The only way to do great work is to love what you do - Steve Jobs.
It gives me immense pleasure to start my blog with quote of the greatest personality and visionary of this century. They became greatest personalities of future generations because of their immense passion in whatever they did. "Passion" is the only ingredient makes a person distinguished personality and proves them as the role model for future generations. Nothing will be identified or recognized, unless you show immense passion. It does not matter whether it is SAP Career or any other profession or any simple work. You can only be passionate if you put your heart in whatever you are doing. If you cannot put your heart in whatever you are doing, then there is no purpose of attempting it. If you are too small for doing big things, then you are too big for doing small things. Never let "ego" take control of your actions, it is the most personality deterrent and take you to the lowest point of your life. You need to think what you want to achieve and dream for it day and night. The dream and imagination is the starting point of your passion. The more you imagine about your life time goal automatically your heart is connected with that goal. That is where immense interest will be generated in you. Then you will forget everything in this world and you will be immensely committed in order achieve that. You can bifurcate your goals as short term / medium / long term goals and decide how much passion is required to achieve them. Please note every small step / success you achieve in your life would help in achieving your life time goal. Even 1000 miles starts with a single step.
If you see SAP SCN Community, there are many passionate people working tirelessly day and night out of their hectic schedules only with a passion to share their knowledge and give benefit the future generations. Nobody would have imagined when they started that SAP SCN would become this much successful. Probably, this is the only platform, where thousands of consultants meet on a daily basis and share their knowledge. There are few thousands of people who worked tirelessly with passion to provide this SCN Platform and we all must be immensely thankful to those people. Today SAP is providing bread and butter for millions of people across the globe directly and indirectly. SAP is not just a product or a software, it is something which transformed the people lives. If you want to be a real good SAP consultant for life then take that challenge with passion. Learn tirelessly, never be shameful to ask something which you does not know, never hesitate to help people, never think twice to share knowledge. If you do these things with your heart, you will not find a successful person than you. "Always give your best" and "do not take success to your head and failure to your heart, but treat both of them as your eyes". Recently, I am fortunate enough to read the great quote from Winston Churchill, "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm". If you take this quote to your heart, then no failure can stop you at all.
There may few millions of people directly or indirectly working for SAP. But, if you see only few people are passionate about SAP. They do not see SAP as a product, it is something beyond, they would always love the feeling of SAPian. When they see the logo of S A P it inspires them, when they heard the word S A P, all their intuitions works towards it. It is not because of the salary they are getting out of their SAP job, because it is the sole reason they love SAP too much. If you want to be part of those few consultants, there is no other go, but passionate enough to become part of those elite group of consultants. Change your perception and thinking towards SAP, do not think it as a job finder, but think it as a life changer. You would find many consultants working on SAP, but they would really not appreciate themselves to be a part of SAP. They would never try to explore what SAP does. The only thing you can learn SAP is to explore more and more. If you are a SAP consultant, but does not know how to log in or never bother to log into the system, then surely you are missing that passion, then the whole essence of your work / ethics are defeated. "Treat your work as God", surely you achieve something substantial in your career.
Sincerely hope the following points would give you enough passion to start, drive and excel your SAP career. Start your day in and out with SAP, do not much think about money, then you will dictate the terms.
SAP is beyond a product
Never think SAP is just a product. You always think that is something beyond your normal imagination. You need to develop that passion on each screen and each part of coding. If you just consider SAP as product or software to output your Client's reports, then you would never appreciate what its merits are. Never be shameful to say yourself as a SAP Consultant. You cannot be a complete consultant if you only talk and do not work on SAP. Always appreciate yourself in exploring the SAP capabilities. If you just think SAP as a product, by the time you leave your office, you will forget what it is. But, if you think something beyond normal product, then your brain and heart still thinks for that even if you leave your office, your thoughts would be roaming around SAP. You would be eager to come back to office and log in to the system, this is the starting point of your passion on SAP.
Enormous appetite for learning
SAP is an ocean. There is no end to it. With lot of technologies and modules around, it is always a challenge for the consultants to be at that pace. The skills and technologies are becoming redundant at much faster rate. You cannot claim to be a great SAP consultant, if you do not have appetite for such learning. Think beyond your technology and your module. The key strength of SAP is its integration with various modules and systems. Your knowledge should cut across all the modules. I understand that getting in depth knowledge in all the modules is not really possible, highly impossible. However, at least you should give your try to get the flavor and basic fundamentals of other modules and how they are being integrated with your core module. The future of SAP is analytic system, therefore, you should not confine yourself to just OLTP systems, but you should spend your appetite in learning OLAP systems.
Bread and butter provider
SAP is your bread and butter. Since you are committed for SAP career, you must always respect the technology you are working with. This respect would earn bread and butter, fulfil your career ambitions and your family prospects. You would unfortunately see many project managers or program managers without knowing how to log in to SAP. It would be painful to work with them when they claim to be managing a program, however, they really do not know the basics of the system. You should always be proud enough to say that you are a SAP consultant. SAP is a profession like any other profession which provides their lively hood. Therefore, it is the time for us to respect it as our bread and butter provider.
Breathe in and breathe out
If you are really passionate enough for SAP professional, you would feel that SAP is coming in and coming out of your breath. If you do not trust my words, slowly close your eyes and take a deep breathe and leaving your breathe by saying SAP, then put down your feelings on a piece of paper. You may think I am more exaggerated, but if you are real passionate, then you would come to know what all SAP means. This is a miracle that has been developed by thousands of people with enormous hard work and you should appreciate and accept this is one of the best available ERP products on this earth. Therefore, you get up from sleep with feeling of SAP consultant and go to sleep with the same feeling.
Stretch beyond normal
You should always stretch beyond your normal limits in learning SAP, then the same rule you apply when you are in the profession. Constantly, you should remember, you are not in a profession to just work for 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. You always make team of similar mind set individuals and discuss about the functionality of the system, what possibilities are available in order to achieve or map complex business scenarios. You always try to reciprocate the sharing of knowledge with consultants from other modules. Try to grasp their knowledge and try to share your knowledge with them, so that both the parties will be benefited. Learn, learn, learn, is the only mantra for your success, for this learning, you need to stretch beyond any limits.
Listen before you talk
Being an SAP Consultant it is always your responsibility to listen to your colleagues, customers, team members and the people around you. Project implementations are always challenging and sometimes they are frustrating. You would find number of people around you, everybody is eager to project their own version of opinions. You always need to think by wearing their shoes and understand what they are saying. This would be a very difficult task, however, it would drive you towards perfection. The more you respect others thoughts and ideas, then it would help in increasing your patience levels and make you a complete personality. Passion gets birth from your listening skills.
Help people around you
We cannot inspire enough from objects like Candle and trees, as they always try to help or benefit others, even their life is going towards end. Trees will give you great tasty fruits, even it is getting lot of stone strokes. Similar way you have such passion to help others, in other way it would really benefit you. If your colleague is struggling with a problem, then you try to help, the more you help number of people, in turn it would help you to increase your knowledge levels. Tomorrow, if you get similar kind of problems, then you would be easily able to resolve them without taking help from any other people. Therefore, sharing knowledge and helping others would always help you in turn.
Make reading is part of life
We cannot live without sleep, drink and eating food. In the similar way, reading is also a habit. Like how our body requires food, water and sufficient sleep, our brain also requires enormous quantities of knowledge to be healthy. I am not sure about the other professions, where there is nothing much required use of thought process, but, surely and definitely, you have lot of brain work required in our profession. You need to read and go through lot of technical and other literature. Whatever be good technical consultant you are if you are unable to read few lines of documents / text, there is no use of your skills. Reading the literature in and around SAP areas, would keep you always fresh and gives you enough strength and confidence to sustain in this competitive world. Therefore, read everything with passion, but not with a compulsion. This habit would distinguish yourself as a passionate personality.
Be passionate
Be passionate in whatever your do, whether it is loving SAP, learning new things, working hard, enjoying team work, helping people, sharing knowledge, innovating new ideas and reading etc. Whether you are successful or not, your passion alone keeps you moving. Do not much bother about the success or failure. Nothing inspires you like success and nothing teaches you like a failure. Therefore, failure is also as important as success and you should not lose your interest when there is a failure. Failures are the stepping stones for your success in your future, therefore, in no way, you should not lose your passion for doing it again. If you apply the same passion in your SAP career, then nothing could ever able to stop you.
Explore the opportunities
To be successful in life, just passion may not be sufficient, but explore the opportunities around you. Every successful person, in addition to passion, explored the right opportunities at the right time. Opportunities does not always to be looking for new job, but also the way you helping other, the way you giving best solutions to the Clients. If you take every odd or hurdle with positive outlook, then it would become an opportunity for you. The most important thing is you should not lose your ethics and integrity while exploring the new opportunities. Keep passion in everything you do, explore opportunities and achieve dreams of your life.
