April 2020. Jennifer Morgan has been dismissed as co-CEO of SAP. At this point: a shame! Without knowing or wanting to shed light on the possibly real reasons: the departure of the first woman in the role of (co-) CEO of a DAX-listed company after only 6 months has a devastating effect on the topic of equal participation of women in top positions. Especially when the message is: crisis? Time for a strong -male- figurehead! It is irritating that SAP apparently does not want to be aware of this responsibility, after being celebrated in the media (almost uncomfortably) for this female appointment just 6 months ago.
A similar dissonance arises in the public handling of the topic of job sharing: Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein were sold from the outset as a prime example of job sharing or co-leadership. As part of a huge co-leadership PR campaign, which seems oversized with just 15 internal tandems. But Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein were never a real job share, that much is clear now. Here are 3 reasons.
The tandem was never intended to be long-term: the press release makes that clear. The decision to return to the one-person model was simply made earlier than planned during the crisis. But: job sharing almost always involves a long-term commitment, unless it is clearly marked as a model with a specific goal (such as targeted knowledge transfer from point A to point B) for a limited period of time, for all parties involved. And in this case, everyone involved also includes the public, to whom the model was presented as a prime example of job sharing. It goes without saying that the context and situation of a tandem can change and thus dissolve again, but if there was a different intention from the outset, we are not talking about job sharing.
Competition instead of collaboration: A temporary model in which only one person will ultimately prevail promotes competition – not collaboration. And in collaboration, decisions made in pairs are more robust and the tandem becomes more flexible and agile in sparring. This is confirmed on the one hand by our large-scale job sharing study (in which SAP also participated) and on the other hand by the current positive feedback from our tandem community in the Corona crisis. Working in tandem is therefore a strength, not a weakness, in times of crisis.
The tandem was heteronomous. Another key finding of our study: tandems that are knotted by a third hand like two rope ends often fail and are often dissatisfied with the model. According to Spiegel magazine, six months ago, “Supervisory Board Chairman and co-founder Hasso Plattner [...] had Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein spontaneously flown to California, explaining to them that they would be parting ways with CEO Bill McDermot. He asked them to take the helm. Both were surprised, but you don't say no to Hasso Plattner.” So, personal initiative in the direction of job sharing or proactive matching played no role. A disastrous start.
The success of companies with many more job sharers than SAP shows that it is absolutely possible to anchor job sharing as a profitable working model in the company DNA. However, this does not work through hasty PR stunts in which a competing dual leadership is declared the top example of job sharing. In the medium term, this unfortunately does more harm than good to the model, as in this case.
A successful introduction of job sharing starts with an honest examination of what job sharing is and what it is not. It only works through the continuous commitment of internal job sharing experts, convinced managers and dedicated job sharers. And until then, the motto should be: do good first and then talk about it. In that order.
Incidentally, the biggest hurdle for implementing job sharing is cited by tandem teams as being scratchy ERP systems, in which, for example, two people with the same authorizations cannot be created. SAP would therefore have the greatest positive impact on job sharing if, as the market leader, it finally adapted its ERP system to make it suitable for job sharing.
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