INTERVIEW with JACQUES COUVAS
A very valued Adjunct Professor in Business Administration Department in our school, Jacques Couvas, has agreed to help us with our project and give an interview about effectiveness. Before we begin, we would like to thank him for his time and contributions.
Who is Jacques Couvas?
“Jacques Couvas has held CEO, COO, executive officer positions, and board directorships with public and private MNCs in Europe, North America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. He has served on various committees of the International Telecommunications Union of the United Nations, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, the European Conference of Posts and Telecommunications, and as corporate and industry advocate at the European Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the World Economic Forum. He is President Emeritus of the European Mobile Messaging Association, of which he was CEO from 1994 to 2005. Couvas holds degrees of Master in Business Administration (Open University Business School, UK) and of Master in European Union Law (University of Leicester, UK), post-graduate diplomas and certificates in European Marketing Management (INSEAD), Executive Management, Financial Strategy, Italian Literature, and Sales Management from U.S. and European institutions. He is completing a Ph.D. in EU Law at Leicester University. He is a former Fellow of the Institute of Directors (London), member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (Brussels), CEMS Strategy Group (Paris), and the Strategic Management Society (Chicago), associate editor of the International Business and Diplomacy Exchange magazine (London), and a peer-reviewer at the Emerald Group Publications (London). He is an advisor to European and American corporations on Middle Eastern affairs and commercial strategies, and an entrepreneur. He has served as Adjunct Professor with major Turkish universities, visiting academic at Santa Clara University School of Law, U.S., and President, Europe of Kepner Tregoe, Inc., a Princeton-based worldwide consulting and executive education firm, specializing in strategy formulation and operational effectiveness.[i]”
Mr. Couvas, we would like to thank you for accepting us to your office and agreeing to help us. We have seen that you are very experienced both in the field and in academy. Can you tell us about yourself?
I have more than 40 years of experience in the business. I started in sales, marketing then operations, finance and I became the CEO of different companies. I worked on the services in general. At first I started in transportation and hotel industry then I moved to telecommunications and high technology. I worked for American multinationals all my life in different parts of the world. I worked in 8 different countries in 3 continents. So, yes, I have a lot of experience in different companies and cultures, this is why I teach cross cultural management. My initial education was in law, I managed engineers all my life but I am not an engineer. Which is good because if you understand the business concepts you can manage other specialties without being specialist in that area. I have been in Turkey for 12 years, the Dean at that time asked me a favor of giving a seminar to MBA students, and after that they offered me the job. I am very glad I took it, because I like combining my work experience to the course materials.
You have a lot of experience in different companies, sectors, departments and cultures. How would you define effectiveness? In text books it is defined as the extent a firm can achieve its goals…
Achieve the goals at the minimum possible cost or the least possible rejection of parts or defects, or any other goal that the company sets.
Working in 3 continents, what do you think are the differences between the pursuits of effectiveness in different cultures?
Well, in Western cultures, of course, are more systematic and use clear toll to measure effectiveness. Because it is something that has already been developed after the 2nd World War. What we learn today in Organizational Behavior course and management in general are the processes that were used during the 2nd World War by the Americans and British. For example strategic planning, it was taken from the military. I remember, I met earlier in my career, many former officers from the army who became general managers just because they had that experience, both in Britain and US. Companies believed that army was like a school for managers in order to be more systematic and thus more effective.
This western systematic process was copied in Europe. Europe is a little bit behind in many of these aspects than America but it doesn’t mean it produces inferior products. Because we have a different approach, the engineering concepts are more sophisticated inn Europe, especially Germany, France and Italy, also. Americans wants to produce quickly, they renew their products, their products are not made to last. In Europe, we have this tradition of having lasting products which are more qualified. In also fashion and design etc.
When we look at the Eastern world, specially Japan. Japan is very good at manufacturing certain types of goods. There is a learning process in Eastern countries. Some companies like Toyota or Sony had started after the 2.WW. Sony began with only a transistor radios but now they are one of the giants in electronics. Toyota and Honda also started very very small and grew to be one of the most competitive companies in the world. All these oriental countries, I would say, are behind the West. Japanese rebuild their economy with the help of the Americans, Japan was a place of outsourcing, but once their economy grew, they moved to something more sophisticated, they started to outsource from Taiwan. When Taiwanese economy grew, they started to outsource from Korea, this is how the economy of Asia grew stronger. So the process is a bit different in Asia, but they have some advantages as I observed. They work very hard, they are loyal to the company, I would say a tremendous level of loyalty, but of course it is a mutual arrangement, because the companies are loyal to the employees, in Japan, China, Taiwan… Which is very different form the Western cultures, especially in US, you are treated well as long as you are good for the company, and you are easily replaced. This situation in Asian companies, increase effectiveness in the individual employee level, terms of motivation and self-discipline.
Goal approach- resource multiple approach
There are fashions in these trends, we have been seeing these fads since the early part of the 20th century and it continues. We still have companies which continued to be goal oriented, so everybody is trying to achieve the preset goals. That was very popular in the 2nd half of the 80s and the 90s. But this didn’t work everywhere, again because of the culture. You cannot make people responsible by themselves, you know, self-accountable, in every culture. In Germany, I would say, it was a little success. Because Germanic culture has the power distance influence, they expect the boss to be knowledgeable. The structure is more hierarchical. Also in Asia, many of the cultures require hierarchy. The employees don’t feel comfortable with being given a goal and left without guidance. Even in Europe, a specific example in Spain, a big American company which introduced the ‘management by objectives’ approach in the early 1990s. They had many subsidiaries. In the Netherlands it worked by itself, in Germany… With some problems but in Spain it was blocked completely. Because the managers needed their bosses to tell them exactly what to do.
I think we would see this in Turkey too…
Yes of course, Turkish people would get very nervous if they would be left without directions. So yes the culture plays a very important role and we underestimate that, even business people but also academic courses. Cross-cultural management is an elective course but probably should be a must course. Because Turkey is in the middle of different cultures and has to have business with other countries, people should know about the other cultures. It is very important to have the best fit with the cultural requirements of employees. Of course the industry is also important.
What would you say about the industries and the fit of the effectiveness approaches?
Some industries can continue by giving organizational objectives or teams objectives but other industries cannot force people to achieve on their own, it just wouldn’t work. Like military organizations, as again I said many management concepts came from the military and they worked very well in 60s 70s. After the 70s there have been some changes, starting in US and then all over the world. What we see today is more autonomous teams, self-managed teams. It is early on, I mean these concepts have been developed in consulting firms in the past 10 years, so we don’t know how it will work. It seems to be effective in Silicon Valley, where firms need to be innovative, and encourage employees to be very free, even making mistakes. Companies like Microsoft and 3M used this approach and it proven to increase effectiveness. The changes in structure and how they measured the effectiveness in this way was very successful, where there is need for rapid change and innovation.
What do you think about the environment and how it is related to the structure and effectiveness?
The nature, the environment that the company is in, is very important to set these goals and achieve higher effectiveness. There is a high competition in the ecosystem in Silicon Valley, you have internal competition in that ecosystem, and not all the firms will survive. Have you done PESTEL analysis in your classes? You need to take into account all the environmental factors when deciding on the strategy, structure and how you are going to achieve your goals. Also it is related to the stakeholders. The venture capital firms are more open to lose money provided they make a lot more; they take more risks but gain a higher reward in the end, in Silicon Valley.
In Asia, on the other hand, the permission to be more innovation and the room for freedom is not that wide. They prefer different ways to increase effectiveness; they prefer more traditional methods of structure and measurement of effectiveness.
You mentioned the stakeholders and how they affect effectiveness. What do you think about the stakeholder approach in measuring effectiveness, what is the best way to integrate all the expectations from all the suppliers, consumers, competitors at. ? How should a manager act according to the stakeholder approach?
A leader should be open to all possibilities because, today, most industries are under competition. So you have to be very flexible and open, although you have a long term goal, you need to be able to change some tactics quickly. You always should seek the opportunities to build more resources and more capabilities. Of course there will be some stakeholders who will resent your choices while you are trying to improve and develop. All the managers have these constraints, I would say three most important: How would I respond to the external threats, how would I keep the best people in the company and how to play the shareholders. Shareholders always want to know how you are doing. Today a life of a CEO is much shorter than it was 20 years ago, around less than 3 years. Because it is really hard to juggle all the constraints and satisfy all the stakeholders while achieving your organizational goals.
Mr. Couvas, we again would like to thank you for your time and sharing your experiences with us.
Of course, I always have time for students who wants to learn more.
HOW TO BE AN EXPERT IN ORGANIZATIONAL LIFE? 