Pairing Logistics with Negotiation. Member Spotlight: Esma Deniz Yilmaz
Esma Deniz is a Logistics Manager at Mavitec B.V. in Bursa, Turkey, where she manages the freight forwarders, subcontracts, operations for importing and exporting and analyzes and coordinates supply chain. She was introduced to the field of logistics during her Bachelor of Business Administration at Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi in Turkey, by one of her professors who spoke back then, at length about the logistics sector and how it would become a star sector in a few years. The choice was clear.
Deniz became involved with MBBI after receiving a scholarship from Negotiators Society organized by Deniz Kite Güner, founder of Global Mediators and Negotiators (GMN). Esma Deniz was introduced to the MBBI-Turkey Chapter after her negotiation training by GMN & Negotiators Society. There are approximately 20 members in MBBI-Turkey Chapter. Some members are mediators and some members are joining the Chapter after the negotiation training GMN delivers in cooperation with Negotiators Society UK and Acıbadem University.
Negotiation Between Companies
For the last two years, she has been working as an expert for local courts on logistics, international trade cases. In the court, judges are not always familiar with the logistics sector and call upon Deniz to examine files and write reports to present to the judges. She has learned a lot from these cases and gained experience on how to handle situations that may create conflict in the future for the company and negotiate accordingly on her own business. “It’s a valuable experience (and huge data) when you know the law and you know what someone did before and the consequences of their actions that created the conflict.”
Deniz completed her masters in Logistics and Operation at Middlesex University in Dubai where she wrote her dissertation on the effects of 3D printing on the global logistics industry after interviewing staff from various private commercial companies like Boeing, as well as military logistics personnel who were related to the subject. While in Dubai, she worked for TWIPV as a buyer and later as lead logistics coordinator, where she organized, coordinated, and expedited humanitarian and military projects from various locations to the camps in West and North Africa, Afghanistan, and Iraq. She is also a member of the Humanitarian Logistics Association where members provide counsel on logistics for the health, humanitarian, and military sectors.
Most negotiations in Turkey happen at the international level and many people still think that negotiation is solely for peacebuilding. She explains that “To put it this way, everyone wants to win. No one wants to give in on anything.” Larger corporations are familiar with the concept “But not in small or midlevel companies. Everything goes to court. The critical piece that people do not consider is that people get entrenched in a position about rightness and what they are advocating for. If they think they are right … they want the other side to pay for it all, and it becomes a pattern they follow for every case. However, if you always drag every case to a court as a company, eventually you will end up with reduced resources and no one to collaborate with.”
Supply Chain Negotiation
Recently, she attended a congress on supply chains and logistics with guests from University of Maryland, USA. Some of the topics covered were security and logistics, industry for 4.0, and humanitarian logistics. Logistics has become part of her “I realized at that congress, that when someone is saying logistics, I feel like they are calling my name and it always feels good to be with people from the sector to share our experiences and knowledge.” She is still deep inside logistics and fervently interested in technological developments, especially how it will affect the sector and the workforce in the future. “One cannot imagine how many companies are having problems every day…the supply chain is a whole complicated process and can be a breeding ground for conflict. There are so many sectors, so many people, so many countries, customs, authorities, and vendors all deeply involved. The complexity of networks are increasing with all these technological developments. You must have a point where you watch all these things from a bigger perspective so that if a conflict arises, you can see it coming. Or when it happens, you are able to solve the conflict effectively. Negotiation is definitely needed so we can build sustainable relations instead of competing to destroy each other.”
Apart from her other roles, Deniz is a PhD student in Business Administration examining what future holds for logistics sector at Uludag Üniversitesi and she is a visiting lecturer of Technology and Logistics in Bursa Technical University. In the near future she is considering starting a consulting firm focusing on negotiations between companies.
Article by Kylea Shropshire, MBBI Writer