Skip to content

Murat
Özbilen

Management Consultant, Chairman of the Board, Güvercin Communication Services

Biography

“The key to management is the identification of the skills and competencies required to manage the business as it is and to create corporate mechanisms that will guarantee adequate representation of interests in the management structure.” 

Managing family businesses

Murat Özbilen has extensive experience in project management, spanning a career of more than 20 years. He holds the Institute of Industrial Engineer’s Mitchell Fein-Outstanding Leadership and Profession Award, and Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honour Society’s Junior Researcher Award. He is currently a faculty member at Rotterdam University in the Netherlands and SRBII in Belgium. Özbilen possesses extensive experience particularly in operational improvement, auditing, the development and integration of organisational and technological systems, hand-over planning in family businesses, and strategic management projects. Özbilen has in-depth experience of the management of family businesses. According to him, unless entrepreneurs are able to convert their entrepreneurial spirit into management skills once companies are set up and a place in the market is established, their presence starts to hurt the management, which to begin with would have been a major contributor to the business. Then arises the question of whether to hand over the job to professionals. However, this does not mean a complete withdrawal on the part of the family from the management. “Family businesses are very dynamic when they are set up. The boss is, at the same time, also the manager. They fully communicate all their value judgments and opinions about the business. Once a company like this becomes established in the market, it must transform the impact of its entrepreneurial spirit into the ability to manage.”

Who is Murat Özbilen?

Murat Özbilen graduated from the Polytechnic University, New York with a BS in industrial engineering and an MS in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. He continued his graduate studies in the US, the Netherlands and the UK in the fields of operational auditing, IT/IS and logistic strategy. A partner with BMC (Business Management Consultants), Özbilen is the company’s director for the Middle East, Africa and the Turkic Republics. He has held consultancy and senior executive positions at Andersen Consulting, Arthur Andersen, ARGE Danısmanlık and IBM Consulting Group.

Speech Topics

• Changing generations in family businesses

• Change management

• Performing in a multi-cultural environment