Episode 35: Why Governance is the Future of Consultancy with Cantekin Ertekin

Speaker A: Welcome to the Consulting Lifestyle podcast. I am um, your host Diogene Tiran de Kura. On this show you will discover the realities, the successes and the struggles of business, management and information technology consultants in the fast moving B2B world. So stay tuned if you want to know more about what it takes to have a consulting lifestyle. Hello and welcome to the Consulting Lifestyle podcast to can take in airtech in. How are you?

Speaker B: I'm well Tishan. I hope you are well also.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm good. I was a bit hesitating because I wanted to be sure I pronounced your name uh, properly. I'm m very excited to uh, have you. You're based in Turkey, you run one or even more uh organizations from there. And I think there is a topic that was not uh, approached at all yet on the podcast is the topic of governance and consulting. So that will be a very good topic to approach during this episode. But first can you for the audience introduce the highlights of your career story?

Speaker B: Sure, sure. Dirshan first, many thanks for your kind organization and hello to everyone. Excited to be here and join on this fantastic podcast series. I'm also a big fan of your podcast series and looking forward to enriching consideration. Grateful about the governance and management consulting and thanks for having me. I have approximately 10 years, yeah 10 years of commercial experience across various sectors. And the initial part of my career I was focusing the strategy execution and uh, right now uh, I have shifted my focus to strategy consulting. And two years ago I founded my own consulting uh firm ITGT Consultancy. And right now we are serving in the MENA and Southern Asia regions for our clients.

Speaker A: MENA being uh, Middle East, North Africa definitely. That's great. And do you have like an IT background necessarily from education?

Speaker B: Yeah, generally my bachelor's degree was Economics, business and economics. Then I completed my master degree for innovation Management. Right now I'm trying to complete my PhD degree for strategy. Yeah. Oh wow.

Speaker A: Okay. Okay. That's pretty busy week. So you run right now IT governance circuit and that what is the purpose of that organization and how do you kind of define governance? Sure.

Speaker B: We have established the IT governance Turkey approximately five years ago in order to making information shareable, not sellable especially as you know at nowadays. And uh, how is more important than what? That's why the information is everywhere. But we are trying to make information to meaningful. That's why we established this organization in order to increase governance terminology, increase governance awareness of the governance also and in the part of this community we have also established our own consulting firm it's also serving for governance and consulting.

Speaker A: Okay, and what is governance?

Speaker B: Yeah, very very very very difficult question. Uh. Dearshan. Yeah, governance. Basically we can define governance managing with your stakeholders. Decentralized, decentralized uh, decision mechanism creating decentralizing, decentralized decision makings and uh, manage it with your stakeholders.

Speaker A: Okay. Okay. So when I look at project management literature, one of those responsibilities is stakeholder management. And when we talk about decentralized decision making, what type of issues have you seen with regards to that and how can that kind of governance focused consulting?

Speaker B: Yeah, sure, sure. And at nowadays as you know our stakeholders is very important for most of the uh clients. That's why we are trying to focus them more. Our focus point is also strategy and governance and we are trying to formulate our clients corporate strategy and corporate governance process in order to complete their business and digital transformation. And we are also trying to apply this new approach to management consulting. A new generation management consulting approach. We are calling this approach and we are aiming to make our clients our key stakeholder of our consulting process. Those way they can contribute and they can help us more. Also we are trying to embed this approach to management consulting.

Speaker A: Okay, so you want inside the traditional, let's say management and strategy consulting, you want to include governance as part of it or at least uh, even as a standalone service. And where that helps businesses and business owners and executives is really with regards to all the stakeholder where it can be big. If you are a car manufacturer you can have so many stakeholders for example if there are products to recall, et cetera because I don't hear so much about governance consulting. So is there a specific methodology or specific aspects to think about when we talk about okay, governance and stakeholders? Are there specific way of doing it? Sure.

Speaker B: As you know the corporate governance uh is uh tailor Smith approach. Regards to Taylor's main approach. There isn't a uh, rigid corporate governance model. Every company and every organization should improve their unique corporate governance approach. That's why they need to consulting service. They are eager to receive consulting service from us. Especially uh, organization stakeholders wants to get information about the key performance results, the organization performance results. That's why they are eager to be key stakeholder of this organization and our governance focused. Also we are also focusing the focusing the decision mechanism and performance management uh structures for organizations.

Speaker A: Okay, and what type of I want to say challenges you have seen with the people that you consult? Is it recognizing that there are more stakeholders than they think or is it also delegating the decision making? What type of uh Challenges. You have seen your.

Speaker B: Oh sure, definitely. We cannot combine whole stakeholders to our process. Firstly, we are trying to define our key stakeholders. Who is our key stakeholders? If we try to include whole stakeholders, it is not uh proper way for us. Our first steps is defining the key stakeholders. Who is the key stakeholders for us Authorities, legal authorities, our clients, our employees, who are they then what? We are trying to create a unique approach for our organization. And sure biggest challenge is uh, when we come your question. The biggest challenge is this question. Who is our key stakeholder? Uh, what are their expectations? What are their peer performance expectation, expediture future expectations? Answering these questions is the biggest challenge for us.

Speaker A: Okay, okay. And is the, the delivery of your services, is it done completely remotely or is there also a hybrid model in

Speaker B: which you sometimes depends on our clients expectation from us sometimes fully remote in generally southern Asia region projects Fully remote? What in the Azerbaijan and Turkey projects is going hybrid model going on?

Speaker A: Yeah, hybrid. Okay, okay, very good point. So you work with so many different uh regions in the world. So even though it's IT governance Turkey, you work internationally. Is there also from a business model perspective in terms of client acquisition, do you get new clients or new assignments through referrals or uh, through maybe the content? Because you're someone that is pretty active on LinkedIn at least I think you have more than 30k followers and you post quite a lot of educational content. Yeah. Does that generate leads?

Speaker B: Uh yeah, we are also both of them. We are also uh trying to generate leads and creating the context useful for contents and introducing our new generation uh governance focused focused management consulting approach. And these also include business agility. The iterative and the flexible nature of the agile can be applied to their business processes and allowing for their uh quicker uh adoption and transformation to transformation. Also data driven decision making mechanism. Uh, we are trying to focus in our management consulting approach. Then finally as you know the pain point of the management consulting industry in our perspective is sustainability. The final output is unsatisfied for our clients in the management consulting industry as you know also all of us are uh, we experienced that all most of the consulting projects final output is just one PowerPoint. It is not sustainable. And that's why we are trying to enhance our asset based consulting approach and we are providing a solution for them. Some of them, we developed these solutions of some of them and some of we are also making business partnership with the uh, solution providers in order to make these projects.

Speaker A: So you make a very very very important point in the industry. You know they had the Reputation of the consultant that is uh. Just providing advice for what they should do in the next five years and leave them with PowerPoint and some graphics. But you do asset based. So an example of asset would be. Would it be like a training material or what?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh it depends on the projects but generally take based on the technology solution and softwares.

Speaker A: Okay, that's great. We definitely are in the same world meaning the world of combining the strategy, all the processes but also putting it uh in real life by using a software so a solution. So that's. Yeah that's very important.

Speaker B: Thank you. To be honest and uh. Most management consulting firm uh unfortunately focusing to selling consulting projects more to our clients. That's why they don't eager to make consulting projects sustainable. But opposite of this approach. We believe that if we can make these projects sustainable our clients eager to make collaboration more. That's why we are fully focusing for this management consulting approach.

Speaker A: Yes. No, that's right, that's right. You're there to provide uh a long term solution and that is better. That is better for everybody. So I totally agree. So one thing that you said also and uh we can see that on the first page of the website of IT provenance turkey is the importance of making information shareable and not saleable. So why that philosophy?

Speaker B: Yeah like as the Mastov pyramids there is a uh. Data pyramid theoretical as you know the information data uh and wisdom. And uh. These are the two different. Three different concepts for us. Information is everywhere. We can find information everywhere at nowadays because the technology makes us more, makes us more democratic. That's why we can share information that is not salable formulation formulation for us. But if you make this information meaningful. Transforming to insights. If you make this information meaningful. Yes you can sure you can sell it. We are focusing this point but the information uh. Shouldn't be sell in our approach hopefully.

Speaker A: Okay, no that's, that's good and, and I like it because indeed some people also try to sell yeah from the start every single bit of information. Sometimes it's an information that you, you. You cannot even take action over it. Like I don't know you. You talk to a ah. I don't know a car manufacturer and you tell him oh you have to go green. You have to go green in the next five years.

Speaker B: Bye bye.

Speaker A: Doesn't work like that. So yeah I agree with you. And as you say next generation consulting approach which is governance focused and asset based focus. I agree with that. I agree actually with that philosophy. I think that in the future consulting has to be way more meaningful, way more tangible. It's really something that the people can act on it long term. I think that that's the future In Canada at least there are many consulting related uh, scandals and uh. Yeah I think the industry is going there definitely.

Speaker B: Uh, you have to transform as a trust trusted advisor.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: To manage and consult.

Speaker A: Have you collaborated with other organizations to deliver some of your projects? Some of the projects you won with IT Governance? Definitely.

Speaker B: Without any collaboration. As you know, governance is not meaningful. We are also uh trying to make collaboration in very global organization for IT governance, project management and business agility, digital transformation and information security. Sure. We are trying to make collaboration with the global organizations also.

Speaker A: Yeah. Because I also believe uh that in the consulting industry there is that concept um coopetition, meaning we can cooperate and compete at the same time. And I think that's also important. You also have a platform called Forum Gig. What is it about?

Speaker B: It's a freelance platform. Most of our clients demanding from us for human capital as you know and some of them as project based. Some of them is fully positions demands where we have tried to develop. Great volume Geek is a freelance platform. It's aiming to combine service provider and service seekers such as enterprises, big enterprises. It's also part of our uh, asset based consulting approach. It's a good example.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You can provide that for your uh, definitely for your clients.

Speaker B: You provide because uh most of our clients and at the end of our projects most of our clients advising to us how can we make sustainable for these projects? Or the key question who will uh, do it? Who will do perform these tasks? And that's why we can say right now you can use this platform and you can uh find your talent even if project based or uh, fully positions.

Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Another thing is you are a mentor for startups. So in your mentorship is it focused on governance or it's more general?

Speaker B: Um yeah, it's also. We are also helping for in order to make them more productive. We are trying to formulate their strategies, corporate strategy and corporate governance structures. And it's very challenging focus. Yes, corporate strategy we can do that. But the governance is very challenging point for the startups because of the limited employee and who is the board and who is the director, who is the manager in venue experience the startups as you know, CEO also decision makers and who uh is the owner of the startups? He is or she is also manager also or board also board of directors also. That's why very challenging points is governance for startups. We are helping them for corporate governance approach.

Speaker A: And that's very important. Maybe the last aspect is the fact that you're also involved with non governmental organizations as a board member. Why did you want to do that and are there uh, like I don't know, specific causes or specific topic you really have a passion for?

Speaker B: Sure, sure. At nowadays management consulting in this industry uh has shrinking. That's why we have to feed us intensely. We have to be open minded and lifelong learner in order to feed ourselves. We are trying to involve various organizations, global organizations such as NGOs or such as communities. The main purpose is that that's very

Speaker A: good so you make it available for uh, organizations that maybe not afford or not have access to that, that type of service. So that is excellent. So uh, thanks very much. Is there maybe another thing that you would like to say about that new generation consulting approach which is more governance and asset based?

Speaker B: Sure. Please follow us from the LinkedIn you they can find our approach and detail in our LinkedIn post from our contents and our websites. Please follow us in order to uh, gain more experience from this approach.

Speaker A: Okay, that is excellent Kantekin. And maybe the last question uh that uh I want to ask is for you uh, consulting lifestyle for you. What does that mean?

Speaker B: Consulting lifestyle is my lifestyle. Uh because you have to improve yourself. You have to client face. You have to a lifelong learning learner. I like combination of this approach. That's why my uh biggest uh passion is being a uh international and clever management consultant.

Speaker A: Okay, that is excellent. And if people would like to get in touch with uh, you where can they find you?

Speaker B: Sure they can Find me on LinkedIn. Also from our website it governsturkey.com Please contact us in order to make collaboration and brainstorming. We will be a place for that.

Speaker A: Okay, excellent. Uh, I will put uh those details uh in the show notes of course and it was a great pleasure to have you on the show. I think uh, the topic of governance, it's a topic that is not spoken about enough and I'm excited even myself I'm excited to see how the consulting industry will evolve with that uh, new approach. So thank you very much Kentekin and for sure I will try to have another one. Thank you so much.

Speaker B: My pleasure.

Speaker A: Thank you for listening to the consulting Lifestyle podcast. Leave a review on itunes if you have enjoyed the episode and subscribe to the podcast so that you get notified to hear other episodes with your host Diogene Tiran. Love you. I love you. Feel.