I posted this article on Instagram yesterday, which is about my take on Turkish-style Management and Leadership.
We had this artificial intelligence phenomenon since, well, forever; because, there were and still are so many people who act with someone else’s mind, without even needing the perks of technology.
You can’t even imagine the surprisingly high number of CEOs-managers-top level executives who tend to make critical decisions using the idea of the last person who exits his office. Some cunning professionals with the ability to analyse the weaknesses of their bosses, who just can’t stand more intelligent and wiser employees, easily create an environment where they can make their bosses do their own bidding.
As a matter of fact, those who tend to keep their employees at bay because of their own weaknesses are the ones who fall right into this trap. Employees who are wise enough to take advantage of the fact that their boss prevent employees from reaching or affecting him or her would, after a while, become the “mind of the boss”. The best and foremost way to achieve this position is to erase the company’s memory. But, how can one do that?
Well, the first thing you need to do is to reassign or say “goodbye and good luck” to key staff members. Then, you will have to centralize the flow of information. In this way, the “chosen” ones become the only persons who are authorized to convey information to the boss; hence you have a “Turkish-style” artificial intelligence.
The companies with enough money can get rid of this tyranny of cunning professionals while the rest would be doomed to either collapse, get acquired or restructured.
Therefore, I think I would not be wrong in saying that artificial intelligence was introduced to Turkey decades ago. Well, joking aside, the only difference between our own unique artificial intelligence and the real “AI” is the fact that information uploaded to the bosses’ or critical decision-makers’ minds usually tend to be wrong.
As the British astrophysicist Steven Hawking once said, “No matter how powerful a computer you have, if you put lousy data in you will get lousy predictions out”.
This was a “warning” article for those who are still trying to run their own organisations with strict and dictatorial rules of hierarchy. Now it’s time for us to use the real artificial intelligence, not that Turkish-style nonsense. We must abandon traditional hierarchy to jump-start a “network-centric organization”, where there is a combination of thinking, learning and doing at the centre of creative human activity. Employees collaborate on tasks that involve technical judgements, but also a high degree of professional expertise and experience.
I don’t care whether people get offended or not by the facts. It’s my duty to tell what I see.
