INTERVIEW WITH KONSTANTIN JOSSELIANI: “SPECIALIZATION AND FOCUS ARE OUR EVERYTHING”

Konstantin Josseliani, the President and CEO of Janus Worldwide, gave a big interview to the business publication ‘A Man of Business’ about business secrets, the development of internal entrepreneurship in the company, the current state of the translation services market, and the outlook for entrepreneurship in general.

– Please tell us how and where your company started. What decisions led to its serious development?

– I went into business partly by chance. I had been educated as a translator of English and German. My first job was at the German company SAP, which develops software. I really enjoyed it there and learned a lot of new things, especially in terms of using technology.

Unfortunately, after some time, the company decided to close the translation department (it was then called the localization department), and I was faced with a choice of what to do and where to go next. Then I made a decision: thanks to the managerial and technological experience that I received at SAP, I could probably try to be the head of a translation company myself.

I had a partner, we took on another person, and that’s actually how Janus was founded. We rented a small office and started our professional journey from there.

– From your point of view, what are the two or three strongest decisions that you made in the initial stage of the company’s life that really ensured its growth?

– There were two main decisions. The first was a clear industry focus. I personally and the company’s first employees came out of the IT sphere. We focused on expanding our customer portfolio in the IT sphere, without trying to spread our efforts by entering other industries. This was the first growth factor.

Subsequently, we quickly realized that most customers require translations in more than one language, which became our second growth factor. It is much more convenient for them to receive multiple languages at once, to send us a product that needs to be translated, or as we say, localized, into a number of languages. We opened production offices to support our customers, first in Kyiv, and then, a few years later, in Almaty (Kazakhstan).

These two points, I believe, were the right decisions on my part, and they allowed the company to grow successfully in its first year.

– And your company still has this advantage associated with multilingualism?

– Yes, we decided that we would develop the strategy further. All companies in our industry are divided into two large groups. There are those that work, as a rule, with one language, that of the country where they are located. And there are others who offer customers localization into several languages at once. We wanted to become a multilingual supplier, offering our customers a comprehensive solution covering all their linguistic needs. And other steps that happened a little later, in the next stage of the company’s development, were the opening of several foreign offices. At the moment, we have 14 offices.

I would like to note an important point: we work according to a principle that is called “Follow the Sun” in our industry. It means that we as a company must be able to work with customers in different time zones. It is very important for us to be close to the customer. If we receive a request from a customer, we must respond to it and get to work on it quickly.

– Which country are your best customers from?

– Every customer is different. All customers are obviously important to us, but they have their own local particularities.

For example, a large Japanese corporation is very fond of stability and constancy. If they start working with a company, they plan to do it for a long time, and something incredible must happen for this cooperation to end. This desire for consistency and stability is even evident in the fact that they are very dissatisfied if we suddenly change managers. We must, by all means, keep the manager who started working with them eight or ten years ago. This consistency is a priority for them.

American customers are different: they are more focused on service in general, on quick interaction, setting estimates, launching projects, and providing services.

German customers are also quite different from everyone else. It seems that back in the 1950s, Willy Brandt said: “If you would like to sell in Germany, dann müssen sie Deutsch sprechen.” So Germans only work with Germans. To work with Germany successfully, you need to have an office there, German employees, and only then will they cooperate with you.

Whatever country we go to, we must take the specifics into account.

– What is happening with the service now? – What requests do customers have, especially from a technological perspective?

– Advanced technology is one new requirement that customers have. In the past, we were limited to corresponding by email: customers sent requests, files, received responses and translations, and everyone was happy. Now the situation is changing, and customers want more technological solutions that make their work more convenient. There are solutions, such as commercial Translation Memory System class solutions, which allow the use of previously translated text so as not to retranslate the same fragments and instead accumulate a translation memory. There are also solutions that simplify direct interaction between the customer and the supplier.

Our company, in particular, has developed a technology platform called GTP. All interaction with customers is carried out through it, and they get new functionality: they can view all the statistics on the work, track the status of projects, and organize additional requests, such as quality control or express translation, for example. Customers like such solutions very much, and they are becoming popular. And it is also a definite competitive advantage for us, which helps us differentiate our services from those of other providers.

– What was the most difficult case you have had in the last ten years? Perhaps a translation of 1000 pages into 50 languages?

– We are prepared for high volumes. We have a term, “scaling,” which means that when we receive a large project that we cannot complete under standard conditions, we increase our resource base, bring in additional specialists, and form a fairly large team.

The company has a vendor management department that fully interacts with our external vendors.

Complex projects are those that are highly visible and important to the company’s image, because the stakes are quite high.

– A lot is now rapidly changing in the field of machine translation. In your personal opinion, where is “live” translation from person to person at the moment, and how will it evolve?

– Of course, our industry is undergoing quite serious technological changes that are transforming the field. My position is that “live” (or human) translation will gradually become a luxury service. It is an expensive, high-quality service that is used for specific situations and content.

Recently, the amount of content has been growing very rapidly, in geometric proportions. More and more large companies are entering international markets. They are offering various solutions and software. The software comes with technical documentation and training and marketing materials. Linguists’ productivity, the output of translators, is lagging far behind this process. It’s not possible to translate everything that is released using human translation. In this regard, machine translation is being used more and more often if the content is purely technical or for internal use only.

Technologies do not stand still, they develop, and the machine translation that we are seeing now is not at all what it was at the end of the last century.

However, even now, machine translation has system limitations that prevent it from being used without post-editing. Even if the content is technical, such as technical documentation, post-editing is still necessary after machine translation. Otherwise, there may be serious errors that affect the meaning and which could lead to catastrophic consequences in terms of the use of the translated product.

– Someone should be responsible for whether the translation is done correctly or not. You can’t place the responsibility on a machine.

– We take responsibility. Even if, in agreement with the customer, it is possible to use MT (Machine Translation), we take it. But at the same time, you need to understand that there is a huge difference between how ordinary users apply machine translation and how a translation company does it.

The translation company does quite a bit of work in preparing machine translation. This is done by trained specialists, which leads to an improvement in the quality of machine translation. But even in this case, we never release a machine translation without final post-editing. Otherwise there may be very, very serious errors.

In some cases, incorrect translation can lead to lawsuits, very long legal proceedings, and, as a result, multimillion-dollar fines. We understand this perfectly and realize our responsibility.

– You have about 400 people on your staff, and everyone is different. How do you manage a team of highly educated people where everyone is an individual?

– There are particularities in working with employees. The company employs highly educated people, usually with higher linguistic education, higher technical education, and sometimes even multiple degrees. For me, the employees, our colleagues, are the main asset of the company. They are what allows us to move forward, to develop, and what makes us better than other companies.

Working with employees is a key area for me personally. I always take part in interviews with candidates for management positions. It is important to me who will work for the company, represent it, and move it forward. And I try to trust to the employees who work for us as much as possible and to provide them with opportunities to realize their abilities and some of their aspirations.

There are several principles that I follow in my work with the company’s personnel. One of the most important is delegation. It is very difficult, because all leaders believe that they do everything better than other employees, and they always want to take things and redo them. However, this should never be done: if you chose a path of delegation, you must understand that you are handing over functions, tasks, and, at the same time, responsibility to others. This is very important. Employees understand it, and their level of responsibility and importance in the company grows. They understand that they are not just cogs in a machine, but people who are responsible for certain blocks of work and who can make independent decisions, and this, in my opinion, allows the serious discovery of potential.

– There are different types of delegation. Some people assign tasks, while others assign tasks and then micromanage them. How far do you let your people go?

– I follow two main schemes in my work with employees. The first (I would call it the main one) is MBO (Management by Objectives). This is my main method of working with personnel. It consists of defining goals for the year together with the employee, discussing the areas of activity, determining what plans we have for the year, what goals we want to achieve, what the intermediate steps are, and how we will measure the achievement of results. In general, I receive a report from the employee, either on a monthly or on a quarterly basis. If there are any deviations from the plan, we discuss them in more detail.

And there is a very small group of employees, I would say that they are the gold reserve, an elite group who work almost independently. A different approach is used for them, called MBE (Management by Exceptions). With these employees, it is sufficient to define the goals for the year, and they start working on them. There is no need for monitoring in this case, as these employees take the initiative themselves if something goes wrong. These are the most experienced people, and it is the highest level of management when an employee is self-sufficient.

There is a term, “internal entrepreneur,” that is currently used in business. These people must have a particular mindset to act independently, without being pushed or controlled. Such employees are quite rare.

– What reference criteria do you use to measure a person’s growth?

– The main criterion is that the employee is proactive. Not reactive, but proactive. Reactive employees are those to whom you assign tasks, and they complete them (or don’t — that also happens). A proactive employee is one who comes to you on his own and says: “I see potential here, let’s try to move in this direction, and I’m ready to take it upon myself. Let’s consider this option.” It is precisely this kind of proactivity, or initiative, on the employees’ part that is a criterion for me to see if they have outgrown the MBO system and need to move to the MBE system. In other words, if they can practically work on their own. But support is still needed here, no longer in the form of control, but in the form of advice and discussion.

– That’s like a transition to an almost equal partnership. In general, what is partnership for you?

– For me, partnership is an opportunity to solve problems jointly that you cannot solve alone. When you join your efforts. It can happen within a company or between multiple companies. If we are talking about our industry, where we are all competitors, there are still common problems and tasks, and we can enter into partnerships to solve these problems.

– Where do you think entrepreneurship is heading? As one example, you mentioned the development of internal entrepreneurship within the company. Are there any trends, management motifs, models, or methods that are obvious to you?

– I would highlight two main trends. The first and obvious one is advanced technology. The industry I went into 28 years ago and the one we have now are two different spheres. Now I feel like I’m working in an IT company. We are surrounded by technological solutions and systems. These days, the work of any modern company is almost unthinkable without technology. Of course, there are still dinosaurs not using systems, but I think the vector is clear here, that is, companies are moving in the direction of advanced technology. Moreover, our customers expect advanced technology from us. They want everything quickly, easily, efficiently, and at the same time, inexpensively. This all is pushing our industry into the IT sphere.

The second trend that emerged with the onset of the pandemic is a change in the format of relations between the head and employees. Previously, employees came to our office and worked there. Now, the relationship between employees and the head is built more on a partnership basis and is becoming more flexible. Employees have more options for choice thanks to remote work, when they can work with any company anywhere in the world. Therefore, it is now extremely important for heads to build the right relationships with staff, to reconsider the motivation system, understand why an employee is working for your company, and how you can retain and develop them. For us, these are the main growth points at the moment.

We are implementing a “Retention and Recruitment” program, the goal of which is to ensure employees’ professional development and to make this symbiosis as beneficial as possible not only for the company, but also directly for the people. People are becoming an even greater asset. They are at the center of business more than ever.

– What else will the company offer its customers in the near future?

– The main trend is that we are expanding the range of services. We used to be positioned purely as a language services provider offering only interpreting and translation, but now that is not enough. As a rule, large corporate clients, who are our target customers, expect to receive a comprehensive product from us.

I’ll give you an example. Let’s say a customer wants to translate a brochure. It would be ideal to get the service from one supplier. We are moving in this direction, actively adding layout, design, and printing services.

In addition, the field of audio and visual translation is developing very actively, with everything related to video, pictures, and subtitles. There is huge demand for it now, and we are trying to meet it. We are developing in the multimedia direction and have created a separate department for this purpose. I would say these additional digital services probably show us the direction for development. And we are going that way.

– Let’s imagine for a moment you could go back to the beginning of your entrepreneurial activity, to your 24-year-old self. What three pieces of advice would you give yourself?

– The first thing is that when we are young, we take risks, and dare I say, more easily get involved in certain adventures which now, with the benefit of hindsight, I might think about and say “no, don’t do it.” Do something else, something calmer and more stable. That is, you really need to think about whether the game is worth the candle. Because not everybody is up to it.

The second tip is that you need to surround yourself with the right people. Pay attention to those who around you, those you talk to, not only at work, but also in life in general. Our environment shapes us. If we are surrounded by people who are not able to help in any way, it is likely that nothing good will come of it. Advice for young entrepreneurs: focus 100% on hiring the right people. Surround yourself with employees who think the same way as you, who are ready to develop the company and fully invest. Otherwise nothing will work out.

And the third tip is to clearly understand what your advantages are. What can you offer that others cannot, that is, what are your competencies. And invest in these competencies. Forget about weaknesses and shortcomings (they always exist). There is some area in which you know you are better than others, so focus completely on that. It will help you make a breakthrough or the first step. There is no need to spread yourself too thin, and no need to try to square the circle. Many companies I know in our industry have followed this path and have not succeeded. Specialization and focus are our everything.