Call for Leaders | Gorkem Tursucu (TotalSoft): We need to show our values in everything we do and more than ever, now it is the time for business leaders to show empathy and flexibility

Call for Leaders – 3Q is a new category where Business Review features our 3 questions with some of Romania’s top business professionals, bringing a positive, insightful, or otherwise constructive view of their markets in the context of the current crisis.

Current conversation: Gorkem Tursucu, CEO TotalSoft

What are the measures you took for your business during this period?

The business disruption changed overnight our way of working and delivering services to clients, so one of the first measures we took was to invite all our teams to work remotely. For us, this decision was rather easy to implement because the infrastructure was already set in place. Using videoconferencing, emails, online trainings and so many other solutions for remote work, we can continue our activity on a normal basis, even if now we have to do it from our home space.

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TotalSoft is responding to the outbreak with a new value-based team management that focuses on effective communication and support for clients, but also on an agile and quick response to market evolution. We are using an organized structure and architecture for decision making and we constantly align our goals to the needs of our clients. We keep an eye to the mid-long term planning yet stay very focused on short term decisions as well.

In the same time, our teams continue to improve their skills through online trainings and personalized reading recommendations. We also managed to establish a mutual feedback system in order to identify their needs and concerns. Proving clarity on decisions at team level, we were able to identify the key roles that need to be filled in, so our recruitment processes are still in progress. More than that, we started the recruitment campaign for this years’ Academies, where we will train more than 60 fresh graduates who want to start their career as Software Developers, Technical Consultants or Business Consultants.

What’s your advice for business leaders regarding this crisis?

This global crisis aligned each person and each business irrespective of geography, wealth or size to the same line – limited view on tomorrow’s evolution and possible scenario. This leaves us no choice but be braver, more flexible and more attentive to the environment and all stakeholders than ever before. We need to show our values in everything we do and more than ever, now it is the time for business leaders to show empathy and flexibility in an environment where decisions must be taken quickly. It is the business leaders’ responsibility to keep a clear, factual communication between the management team, clients and employees in order to keep rumors and confusion away. The focus must be both on client and employee engagement. Everybody must bring in 110%: 100% to ensure the continuation of the business and another 10% to keep the pace with the daily changes brought by this disruption. Good leadership can not only make an organization stronger, but it also helps drive progress.

What’s the most positive business news you’ve read today and want to share?

The most positive business news relates to the ability of companies to adapt very fast to the current situation. Most of them have allowed employees to work from home and changed the way they do business almost overnight.

While it might seem rather hard to remain optimistic, technology has made it possible to work from everywhere. Digitalization created a new way of structuring work streams and so far, most technology driven companies were able to maintain their productivity consistently and reliably. We are confident that democratization of technology and a common set of values can bring the new business environment to a common ground. As Darwin once said, “it is not the strongest species that survive, but the ones who are able to adapt and adjust to the changing environments”.