Gaining Professional Awareness Early
The young person arriving after university comes hungry for a role; there is no time left for a process of discovery. SPALDA® Academy aims to pull professional awareness back to the high-school years, even to the end of secondary school.
Transcript
Description (Instagram Reels)
The business world is not just about choosing a single job function. Understanding family dynamics, institutionalization, and a tangle of complex relationships takes time.
One of our goals at SPALDA® AcademyAn academy whose idea was seeded in 2018, whose pilot development began in 2022, and which launched in 2025. It develops the next generation in family businesses not merely as operational managers but as responsible leaders who grasp the whole of the corporate entity. See in glossary → is to ensure that young people gain this professional awareness not after receiving their university diploma, but during their high-school years. The earlier this process begins, the more correctly the development process can be designed. 🚀
Tags: #OrhanErkut #ManagementConsulting #FamilyBusinesses #spaldaakademi
Transcript
Another important topic is starting early. This is actually a very, very important subject. At SPALDA® Academy, we are moving forward with a focus on establishing an academy that young people can join upon graduating from high school, the moment they finish high school. Because we see that it is not very easy to awaken awareness of this process and to observe development after someone graduates from university. The main reason for the comment I gave a moment ago about delays, while describing some traditional or current practices, actually lies right here. Because a young person who has chosen their profession and come close to working full-time in professional life arrives already hungry for a role.
You cannot say to that person, "Wait, let me take a look, in which job function do your interests lie?" And because they enter the company as the bossThe person holding the highest decision-making authority in a business — anyone who founds, buys or inherits it. The title can pass from generation to generation. See in glossary →'s child and a next-generation shareholder, there is also an expectation of them from those around them.
It is about running the business well, carrying it forward, and being successful. So you have not actually given them a process of discovery. This is why I speak of it being late. Another piece of work that is very important to me is currently continuing at SPALDA® Academy, actually at an R&D stage.
Our main goal is to pull this age back four years before high-school graduation, to the period when high school begins according to our current education system, that is, to the point where they finish secondary school. Because we think that an awareness that has begun from here on will have other advantages. Do not think that this work is carried out only for choosing a job function and the young person's areas of interest. At the same time, a great deal is whispered to the young person about what exists within the focus of that family and that business as a whole, and about what they should interpret and how. It is also not imposed on them with such an aggressive program and intensity that it would cause them to skip school. That is, we are talking about them perceiving the work correctly through programs suited to that period.
Because, as you know, what we are talking about here is not just business. Business is a whole carried out in different sectors that pursue profit, where inputs and outputs are clear and you need to generate income. But this is a much more complex structure. Why?
Because there are relationships involved, there is family, there are daughters-in-law and sons-in-law, there are fathers, there are children. That is, they are within a fairly complex family relationship. And within this family relationship, remember the definition of institutionalization: creating the mechanisms by which those promises can be kept.
I know that many families hold meetings, at certain times, where they come to understand together how the family will look at the business. Some call it a family assembly, some call it a family council. There are also various organizationsHere, 'organization' is used in a broad, encompassing sense: beyond companies, it covers legal entities such as associations, public institutions and non-governmental organizations, as well as the decision-making and governance structures of a company and family (family council, ownership group, board of directors, next-generation board). See in glossary → held both to keep the family together and to inform them about the business; that is, this matter has an important side beyond the business side.
It is not really possible to instill these things in a child after they have graduated from university.
Source: Instagram Reels · Posted: March 25, 2026. The media link is in the "Medya URL" field.