It’s impossible for just one person to solve many chronic issues that have arisen in our beautiful country. But if people were to look after their own households, and tidied up their own front doors, as a majority, some things may change.

This piece is about some issues in my general work environment and how I will deal with them. But firstly, let’s start from matters outside our workplace.

1- The right approach to social entrepreneurship

Currently there is a high demand of social entrepreneurship. Everyone is talking about this, infact there are many young people trying to act or taking action. We are also witnessing articles from the press displaying social entrepreneurship via many different channels. Some times there may be incorrect details (deformation) in these written pieces. There are commercial firms that don’t meet the criteria set for social entrepreneurship, but are still represented as a social entrepreneurship.

My thoughts about this practically mirror those of one of Turkey’s experts in CSO (Civil Society Organisation) and social entrepreneurship, Mr Uygar Ozesmi.

Social entrepreneurship has many different factors from classic entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is when an individual or a group bond together to create value, establish a profitable platform and expand, introducing a new product or service into the market. Like this classic entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship also recognises problems and opportunities, takes risks and finds ways to solve and expand.

The most important difference between then is the commercial entrepreneurship profit; social entrepreneurship being more focused on being a social benefit. Another important difference is as commercial entrepreneurship entails bringing out imitations of models which are not well received, social entrepreneurship aim is to create a model to be beneficial to society and is a vehicle to be effective and extend their line of work.

Social entrepreneurship aims to be a part of the solution, not the problem, to be able to raise opportunities from problems faced by individuals or groups, to lay foundations to new ideas, to have enough funding for sustainability rather than be profitable, to be a part of or fully involved in society – in short, to be a body who values everything from nature to all of natures species besides just humans. Social entrepreneurship requires responsibility of the whole world. For this reason, social entrepreneurship should be a part of our activities…

I will write a detailed piece about this topic of social entrepreneurship.

 

2- How arguing becomes a war of ego

I am amongst many projects of sustainability. Although the education levels in these environments are high, arguments can tend to turn into a war of ego’s. Naturally, some people can tend to turn these arguments into their opinions. By not respecting the other person’s views, they can persist to go ahead with their own views and expect others to pull back. Infact they even start to put things into motion.

So even in a highly intellectual environment, some people can lose themselves in these thoughts and misuses some facts to backup and defend their views. In my arguments, without getting emotional; I generally portray the right facts without losing myself or my thought theory. And this tends to anger the other party who has a higher ego.

People who are in educational roles and have high contributions to society require training and education in areas to control their ego’s. Some can do this via mediation, yoga, breathing exercises or by doing sport.

To not lose control and remain in a respective and loving frame, I recommend those people to find a method to help them.

 

3- Don’t get involved in unnecessary arguments

I had gone to Akyaka for a holiday. We were to do kitesurfing and then relax and enjoy our time together with friends. One night, when we were enjoying a meal at one of their famous fish restaurants Olta, suddenly out of nowhere, an argument started. When the topic was about energy, mining, CSO (even Soma), I continued the argument. These were topics I knew much about so when I was trying to correct the mistakes about them, the other sides went out of complete control and started to slur words of offence. Once offensive words came into the picture, the nature of the argument changed. Everyone warned him, and in the end he apologised to me. One of his friends however still tried to come at me, and he was then quieted down by a friend of his on the table. A night which was going to be quite enjoyable turned into something far from it. I came across situations like this both in my private and work life.

My approach to arguments is if I don’t know about the topic, I prefer to listen to the other party in order to learn some things. But if I know about the topic, I will comment, and to the end, defend and correct matters regarding it. So I therefore recommend everyone to get involved in arguments only by using these principles.

 

4- Problems experienced in traffic

The road to Sile passes from the front of our Cekmekoy office. And to come to our office, you need to enter through the side lane. Our office, situated on the corner of this highway, witnesses cars racing with other cars trying to enter the highway. We have started to experience some serious issues regarding this. Some buses, minibuses, and cars that drive kamikaze like, have had accidents with drivers of businesses right in front of our office. Infact one accident was pretty rough; thank God no one was hurt. The roads behind the office also have fast driving cars. Unfortunately, we have also witnessed some heart stopping accidents there too. We constantly talk amongst each other of the precautions we need to take. However, people besides us, who use their car and speed recklessly, can only be educated when our country as a whole is made aware of this. And unfortunately for this to happen, a generation needs to pass on first. How sad.

Instead of waiting for a generation to change, there is another way to solve this problem, technology. I am keenly waiting for vehicles to come out into the market that move without the use of humans. You can’t take the wheel away from a psychologically affected person in any other way.

In order for the improvement of technology to speed up, you can be sure I will do everything in my will for it.

 

Now I will give you examples of people from our workplace:

 

5- Trying to get in the front of the line

When I am at work, I wait in the line like everyone else in the food hall. One day when I got into the line, a worker from our call centre quickly jumped in front of me into the line just as I was reaching out for a food tray. I then said to her ‘you need to ask for permission before you try and get in front ‘. Without recognising me, with anger she turned and said ‘my friend was here holding the line for me, that’s why I am here’. I said to her ‘here the rule is to ask for permission from the person behind you which will take you 2 seconds’. She looked at my face really weirdly. I said ‘from now on, try and obey the rules of good manners’, and to stop holding the line up, I further said ‘go on, continue!’. At that point, she didn’t say anything because I believe her friends in the line told her who I was. If I wasn’t the CEO of the whole company, I’m sure she would have continued to argue with me and defend her case.

Then onwards, I notified the call centre management and all our other companies HR managers to teach and educate these workers of the rules of good manners.

 

6- Trying to get into the lift before people get out

This problem is something I continually face when in the office or other lifts in buildings in Turkey. Before people get out of the lifts, others try and get in. This is actually a very simple rule. First, wait for people to get out of the lift, and then go inside. Otherwise, it becomes quite chaotic. We will run over this simple rule in our office education sessions.

 

7- Not greeting one another

This is a general problem. Everyone is walking with an angry face; they walk past each other without saying hello, and get into the lifts. Whereas many developed countries in the world always greet each other. This two way greeting is good for communication. Firstly, it shows that you respect the person in front of you. Secondly, it increases positive energy; psychologically it has a good effect on everyone. Finally, if there was a topic you wanted to talk about, it’s a good way to get a conversation started. If we go back to the ‘lift’ example before, in the morning if we say ‘good morning’ and ‘good day’ when we get out of the lift, it would be most appropriate.

 

8- Unnecessarily extending meetings and telephone conversations

This is one topic I am most anxious about at work. At first in order to not come across rude, I used to let them continue, but now the moment I feel the topic going off for longer periods, I intervene. Talking about the same things over and over again is a waste of both time and energy, which brings a person down. Some people try and stick to the introduction-body-conclusion method. However, that introduction sometimes goes on for so long that it takes up much more time. Or sometimes in the development area, the same topics are discussed, which some people take steps back from. In the end, I intervene by saying ‘OK, I understand, you mean to say this, what’s your suggestion?’ which helps bring it to a conclusion.

 

9- More King than a King

I came across this quite often. You give someone authority. Then they lose themselves. That kind, polite person suddenly thinks he can demand and act the way he wants. These are behaviours I cannot stand. The moment I see this kind of behaviour I intervene. Firstly, I’ll give them two warnings. If they continue with the same actions, without hesitation, I will either remove their authority or fire them. We are human at the end of the day, but I cannot handle someone treating someone else in a bad way or acting above them especially if they have no right to do so.

 

10- Respect for women

Since the establishment of the republic, the old generations have always put women first and shown them the respect they deserve. When we look at the new generations, unfortunately they don’t respect women the way they should. Our mothers, wives, sisters, grandmothers play a very important part in our lives. If there weren’t women, men also wouldn’t exist. We will explain to men in our workplace how important it is for them to respect women during our education sessions. We will start this off by telling them that women needs to be given way as priority first.

Naturally, everyone firstly needs to maintain and tidy up their own households which we will focus on in our workplace training sessions.

In the future, when I find time, I will prepare a living manual with people who I can trust with their mind and their ideas. This will be a manual to help guide and give advice about future lifestyle predictions. I will share the details of this in the future. We will present this manual for everyone’s usage.

 

Take care…

 

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