SABANCI: “HAVING CLOSE COOPERATION BETWEEN STAKEHOLDERS AND MANAGEMENT TEAM IS QUITE IMPORTANT IN RESPECT OF PLACING EXTENDED BREADTH ON THE CRITICAL SUCCESS MEASUREMENTS AS WELL AS LONG TERM PERSPECTIVE ON STRATEGICAL PLANNING”
“FOR CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, TAKING SHARED AND SNAP DECISIONS IS NOW POSSIBLE THROUGH THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY”
“SURVEYS POINT TO THE FACT THAT THE CORPORATIONS ACQUIRE RATHER MORE SUCCESS AT THE LONG TERM PERSPECTIVE IF THE WOMEN HOLD STRONGER GROUND AT SENIOR MANAGEMENT”
At the meeting called “Necessities in the Long Term”, Sabancı Group Chairman of the Board Güler Sabancı participated as a speaker, within the scope of the Annual Meetings of the World Economic Forum gathered at Davos. At the meeting, Sabancı underlined that economic uncertainties push the management to take lots of short term decisions; that the governance methods should be reassessed, that the measurements and strategic planning should be done as extending to long terms, and also quoted the surveys indicating that public companies shut their doors within five years on a scale of one out of three.
In her speech, Sabancı stated that the companies should consider long term at the critical success factors in order to manage standing on their feet in the long term. She said “they should have long term aspect in their focus for strategic planning. Even though we are pushed towards short term focus, we should always keep long term perspective in the back of our minds. With family monitoring and ownership culture, long term perspective is promoted. At governance, taking shared and snap decisions is possible now through technology”.
You can find Güler Sabancı’s speech at the meeting as follows:
“As shown on a recent survey conducted by Boston Consulting Group shows that the public corporations have closed down on a very high rate within the past 5 years. Every 1 public corporation closes down out of 3. What we do at Sabancı is to define the distance between stakeholders and the management team accurately. We strive for making this distance as close as possible. In order to achieve this, we need a flexible and agile management system at first.
Second important issue is the Key Performance Indicators. The management needs Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that shall guide them in the long run, and push them into thinking on long term.
The third issue at Sabancı is our long term strategic planning cycle. We encourage our corporate management teams to focus on a decade ahead from now. Through the use of the technological facilities we possess, it is much easier to consider a range of scenarios. Futhermore, five years plans are studied. Those provide guidance as well.
There should be a balance between the plans and spontaneous instances. You need to have a team that can act depending on the situation. We learned this through the experiences we acquired in Turkey, one of the developing countries. Occassionally turbulences may happen. Of course you need to take them into consideration, monitor them. However, you can not let them influence your every single day. You need to be proactive. Although you are pushed into acting in the short term, we should always keep our long term perspective, without making amends on today’s performance.
Underlining the surveys stating that the companies are more successful at long term perspective if women hold stronger positions at senior management level, Güler Sabancı received a round of long applause from the audience for those words.
The moderator of the meeting was Victor Halberstadt, the Economy Professor at Leiden University, and other speakers included Andrew N. Liveris, Dow Chemical Company CEO and Chairman of the Board, Dominic Barton, McKinsey & Company Chairman, Laurence Fink, BlackRock Inc. Chairman of the Board, Tidjane Thiam, Credit Suisse AG CEO and Mark Wiseman, CPP Investment Board Chairman.
