Your time is coming!
This morning when I woke up, I checked my Blackberry (as I often do) before beginning to pack my son’s lunch. Imagine the excitement when I came across this in my inbox! ______________________________________________ From: John B Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 5:45 PM To: Natalie H Subject: Fw: Support for the COO programs and Projects Your time is coming! ————————– Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld ______________________________________________ From: Erwin G To: John B Sent: Wed Jan 21 16:53:35...
Read MoreMeeting Ernie, learning Lean
One of the funny things about SAP is that we refer to our highest-ranking executives by their first names - Leo, Bill, Henning, Marty, Ernie, Hasso, Shai … Not that there aren’t other Germans at SAP named Henning! But when you just say ‘Henning’, everyone knows who you’re talking about. In my case, I’m really excited to tell you that (as part of SAP’s Top Talent program) I had the chance to have lunch and speak with Ernie in September last year, during his worldwide Listen & Learn Tour. There are a couple of reasons I didn’t write...
Read MoreTalent Management
In my dissertation research, I explored the different mechanisms of control at work within the corporate context. I took advantage of my insider access as a corporate employee to describe and analyze varied of business practices and deconstruct them from an anthropological point of view. I looked at everything from employee communications, to budgeting, to HR practices. For a theoretical framework I used the work of Foucault. Towards the end of his career, Foucault described a form of power he called ‘technologies of the self’, in which people self-manage because they have...
Read MoreWild & wooly
SAP, it seems, is in a constant state of re-organization. I wrote a whole chapter on the topic in my dissertation, which I completed in 2004. For reasons that I’ll get to in a minute, I re-read the chapter today and I feel that much of it still holds true, in spite of the fact that I wrote my dissertation during very dark moments in both the country and the company’s history - the dot-com crash and after 9/11. Changes were also underway in part because of the departure of the Americas’ CEO, and because the U.S. was making the transition to a regionally-focused selling...
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