Being good at your job

When the subject of “being good at your job” is approached, people always hold up the CEOs as example. I wanted to tell a different example.

When I was student in METU Business Administration Department, Bilge Doruk (we started calling her Madame Bilge in time) was the secretary of the department. Most of our lecturers (Kamil Kozan, Halil Çopur, Osman A. Ataç) got master’s degree in USA and got back to METU. Madame Bilge was on the same duty when they were students. She was the most important element that ensured the periods of Chiefs of Department changing to go smoothly.
She had a natural power. The door of her room was always open. When she said “I’m writing exam questions”, the students can’t come in. Even the cheekiest student wouldn’t go into the room. (As there was no PC back then, the teachers used to write the exam questions by hand, and give them to Madame Bilge for the questions to be written in stencil papers and copied in the duplicator.)

We graduated. Madame Bilge retired in the same period.

Later we got together in a project of Price Waterhouse. We (today’s chairman of the board of directors of Professional Association of Information Technology Software Authors) Dr. Zafer Inkaya and I were juniors. And Madame Bilge was the assistant of the Project Director David.

What I remember from back then:

A long English text was going to be written (No PCs. Everything was written by hand, then in the typewriter). Zafer was reading and Madame Bilge was typing it at the same pace. When in the thirtieth pages, Madame Bilge warns Zafer:

“You used that word for another concept at the beginning”.

Zafer, checks it.  Madame Bilge was right.

Later we learned that; years ago, an exam was made for the non-academic employees in METU. Madame Bilge was among the ones who got the highest points in the exam, some people with master’s degree from US universities couldn’t pass.

One day, when we got back from annual leave, we came across David. After a few minutes of chit-chat we sat down. Madame Bilge warned us:

“Even if you came across David in the hall, you have to visit the Project Director formally and tell him you got back from vacation and back on your jobs. You can learn if anything changed while you were off.”

When we got to the room of David, we found a reminder:

“His mother had an accident while you were away. He had to go to England. Don’t forget to tell your best wishes”.

A colleague named Ali (alias) was also working in the project team. Ali was the exact example of the term “snappish” back then. He loved annoying and disturbing everyone constantly. Madame Bilge couldn’t endure it and told David that she wanted to resign. David called Ali and said:

“If Madame Bilge leaves, you leave. If Madame Bilge tells me that “she would stay if you are gone”, you leave.”

Ali became desperate. Madame Bilge backed down from resigning and didn’t ask Ali to leave either.

The lessons we learned from Madame Bilge aided us throughout our business lives.

In short, the measure of success is not being a CEO. You can be the one who is good at his job for everybody as an assistant.

Etiketler: success

Category: Business life