‘I couldn’t understand people’: Sami Yalavac on his 20-year journey in Australian enterprise IT

When enterprise tech veteran, Sami Yalavac, immigrated with his family from Turkey to Australia in 2003 to escape an economic crisis that hit the European nation a couple of years earlier, he was in a bit of a bind. Moving to a country where he didn’t have friends or relatives was hard enough, but it was the language barrier that proved to be the real issue.

“I couldn’t understand people. Recruiters were calling, I couldn’t understand which company and which job [was being discussed] so I couldn’t reply to them,” he tells Sit-Down.

Finding a house to rent for his family was also a challenge. One day, Yalavac took the unusual step of approaching a house owner to state his case for renting their property after a real estate agent left the premises. He convinced the owner to rent the house to his family with no pay slip to prove his income or references.

When Yalavac first applied for a visa to immigrate to Australia, he created a group using the now defunct online discussion board, Yahoo! Groups. He documented his experience and provided advice to people applying for visas to settle in Australia and what to expect once they arrived.

Eventually, Yalavac and his wife started offering to meet people at the airport and host them at their home until accommodation was secured. They would help new arrivals find a more permanent rental property, a motor vehicle and even, employment. They ended up creating a network for 2,000 families in Australia and overseas; helping doctors, engineers and people with other skills make their way in a new country.

Yalavac’s first job in Australia was as a senior consultant for technical delivery at Beacon IT as part of a team that designed and implemented a web-based budget management system for Victoria’s Department of Treasury and Finance and Department of Health and Human Services.

During his early days at the technology solution provider, he says he still had trouble understanding people and the requirements of customers. 

But his willingness to learn and make his new life work paid off. He stayed at Beacon to support the system at Treasury’s request before being asked to lead another project in his first leadership role.

At the same time ,Yalavac was studying English through a private tutor that he paid for while supporting three children on a relatively low salary at the time. The tuition, which included Yalavac reading books written for primary school students, was subsequently funded by his employer.

Fast forward almost 20 years and Yalavac has left his early troubles well behind. Last month, he left the Australian operation of health insurance giant, Bupa after 17 years. He was first employed at Bupa in 2006 as a software developer before becoming director of operations and infrastructure, and Asia-Pacific chief information officer.

Earlier this year, Yalavac’s well-earned business nous earned him a stint as interim managing director before he handed over the reins to former Programmed chief executive, Glen Thompson. Jenny Watson has also slipped into the interim APAC CIO role.

“This is a great company with a great purpose, however after 7 years in the CIO role and close to a year as MD…I had the option to return back [as CIO] or start a new chapter. If I don’t challenge myself and do something new, I will lose my energy,” he says.

 After a busy year, Yalavac will spend time reflecting on what kind of life he now wants before starting his search for CIO roles that would suit him or possibly starting his own consultancy.

“Life is short, I want to do something that I will enjoy but not killing myself,” he says.

Culture the key to success

Yalavac and his team at Bupa introduced several innovations in recent years. This year, they created Blua, a solution that enables customers to access medical services through an app and gives doctors complete visibility of their patients’ health profile. 

An internet-of-things (IoT) technology, dubbed ‘Sleep Sense’ is being used at Bupa’s aged care homes. Under a trial, a device placed under residents’ beds provided clinicians with real time information about their movements. 

The technology monitors the heartbeats and breathing rates of aged care residents and send alerts to clinical staff if they move from their beds. The care team can monitor a patient who is breathing abnormally, which improves how they respond to potentially life-threatening situations.

But Yalavac says it was building a technology team with a good culture that was one of his biggest achievements at Bupa. During his tenure, he handpicked staff, including people who were new migrants in Australia. Some of these people are now in senior roles at the health insurer.

“The culture is inclusive and respectful…very customer and service focused and innovative,” he says.

Yalavac says that when he took on the CIO role, employee satisfaction across the technology team was at rock bottom compared to the rest of the organisation. In less than two years, Yalavac managed to drag the team from last place and turn it into the group with the best engagement across Bupa. Internal customer scores were lifted from negative to positive ranges, he says.

“This is a piece I am proud of; [my work] was acknowledged by the market and organisations invited me to help them how to transform their departments,” he says.

He says that these improvements require a change in mindset across teams; it’s about getting people to believe things can improve and accept that they might be part of the problem. He adds that organisations often have great strategies but fail at change management.

Learning from failure

Yalavac says he learnt a key business lesson around two years ago when there was a leadership change at Bupa. He falsely believed that the expectations of these new leaders could be met by his technology team.

“The leadership had new expectations and we were below those expectations. We were naively believing that we were already great,” he says.

Yalavac was able to turn this around by connecting with the executive to understand what they required. He changed the operating model, as well as people and roles; it was a painful process but one that turned made the technology group a success again.

“My message to my peers in the market is, regardless of how great you think you are, if it [your work] doesn’t meet the expectations of stakeholders, it’s meaningless. So, we must understand their pain points and expectations, and unless we speak the same language, what we are saying will not resonate with them,” he says.

Another lesson learned, Yalavac says, is that although it’s important to trust and empower people to do their jobs, there are some critical activities that need ‘checkpoints and controls’ in place.

Yalavac says he failed to do this in certain areas when he rolled out a data program at Bupa.

“I didn’t realise for a while that we weren’t on the right track; things were missing, we wasted time and money, we lost the trust that we had gained from the business. That was a huge lesson for me; I failed to take timely action. Sometimes, we try to be close to everything and we lose the big picture.”

Framing innovation

Yalavac is a firm believer that framing technological innovation the right way is more important than the innovation itself. Tech departments often spend too much time focusing on the functionality of a piece of technology, ‘why it is exciting and so cool.’

Tech teams don’t talk enough about what particular technologies mean for customers, which means that they may miss the mark, he says.

Sometimes, the simplest technological innovations will be more attractive to colleagues and customers because they address a particular pain point, he says.

“We need to balance two things. Of course, we want to do exciting stuff by introducing the latest technology and have the best features, but it needs to be useful for people,” he says.

For example, the team at Bupa’s aged care operation in New Zealand introduced a new telephony system across its facilities, which had all the ‘bells and whistles.’

But residents using this system, some who are over 75 years of age, as well as the nursing staff, don’t need those features.

“They need one button only and that’s it; it was a brilliant innovation, but a huge failure. It wasn’t useful at all. So, you need to think about what problem you are solving and ask, ‘is it really meaningful or not?’”

Finally, being a good communicator is also an important skill, he says.

“There’s a huge gap; most technology people are introverts who are not necessarily spending time with people. You put those people in front of your business colleagues, it is a recipe for failure if you don’t invest in their soft skills.”

I would advise my peers to not underestimate soft skills … you should uplift them so your innovation story is meaningful and understandable.”

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