Month: July 2014

18/07/2014

The holy month of Ramadan is here upon us, the month of goodness, blessing, kindness and good deeds. We have all been waiting for it impatiently and passionately. We feel blessed to be part of it now, and may Allah bless the deceased who missed it and wished they were part of it too.

Ramadan is here to renew faith, give us ample opportunities for good deeds, close the doors to hell and open the doors to heaven. Let’s work together and exert utmost efforts to excel in this month of goodness. We can be creative in acts of kindness and compete to harvest the rewards; we can diversify in mobilizing efforts and bringing out our hidden talents.

We can excel with Allah in worshipping and obedience, in reading the Holy Quran and understanding its verses and in praying to Allah and seeking His forgiveness so that we are among those mentioned in the verse: “… and the men who remember Allah often and the women who do so – for them Allah has prepared forgiveness and a great reward”. Let’s seek to be among the residents of Heaven and let’s seek forgiveness in this Holy Month.

We can excel with ourselves by developing ourselves and our way of thinking and always encouraging ourselves to think good of others and think positively and look with confidence and determination to what we want to be and what we aspire to. This can be done intellectually by reading and researching and meeting with intellectuals and listening to lectures that are commonly held after Taraweeh prayer throughout the UAE mosques. It can also be done from a health and physical aspect by changing our dietary habits and following the example of Prophet Muhammad (SAWS) in delaying the Suhoor meal and hurrying the Iftar meal. He also said a third for food, a third for drink and a third for you. We can also increase our portions of drinking water, eating salads and fruits and exercising. After this blessed month, we should seek self-assessment.

We can excel with others by being devoted, obedient and kind to our parents asking for their contentment and visiting relatives and asking about them. We should visit the sick people and be kind to people in general and do charity acts even if little. We should smile often; smiling is a charity for those who cannot afford otherwise. We should respect the elderly and be compassionate towards the youngsters; we should give the poor and the orphans. We should excel in training our children to do all that and respect others regardless of their class or group.

We can excel in work by complying with the arrival and departure times and not be late on the pretext of fasting and sleeping. We should be cheerful when dealing with customers, assisting them in solving problems, facilitating matters for them and guiding them towards the proper procedures.

We can excel by removing any harm from the road and be kind to cleaning workers and use our time in useful matters and not talk about others behind their back. We can cooperate to assist colleagues in what they need, while seeking reward from Allah.

In this manner, we can achieve excellence in this Holy Month, leaving it with a great reward and significant change and positivity in our lives in all its intellectual, professional, social and health aspects.

07/07/2014

The term ‘Benchmarking’ could be new for some people, though it is well known to those who work in the government sector, especially at entities that are qualified for excellence awards. It is a method for learning and quality improvement by means of learning from others’ successes and failures.

Benchmarking can be formal or informal depending on the preliminary arrangements taken and the processes associated with it. The informal benchmarking doesn’t require any pre-arrangements, and we all do this kind of benchmarking whenever we admire a practice or a behavior of an individual or an organization where we may fully or partially adopt it or develop it so as to suit us. On the other hand, formal benchmarking needs preliminary coordination with the benchmark partner.

Benchmarking can be divided into ‘process benchmarking’ and ‘performance benchmarking’. In the first type, the benchmarking initiator compares a specific process to the same process of another “best practice” firm. One of the most successful examples on this type is the comparisons which were done by a London-based children’s hospital with the Ferrari Factory. The process of moving the children from the operations theatre to their care units was compared to the process of changing the tyres during a race. This benchmarking process helped the hospital to reduce death cases and improve outcomes by 70 percent!

I personally had conducted comparisons between a national bank and a group of hotels which resulted in a great impact on performance improvement. Meanwhile, performance indicators benchmarking allows the initiator firm to assess their competitive position according to the international and local indexes within the same industry.

For a successful benchmarking, there are nine main tips: Obtain Commitment and support from the key stakeholders, be prepared and humble enough to listen and learn, put an action plan once the benchmarking has been completed and start execution, pick the right benchmark partner, select and train the right team, study and understand the firm’s processes before embarking on comparison so as to get overall meaningful results, don’t focus only on documentation and information aspects, always monitor the action plan implementation, and finally continue to do benchmarking on a periodic basis.