Two Leadership Mantras for the New Normal

By Peter Pluim, EVP, Global Head of Enterprise Cloud Services, SAP

For the past 150+ days I have been leading the Enterprise Cloud Services team at SAP from my home office in London. A remote work set-up can be challenging, especially for employees who thrive on daily interactions with their colleagues at the office and regular face-to-face meetings with customers and partners. Online schooling has added an increased burden for working parents. Having team members in different stages of shelter-in-place and re-opening at their locations creates a sense of uncertainty. We cannot go back ‘working like it’s 2019’. In fact, we need and want to move forward. But what will be the new normal? This uncertainty creates both, discomfort and opportunity. It is an opportunity to re-imagine the way we work and incorporate the learnings from the past months into our way forward.

I have witnessed an incredible level of tenacity, team spirit, creativity, and fun. Also, I have gotten to know my team and our customers better on a personal level. Over the past months, I have met their children, extended family members, and their pets. I even picked up some great interior design inspirations for decorating our new house, which also due to COVID is still furnished by bean bags for now ?? 

Based on my experience, there are two leadership mantras that keep the team and customers engaged and guide them onto the path towards a new normal:

Keep a Focus on Work-Life Balance

The physical and mental well-being of employees has become even more important. First and foremost, team members need to know that you care about their health and safety and that they have the support and flexibility to adapt their work environment based on their circumstances. Frequent and consistent communications is key. I am hosting regular virtual get-togethers with the team for pulse checks and answer questions. We are also using online tools to share experiences and give tips. In one-to-one conversations, the phrase ‘how are you’ has never been more important. Use it to really find out what is on your employees’ mind and any challenges they may be facing.

Second, you need to walk the talk in work-life balance. Encourage team members to take their well-deserved holidays and find time to recharge. Being in back-to-back conference calls all week can take a toll. While we cannot travel to far flung places for the time being, we can still take time off to decompress by logging off the computer, reading a good book, spending time with family. I have taken a couple of staycations at home myself to clear my mind. I not only felt invigorated afterwards, team members felt more at ease to take vacation themselves afterwards. It is another way to ensure that we all allow each other the needed flexibility in this new work environment to succeed.

Third, promote learning and upskilling. Giving employees more opportunities for training and career development achieves a better work-life balance. It also prepares the team for the future of work. We rolled out a comprehensive learning and certification program to teach new skills and upskill for future technologies. The initial feedback was so positive that we are now working on expanding the program.

Stay Close to Customers

Customer needs and customer experience is at the heart of everything we do. It is thereby critical to stay connected with customers, partners, and other external stakeholders, whether we work in the office or virtually. There are so many ways to stay close, as an alternative to face-to-face meetings. The good old phone call, web meetings, virtual collaboration tools, and chat sessions are just a few options to keep the conversation going.

Staying close to the customer goes beyond a weekly phone call. It requires empathy and proactive thinking. Put yourself into your customers’ shoes. Companies shifted to remote working models almost overnight. In addition, many companies we work with rethink, not only the way they operate internally as a virtual team, but also how they create, market, and sell their products and services to their customers. They need the peace of mind that they have access to the latest technological capabilities, thinking, and support to innovate their business model and offerings now and for the future. 

Digital transformation is at the heart of it. The Wall Street Journal reported that cloud services spending in the second quarter of 2020 was up 11% from the previous quarter and 30% from the same period, based on an analysis by research firm Canalys. Companies have accelerated their shift to more digital business models using the cloud. 

To date, companies are at different stages in their transformation journey. Staying close to customers can drive product innovation based on their specific needs. For example, our team identified in customer conversations that having more choice is important. As a result, we rolled out the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, Customer Edition this month. It makes our private cloud service SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud and license subscription available to customers who want to keep their SAP software landscape and data within their own data center environment. It is an example how we innovated our product portfolio together with customer and partners by staying connected at all time.

The two leadership mantras – work-life balance and customer focus - need to be applied in tandem to guide companies through changes and into the new normal. I typically divide my day equally between internal and external meetings. In addition, I carve out time for networking and reflection. While a journey can be started with the immediate network, growing the network consistently along the way can lead to the best possible future for everyone.