Due to the incomplete integration of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC) economy into regional and global economic systems, it is partially affected by crises in the surrounding area. Since the only country we have direct contact with is Turkey, and the official currency used is the Turkish Lira (TL), shocks occurring in Turkey can have a greater impact on KKTC than other shocks. However, the resilience of the Turkish economy and the stamina seen in Turkish Cypriot financial institutions despite shocks strengthen the perception that KKTC will follow a similar course despite fluctuations.
In this situation, despite existing structural problems and public weaknesses, it can be predicted that the private sector will generally have a moderate or moderately good trend in the medium term. Such a trend could create opportunities and medium-term planning possibilities for companies in our country. Therefore, despite crises in other countries, institutions in KKTC will be relatively advantageous. However, to manage this process well, they need to monitor internal and external competition, evaluate company plans and operations well, and effectively control and supervise healthy growth targets. For this, companies need to be managed with a strategic planning and performance-based management approach, ensuring transparency while providing alignment and collaboration in goals and work.
It is widely accepted that companies cannot achieve high performance for many years with static and traditional management methods and habits. In today's conditions, amid increased competition and dynamic economic structures, companies need to perceive the environment like a living organism, react, and adjust their structure and actions according to the conditions.
At this stage, medium-term strategic planning and a performance-based management approach become crucial. The Strategic Planning method provides vision and general goal unity while being an important planning method that develops organizational culture, ensures full employee participation and motivation. However, leaving this process alone leads to the strategic plan becoming merely a control tool for top management and, over time, erosion in lower levels of the company. To prevent this and to ensure that planning is effectively productive in practice, companies need to create performance goals reflected in divisions and employees and establish monitoring systems for them. This way, each employee can clearly understand their contribution to the general vision and goals, and roles in teamwork become clear, minimizing possible negative reactions.
The main idea here is that strategic planning should be a guiding element rather than just a document, and different parts of companies should manage their operations complementarily as a whole. The role of monitoring and evaluation is to ensure that necessary delegation is made, reporting works, and providing the necessary flexibility for both the company and employees to stay on track with general visions and goals without deviation. The most important point to be noted here is that flexibility and responsiveness mentioned in the introduction should not be ignored during the planning and execution stages. This requires a critical competency for top management and many world-renowned companies that cannot manage this successfully in today's world unfortunately fall into great difficulties. Some lose their advantages due to strict and structural management approaches, especially in competition, while others achieve temporary successes but fade away like stars due to not establishing necessary planning and organizational culture.
Returning to companies in KKTC, we see that the focus areas are still formed on three main axes, which are still basic management requirements. Therefore, local companies should be managed and supervised through strategic planning and performance criteria focused on these axes. These can be listed as follows:
Sales & Marketing
Finance
Human Resources
Especially, problems and performance losses in sales and marketing can be extremely destructive damages for companies. However, a common mistake or habit of overlooking this is the background of financial performance and human resources performance, not taking them into account and not considering their impact on total performance. Companies in our country are more focused on external factors than internal potential and cannot evaluate internal potential well. This situation often leads to loss of dynamism in companies and reduces the possibility of creating new synergies.
In view of all this, our companies need to adopt a strategic planning and performance-based management culture, especially by managing sales/marketing, finance, and human resources departments according to this approach.
In the strategic planning process and the formation of performance goals in these three areas, the following points should be considered:
Sales and Marketing:
Develop Performance-Based Project Management by designing and implementing business processes on a project basis, adopting a project approach, working on teamwork, and resource planning.
In Performance-Based Department Management, work on alignment with strategic goals, marketing performance criteria, interpretation of sales performance, and creative sales methods based on performance.
Consider Project Financial Performance for project-based evaluation, consolidation, and project-based reporting.
By creating Financial Performance Criteria, work on alignment with strategic goals, determining control ratios, interpreting financial health, and executive reporting.
Human Resources:
Create Personnel Goals for alignment with strategic goals, department-personnel goals, and activities such as review and revision.
By creating Human Resources Performance Criteria, carry out activities related to training, leave, salaries, performance evaluation system, and top management reporting.
When all these processes are in harmony from top to bottom and building blocks are designed and managed in a complementary manner, a beautiful and strong product will emerge, like a building, and adopting such a management style as an organizational culture will contribute to institutionalization and continuous improvement.
Dr. Bilinç Dolmacı
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