I never thought of seeing the NBK logo on the new trend watching magazine issued by trendwatching.com. This website follows world wide trends and what are the new trend setters out there, like Snack culture and Primuimzation. So what gets me is how does NBK think issues like that are interesting to them. Such a large corporation is heading into the right direction and is surly spotting opportunities within the global market. For NBK to have there sights outwards is a smart move, thats one of the things that make it a bank that wants to become a leader and a major player in the market. BUT, but they still lack social responsibility and community work, and my guess is that this problem is from a Kuwaiti top management structure that still thinks what they studied in the university from 1970′s is important and nothing new has been added. Social responsibility and protecting the environment is the top leading agenda on many world wide corporation and NBK has an obligation to educate the Kuwaiti society about such issues, yet it still keeps its customers in the dark. ….”I just cant wait for the next walkathon to win the new model minicooper!!” one community event is pathetic for NBK’s size and influence towards its community.

I have explained before how companies take a step ahead to enter new markets, well now i understand why Sultan Center Kuwait made a move and acquired the Wasabi brand from Good Food company. Wasabi will branch out now in the GCC region becoming a Kuwaiti chain going regional, and offcourse Sultan Center management are smart, because they can easily handle such business because of there background in food handleing / operations and retailing. Plus they are expanding too, GCC wise. So why not support other brands like Wasabi. Imagine how many countless malls are popping up in Kuwait, now imagine Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and UAE. This may surly take some years to complete, but when done who can compete against them. Creating a brand, recruiting chefs from Green valley in the Philippines now turned into a GCC chain. So what does Good Food company do with the 5million KD buyout, create more brands i guess. Some start to think why did i not come up with such a concept, looks fairly simple yah. Well the same idea came to a guy in Good Food company, but he had the resources to support his idea, and you too can. These business venture are not a one man show but a whole orgnizational project, when i  say resources i mean financial resources, these plus experties etc etc..but hold on; these financial resource are a well studied plan with loans but from a business structure not the ones you take from your branch. So what i’m saying here is that when you’ve got a strong feasible idea, dont be afraid to follow it through and you may be surprised where you end up, 6al7a most probably:P 

on the 10th to the 15 of November, the Dubai air show will begin. So went online at Jazeera airways tried to book my tickets and as usual the Error sign popped. Because i really want to see the air show i kept my cool and called the 177 hotline, booked the tickets. The employee explained that i had to visit the airport and pay there, i did not mind yet because i really wana go! But i have realized one thing, when i tried to pay online using my visa card, the website added a charge of two KD. So my tickets totaled to 105kd, when i reached the airport “confusing line”counter and gave in my flight detail to my surprise i was requested to pay another 2kd per seat for using my visa card, again! So what i would like to explain is why when banks force there visa subcribers like Jazeera airways fees they forward such fees to us as customers, why cant such large corporation handle these charges, and provide the real benefit behind using your visa card. This may happened to you around Kuwait when wanting to buy any product in any store and the clerk request you to pay an extra 3kd charge because of the visa charges imposed on them. Okay i may understand that small shops have lower profit margins but not an airline company. I wasted about 30 minutes of my time today plus the commute to the airport and still get charged extra, why all this happened! because Jazeera website could not handle traffic when they promote there offers, maybe they should change there name to the Frustration Airlines better.

We all now how information in Kuwait is so secret, even though its available in certain places but the gate keepers to such information make it impossible to reach. Many laws are readily available in the ministry but it takes a while to find, normal symptoms of a bureaucratic centralized system. Anyways back to the secret handbook, the ministry of social affairs has a book on how to govern employees in the private sector in Kuwait, this book includes Kuwaitis and non Kuwaitis. I’ll give you a brief idea about it: this book has  a set of rules the companies in Kuwait must follow in situation like when your late or did not show up for work for more than 7 days, what constitute a firing or termination ?  Companies in Kuwait may use it to guide thembut may not use a harsher law written within this hand book. The problem with this book is that it is not written in a clear format, very typical Kuwaiti so the wrongful holders can manipulate the law as they wish and use it to there advantage. The book even includes indemnity for Kuwaitis but companies can always use other means of termination for you to not get anything. The book also explains the disciplinary code on employees, and how many warning and deduction you may get (and what extent of deductions your getting). The book is called “Kuwait private sector law handbook” and is available in some English bookstores, its a good book to browse through just to understand where you stand within a company when you start second guessing your superior.

So what does new Prado cars coming into Kuwait being parked at E7san (ehsaan) do? for the folks that do not know what ehsaan is, he is the number on shop in Kuwait for changing car seats. So our friends at Toyota Alsayer import Prado jeeps that come in cloth seating and change them at ehsaan to turn them into Leather seats. How can poeple trust such a exclusive dealership with such fishy business. They claim the car is leather seats, charge you a hefty amount, and then only spend a small amount to convert it into leather at a Pakistani famous shop in Sharq at the first place. So if Toyota Alsayer is doing such acts i guess they have fooled us much more in many different ways, i have posted earlier how Lexus charges people by changing anything in the car for annual service requirements and give incentives to there employees based on such action. Back to the post you may ask your self, maybe someone else other than Toyota is importing these Prado cars but guess what: No one is allowed in Kuwait to import Toyota other than Alsayer. So the next questions comes, till when such companies monopolize the Kuwaiti market with there bad service and deceiving customers. Such action show that profits is the only desiocion maker, and anything else does not matter. Why cant such a market open up for better equipped Kuwaitis that would love to open there own dealerships and serve customer in an honorable way!

Had some critic on the last post that it was not detailed enough, let me give you some Kuwaiti examples how decentralization can make business move forward and what risk are associated with it. Some local banks in Kuwait can provide a loan in 15 minutes and others in 3 days. Thats a large waiting time and a competitive edge for banks that can do business that fast. As a customer you would not see what is going on in the background, some may have experienced that when visiting banks for a loan in Kuwait 5 years ago, you would have been told to apply for the loan only at your branch that you have opened the account in, but nowadays you can do that at any branch. the old process was that when applying for a loan, the loan goes to the H/O for processing and grant, then to your account. This means that your application physically has to go to the H/O and gets processed by the loan officer there. Nowadays the employee at any branch has been empowered(this word may create wealth or the downfall of a business) to study your case within certain crteira’s and grant the approval on the spot. The loan still goes to the H/O but only for filling. Why is not everybody doing so in Kuwait, because such process carries with it great risk. Think of it, now an employee working in a bank for only two years is releasing loans amounting to 30,000kd. In such cases, fault or error will occur due to short learning curves and experience only gained by time, some mistakes that have accumulated to the problem that reached the parliament about installments reaching way higher than the 50/50 law introduced by the Central bank of Kuwait. Another simple example would be empowering my employee at my store to give customers free gaming hours in my networking gaming shop when the PC froze and created certain discomfort for the customer, but then at the same time the employee may use the free hours to balance out money he originally got from paying customers and keep it to himself. Such a process must be studied carefully to create what is called a risk controlled environment, where minimal risk is accepted. Because the outcome of decentralization is amazing and customer satisfying, but to do so needs internal control to be set in place to create such empowerment. Thats one of the factors that makes the Ritz Carlton one of the best hotels in the world. If you think about it, you can find that around your work place many process do not make sense and can be decentralized.

Some who follow the market news daily can notice that many companies in Kuwait are entering the stock market, the last one was Bareeq Holding. This kind of method is called split off, but its kind of the Kuwaiti split off just to gain money and raise capital. Let me give a simple example how the financial world create tools to make more existing money and opportunities. Gulf Franchising Company GFC is a listed company in the stock market and the main operations are the Kwik Kopy shops and Sac’sec the french Laundry and the pitman training schools. So what i have stated above is its main operations and the main money maker or core service, but as you all know everything in Kuwait is the other way round. Money is raised from the public as IPO and the money used in such companies goes into the market again instead of real operations like the franchise brands they acquire, some times it seems like these brands are a cover for something else. So back to Bareek Holding, now this company as they claim has purchased the Sac’sec laundry franchise from GFC and made its own company to go public too, and Bareeq made an IPO and went into the stock market. The company owns only a laundry franchise and its being traded in the KSE! at 200fils, GFC is being traded at an average of 300fils! and to make matter worse about 60% of Bareeq profits are from investments not from operations of the laundry itself. So my questions here are we over evaluating the Kuwaiti Stock market, may such moves create a bubble? many more companies are following the same path by creating split off company which are physically on the same location, meaning by just introducing a department within a company and then giving it separate entity and registering it in the ministry of commerce then raisin capital and releasing it into the market. Beware of such moves, these are illegal in the states due to what is called as exit strategies. Some large owners of these shares sell off everything they have on the fist day they go public!  

When starting a business, one important factor to create is a work flow sheet. In previous posts i have discussed Areesh the car cover service, when creating the idea and then placing in on paper it totally changes. So you have to create a work flow diagram to make the idea look clear and feasible, (please search Areesh in the search option if you have no idea about it) the program i use is called Visio, please take time to look at the work flow diagram. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. I have named different teams within the process with names like Gator and Central, please click on the image below to understand my point.

This post will be talking to the employees in the private sector and in the business/financial sector specifically. The business field overall separates into two segments, Support functions and the sales/the front line. let me give some examples to make my point a bit clearer, the Front line jobs are the money makers in “Kuwait”, (i’ll explain later why i’m stressing on Kuwait) these are the guys that sell the service or product, they are the pharmaceutical sales people, or loan officers, or credit officer, dealers in the stock market, account executives , its any job that creates profit for the company. The support are the guys at the back that you never see, these are the operations officer, settlement and claim officers, accountants, auditors, graphic designers, these that create an exta cost on the company. As you can see the front liners create money and the support are a burden on the company, thats why they get more incentive and better salaries as front liners. Front liners reach the top much faster than support but this is not always the case, but in Kuwait sorry to say it is. So here comes my point, i work in the support functions, but comparing the benefits in Kuwait, the support are in favor here. We are few, we have less stress to handle, and better opportunity to go up the ladder because of supply in the market. See most CEO’s now came from the front lines, but now support are catching up. The more transactions and deals are being created in the financial world, the more we create companies as support to regulate and monitor them, like Ci-net and the KSE. International banks now are bieng chaired by risk manager and information system managers. Dont get me wrong, i’m not downgrading front liners just explaining the status quo:P because in Kuwait CEO’s never understand the importance of support jobs because our daily actions do not relate to money directly. (below is a picture of stock dealers) 

    

If you have been noticing obesity news is all over Kuwait, in Al Qabas news paper 3 days ago had some statistics on obesity projections within the Kuwaiti population, 65% of Kuwaiti will have serious health problems within the coming years. In Kuwait we all know how the private sector in Kuwait is much smarter, effective and beneficial compared to the government sector. Kuwaiti private companies are making millions of dinars all year round, some like KFH (Kuwait Finance House) made more than 200 million KD last year. So why dont these companies show some social benefit within the Kuwaiti society, or is the bottom line the only mover?! Some like NBK have social responsibility within their mission statements, why cant they tackle such subjects like obesity in Kuwait, why do we have to wait for forbes.com to knock us on the head and start fixing such problems, or these banks are waiting to give us surgery loans! health problems in the future will become a burden on the Ministry of Health and the government budget (which most probably has a leak some where else if you know what i mean:P) Why cant local companies in Kuwait make an example like giving consumers a 1000kd Dana Account Gift if one of its customers that is defined as obese and lost a certain amount of kilo’s with a supervised health official working with a local bank(Hint Gulf Bank!!) Then this person can be the new advertsiment figure to encourage Kuwaitis to loose weight, he even may be the new Jared “the subway dude who lost significant kilos” How hard is it for some marketing department with such large budget to pay attention and for once tap into the Kuwaiti social paradigm and tackle issues like that, the sheer satisfaction from such successful campaign of real people loosing weight and changing there lives totally would be breath taking!! About an average of 7 million KD (NBK report 2006) is spent yearly in advertising localy, cant 250,000kd be used for such an effective and inspiring campaigns! Why i ask the private sector because we are the generators of profit in Kuwait from Kuwaitis and non Kuwaitis alike, so they have an obligation towards society to reinvest. Thats Jared, who lost weight by using the subway diet. (below)