A friend of mine contacted me a few weeks ago to ask for my help. Her mother, Kathie, is the assistant dean of Duke’s business school (I think that is her position), and she is interested expanding Duke’s executive MBA program to Istanbul. Kathie asked her daughter if she knew anyone in Turkey and my name came up, and Kathie contacted me a couple of months ago.
Since Kathie was looking for both business leaders to partner with, and prospective students, I put her in touch with Murat. Murat went to Robert College, and American high school her in Turkey. This high school is hands down the best high school in Turkey. It is very expensive and very hard to get into. Each year they take between 100 and 150 students, and pretty much everyone in Istanbul wants to go there (at least from what I have seen). Murat’s high school friends are among Turkey’s brightest, and are generally from very wealthy, very powerful families. My thought was that if Murat wanted to help, which he did, he would be able to put Kathie in touch with some very well connected people.
The dinner was wonderful. Including Kathie and her husband we were eight. We had dinner in an old palace on the Asian side of the city, with beautiful views of the Bosporus. The architecture of the restaurant was more or less unchanged from the original style of the palace, and they had a great wine menu. Need less to say, I ate and drank a lot.
The eight of us chatted about Turkish culture and what obstacles Kathie and Duke would face in trying to create something here in Istanbul. The other young people Murat had invited were all very well spoken, and very intelligent. They went on and on about all of the various problems they could foresee Duke having, as well as possible strategies for overcoming it. The exchange between Murat’s guests (whom were all my age), Kathie and my guest (Erman) was very intellectual and very professional. I was very impressed and almost a bit intimidated by them. My contribution to the conversation was of course my impressions and interpretations of Turkish culture from an American view point.
I think the dinner wasn’t quite what Murat had intended. In typical Murat fashion, he waited a bit too long to start planning this evening. It still went well, but there was one point shortly before the dinner where Murat was quite nervous that things would not come together and that everything would fall apart. This captured two very big cultural aspects of being Turks: being hospitable and not planning ahead. When Turks have guests, they seem to bend over backwards to ensure their guests enjoy themselves. Murat’s worry this past week was his instinctive ‘Turkish hospitality’ taking over and pushing him to do some planning. I of course found his distress wildly entertaining as I am always the one preaching planning ahead, and proactive approaches.
This brings me to the point of this entry. Living in the Marshal Islands, Switzerland and now Turkey, I have looked at cultures in terms of where they fall on the proactive-reactive continuum. Coming from New York, I learned a proactive approach to problem solving. Planning ahead and taking preventative measures is the way I like to do things. I have a really hard time functioning in a system that does not adopt this same mentality. The Marshals and Turkey definitely do not share this mentality.
I am constantly frustrated by what I see as Turkish people’s inability to plan. When I make a business trip, I print out every train schedule, all the hotel information, meeting times, and any other information that could potentially be important. I always take an extra tooth brush, paper and pen with me wherever I go (even in Turkey). I always plan for the worst, and try to always have a backup plan. I can be flexible if I need to, but I like to know what’s coming so I don’t have to be. Most of the Turks I have met do not do this. They leave work to the last minute, the do one thing at a time and plan for the next only when necessary. I have always seen this as a reactive approach which is bound to be more costly and therefore inferior in my mind. I simply cannot understand why someone would approach a problem in this way.
During this dinner Murat captured this aspect of Turkish culture in a very poetic way. He said that while American’s plan ahead and work hard towards something, “Turks save the day.” They wait until the last minute and then throw all their energy at the problem. If they are capable, they solve the problem. Murat used as an example his time spent in the US at Carnegie Mellon Unversity. He said many of his class mates would study for days before a test, and Murat would only study for a few hours right before the exam, and would do just as well as the rest of his classmates. Having been his classmate for some time, I can attest to the validity of this statement. Murat always left work until the last minute, and he usually did well.
The trouble, according to Murat, came when it was time for him to do group work. The save-the-day approach does not work well when you have a group with several other people in it. Not being able to plan ahead, divide up work, stick to meeting times, and in general function productively with in a group is a huge detriment when you have a long term project. I can also attest to the fact that Murat was indeed not very good at group work. At this point, please note that I am not making any claims about my own abilities. I am simply using Murat as blanket example for the majority of Turkey, compared against what I saw in my peers at Carnegie Mellon.
Putting it that way, and hearing Murat describe what I have seen as a flaw in Turkish culture, casts things in a different light. It is simply a different approach to things. But which way is better? Of course a mix. A healthy mix, or taking things in moderation is the best approach most things. You want to be able to plan ahead and go over everything in great detail so you are always prepared, but if you cannot ’save the day,’ you will find yourself struggling with unexpected bumps in the road that perhaps a Turkish person would have no problem handling. Vice versa, if you cannot plan ahead, you will always be under pressure, and always stressed trying to ’save the day.’
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Recent Comments