Let it go… I’ll start my sabbatical on January 01, and it’s now time to let go.
After 79 full-time quarters, I want to spend a six-month sabbatical sensing the now and exploring the next.
My first daughter was born 20 years ago – my younger daughter, two years later. My wife and I decided three years ago that once our daughters both have their school-leaving examinations, we wanted to do a sabbatical together to travel and collect ideas for the years to come.
The true luxury is time: Time to do creative work, time to spend with the family and friends whom I love, time to connect with inspirational people and ways of living, time to experience new landscapes, cultures, and time to design what we are going to do next.
This all is made easier by an employer who offers time-accounts for his German employees. Even if I follow the default and return to my field of responsibility, it will be different: “You never step into the same river twice”, as Heraclitus said. Everything is in a state of flux at all times. Our organisations have to become more fluid too.
Hence, I’m grateful for my leaders, Heike Laube and Wolfgang Fassnacht, who have fully supported the sabbatical as I proposed it earlier this year. I’m curious to see how SAP Learning now led by our new CLO Max Wessel will have changed after the first half-year 2021.
I’m grateful for this extraordinary opportunity that I received in 2017 to lead SAP Development Learning. It has been a journey full of highlights, perseverance, and difficult moments: a real learning journey. I’m still very inspired by our purpose to open horizons, so that people discover and unleash their full potential, for both their professional and personal paths.
Thank you, team, for bringing your heart to work, igniting curiosity and passion, recognising contributions, building strong communities, valuing self-responsibility, and making our learner’s needs the basis of everything that we do. I’m grateful to have shared my professional life with you: Anette, Bilyana, Birgit, Caro, Dani, David, Deniz, Dewi, Domi, Hrisi, Ilona, Inaam, Isa, Klaus, Lakshmi, Martin, Nora, Panneer, Peter, Rosie, Sarah, Sidra, Soumya, Svenja, Srishti, Sudha, Tanvi, Tina, and Xinru.
I wish Michael Lang, my successor for this rotation, all the best for the next weeks and months. Our handover time has been an excellent experience for me.
It’s now time to let go.
