Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
Learning at the
Speed of Business:
SAP Leads in the Cloud
BY JENNY DEARBORN
38
TD | January 2015
TDFE690102Dearborn.indd 38
New approaches to
established philosophies
To be clear, SAP always has valued talent development and learning. Two of our mantras
bear this out. The first, Everyone is a teacher
and everyone is a learner, recognizes that we
all have a responsibility to help each other grow
regardless of rank or role, and that learning is a
continuous way of life, not a one-time event.
And Everyone is a talent means that each
individual employee has value to contribute
and deserves the chance to be fully enabled to
grow a meaningful career at SAP. As described
below, developing amazing talent is one of
three core SAP leadership expectations.
12/12/14 3:10 PM
at c level
podcast
January 2015 | TD
TDFE690102Dearborn.indd 39
39
12/12/14 3:10 PM
at c level
IF LEARNING
DOESNT HAVE
A MEASURABLE
BUSINESS
IMPACT, WE
SHOULDNT BE
DOING IT.
PERIOD.
What needed changing was how these philosophies were brought to life. For a company
that has doubled in the past 4.5 years to a
67,000-person workforce with 263,000 customers in 190 countries, L&D was not exactly
serving employees as a single, well-oiled machine. Now, with the full trust and support
of the SAP managing board, my team of innovative, dedicated, award-winning learning
professionals is leading the way.
The change is happening in different arenas, key among which is structuralsuch
as centralizing funding for strategic crosscorporate programs, aligning on a new
governance structure, and implementing our
cloud-based SuccessFactors LMS. Were currently going through a massive exercise to
move multiple separate learning groups to
one branded name, logo, learning technology
experience, content taxonomy, instructional
design philosophy, and employee messaging,
even though these teams report to their respective business units.
There is so much tremendous will (and
goodwill) to make learning at SAP run simple
as our new corporate tagline readsthat these
changes have been passionately embraced
and fairly easy to implement. Thats how
committed our learning professionals are to
excellence and how seriously we take CEO Bill
McDermotts simplicity call to arms.
Leadership principle 2: Develop amazing talent. SAP executives get it. They get learning.
Leadership principle 3: Ensure customer success. By driving simplicity and developing our
talent, we will achieve success for our customers. Well architect smarter technologies,
devise more effective solutions, and connect
our customers with integrated offerings that
solve increasingly complex challenges.
Learning has a direct role in ensuring customer success as well, through SAP Educations
award-winning cloud-based enterprise Learning Hub, and openSAP, SAPs free learning
platform, which leads enterprise massive open
online courses in innovation.
TD | January 2015
TDFE690102Dearborn.indd 40
12/12/14 3:10 PM
Advice so far
In addition to a great learning culture, supportive board and executives, business alignment,
SAP learning professionals who strive for excellence, and wonderful goodwill, other factors
that have led to our success include:
Focusing on a key early winleadership
developmentwhich was a terrific opportunity for enhancement and also the most
visible. Creating a huge win and delivering something truly transformational for a
constituency that wields power generates
tremendous momentum.
Delivering quality solutions and getting and
publishing measurable business impact results quickly, which builds credibility.
Unleashing everything youve got. Leave
fear at the door.
Do all of that well and youll get the platform to have a bigger voice and achieve what
you came for.
TDFE690102Dearborn.indd 41
41
12/12/14 3:11 PM
Copyright of TD: Talent Development is the property of Association for Talent Development
and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without
the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or
email articles for individual use.