Professional type readers. Don’t switch off just because this talks about SAP. See it in a wider context. Please.
I make no secret of the fact I am an SAP Mentor and that I thoroughly enjoy the company of my SAPesque colleagues. Or that SAP comps me for T&E on SAP gigs.
SAP Mentors are without question the sharpest, brightest and yet most sociable people I know. Who would ever have thought that about geeks – people who are mostly immersed in code and talk in weird terms lesser mortals would struggle to understand. Yet that doesn’t prevent me from being a sharp critic of what SAP the company does. It’s been made clear to me time and again that SAP wants me to say what I do as a way of keeping the company honest. I’ll take that as a compliment even though I field the late night ‘why did you say that?’ calls which would suggest otherwise.
The last few days I’ve been buried inside the Messe in Vienna along with 3,500 other attendees, trying to soak up the new stuff SAP wants us to understand, meet with new executives, say thanks and bon voyage to outgoing execs. It’s been a round of 15+ hour days coupled with late night dinner, drinks and conversation that after a few beers becomes both massively clear and at the same time totally obscured. You get the picture.
This year saw SAP make a big deal of its Mentor community in various keynote speeches and staged events. As you can see from the pic, we were given distinctive rugby style shirts which immediately identified us as ‘different’ from other attendees. My personal experience is that it scared a few people and caught the curiosity of others. Be that as it may. After all, SAP positions ‘us’ as the best of the best, something most of us take with a grain of salt because the broad SAP community is stuffed full of incredibly bright people. But to the theme of this post…
…any large community of people centred around a common interest needs its champions. These are people who in a way irrationally believe that the goals of the community transcend personal wishes and aspirations. In a way it allows individuals to abstract themselves from the world to which they are attached and so be free to say whatever matters without fear of recrimination. In SAP’s case, this is the 0.0056% of people the company has cherry picked for whatever reason to be its champions. The curious thing is that even though all I have met retain a burning passion for what SAP can deliver, they don’t necessarily believe in what SAP says. In addition, they’re not afraid of saying so behind closed doors both to executives and among their peers.
There is a healthy tension that exists between this ‘herd of unruly cats’ and the people tasked with managing the group. It ensures that the ‘voice of the Mentors’ is not only heard but acted upon. Often it seems that action is way too slow for ‘our’ liking but it does happen. What seems to ‘us’ as simple has multiple dimensions for a company as large as SAP and I sense that we’re not always patient enough to accept that fact. I sure as heck am not. To me life is very simple and cultural excuses for inaction carry little weight.
Why talk about this? Here’s a few things to consider. SAP has gone out its way to make the Mentors aware of new ’stuff’ long before they become public. That gives the company an opportunity to gain early feedback from people at the coal face of what SAP delivers. SAP makes sure we get regular exposure to senior level executives. Why? Because peeps who are that far up the food chain don’t necessarily see what’s going on in the places that matter. It’s that coal face thing again. SAP sucks up ‘our’ knowledge often at zero direct compensation. It’s a sort of quid pro quo. You give and so do we. Up to a point.
Why on earth should that be of interest to professionals. Think this way:
- If ICAEW/AICPA could replicate a similar style of community then it would better understand the body of people who live and breathe what it means to to be a ‘pro’ in the field. That’s a huge potential mutual win and something that should feed directly into the graduate recruitment process.
- Showcasing Mentor capabilities gives others something to which they might aspire. Provided there is a clear commercial connection somewhere then it makes a huge amount of sense to all concerned.
- Showcasing passion keeps relevancy vital and alive. Given the poor state of standing the profession is currently experiencing then that’s another win.
- Demonstrating that passion and talent are important to a large organization should mean that potential new entrants are encouraged to join the fold.
- Ancillary groups – for example the Adobe crowd, get access to influential thinkers that would otherwise be denied. Think about those who want to specialize.
- Mentors spearhead new thinking around what it means to be part of the SAP ecosystem in ways that have far reaching ripple effects. What about those who might like to see new directions?
I’m sure there are many other aspects that could be made but these are a handful of what I see as powerful pointers in a direction that makes win-win sense. Or do you think I am viewing the world through rose coloured SAP specs?
Turned 90 degrees – does ICAEW/AICPA have a way of drawing in and nurturing those same types of thinker? Could the SAP example be a template for those groups of people? I cannot believe that among groups of 132,000 and 350,000 (is that right re: CPAs?) respectively that the professions could not draw at least some people capable of articulating a passion for what they do. Your POV…
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