Read, think, act

What fascinates me about this episode is the stringent sequence of reading, thinking and acting. Referring to my profession of writing, I often like to say that SAP CEO Christian Klein works too much and reads too little. A few days ago, an SAP employee confirmed to me once again that the company lives in an echo chamber - completely isolated from the outside world.

In the summer of 2019, I had an interview with Christian Klein and spoke to him about the desolate state of Hana: Patches are coming in shorter and shorter intervals and support refuses to help if not all updates - up to the last one - are applied. Christian Klein countered that he only hears good and successful things from Hana.

Of course, we were both right: My interviewees are basic administrators as well as CIOs, and a journalist who has little idea is sometimes told the truth. Christian Klein's interlocutors are mainly at board level with their own echo chamber. When echo chamber meets echo chamber, the truth falls by the wayside.

Jürgen Habermas' decision to first accept and then reject a 225,000-euro prize from the Arab Emirates is for everyone to evaluate for themselves. One group believes that this can promote dialogue between the Occident and the Orient and thus positively influence democratic development.

Opposed to this is a group that fears that the award ceremony could become a fig leaf for an anti-democratic system. As a journalist, I have to side with the advocates of dialogue. In the case of Hong Kong and the democracy movement there, dialogue with China seems to have left no trace. Perhaps Jürgen Habermas ultimately thought similarly.

For all of them, the act of reading, reflecting, and acting is almost unique to Habermas. Reading and thinking afterwards, i.e. reflecting on what has been taken in order to generate instructions for action from it, sounds logical, but is hardly present anymore. Without sarcasm, therefore, the question must be asked: What does Christian Klein read and what does he think about?

At the moment, Klein is trapped in SAP's echo chamber. It became graphic during the "Rise with SAP" presentation: in a virtual room that could hardly be surpassed in terms of tastelessness and antiquatedness (open fireplace, plush carpeting, pristine nature with hints of American national parks outside the windows, etc.). Anyone who doesn't understand this criticism should take a look at any Apple presentation by Tim Cook from the past twelve months - and the SAP campus in Walldorf is definitely on a par with the -Apple architecture in this respect.

Christian Klein works too much and neglects his unfiltered and uncontrollable external contacts. Naturally, he cannot do without his bodyguards, but discussing only with selected existing customers or the head of the DSAG user association is too little. Out of gratitude for a new, open dialog, the SAP community should then purchase S/4 licenses, just as we must now, out of respect and appreciation, purchase Jürgen Habermas books.