What the COVID-19 crisis is teaching me about – literally – everything

It goes without saying: This crisis has already had an incredible effect on everything: the way we work; the way we do business; appreciating what we have.

I’d like to share some personal observations from the last couple of weeks:

• While I really miss being in the office and talking to my colleagues, I am able to organize my time very well and am getting a lot done.
• The day loses its structure and formerly well-distinct portions of my time blur into each other (the transition from “breakfast” to answering my first e-mails in the morning is dangerously seamless).
• Although it’s quite stressful to home school my kids and maintain a structure for them throughout the day (so they realize this is not a vacation!), I very much enjoy being around my family more (which they also seem to love).
• While I am a fan of shaking hands and meeting people in person, I am really getting used to being digitally close instead. I realize much more how productive virtual meetings can be (if well-prepared and conducted professionally), and observing other peoples’ homes while talking business is a nice side-effect that helps one get to know each other on a different level.
• For some reason (and I still need to figure this out), I feel more exhausted being on calls and attending virtual meetings all day, so I’ve been doing a lot of running to compensate.

Abstracting from my personal observations and assessing the big picture, I came up with the following lessons:

1.     Silver-lining is key

The crisis has led to a planned and unplanned reset of many areas in our economy, political environment, and our social as well as private lives. This “zero-based approach” we know from financial planning (where budgets are evaluated and justified every lifecycle) is now also applicable to various aspects of our lives. It also provides opportunities to tackle more “disruptive” changes that maybe would not have been pursued so far due to e.g. the “curse” of unbroken success. On an individual level, it helps us assess and value things differently from in the past.

2.     Mindfulness is key

This situation is teaching us to embrace the small things that really matter again: showing empathy for the well-being of others, forgiving mistakes, not getting hung up on smaller bumps during the process and caring for outcome over input, as well as embracing team efforts over individual agendas – as we are all sitting in the same boat.

Plus, we should not forget: we are not stuck at home, we are safe at home. While we at SAP are helping to flatten the curve to help decrease transmission by working remotely, I have the highest gratitude for those on the front lines: from the health care workers, to the store assistants, to the factory workers, and many more.

3.     Flexibility is key

Alicia Tillman, our CMO, recently said: “We’ve all been empathetic to the new challenge of balancing households and careers in this new environment, and we are providing the flexibility needed across our teams right now to keep everything running at our best.” And I could not agree with her more. Basically, many parts of the world went virtual overnight and it has already become obvious: We will never do business the same way again!

Maybe we don’t need 9-5pm working hours anymore? Maybe we can boost our creativity even more if we leave working hours as flexible as they are now? SAP has always been open to working from home or other locations – however, this crisis is enabling us to balance the needs of our family and our work even better – at least that's the way I experience it. A run first thing in the morning? Go for it. Late breakfast at 11am? Go for it. A walk with the kids at 3pm in the afternoon? Go for it. A night shift? Go for it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for work 24/7 – but I am stressing how different individual needs can be when it comes to focused work and creativity.

4.     Listen-understand-act is key

Perhaps now is the time to rethink, establish home office as the “new normal” and certainly to advance digitization so that new forms of work are possible. Luckily enough, SAP has always been a big supporter of remote work, even before the COVID-19 crisis began. However, in times where “virtual” is the new normal, it has become even more important to check in with our colleagues regularly. What do my team, my customers, and my partners need to do their job as they are spread out all over the world? And how can we (as managers) support them? These questions are answered in the Remote Work Pulse Survey SAP has just provided together with Qualtrics – and which can be used freely by Qualtrics’ customers.

After running the Pulse SAP-internally, we’ve understood that collaboration, wellbeing, and communication are key to staying connected with our colleagues around the globe. This included the analysis of ~45,000 free text comments and dashboards. While truly listening and understanding is important, the key is to act upon the issues quickly which has led to a threefold approach:

• Global actions – such as providing regular calls on the crisis situation; a checklist for managers by HR on how to interact with employees; or strong IT tools for virtual collaboration as our complete workforce is now working remotely.
• Local actions – such as those taken by the local Management, e.g. the alignment on highly flexible working times and time slots without calls/meetings for certain time zones for team members to take breaks.
• Team-specific actions – like providing possibilities to connect informally with e.g. virtual lunches or coffee breaks.

Per the listen-understand-act approach, SAP has therefore been able to react quickly to the needs of its employees.

5.     Learning is key

The current situation won’t last forever. However, we’ll always remember the steps our organization took and how we felt at that time, long after we all return to the office. SAP has been bundling our employees’ feedback and ideas including the SAP One Billion Lives social entrepreneurship initiative in a global SAP-wide Innovation Campaign “ONE SAP Fights COVID-19”, as well as launching new digital learning initiatives, and is opening up access to technologies that can help all of us continue to move forward. This is what really counts now.

When all this is over, many things will have changed. Many people, too. But we will come back stronger. What are you learning from this situation?

Stay healthy, everybody! #coronavirus