When 100 turns 1500... part 1

As of today, it has been 1500 days. I’ve been the Managing Director of SAP Czech Republic for more than four years, and I feel like there are still so many exciting things in front of me, just like when I was writing the reflection after my first 100 days. Some things really do not change. Even though I see the past successes, I already have a mind full of things I want to improve, areas I want to explore and skills I want to take to a new level.

However, the starting point is different. As with children who already know very well how to run or talk in their first 1500 days, activities such as preparing the audit reports or planning all next year’s deadlines aren’t a challenge anymore. Just like the children, I always keep learning, and the best “school of life” is SAP’s customers.

The resplendent variety of people and businesses I get to talk to fuels my work and keeps me on my toes. And even after four years, I have a small child in my head that gets excited when I explore how our customers operate, see their stores and how they use SAP solutions in real life or hear their visions how they wat to transform their business to brave the new age.

SAP is having a transformation of its own. That’s why I am actively listening to our customers, their needs, goals and visions, because they also face a lack of skilled labour, want to motivate their colleagues in the long-term better or may have gone through a transformation before SAP. Taking inspiration from our customers is definitely one of the things that I learned to pay more attention to.

Always customer first

What has also changed has been the approach to work as a whole. I am a people person, and I love meeting people in the office, planning, laughing, having lunch together and pulling the rope to ring the bell in the office to summon colleagues for our success announcement celebrations. It’s much more challenging online to feel the dynamics in your team or uncover the whole feedback. I had to adjust my management style and I am glad that the team responded well and came forth with their own ideas.

Talking about change, I don’t think I had heard this word mentioned more often than in the last few years. They have been a real-life intensive course of change management in various forms and become a domain where I stand firmer in my shoes now. The change keeps accelerating, and we need to learn to adapt even faster than before. So I am always looking for new shoes (both metaphorically and literally), if you are asking. ??

The cloud transformation at SAP is the perfect example of the accelerating change. When I set off onto the MD journey, the cloud was a matter of increasingly intensive discussions. Now it is the utmost priority. And the future.

With every major shift, there is a lot of resistance on all fronts and breaking down walls fortified by years of experience looks like a Herculean task at first. But in the end, only the companies embedding innovation into their DNA are set to survive. More than half of companies on the Fortune 500 list since 2000 have either gone bankrupt, been acquired or ceased to exist, all resultant of market evolution.

Looking at all the above, I feel being an MD in such dynamic times is a privilege. And a privilege to be at SAP because if people mention one thing when asked why they stay here, they say their colleagues, the atmosphere and the company values. SAP has done a great job learning from employee and customer feedback to build up a team of people who strive for excellence and work as one. When people see their work makes a difference, it shows on so many levels.

Even though I have so many more things in mind, I will stop here and leave this as part 1. It’s already long enough. ??

I wish us all success and a good amount of resilience for the future,

Hanka