A life changing trip: the human stories behind the need to make the world a better place
The room fell silent as the impact of the last few days sank in. It was midway through SAP’s first India Quest and 20 members of SAP India’s senior leadership team had visited parts of their country that they usually considered from a safe distance: the slums where women search through piles of garbage for anything they can salvage so that they can buy food for their families.
In the quiet of the meeting room, the participants were gathered for a daily download on their experience: an hour of reflection during which they opened up about the things they had seen and felt. Someone blurted out “I feel this small,” pinching his thumb and index finger together. “I’m educated, I have a good career. Look at what these people have created out of nothing. What could we be creating?”
Other people in the room nodded in agreement, equally humbled and affected by the experience of meeting people like Jyoti Mhapsekar, the organiser of a community of waste picker women in Mumbai’s biggest rubbish dump. These women were anything but victims. Trained in micro-finance, literacy, and new skills like composting that would help them improve their lives, they had become agents of change. Jyoti’s very presence at the dump represented a new way of thinking. As a middle-class woman, she had crossed caste boundaries to work with people she could easily have chosen to ignore. Where others were overwhelmed by the size of the challenge, Jyoti saw opportunity – the essence of innovation.
The SAP team had come away thinking that, no matter how much SAP had to offer women like Jyoti, these same women had a lot to teach SAP. As a result of the Quest, SAP’s India team is now pursuing opportunities to work with social innovators to cross-pollinate ideas.
Rethinking leadership and challenging assumptions
Sustainability is a concept that can have many meanings and one of the best ways to understand it is through practical, on-the-ground experience. While our People Survey shows that 89% of our employees believe it is important for SAP to pursue sustainability, it’s less clear how that belief can be translated into action and become an intrinsic part of what we do. Our India Quest has taken us out of our comfort zones and led us to encounter people, places and ideas that we wouldn’t often come across. “It is a rare opportunity to challenge what we think we know”, says Peter Graf, SAP’s Chief Sustainability Officer.
Peter found himself transformed by a similar India Quest experience a few years ago. One minute he was in a comfortable setting, chatting with executives, and the next he was striking up a conversation with a woman in front of her home, a makeshift shack on the edge of a busy street. While struck by the differences between her life and his own, he was even more affected by what they had common. When she told him that two things mattered most to her in the world – the love of her husband and the health of her children – Peter experience a profound connection with her. His reaction afterwards summed up his feelings about the Quest: “It is a transformational experience if you are ready to do two things: confront your own preconceptions and rethink what leadership is meant to achieve in the 21st century.”
Read part two of Rachel’s blog on the impact of SAP’s first Quest