Our guest, Haluk, in his entire life, have never been happy with the concept of hierarchical management. He was sure that hierarchy did not bring any happiness to people, but also, he had never been able to convince himself that it was the absolute management style for successful organizations. As a result, he believed in the necessity of transitioning to the “self-management”. And as the start of this change, he fired Latro’s Boss, who was himself, and removed the central power!
While this non-bureaucratic space of freedom allows individuals to enjoy self-discovery and realize themselves freely, the collective management and decision-making mechanism improve the confidence of co-experiencing this journey as a team. This management model removes all obstacles to an individual’s self-expression, inherently extending support in the personal development journey. This structure strongly emphasizes “creativity” and makes “innovation” the most powerful element of its culture.
So who is Haluk now? A self-fired ex-boss, one of the Explorers of Latro, a person who is freer, happier, more creative, more innovative and a lot more beneficial to the company and to community.
Living Room Conversations: Latro’s Transformation with Haluk can Hur
welcome everyone to Life Sciences living room conversation we are in episode 55 and today I am your host my name is Britta I’m very much looking forward to this conversation today and yeah we believe with this these conversations that we have here today we can bring some inspiration to your living rooms as well motivate you on also starting to act and maybe shape the world out there and especially the working environment world and what we really hope is that you take something of that inspiration home for yourself and also for the people that are around you um to look a bit more into how how we work together and what we want to shape differently thanks also for everyone who’s tuning in from somewhere else like YouTube just watching us feel free to put some questions into the comments so that we can also address those and let’s yeah jump right back back into it and let’s have a look introduce a look here with us who is who’s joining us in this episode and we are talking about La trust transformation because saluk is the is the owner and founder of Latter and he actually one thing that he did straight in the beginning was to fire um his own boss and that was him and that will be a very interesting story but before that let’s uh welcome in here in at the show and let him introduce himself a little bit uh tell us a bit about yourself as well welcome Halo hello hello thank you very much uh it’s a great honor to be here and thanks for organizing this yeah my name is saluk John Hurt I’m the founder of latro I’m a chemical engineer uh 44 years old uh father of a beautiful girl I have I’m a Serial entrepreneur I have I do have this chemical business as with lotra and some other startups in Machinery industry and the last one is in software uh I started working in a chemical company after school for about nine ten years and I founded this company later became an entrepreneur and I really enjoyed this journey so that’s why that’s why I continue to do that I’m a number of entrepreneurs organization it’s the largest organization of entrepreneurs in the world and I’m also the European area director in the organization so I do love again in the from the community perspective also love being in this ecosystem of Entrepreneurship and startups hey I’m an angel investor I also do love to be a part of the other startups as being investing them and also being mentoring to the founders and I like to be in their Journey too uh and yeah this is more or less who I am I love doing sports I’m a kite Surfer I do love sailing snowboarding and yeah some other sports that I used to do but with the age I guess because it’s not that much yeah and it brings you out of bed in the morning it’s a personal question but you shared that you have a daughter I’m not sure how old she is but then maybe she she supports you getting out of bed yeah she’s she’s 12 she’s 12. yeah yeah she’s she’s she’s a big friend of mine I just love to hang around with her on everything so she’s a good friend of mine perfect thanks a lot for sharing also a bit of your your personal site and of course what we are mostly interested in in is in this uh yeah transformation Journey uh that that we have heard about and uh yeah I think in the in the description that I read about you it said that you fired fired Your Own Boss and that was actually you and this is a very interesting thing that you did I would say so how how did this all started how did you go into this why did you start going that direction and how how did you do that yeah um I guess uh everything is starting from the personality uh I never liked this uh hierarchical system in school in families or or in companies for sure so I in my professional life or in the beginning of latro I never liked to you know this relationship of hierarchy you know having someone to report or having people to report to you I I was always thinking why we are not talking about the the what we need to do actually the actions and instead we are discussing about who’s gonna be uh who’s gonna give the orders to whom and who’s gonna give the reports to whom so I I’ve I always found it very meanless and in in the beginning of lateral Journey also we never had a real hierarchical system but still we also didn’t have any other alternative structure So within this mindset I was searching for what else to do and the agile world was you know interesting for me in agile with the the the what we need to do actually the actions and instead we are discussing about who’s gonna be uh who’s gonna give the orders to whom and who’s gonna give the reports to whom so I I’ve I always found it very meanless and in in the beginning of lateral Journey also we never had a real hierarchical system but still we also didn’t have any other alternative structure So within this mindset I was without any person in charge or without any hierarchy at all so this is this is the how it comes to the the point I think one of my again personalities I don’t really afraid going to a place which which is out of my comfort zone or which is not the other such I kind of enjoy if if others are not doing it I I like to I like to do it so it’s it’s I love challenging I love being challenged I think I’m kind of a rebellion I don’t know it sounds very good I think what what many uh people I mean maybe the the Collective mindsets if you’re a big believer of the human the humidity can do it if you can believe on people that’s where you start so it’s not a game not yet another organizational model that you choose from it is a complete philosophy you have to trust people you have to trust the intelligence of the crowd you have to trust that as a group of people can really be good can really make good decisions and it all starts from there and the ego in in in the people are really a big stopper for this because is like uh I don’t know like it’s something else uh the the purpose and and it was saying that the uh yeah the the the the importance of the purpose is being told a lot but yes as a group of people if you are believing to go to Same Direction together you’re going to have a purpose so you have to make sure the culture the purpose has to be there I would strongly um and I think the last last part for again it’s a big big First Step but if you see in this first step there is no action it is just the behavior it is a level of a very high CO organization are completely autonomous organization so that the people can believe that they can step up from the level that they are yeah I really like what you’re saying that also to say this it’s not black or white it’s not you either have to go the full way or you’re not going at all but it’s also there are so many shapes in between where you can take Little Steps in in different directions create more trust to create less hierarchy uh try to delegate more Empower your people and not everybody believes on the collectiveness not everybody believes on radical transparency brings benefits they they have some other worries which again I don’t blame on anyone it’s it’s not a right or wrong thing but it is their their approach their mentality for so in that period in the beginning the people tried to understand and some of them really you know were already had that mindset so very quickly jump on it and really become the hero of this transformation Journey but some of them said okay goodbye I’m I’m naming so it’s the problem that the earthquake we are facing in Turkey unfortunately not only in Turkey all over the world it’s the same problem the very deep hierarchy causing that the people are are we are not taking the issues collectively we all are like the people are expecting the things from the uh managers or or the hierarchical up upper level and the upper level has and other things so it is not like collectively we are managing the this big problem and again for both sides it is it is wrong from the upper management sites it is good for their stay focused sometimes very challenging um we have a very engaging Community here as well and have some questions in the chat which I would like to address um so one question that I see is did any experiences in life or your early career contribute to your Paths of self-management so is there some kind of also history or career do you yeah that um that led you to the path of self-management or received more really in the in the mindset part of what you were already sharing uh I don’t I can a person came to me before I cannot so how do we move if that forward also what you’re sharing with us yeah but also the mindset and all these kind of things how do we do that yeah actually this is an amazing question so this I had like a half an hour answered for that but I’ll try to keep it very simple because this is my hidden agenda question because my hidden agenda within all this transformation which is all the success that I am trying to achieve is to change for the future yes for sure for my daughter I’m trying to change her mindset and trying the ones being the ones being chosen the ones who really put their best effort with their skills they’ve become an actual leader so in the world there’s gonna be always natural leaders but no more so yes to my daughter every single uh day I given an example of the benefits of believing in people trusting in people being transparent and and uh believing in collectiveness thanks a lot for sharing also this great question I really like liked it to also see so what’s what’s coming next I mean we are looking around us maybe where are some people like it in the big environment going to politics and changing things others do it just for themselves or in their family or in the company and I think this is Ulta Beauty on the different people that we are we all have a different access to it and can kind of support that in different ways exactly exactly yes that’s what’s happening and that’s what I believe if you leave self-management in a company you don’t go here to do hierarchy in your family so it’s I think it expands so and that’s that’s the real value you you kind of had a road map what were like the key Milestones that you looked at when you when you try to transform there uh it all starts with the culture for uh so let me put the steps it all comes with the culture culture means they gain the purpose values and principles so together with the team with everyone we Define our culture we Define that how we are uh what’s what what values are going to guide us what is the North Star for us what is the what is the purpose for us what principles Are Gonna Keep Us uh before the change I was kind of like the CEO or the owner or the I don’t know general manager of the company uh uh again the company was not hierarchical but still I had that title and I had this big room uh with this big table and everything so today I’m like almost completely out of the company because I when I had my freedom I wanted to work for something else so now with my other two co-founders who were also in this transformation that I was in the beginning of our speech I was talking about three of us now we are their own time and consume the contribution on their own time so this gives me Freedom now I’m learning new stuff now I become a founder of a new software uh startup and and I’m I’m enjoying really enjoying so sometimes the people get strong that I did this because that I can go and do more kite surfing it didn’t work like that to create more things I didn’t know that but yeah it didn’t work out like that I started to create so my creation power increased yeah I see yeah it’s great paper in that way yeah um and was there any moment during this couple of years now where you said oh I got nervous it was not running as well maybe in the company I got nervous that they will yeah that it will all go down and I have to somehow do something and step in and tell what or did you have a situation where you had this feeling and what did you do or what would you do like what is your thinking about that yeah uh first of all the situation was not very good always I all I had big fears but things got not as deep as you were calling us to that and also in the companies it seems like the companies are realizing the way of being successful is coming from taking decisions or actions more collectively so they are trying to go in the direction of agile management they try to take their decisions uh collectively so that’s what made one of the reasons why they are making this many of meetings why we have so many meetings because now it’s being more understand understood by people by companies that that needs to be a less hierarchy and that’s a very good news so system that we measure the people’s performance so I’m not sure but we have the when we set up our purpose we said it is evolutionary and even start from now we talk about if our purpose can be changed oh yeah so it is it still organization according to my understanding according to the book that I understood I think we are required a good example of a teal organization but again I’m not sure what is missing but from the radical hierarchy radical transparency point of view it is Dash I mean from the purpose from the yeah yeah yeah I don’t know I think I think I’m I’m just hoping that the what we have started in lateral with the results will inspire people with inspired the companies around us and then the people in that companies will be inspired from their companies and applied in their families in their decisions and if this can go bigger and bigger and big then it will come all the way to how we manage us how we think the world’s problems and then I think that that will be a real value that’s that’s that’s the my that’s my be hosting your session so we will see each other again which is really cool and I think before that we have another two um living room conversations as well uh so one was Frederica next week already and then Keith the Met candles as well.
