ZAFER PARLAR
Foreign executives often ask me about the main characteristics of Turkish executives. If we generalize their behaviors, they are flexible, emotional and relationship-oriented. If you acknowledge these and build your relations accordingly, you can achieve great results. On the other hand, ignoring them can cost you time, money and in some cases your face.
Imagine you are a kid where they constantly construct buildings, roads and airports. Changing macro-economic factors such as high inflation and devaluation is a daily activity so is taking individual positions against them. Even the kid who sells simit (Turkish bagels) on the street buys and sells hard currency to protect his money. Political instability and short-term coalitions are considered the norm to run the government. Rules and regulations also change on regular basis. What would you do when you grow up and start running a business? I bet you would not start with a five-year plan and stick to it within this environment. You have to be flexible and able to respond to external changes in order to survive.
Today, Turkey is quite far away from the above picture, but this is the environment in which your local executives grew up. The good thing about this behavior is that you can call a meeting tomorrow and tell them you have decided to change north to south, east to west. They will ask for a couple days to adapt and then carry on with the new system. The difficult part is to manage their frustrations when they get squeezed between the decision-making process of your headquarters and the local changes that demand immediate responses to win the game.
Though on different levels, all southern Europeans are emotional. It is genetically so. They do not approve or disapprove, but love and hate. Nothing is only business. People leave big deals on the table because they cannot get along. Managing emotional people requires a different skill set. You have to stay cool, but show empathy at the same time when people get carried away and start dramatizing. Your client can call your margin offer an insult. Your subordinate can get mad and create a scene when he is not promoted. On the other hand some people can work with you for months without getting a decent return just for you or your company’s sake if they are emotionally attached. They never forget when you extend a helping hand. It is very good to be very open. If you have to deliver bad news, you better do that during one-on-one meetings.
In an emerging market you can lose a lot when conditions change. Only your friends and network can put you back up. You become friends first and then make business. Things might change from norms to rents depending on who you know. That’s why when you ask about someone, they always say “he/she is a good friend.” That’s why they greet half of the tables in a restaurant. This is why being part of a football club management or getting affiliated with a political party is much more important.
If you are from Northern Europe or North America, that means you are coming from a culture that is more rigid than flexible, neutral than emotional, rule-oriented than relationship-oriented. Therefore it will be more difficult for you to understand the local dynamics compared with someone from South America or southern Europe, Asia or Africa. As it will not be a onetime event, developing a new reconciling behavior pattern is important. In order to do that, you have to accept the differences and show respect to local perspectives. At the end of the day everything grows on a reason, sometimes it just cannot be yours.
* Zafer Parlar is the founder of istventures (www.istventures.com), which supports international companies in their market entries and development in Turkey, as well as Turkish companies in their local operations and international expansion plans. [email protected]
(Source: www.hurriyetdailynews.com )