The anatomy of the Cypriot Enterprise

Having worked in several Cypriot businesses during the past few years, I came to notice a few unusual things happening. This post is a semi-humorous approach to talk about these issues using fake examples, without reference to real persons, facts or companies. Any similarities are purely coincidental.

First of all, when someone in Cyprus decides to start a business, they just do it (like the Nike motto). No market study, no business plan, no budgeting, no sales analysis and prediction. Nothing. You just go write a company in the registry and off you go. Of course, they don’t even hire expert people required to run these new business, they just assume that the people they already have onboard are suitable to run it — without any training whatsoever. “Ok lets just work for today, and tomorrow we’ll see”.

If you have lots of money to burn, and your idea is somewhat good enough, the business may have a partial success. It will start growing rapidly, in paces that you will not really control — since there is no business plan or structure within the company. Of course the management will go hire new “key” people, sufficiently ignoring the people who were already there. These new hot-shots (because in Cyprus whatever you say, you are) will try to enforce something they’ve learned in a business in a completely different sector (lets say they hired a new Sales manager in a Technology business who previously worked in dealing cars) in this new startup. Of course, as you’d expect, it will not work.

As the lack of clear vision still persists, you will commonly hear contradictory announcements throughout the year: “We will take over the market” and the next day “We are in negotiations for being sold”. Of course this not only destroys the morale of the people working for the company, it also pushes them to pursue other ventures, therefore they’ll start loosing employees. Someone with a business background will know that if an employee is good enough (i.e.: he/she does the work he/she is supposed to be doing), you don’t risk driving him away, as the replacement might not come as soon as you need it and on top of that you’ll have the extra cost of training. Keeping a good employee is a must. Well, not in Cypriot businesses. In their minds this will get translated into this: “No worries, we’ll hire someone new with half the salary! He’ll learn the business in no time!”.

If of course your business is souvlakia-making (barbecuing), this would be very easy and straight forward (although I am sure, every trade has its secrets). However, if you are in a business that requires expertise, training and know-how, this is not easy at all. Getting someone up to speed especially in dynamic, pressuring and understaffed environment is extremely difficult. Not anyone can handle this. And if you happen to become an expert in a field, instead of being a company-asset, you magically become a liability. Why? Because you want a raise, your salary is high, and your managers say that your job is relatively easy: Hey, you just type a few commands here and there, why should we pay you?

When a new employee is hired (if you manage to justify it, because you just type some commands in a terminal), there is no training. The management expects you to train the newbie and transfer all the knowledge you gathered the past X years working in the company, or from the numerous manuals you’ve read in a weeks time. Dude, first of all, I AM NOT A TEACHER, and secondly HOW ON EARTH you expect that to happen in a week? Working for the company is already hard, but you get on new duties that involve teaching and training as well, because the management can not spare any money for training — Why pay for that when we have a manual?

In the progress of getting a business plan, at the end of the year they ask the department heads to submit a budget. They don’t give them any information or targets, just the command “submit budget”. A simple question pops in your head instantly: “How am I going to prepare a budget if I do not know what I am budgeting for?”. Questions like “What’s your expected growth?”, “What are your targets of the year?” and “How much is the budget?” do not matter in Cyprus. You just have to prepare a budget, and if the management disapproves it, its your fault: why did you put so much stuff on it anyway? Budgeting in the real business world means projecting expected sales — How much money am I expecting to make in 2010? How much new customers will I take on? And from there, in a waterfall model, should fall into supporting departments: how much money you need to support this growth? But of course, what do I know, I am not a manager!

If you take a look at an organisational chart of a Cypriot company, half of the people will have the word “manager” in it. Everyone in Cyprus is a manager of some sort, even if there is no one left to do the real work. Everyone is an expert in something, and they don’t really consult their fellow coworkers because there is a growing envy between them: who is going to talk first to the Managing Director with a cool idea, because he has all the money and power and we must be friends with him. Of course, the issue with money & power is a society one, it just gets reflected in the company, but it is always funny to see people running around other people like faithful dogs.

Every request someone has in a Cypriot company is a high-priority one: if someone is dying but somebody else broke his hand, you should stop treating the dying man and go treat the one with the hand. Especially if the one commanded you to it is a manager, it overwrites all your existing work and priorities. And of course, you can’t say no, because then you’ll be under-utilised and ineffective. Naturally, this keeps happening even if a department ends up with 50 pending issues but nothing closed because of this priority and focus shifting, enforced by the all-knowing managers of the company.

After finishing this post, I think I understand why over 50% of the Cypriot population works for the government, they are fed up with all of the above!