MEHMET AKSEL
Hardly a day goes by that I don’t read Fatih Altaylı’s column.
No matter what anyone would say, I would easily sign my name under the things he writes. Those that I wouldn’t are either on topics that I’m not familiar with or because I don’t agree with him on that very rare occasion.
On 6 January 2022, he concluded his article’s now classic ‘When will we learn‘ bit with the following words: “When we understand that a good manager is not one who knows everything, but one that brings together and manages those who know.“
Big cheers to the person who recognizes this, and hats off to the one who applies it.
You see…
I didn’t complete a university degree; I didn’t even finish high school properly. I did not study at a vocational school, nor did I learn a profession by working as an apprentice or journeyman.
In contrast, in my TED talk, I made a comment which for me is the ugly truth, to hammer the message home saying, “one should not open a gay bar unless they are homosexual” as a means to explain that a person should not pursue a career they don’t fancy and not dive into something they have no idea about just for the sake of making money.
During the 70s, 80s and 90s when I used to do horse riding, I sought to ride the best horse that my budget allowed, entrust my horse to the best groom that could take care of it, take it to the best blacksmith and the best veterinarian, and provide the best conditions for my horse, even if those were primitive in today’s standards. I would also entrust my horse and myself to the best trainer I could work with at that time. And I must reiterate, I would do these not with money but with intellect.
Did I work very hard? Yes.
Did I ride very well? No.
But my hard work and what for me was the ‘best’ team made me the Balkans champion (It was an important accomplishment back then).
During the 80s and 90s, when I used to sell cars, I had a very good and honest partner, Alper Abi. We put together a great team for ourselves. We used to pay great attention to customer satisfaction, from the delivery of new cars to the service of used ones, and we greeted and handled every single person who entered the gallery with so-called ‘velvet gloves.’
Years went by, businesses followed one another.
Believe me, in every task I take on, in every sport I compete in, I first sought to bring together the best possible team around me, and second, I tried to motivate them for the target I desired.
Today we have MSA. It is considered amongst the cooking schools with the highest quality of education in the world.
We are now in the process of building the Moscow and Lisbon campuses.
It has been 18 years since its foundation, and whether it is 18 or 118, I run to work every single day with even crazier ideas than before and an excitement that grows each day.
The best thing I could do was to put my soul into my work, to dream, to work hard, to get lost in the details and of course, to build a good team in the process and to be the most uninformed person in this team I’ve established.
Let me explain…
- I try not to interfere with the internal management of the company as much as possible, I take special care not to interfere; my field of interest is the DNA and vision of the company. I don’t ever meddle with the finance side of things. Throughout my life, I have always thought that in terms of the money-business relationship, money inevitably follows every business that succeeds. My primary area of interest is to be an umbrella that protects the company’s DNA, to dream, to produce/discuss ideas, and to pave the way for my colleagues by focusing on the realization of the project at hand as best as we can. But my dear partner and colleague Sitare is my biggest aide and, more importantly, the guarantee for that DNA, that vision and dreams to be structured in a corporate and of course sustainable manner.
- Needless to say, I don’t understand much about education either. I already acknowledged the fact that ‘my education life was terrible.’ As the head of an educational institution, because I know quite well how a well-informed and equipped person should be, I work with the highest level global accreditation bodies; benefit from their knowledge, experience and expertise; take care to implement their programs with utmost diligence, and even be subjected to close inspection by them.
- I don’t know the first thing about cooking; I don’t like cooking, and have never even cooked an egg before. Of course, this is not important at all, nor is it necessary (You know, we are a cooking school, in case you were wondering). But there is Chef Cem, whom we trust at the helm of the educational programs, so that’s fine. Kudos to Cem, who manages all the courses and the entire team with the best instructor chefs, assistant chefs and assistants required by this international accreditation program that we have implemented.
- Marketing is Sitare’s forte. For years, I had the misconception that ‘good work is its own best promoter.’ But Sitare has a Mehtap (and of course we do too) and a whole team who over the years, have proven to me that I was wrong as much as I was right. And today, this team could shake up the world if they were given the task of promoting Turkey, rest assured.
- I told you that money was not my strong suit, I was never good in maths at any point throughout my life, and I sadly don’t have it in me. It was the same when I received pocket money, same in my sports life and in my business life. I made my biggest investments not with money, but with my dreams and my stakeholders (I don’t like this word, but I couldn’t find another one). But today, we have the lovely Nursen Hanım, who together with her team oversee MSA’s finances in a discipline that would even impress publicly traded companies, cares deeply about the payments or troubles of students and their families, and can pull off a mission impossible when it comes to issues of purchasing and consumption.
- I had sworn to never open a restaurant, so there is Chef Mehmet and Chef Turan and their teams at our restaurant inside the Sabanci Museum, who do such a good job that made me renege on my vow.
- Chef Zeynep and her team that run the office of student affairs and our alumni association, who take care of everyone as if they were her own family, from the grades of 600 students registered each semester to the materials they use, and from the uniforms they wear to the knife they use and to the bleeding finger she accidentally cut just seconds ago.
- Emine and her team oversee the workshops, which are still continuing after 18 years without any interruption and with increased excitement.
- There is Pınar and her team, who always make the best organizations.
- There is Duran and his team, who ensure that not even a single day of school is disrupted and that we continue unabashedly 24/7 at MSA and its restaurant, in the true sense of the word, when it comes to electricity, electronics, water, gas, air-conditioning, renovation, repair, digital, whatever details you can think of.
- Providing the “right product”, which is a very important part of our business, in the right amount, at the right time and at the right address, and bringing together hundreds of food products with freshness and in a healthy manner to students and lovers of cuisine is only made possible by our purchasing, storage and coordination team spearheaded by Ümit.
- There is Hüsnü Bey and his hygiene team made up of dozens of people, who work 24/7 and undertake the cleaning of MSA meticulously.
- Please come and see for yourself, the books published, movies shot, products grown or produced, the online course, R&D studies and others as well as the value given to people and the care given to equipment.
And you know what, these teams have been around since MSA was founded and they’re all in love with their work.
I recently wrote that Sitare and Mehtap are working on preparing a large-scale ‘defining our values’ document through a series of in-house workshops, which is important for our international investments. (I only became aware of this later; it has been ongoing for three months.)
One of the key results so far (which I think is the most important one, and I am proud) is that everyone at MSA describes their colleagues as ‘people who have come together for a common goal and think they are in the team because each one of them is really good at what they do‘ and are glad and proud to be working with them.
This is the internal side; how about the outside?
Isn’t it important to gather “the good and the well-informed” around the system just as you would on the inside?
We have very valuable business partners, ‘top chef’ guest trainers, consultants, sponsors and agencies. All of them are the best in their fields and they love working with us. They respect us in our field, and we trust them, their work, their products and their ideas. This is a manner of working where materiality can’t (or let’s say finds it difficult to) make ground in the big picture.
That’s one of the secrets behind MSA’s 18 years.
Oh, and are we, Sitare and I, good managers? Well, we can’t speak for that.
But let me say this on behalf of both of us, like before and in the future, when we establish our team, we always worked and will continue to work with our friends who we think are the best for that job, who deserve that job, who can do the job properly, and most importantly, who truly want to do that job.
I also wrote about this in an article… My primary goal has always been ‘to have the least know-how of the topic discussed when we gather around a table.’
See, for me, the main takeaway that I think Fatih Altaylı wanted to express at the beginning of the article is this.
If institutional success is achieved in any matter and has been made sustainable, the primary driver behind this is the ‘right and well-informed people’ that spearhead this process.
