Blog It Forward – Heike van Geel

so, I am kinda 2+ weeks behind schedule and I better finish this today, in particular since I am not capable to find the blog draft that I already started. sorry for venting, but what’s happening to the draft versions?

now, rather looking at the up-side, I do feel very honored to being BIF’d by  Audrey Stevenson and mentioned in her BIF

I am expected to read all the blogs? Wow, that’ll keep me busy. I did read some though and do look forward to read more, it is exciting to see how the chain travels the globe.

introduction to myself. I had a nice segway for this, yesterday, now lost in that draft I cannot find anymore. oh, here it comes, I am German and maintain that habit of mulling over things, actually cry over spilled milk. meckern as we call it in German. so, I am not over that lost draft just yet. Once I am over it, it will be okay. My name is Heike van Geel, yes German, not Dutch. I started working at SAP in May 2000, I’ve never worked for SAP in Germany and I’ve never worked for any other company in the US.

fun fact about myself. my husband and I do not only share the same initials, we also have an almost identical SSN, only one digit is different. Whenever we apply for a new credit that is raising suspicions, the system says it cannot be that two people are married and have an almost identical SSN numbers, did they meet in the line at the SSN office?

a cool picture of myself or homeland/town.

This is me. Uwe Dune on the island of Sylt. Unfortunately I cannot call Sylt mine nor my home. Though in many ways it’s home to me and where my heart is. And, as you can see, it was pretty cool that day, minus 10 C.

How do you think the way you were raised affected your career?

Education, hobbies, sports, friends – all those things were pretty much my choices. I was fortunate enough to be raised by parents who’d never forced their children to follow a particular education path, hobby nor sports activities. Of course within certain parameters of the financial possible, but especially my mom would  never judge our choices. I think that gave me the confidence being comfortable to change careers.

If you were given by your work a full day every week to do whatever you feel like, what would it be?

Exactly that. Do whatever I feel like doing on that given day. 

Describe an Instance when Empathy in a Project, Development, Collaboration, Work Experience, or Community Interaction Turned a Situation Around (or Should Have)

Those who know me, know I am on a mission, on a mission to spread design thinking. Now empathy does play a key role in design thinking. So, here I am on my mission and I am very passionate about that mission and anxious if not impatient. I like to share the advice I am getting from one of my favorite colleague and friend, somebody who calls me her DT mentor (I am ever so honored), Deepa Iyer , she keeps reminding me of the importance of empathy. She does not say be empathetic, but whenever I am yet again about to lose my patience, she’d say “it has to work for them, right?”, them being the people I like to designthinkiefy. So simple, so true, the pace of change, a change of mindset has to work for the people it’s addressed to, at their pace and under their conditions, otherwise it simply becomes irrelevant as change cannot be forced. Thanks Deepa, for being a mentor and coach to me 🙂

We all know, the people who use the products and services we create will learn how to work around it if we don’t make it relevant to them. They don’t need us, they’ll find their way of accomplishing their goals.

I learned more lessons on empathy while working in SAP’s probably most diverse team, actually the most inclusive team I should say. I am talking 15 people, 9 locations, 12 different passports, x different spoken languages and more. Most fun team I ever worked with. One had to accept the other and be inclusive, otherwise you’d be on your own and that’s no fun.

What else?

Ah, yes, I have to blog it forward. The first thing I thought about after I received Audrey’s BIF.

I’d like to blog it forward to

Deepa Iyer – as mentioned 

Tobias Hildenbrand – who has a lot to share about design thinking and agile, lean and more

Tobias, sorry, but I warned you, the community has to hearyour stories 🙂

Cesar Rodriguez  – who currently works in my team to put rubber on the road how best combine DT, Agile, Scrum and PM – since we all know DT is complimentary to well grounded and established methods in the SAP world.

http://scn.sap.com/people/cesar.rodriguez7

Olena Demeter – has a lot to blog about and who is lucky enough to currently reside with the most fun team at SAP 

Laure Cetin – she told me she has been BIF’d a few times already, of course she has 🙂 , lemme just increase that pressure a bit more – not being empathatic about the fact this we are in mist of TechEd season

Questions to you – chose any 3 from the BIF blog started by xMoshe Naveh (Old Acct)

Lost blog draft: i am over you!