Change Management By R. Benzi

Change Management A Turkish Manager’s New Life

Pinar’s Unabashed Tenaciousness

Pinar Kastancioglu is a strong, determined and dynamic mother of two. She married three times, and worked many 24/7 jobs that were consuming her life. Finally she reached a turning point when realized that she wanted something different for her life and for her children.

Pinar moved 700 km from Istanbul and started an organic farm.

Reaching Pinar is not so simple. I board a plane to Istanbul from Milan; the flight and landing are perfect. In the large airport I meet a noisy and courteous nation.

Istanbul is only a stopover. I travel next to Izmir, a full hour flight. Outside the terminal I meet Mehmet’s friendly smile. He’s my driver and he will take me to the farm. It’s evening already, time for a quick coffee. We take a road to a destination I don’t know; I just know we will cover 200 km and it will take three hours. Mehmet speaks only Turkish, but we communicate with gestures and smiles. Night has fallen, I am tired. I am taken by the natural, almost wild, landscape.

A shiver runs down my spine when we pass through the city of Hydin, the former home of the ancient city of Troy. I can see before my eyes, just like in a movie, the gallant deeds of Hector, Achilles and Ulysses. I close my eyes and dream. Where are we going? How long will it take? It doesn’t matter, I will wait. In the meantime it starts raining and it is cold. We travel across some woods and olive tree groves, lit up by the car’s high-beam headlights. The asphalt of the road has been damaged by bad weather and negligence. White roads, full of pits and puddles. The car climbs up the mountain; the mystery thickens as we finally pull up in a small poorlylit square. I am in Sinekçiler Koånyu, 650 meters above sea level, a lost village on the hills near Nazilli in southwestern Turkey. Stray dogs, cows, bulls and sheep stand in my way. I meet a few men who smile at me and welcome me with unexpected courtesy. Just in time for a hot tea.

Another few kilometers and I arrive at the guesthouse. My watch says it’s just past midnight. My room is spacious, one of the many rooms in a wooden house in the middle of the forest. It’s raining hard. I am very tired and hungry. It’s piercing cold. I am sleeping in this room tonight, guest of the mysterious Pinar who I haven’t met yet.

In the early morning, I am awoken by a blue tit, tapping at the window glass with his beak. After a hearty breakfast my Turkish guardian angels take me to Ipen Hanim çiftligi. Pinar’s farm is located a half hour away from where spent the night. The wait is immediately rewarded with smiles, hugs and a friendly heartiness that puts me at ease.

Pinar is a strong woman, practical and efficient. She lived in Istanbul and after attending the Faculty of Business Administration at the university, without graduating, started working in a casino. She was certainly talented as in a few years she was promoted to manager. A casino customer, an important man in the Turkish construction industry, asked her to manage the commercial department of his company. Pinar accepted and worked with him for seven years. She worked very hard, achieving much success. She married and had a child. When she was 27, she separated and got divorced, to marry for a second time. At the time, work took up every second of her life. She says “I was working 24/7; I couldn’t even take care of my child, who was, meanwhile, growing up, or live in a relationship with my

Text and Photos by ROBERTO BENZI

She was living in crowded and busy city of Istanbul, where she worked 24/7 with no time to spend time with her family ...now she's never been happier, her farm is like a giant family.

01 Pinar Kastancioglu 02 Oh kitty, soft kitty, little ball of fur 03 Women working the fields 04 Man and Earth 05 New life 06 Farm's fields 07, 08, 09 and 10 Ipek Hanim products 11 Typical dish at Ipek Hanim 12 Turkish tea 13 Ipek Hanim dippings

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husband. How long could I exist in that situation?”

Shortly after she made a drastic decision: she left her job and searched for a new life, where she could work, but also have time to spend with her family. She spent a few years in Kusadasi, a beautiful seaside resort near Aydin, with her child and husband; she had time to rest and plan a new future. Yet she divorced a second time and continued on her own. She met a man, who then became her third husband and with whom she had a daughter. He had a mineral water company near Nazilli and Pinar started to work with him. The company, initially small and limited to a local production, grew, and after eight years of activity pushed by Pinar’s enthusiasm, grew even larger. The results were incredible, but Pinar was once again stuck in full-time job just as when she was in Istanbul. Dissatisfied, dynamic and tenacious, and always searching for a more balanced life, she divorced for the third time and decided to buy a piece of land where she could build a farm and produce organic products. This time, on her own with her two kids.

ws Pinar, why did you choose Ocakly, located at more than 700 km from Istanbul, as the place to build your new farmhouse?

pk I was familiar with this place already, because it is very close to the mineral water company where I worked with my third husband. Furthermore, at the time we bought some land that we used to transfer water from the source to the factory. When we divorced we divided the assets, land included; I made some of the lands available for organic farming. Last but not least I already had created good relations with the people and everything seemed much easier.

ws How much did you pay for the land where you built your farm?

pk It was an abandoned piece of land owned by the government. The price was very favorable, more or less the equivalent to $2,000 for a 6,000 square meter piece of land. And it was in 2002.

ws When did you build the structures and how much did you invest?

pk I started building the central part of the house where I live with my two children in 2007. After that we built all other edifices where we now produce and store the food. In total the cost amounted to approximately $50,000.

ws How many people are working with you?

pk I started farming and producing in 2007. We were two people: a lady who still works with me and myself. The first cultivation included tomatoes, hot pep-

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Massage therapy was something I could do for a living that had some meaning.

Kimberley Pledger14 is a massage therapist from England who used to work in new media as a business developer, but found that her career lacked in meaning. At age 36 she decided to go in for the kill and do something that could really change people’s lives.

What were the main reasons that pushed you to change?

kp I enjoyed the buzz of working in new media and had never particularly wanted to do something worthy in my career, as I'd always been more interested in chasing the dollar. But increasingly, I found my work was meaningless. I had already started a course in massage as a hobby and as I was quite depressed I took a year off to travel and recuperate. I studied massage in Thailand and when I came back volunteered at the Royal Free Hospital, where an encounter with a patient made me realize massage therapy was something I could do for a living that had some meaning.

What sort of investment did you make?

kp My initial investment was something in the region of £10,000. This included training and set-up costs.

I realized something was lacking.

Diane Milczarek15 is the owner of Garden Lane Soaps and lives in California, US. She had been working in the Human Resources department

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pers and basic vegetables such as lettuce and zucchini. As the requests grew, we were growing as a company. The number of workers increased and I was acquiring new plots of land for farming. Today it is the same. We are currently 200 people. The farm includes 25 families, fathers, mothers and children, and there’s solidarity between us. We are a sort of cooperative. The takings are divided among us and a part of them is reinvested to buy new land, or to build a new house and to improve some aspects of the production.

ws What products do you grow and sell?

pk Many, from vegetables to olives, honey, soaps, oil, eggs, flour, bread, cheese, pasta, soups, walnuts. Our organic products are certified and of high quality. The sowing, picking and conserving processes are almost exclusively hand-made. Checks are strict and I take care of the quality.

ws How did you let people know about you and how do you sell to the public?

pk We started selling to close friends and acquaintances, and then gradually to friends of friends through word of mouth. We don’t invest in advertising, just a website since we sell exclusively over the Internet. We consider ourselves a niche sector and today we count 15,000 customers across Turkey.

ws It appears you are not feeling the crisis that is gnawing at Europe in recent times. What was the rate of your turnover last year?

pk I’d rather not say numbers. We are proceeding with calculations. Anyway, it is going well.

ws Were you able to adapt easily to this simple life in a place so far away from the chaos?

pk It took me a while. The transition has been gradual, from the metropolis through more human-sized cities like as Kusadasi and Nazilli, and finally here. The few friends I hung out with come and visit me and we have kept very good relationships.

ws So, no regrets?

pk No, no regrets. Here, at İpek Hanım Çiftliği, I'm happy. I can be with my kids, I work well and I am surrounded by a big family.•

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of the local school district for 13 years which she loved, yet she felt something was missing. This is when she left her career and started her own soap making boutique.

What were the main reasons that made you decide to change careers?

dm Less staff, more work stress and, unfortunately, less job satisfaction. It seemed like the perfect time for me to think about my future.

What sort of investment did you make?

dm I invested about $6,000 of my own money to get my business started. It has been more rewarding than I could have imagined. I have met so many wonderful and supportive people in the business community. They have shared advice and shared experiences which have contributed to the success of Garden Lane Soaps. I have had to push through fear and doubt and have come to appreciate that this is common stuff. The growth from the challenge is not only incredibly rewarding but empowering and has brought me a great deal of joy.

I didn’t want to look back when I was 65 or 70 and think that I wasted my life.

Alex Barnett16 is a former lawyer who was hit hard by economic turmoil. He got laid off, turned down a very highpaying job with the government and moved onto standup comedy.

What were the main reasons that made you go through this shift?

ab I was diligently looking for a new job and not succeeding so I thought that maybe there was something else I could do. I had been performing comedy on and off and I truly enjoyed it, so I thought, “Now is the time to take the leap and do that.” Because I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have any real responsibilities at the time and I didn’t have any debts. I think though that what truly motivated me was the idea that I didn’t want to look back when I was 65 or 70 and think that I wasted my life, and that I had spent my entire adult life in a job I didn’t really care for.

Why did you turn down the highpaying government job?

ab It was a fairly high-ranking position for an attorney working in the Attorney General office in Washington D.C. There were parts of the job that appealed to me, because they were platforms to do things that promote social justice, but there were a lot of question marks about the job. I was flattered by the offer but it just didn’t feel right.

What sort of investment did you make for this shift?

ab A big one, because I turned down a job offer that was going to pay me reasonably well and provide benefits, and I gave that up to pursue a career that didn’t provide any stable income at the beginning or benefits. There were a lot of investments upfront, like getting a website, getting social media platforms running, getting photos taken, sending out letters and e-mails, buying video cameras and renting cars to go to shows, paying for planes to get to shows that were further away than a car ride. Last but not least all the classes I took were paid for by me.