make sound business decisions, said Feisal Hammude, general manager of Dubai projects.
Many of these business leaders may be more concerned with the minutiae of the company than the overall company vision and strategy, even though the company is experiencing profit and growth. There is more concern about making quick profits at the expense of a strong and happy work environment, resulting in low workplace morale and an inability to retain your best talent. However, the trend is slowly changing due to stiff competition and a large expat workforce from North America and Europe who are slowly educating companies and instilling their own expertise. At the same time, local youth have had the experience of being educated abroad and have come back with new skills and knowledge, which has made them smart managers of some big companies in the region.
leadership attitude
In a recent article by Ron Feddersen, leadership is about the ability to lead, set a course and set a vision, and choose the best way to get there and ensure everyone in an organization is headed in the same direction. Management follows leadership. Once a direction is set, management, doing things right, assesses the goals and declares, “This is the best way to get there.”
In the early stages of a business, the owner must be both a leader and a manager. But as the business grows, it becomes increasingly difficult for one person to lead and manage. When articles are written about a once-promising but failing business, the reasons cited typically include things like lack of adequate capital, unexpected competition, or lack of delegation from the entrepreneur. These may well be contributing factors. In fact, often the underlying reason is that the owner was too busy managing to lead or didn’t know how to manage his big idea to make it successful.
The other side
The size of a company has nothing to do with whether strong management can replace great leadership or vice versa. Both large and small businesses need each other, and knowing the difference between the two is especially crucial for companies making the transition from start-up to successful, midsize, growing business.
find your niche
Most companies spend a great deal of energy and resources trying to find a niche for their products or services in order to minimize competition, maximize profits, and ensure continued success. But rarely does the person at the top of the company spend real time finding their own niche within the business: Are they better leaders or managers? The answer is as important to the future of the organization as knowing where to fit in the market.
The answer isn’t always easy to discover, especially for someone who turned a flash of business savvy into a growing, profitable company with a bright outlook. It’s also not always an answer that appears with the same flare that created the business in the first place. But the process of finding the answer requires the same drive and commitment as someone dedicated to making your business a success in the first place.