Embedding effective DEI in APAC with SAP’s Paul Marriott [Podcast]

Phil Cross: Welcome to the Leaders for Good Podcast. Now we know a lot of you are new listeners, so first of all, a big warm welcome to you and if you’re unfamiliar with Leaders for Good, we are specialists in diversity, equity, inclusion, and culture change. So we work with organisations of all shapes and sizes to develop and deliver DEI strategies.

We roll out powerful workshops and experiences for team members, and we provide consulting and advisory services. My name is Phil Cross. You won’t be hearing from me, however, in today’s episode. You will luckily be hearing from my co-founder Kerry Boys, along with our Project Director Veronica Llorca-Smith.

And today they talked to Paul Marriott. Paul is President Asia-Pacific Japan for SAP. Now, this is a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation with Paul, touching on his journey in DEI and how he came to be such a passionate advocate and supporter. We talked about the regional differences in diversity, equity and inclusion in Japan and Asia Pacific.

We touched on the tech sector. So what are the particular nuances, challenges, and opportunities when it comes to DEI and tech? We look at some of the wonderful initiatives that they’re rolling out at SAP well worth the lesson to that portion of the podcast amongst many other things such as how you scale DEI at large complex organisations like SAP, how you learn from mistakes, how you think about role modelling.

This is a podcast not to be missed. We recommend grabbing yourself a pen and paper as there will be plenty of things you want to take notes on. Without further ado, we bring you this conversation with Paul Marriott.

Kerry Boys: So both of you, welcome to Sydney. Thank you for being here.

Paul Marriott: Great to be here. Thank you for having me and being together.

Kerry Boys: It feels good.

So Paul, we’d love to start by asking you about why diversity, equity and inclusion is important to you. And when we met, you told us a really interesting story about how this came to really matter.

Paul Marriott: Yeah. Well, look, firstly, again, thanks Kerry for having such a, an important discussion. It is a topic very, very close to my heart and I think the way that you understand why it’s important, right? You have to unravel yourself. A little bit. Right. And go back to what’s your core beliefs? What are the things that you’re deeply connected to?

So, I’m over 50, so I break my life down into kind of three big chunks. And I grew up in a, a very working class family. My parents were actually divorced. So, when I was young, I watched I watched my Mum actually, you know, kind of hold down like multiple jobs and, you know, to make sure that me and my brother were, were well catered for.

And I think what you take away from growing up in an environment like that is a lot about financial inclusion and, and opportunity, right? That, if you don’t have, can make life actually very tough. So that’s really at the foundation. And I guess the first thing I was all about was how do I get that financial stability and make sure that you, you set, you set yourself up for that success.

I fell into the tech industry, so I wasn’t probably aware of my tech passions until I got into university. I did a degree in machine learning and artificial intelligence. This was like 25 plus years ago. And I was really, really motivated by what technology could do. And that is again, a, something that I’m really passionate about.

So then that allowed me to get into the tech industry. Of course, that’s a, that’s a very buoyant and lucrative industry, so it gives you that financial stability and growth, and driving and, and using technology, right? To drive business was what I was really passionate about. I think in the last 10 years. It comes down to how do you use talent and create an opportunity for talent in our industry combined with technology to have social impact. And the big opportunity I have in a role like what I’ve got at SAP, it’s a big organisation, is doing that at scale. So the headline that you want to create is, you know, how do you create an environment across all the communities in Asia where people combined with technology, can have profound impact.

You know, whether it’s environment, whether it’s workforce equality, any type of sustainability driven topic right, is, is, is what I get the opportunity to do. So that’s, that’s where it all stems from, and that’s, that’s where the passion comes from, you know, every day to get you outta bed and excited about what I get to do at SAP.

So I feel very lucky, very lucky.

Veronica Llorca-Smith: Thank you so much for sharing with you your, background and personally I’m very excited to talk to you about DEI and tech. I have a, a background in tech as well. I used to work at Apple in the leadership for seven years in Hong Kong. And so to frame the conversation about today, we’re gonna talk about DEI in the region in Asia Pacific. We’re gonna go deeper than into the industry in tech and then SAP. But before we do that, we’re gonna talk about the elephant in the room. So as a white man, leading….

Paul Marriott: I’m the elephant in the room.

Veronica Llorca-Smith: Exactly. The DEI effort. Yeah. Have you faced any challenge and what does that look like?

Paul Marriott: It’s, look, it is a really good question and it’s one that I’ve thought about a lot and we might come back and maybe, yeah, there’s things I can share with you as we go through.

Honestly, for me, where I’ve got to is that everybody has the opportunity to contribute, and I think when you’ve got that mindset, you know, colour, creed, nationality, culture, You know, it’s all, it’s all an opportunity, right? The greatest gift that we have as a human race is diversity. Now then as a over 50 white male in an industry that has an association with that demographic, there’s no doubt that what I think you have to do is, is be extremely focused on how you then drive diversity and demonstrate day in, day out through your behaviours, how you want to create that highly, diverse environment through, through, through inclusion.

So it’s like a blessing and a curse. The, the curse is I’m the elephant in the room. The blessing is if you absolutely acknowledge that proactively, That as an over white, I’m more, I’m more motivated, more excited about this topic than I’ve ever been. And I feel I can do more to support it than I ever could have done in the past.

And as long as you have that belief and passion, I think you, you can, anybody can then drive that, you know, drive that progress. So, yeah, it’s a great question and I can give you some so maybe some learnings. As we go through where I’ve had some bumps on that exact topic.

Kerry Boys: Thank you for sharing so honestly. It is a really a tough challenge. And yeah, I love that you spent time thinking about it and I think even, even that shows that you’re quite advanced on, on this journey. So it’s great to get to talk to you about that. And yeah, we’d love to hear some examples as we go through.
We thought we’d start by thinking about tech. Tech is a unique industry. We work with quite a lot of tech clients. We love it. But what are the key DEI challenges that you see in the tech world?

Paul Marriott: So look, you know, the, the, when I came into the industry, it was predominantly, Male oriented and, and more western oriented. Although now you see, like in Asia, 70% of the, the world’s STEM talent is graduating out of Asia.

It’s very non-western. In fact, it’s, it’s very skewed towards Asia and what an incredible opportunity, right? Cause you’re tapping into so many different nationalities and cultures that can bring so much more than just their technology prowess, but, but also, you know, they’re different points of view, right? That’s really the real power of diversity.

The challenge is, is that how do you then get that into the tech industry in a quicker and faster way so that there is the heritage, but how do you accelerate that through and how do you help an organisation. Sustain then doing that in a, in a scalable way, because as you bring in more diversity, it is more difficult to manage.

You know, that’s constructive tension that comes through having a more diverse team requires a different, type of leadership. More purposeful, more belief led leadership. You have to work a lot with leadership. And managers to be able to then make sure that that environment is constructive and healthy for everybody.
And that, that’s, that’s a big part of the challenge. It’s one that I love dealing with every day. And when you get that right and when you’re willing to just continue to learn, then I think you just continue to get more and more scale. And we’re seeing that, we’re seeing that change. My Southeast Asia business is already has gender parity, you know, in both the leadership and across the whole market unit, right. Which, it’s absolutely doable.

Kerry Boys: And that’s amazing because one of the things we find with tech organisations is, if just on the gender point specifically, is it’s very easy to say there’s no women in tech. And to use that as a reason to not have gender parity, to not have enough women in technology. And actually what we’ve found as an organisation we worked with recently who told us that they had 20% women in tech after five months, we had 40% of their workforce were, or the people being recruited in were female.

Yes. So it’s just a change of a change of mindset there.

Paul Marriott: I think there’s, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, I mean here in Australia right, you have ICT Explorers, right? Great example where you see great, great diversity in the talent that comes through a program like that. The image a great example is, is how as a company do you present yourself to the marketplace, and this is where you get into these unconscious biases.
Just in the way you brand and present yourself is really important. You take something as simple as a job description. A job description for many years in our industry has been oriented towards a male. So we do things like look at the, we have tooling that allows us to create non-biased job descriptions.

We think a lot about our employee value proposition and how that brand is presented to the marketplace to make it sure it’s truly representing the diversity that we have established and want to continue to establish. So yeah, you, you have to have a long-term strategy. To really think about how you present yourself to the market, you have to look at every single people process and make sure it’s truly, truly inclusive.

You have to always be mindful that there is bias in the system, and as long as you’re continually doing that, those inclusive processes, right, become more, more effective truly bringing in then the diverse talent. It’s, yeah, that’s what we’re currently doing. We need to keep doing it, you know, more and more Right. To get the scale.

Kerry Boys: Yeah. And it’s an ongoing task.

Paul Marriott: Yes.

Kerry Boys: It’s never, going to be done.

Paul Marriott: It’s, yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s always, it’s, it’s continuous forever. Yeah.

Kerry Boys: One thing I’d just love to pick up on that you said a moment ago was around the fact that actually diversity. Having more diversity can be hard, and we have to encourage this constructive disagreement and we talk about it as friction.

There’s like extra friction in the organisation and that’s a really good thing. Yeah. So when we see organisations where there’s no disagreement, it tends to be either you’ve got homogenous organisation and everyone thinks the same, or you’ve got no psychological safety. Yeah. So we’re always saying actually constructive disagreement is really positive.

Yeah. How do you go about encouraging that? So you just said you loved it. We love it as well.

Paul Marriott: Radical candour. Radical candour is, so first of all, you got to create the psychological safety. It’s hard to have constructive tension or radical candour if you don’t have the psychological safety, which means that you have to create teams that are very comfortable where you get a hundred percent participation.

When you know, you talk about, you know, bringing your whole self to work. For people to bring their whole self to work, they have to feel very comfortable. That their point of view is heard and listened to in a professional and constructive way, even if that point of view is completely, you know, going against someone else’s view.

Now as a leader there’s a number of things you can do today, firstly, you need to establish I always feel I, it’s good to establish a connection to an individual’s beliefs. So really what is driving. You know, what is driving the people in my team that I manage every day? And when you start making that connection, there’s a, there’s a stronger bond in terms of the types of discussions that you have because people then are really connected to the passions and the beliefs, right?

That then in our industry, we’re tackling every day. And then as a leader, it’s about how do you draw out all of that talent into the discussion. There’s always someone in the meeting that perhaps is not saying as much as others. So how is really as a leader what you’re doing is facilitating, getting everybody to the table?
So I often look at the meetings that I’m in and a judge of my success or how a judge myself against the successes. Have I got every single person participating? Who’s the, who’s the protagonist in the room that’s got a brilliant alternative point of view, but for some reason doesn’t feel comfortable bringing that point of view to the table, perhaps cuz of some other personalities in the room that have, you know, that are always, always presenting their points of view. So it’s, it’s about, you know, creating that balance and that environment and that safety through the connection, and then you start to get the magic happening, right, in terms of people’s, alternative views on, on how you tackle a challenge or a problem.

Veronica Llorca-Smith: So Paul, I think you have a very difficult job. Really, DEI is a very complex topic as we are discussing and then we’re talking about DEI in an industry that makes it also very complex in tech. And there’s an additional challenge, which is the region that you’re managing. It’s not only a huge region, but it’s extremely diverse.

You have Pacific, you have Northern Asia, you have Southeast Asia. So how do you look at that from a DEI standpoint? What are the commonalities, but also what are the challenges of understanding the local nuances?

Paul Marriott: Yeah, I, so I think I’ve got like, The best job. Right. I love it. And because, you know, in if you have an opportunity to have an impact around these topics, right?

That’s, of course, it’s a challenge. But for me, that’s the opportunity, right. Which I, I mean, it’s, it’s the most important topic every day, right? That you thrive with. You’re right the region is very diverse, but that’s also the beauty of the region, right? I get an advantage. I see that as an advantage because I have Japanese, I have Korean, and I have all the Southeast Asian countries, India, Australia, and New Zealand.

I’ve got diversity already through nationality. I see that as a differentiator, but maybe you have to see it as a differentiator. Maybe my, that’s where my mindset’s got to that I know when you get participation across that geographic diversity, you will get a better outcome.

Now, nuances, as you know, getting a Japanese non-English speaker or a Korean non-English speaker to participate in the same way as an English-speaking Indian or an, or an Australian or a Kiwi.

That’s, that’s the challenge because if your native language, and we speak English as a standard language in SAP, so the native speakers by default sort of, have a better opportunity to be vocal. So you have to be mindful of that. And you also, you also have to remove the bias that the way things are said for a non-native speaker is perhaps going to be said a little bit differently.

Right? So you, it’s, you know, the, the eloquence of how things are said is not really the point. It’s what they’re saying. And the content of what they’re saying is more important than how they say it. So when you take that into context of English speakers, non-English speakers, right, you remove, you start to remove that bias.

And just, just really giving non-English speakers, you know, making sure that they get the opportunity to speak and represent, you know, represent their points of view in a meeting is, it’s easy to do, but you just have to make sure it happens. Now, that’s one example of where you’re, where you’re managing, say just language.

Veronica Llorca-Smith: And just wanted to say thank you because as a non-native speaker myself, it’s great to see that this is something that companies are acknowledging and are really trying to advocate for.

Paul Marriott: Yeah, no, absolutely. I see cases where a Japanese leader will have, I have a Japanese leader who is unbelievably brilliant at what he does, and he speaks good English.

I could put him with an Australian leader and because it takes him longer to get his point of view across, an Australian leader may be less patient to go through that process of listening. Understanding and then actually realising that this is a fantastic point of view. So what my role is, is to continue to coach and facilitate that across the different nationalities, right?

So then you get the best of the best. And it’s, it’s really just being aware of the bias, right? There’s an unconscious bias there around just language. So you become aware of it, you educate the team on it, and then you cross the chasm, right? In terms of how that communication gets, gets better and better around those different points of view.

Phil Cross: If you like what you’ve heard so far in the podcast and are looking for new ways to bring diversity, equity, and inclusion to life in your organisation, why not reach out for a chat at Leaders for Good? We offer a range of solutions from diversity, equity, inclusion, strategy, sprints through to inclusive leadership workshops to DEI training for your whole organisation.

So if that sounds good, drop us an email at [email protected].

Kerry Boys: Thank you for sharing that, and I think we’re gonna dig into it in more detail as we start to think about SAP and the work that you’re doing there. So I know you’ve got three core pillars. If you could talk to us a bit about those and then maybe some examples of some of the forward thinking work you’re doing in DEI.

So you mentioned some of the stuff around talent strategy and recruitment, which is awesome. But some of the other examples you shared a bit higher up the maturity levels in DEI.

Paul Marriott: Yeah.

Kerry Boys: So we’d love to hear, yeah. Tell us about the pillars and, and what are some of these more advanced initiatives you’re doing that could inspire others?

Paul Marriott: Very good. So we, yes, absolutely. So we, SAP we have a corporate strategy, you know, help the world run better and improve people’s lives is our vision in Asia. For me, it’s all about empowering Asia’s sustainable future. And I have a strategy that has three Ps as you referenced, so purpose, people and partnerships.

So people is, one of those three Ps and obviously are very primary. It’s central to everything you do with your workforce. The reason why I have these three Ps is as I mentioned before, I feel that. A great workforce is one that is connected to belief. So for me, everything starts with purpose.

You know, what’s the purpose or, what’s the purpose of the organisation? And then how can employees be connected and contribute to that, where that’s connected to their beliefs. So we mentioned this before, it could be around, you know, gender equality. It could be around, you know, multi-generational, it could be around environment and all the topics around emissions and waste and so on.
So the reason why that’s so relevant also to Asia is that we are the most polluting region. In the world where double the emission rates of Europe and North America combined because of the manufacturing base we have in Asia and we’re pretty much half the world’s pollution. That’s, that’s a problem, but it’s also a huge opportunity.

So I honestly believe that the ESG and sustainability will be won and lost in this part of the world. Now we’ve also got the most populous region and we have the most populous young talent in Asia as well. So this 70% of the world’s STEM talent coming out of Asia as a result of that young population, that young population is extremely motivated.

With their connected to belief to create a, a better planet, a better environment. The, the, the young people you talk to coming outta universities interestingly, are very driven by that, sustainability and, and creating a better environment and a better planet for everybody. So we’ve got young people the most populous young people. We’ve got this big sustainability problem. We also have, from a partnership perspective in, in Asia, the highest levels of technology innovation. So you think about the startup communities and the, the rate of acceleration of technology innovation in Asia. It is, off the scale, the amount of private equity investment flowing into the region is higher than it’s ever been before, and that’s because there’s so much raw talent creating technology, you know, to have business impact.

You combine these three things together. You’ve got the perfect environment to have profound impact on, on the environment and, and topics around things like sustainability. So that’s, that’s the strategy. When you’ve got a strategy like this and people understand it and get connected to it, that drives the inclusion. The more diversity I can get into the workforce and with our ecosystem to then drive those topics of innovation and sustainability to drive impact, you drive more inclusion, you get more diversity, and it, it actually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you like, in terms of how you drive that more and more at scale.
So having the strategy gives something for people to be connected to. They can see how they contribute in their way, their team contributes and organisation contributes, and then the whole region contributes. Right? And that’s what really creates the scale.

Kerry Boys: Yep. That’s great. And what about some of those examples of some sort of DEI led initiatives that you’re running?

You have some great ones.

Paul Marriott: Yeah, so we’ve done, so we’ve got the Business Women’s Network that’s a really, really active community right across the region. And what I love about the, the Business Women’s Network is of, you know, it’s, it’s very geared to, to helping women be successful in our industry, leading, participating but there’s an increasing male membership to that community as well.
So, you know, and I, I really encourage, males to be involved in supporting that community. Which, so in the early days it was very female dominated, and now you see a much better mix of males and females and the support for females, you know, as part of that network. So that’s a great way of, of sharing. We bring in female, you know industry leaders, you know, to talk, I mean, you know, having children, taking time out, getting back into the workplace. Unconscious bias, you know, all of these topics are discussed to support women in the business. So that, that’s a great one.

We do other programs around early talents. So we have a very significant graduate intake program where we have an academy. We have a graduate academy that accelerates, the exposure to the business for, for young talent to come in and, and thrive as quickly as possible, which they love and we love and we benefit from. And we do, I kicked off a program last year, which I called 35 under 35 because what I realised was I didn’t have enough young or early talent in the leadership ranks. So the, the leadership of SAP tends to have a higher average age from a tenure perspective, and I want to bring in younger people into the leadership. So my 35, under 35 was go out and find people under the age of 35 years old and put a, an accelerated program around their development.
From a, from a leadership perspective, we. 50 to 60 people in this program, and we’ve had enormous success with accelerating then talent that’s below 35 into management roles. And that, that’s made a big difference, right? In terms of, incubating and supporting emerging leadership within the company, right, that we need for the future.

So these are. Two or three examples of many that we’re doing.

Kerry Boys: I’m just gonna touch on one more that you mentioned previously, because it wasn’t just about driving inclusion internally at SAP, but you’re thinking about how you can use your power to make impact beyond. So you, you talked about the opportunity where you’re providing education and in digital access for underprivileged girls, and that’s an amazing one.

Yes. I’d love you just to talk to that a little bit. 

Paul Marriott: Yeah, thank you for reminding me. So a great project is, so the Nanhi Kali project in India. For any of the listeners that have spent any time in India, it’s a, it’s a beautiful, beautiful country.

I absolutely love visiting there, but it has some major poverty challenges. And, if you’ve ever gone into the, the shanty areas of India where you’ve got literally hundreds of thousands of people, right, that are living below the poverty line, the shanty in Mumbai is particularly acute. And what we’ve established there through a partnership with, with customers is getting into the schools that are inside these shanties where we provide technology, you know, we take reused, laptops or technology that’s going to go to landfill, or we take low cost technology devices.
So we give them, we create that digital inclusion in terms of the technology, and then we provide the educational support and we focused on girls because in India in reality, living in that environment, you are likely to not get the educational support. You are likely, unfortunately to end up essentially having, having children and perpetuating the problem.

Whereas if we can break that cycle with women at that age, and when you go and visit and you see it, it’s like amazing. You know, these girls are just like, Beautiful, engaged, capable people, and you get the opportunity through technology then to, to create opportunity for them. So that’s a, great example of tapping into a community that wouldn’t normally have that access.
And then we, we see those girls going, you know, literally out of the shanties and having the opportunity for that financial stability and inclusion into the tech industry. So that’s a great one.

A second one is, we found a platform that was, established and supported by UNICEF.

It was out of Africa, and it’s linked to an initiative called Generations Unlimited. This is, it’s similar. It’s all about, identifying less privileged communities’ young people that don’t have even the basic skills, to get into the tech industry. So we, we find them, we start to develop basic communication skills and then you start to build very basic technology skills and then you start layering that up for us. Obviously, we can start to establish SAP skills, but we’re piloting that now in the Philippines. And as we learn more about how we get into those communities and then accelerate them and, and drive that digital inclusion, we’ll look to, you know, expand that right, right around the region.

So, that’s a, that’s a great one as well.

Kerry Boys: We are really passionate about that 50% of our profits go to similar initiatives. So Beautiful. It’s, yeah, big passion area for us. Yeah.

Veronica Llorca-Smith: So I would like to go back to the strategy piece, and there is one word that you use that is scale and scale is really a challenge when we’re talking to many of our clients, particularly large organisations, from the strategy. If you want to really. Have an effective execution, you need to be able to scale. So can you tell us a little bit more what that looks like in such a large organisation and with so many countries? More than 10, I guess.

Paul Marriott: Yeah, so I maybe I talk about scaling two different ways. So as the, as the leader of the region, it starts with me and what I do and how I behave.
So one of the ways I believe you get scale is that by me establishing diversity, the driving inclusion and creating diversity at my level. I, I have a belief that that then drives through the organisation. You have to lead by example. So for example, I inherited a, a leadership team that was around about a 70 30 split from a gender perspective.

We had markets like Southeast Asia that had historically been led by a non Asian leader, typically a, a Western leader. So, since I inherited that team, I now have gender parity. So I have a 50 50 split between male, male and female leaders. And every market is led by someone from the market. So my Southeast Asian business is led by a Singaporean, my Korean business by a Korean, Indian by Indian, Aussie, Australian by Australian. So Japan by Japan.

So this, once you establish that and you demonstrate. And you see the higher levels of business performance and people start to realise that that comes from the diversity that you’ve created. It becomes a ripple effect. It’s the penny drop moment for, you know, then others to see, well, hey, you’ve got a highly diverse team that you’ve created through very inclusive engagement, and that’s actually driving higher business performance and this is fantastic, right? Cuz then you start to see that go through the rest of the organisation. It takes time. I always want it to go faster, but it, you know, it absolutely works to lead it from the top.
The second thing is, I would almost say is like bottom up. So I see pockets of brilliant work done within a team where you’ve just, again, got the mindset and the connection to this topic where things within certain teams get done, where it creates exactly the same highly inclusive, highly diverse team, and brilliant you know, business performance outcome.

So what’s really important is to constantly look, looking for those teams all the time and pulling that as best practice showcasing. Recognising those teams. And again, that just builds like a grassroots approach to, you know, from the organisation on getting more and more people inspired to do that. Sharing ideas, use them as coaches and champions. Corporate rebels, I always like to call them, find these corporate rebels on this topic. Let them be the advocates, right, through grassroots type initiatives. So do it from lead, from the top, and then grassroots from the bottom. And if you can help me go, make it go even faster, I’d love to get more advice from listeners.

Veronica Llorca-Smith: Absolutely. That’s a different conversation.

Paul Marriott: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Kerry Boys: And what I love is you just described the sort of combination of top-down and bottom up, and of course we absolutely need those. One of the questions I was going to ask you was, where does DEI responsibilities sit at SAP? And I think what I love is you’ve articulated it as you’ve taken a real responsibility there as a regional lead, which is amazing.

Do you have any kind of official DEI lead roles internally at global or regional or country level. How does that work in terms of sort of KPI-ed DEI responsibility?

Paul Marriott: Yeah, so it’s a very good question. Cuz I believe that I am responsible for it and I believe every single person that works for SAP’s responsible for it.

So my default is that we are all responsible. And only then will you have true inclusion and diversity .Now, and unfortunately we don’t have that pervasiveness today. We’re getting a whole lot better. We have it in certain parts of the business more than others, and we will get there. To help facilitate that we do have, a global, what we call Diversity and Inclusion Leader. And we have representatives both at the regional level for Asia Pacific, Japan, and, and at the country level. And we then build communities around those individuals that, you know, become the champions and the advocates and the catalysts, you know, to help drive and be the catalyst for change.

That, that really helps because they do look at the data. They are looking at, you know, what is, what is the gender mix, what is the generational or the nationality mix and so on LGBT and, and, and inclusion across all of the different dimensions. So they’re, they’re governing, if you like, where we’re at and supporting where we’re going as a very scalable program. You asked about scalability. They, they help create scale because when this is happening all around the world through different communities, you know, black inclusion in North America is not necessarily something that, I have, an issue with in, in Asia. But I can learn from a program like that, and that’s where that, or that D&I, organisation helps share all of those best practices, not just in Asia, but around the world.

So it does, it does make a difference. But I would love to come to a day where you don’t need that to move the needle. But it, it’s, it’s important. It helps create the catalyst and, and drive the, the scalable programs. But ultimately you wanna make that function redundant in reality, where, when then we’re all owning it, every day.

So we’ll get there.

Kerry Boys: How far off making that redundant do you reckon? We are, and I’m not gonna ask you necessarily at SAP, but, but as a, as a global community?

Paul Marriott: I might contradict myself here a little bit because. There’s probably duty of care to always have governance around it. Like anything, when you’re, when you’re running any, any large scale business, I, I have a general philosophy that you trust first and then you govern as needed.

But even on the basis of establishing a high level of trust around inclusion and diversity. Actually, you probably do always need some independent governance, which is, is what our D&I team continue to maintain and ensure. So maybe it’s, maybe it’s a nirvana for it to be made redundant. And, and maybe my colleagues in that part of the business probably don’t want to hear me saying that.
So it, it’ll always likely be an important part cuz there’s always some other element of diversity, right? That you can be maturing and developing. So yeah, may, maybe I’m contradicting myself a little bit there. The nirvana hopefully you wouldn’t need it, but look, we’ll get to a high level of scale where they will still always create value right around these programs.

You know, it’s, it’s, there’s always gonna be another challenge in the future. Perhaps we don’t even. we’re not even aware of yet. Right. That they can help us tackle as well.

Kerry Boys: Yeah. It’s an area that changes so quickly. I think I, I’m with you. I think it’s gonna be an endless journey. My answer to that question before would’ve been a long time.

Paul Marriott: Yes.

Kerry Boys: But, I think you’re right. I think it’s, it’s a, yeah, a journey that needs, that needs focus. We know what we measure. Yeah. It’s focused on, and if we’ve got people there. I also just want to reiterate what you said there around. What a traditionally DEI leads you articulated them as a support role for everyone else.

And that is a really beautiful flip on how most organisations talk about it. Most organisations talk about these people as driving, actually thinking of supporting the entire ecosystem and everyone within the business is such a great way to think about it.

Paul Marriott: Yeah, yeah. I, last week I was, so, Supriya, who leads this for us globally, We were going through the what I call the Asia now strategy, these three Ps, the people pillars, you know, a big part of that.

So she’s completely connected into my strategy and then with her leadership and her team, you know, how do we accelerate, right? It’s a partnership of acceleration. So there’s, everybody’s agreed to the, to the outcome. How do you together, I mean, better. Always right. And I, I, so it does make a difference and I do think we should sustain it on a long-term basis cuz there’ll always be a topic, there’ll always be an improvement that you can make.

I mean, you can, you can never stop improving a workforce environment, right. For people to be successful in.

Veronica Llorca-Smith: And talking about Improving and learning. You talked about learning from America for example, but we also believe that Leaders for Good that learning, it also goes with making mistakes and it’s a healthy way of learning.

Paul Marriott: Mm-hmm.

Veronica Llorca-Smith: Especially in DEI, we all make mistakes. We all say the wrong things unintentionally, so I’m putting you a little bit on the spot, but I love you to share some of the learnings and mistakes along the way.

Paul Marriott: And I think we, so in SAP we do reasonably well on this, this concept of, you know, the kind of failure culture and then learning and, you know, innovation generally comes from failing many, many times, right?
I mean, and being comfortable with that, but always being able to be in an environment right where you stand back up. And you, you, you positively move forward from that experience. I think, I think we continue to wanna improve on that type of an environment around, D&I specifically, you asked me about the white elephant in the room, so this is a good one.

So when I first took on this role, I was very clear in my mind that I wanted to focus on gender and generational. So in these large forums where you’ve got literally thousands of employees coming into some kind of a town hall. Um you know, for, for a discussion, you know, on a quarterly basis when I talked about people, I talked only about gender diversity and, you know, getting women into management and getting gender parity, you know, across the business and about bringing early talent in.

And I talked to that topic so much. That I was actually excluding all of the other, constituents, including the 50 year old white males or 40 year old white males, which, which the industry and, and SAP still has a significant community around. And what I realised was that, my intent was the right one, but also you’ve gotta bring everybody along. And some of those, some of those communities were feeling that, hey, if, if I’m not one of the focus communities, my opportunity for growth in SAP is, is not as significant. So we so, so then I realized, and it was Simon Fuller, who you may or may not know, he’s a very famous British, he goes and finds talent in the music industry, right? Simon Fuller. And he, shared with me his inclusion approach around finding talent in the music industry. And he found technology was an incredible way of identifying new talent that he’d never had access to that talent before, right?

Cause it suddenly gave him, gave him a global platform to find talent. And it was a penny drop moment where I realised everything’s actually about inclusion. It’s all about how do you create the most inclusive process and an environment whereby you maximize the opportunity for anybody to be successful.
So whether that’s the male community, over 50, over 40 female, nationality, gender, LGBT and of course we do a lot of, a lot of work with, other aspects of diversity like autism, for example, in our industry is a fantastic opportunity. Right. So, you know, we are, we’re doing a lot of work to bring, people that are on the spectrum in, into SAP to contribute in a really positive way.
It, it’s about inclusion. And if you get inclusion right, diversity will come. And then you maybe have the focus groups around where you’d want to accelerate that, for example, around women in leadership or early talent and emerging talent. And I found that once, once, once you realised that that’s what you were creating, that’s where the real scale happened.

So that was a big learning for me. Big learning. I learned the hard way, because you get some pretty tough feedback from those constituents that don’t feel like they’re being given the same opportunity. And I learned that and I took the feedback and I failed, and I’ve picked myself up and, and now I think that constituent is actually not only supported, of, not only thriving with the opportunity for their own growth, but supporting everyone else’s growth as well.
So, bought into the strategy of D&I, as well as having the opportunity themselves to be successful irrespective of the demographic.

Kerry Boys: Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, so honestly, and it’s a challenge we see lots of organisations face, which is we think about diversity and inclusion and we go straight into demographic dimensions, demographic groups. And actually, one of our key principles is that’s really important, but actually if we can set up the sort of foundations for inclusion, because some things like inclusive behaviour are, are all obviously, consistent across all those groups. If we can set up those foundations and then we can almost build on top of those foundations with specific groups, it makes everything much more powerful.

So I, I really love what you’ve just said about how can we use inclusion generally, demonstrate it benefits everyone and then we can deep dive where we need to.

Paul Marriott: Yeah, and it’s, it’s everything from talking over someone in a meeting. Right. Someone has a, in quotes, stronger personality. They interrupt someone, they talk over someone else, or they actually represent an idea that someone else has said, but they get credit for it.

These are all those sort of unconscious biases where if you work on those from a behavioural perspective, the behavioural science, the neuroscience behind that, You also get significantly improved inclusion. So you’re absolutely right, right? This, this has comes in many different forms and we’ve done some great work around neuroscience, unconscious bias, helping people understand that that exists ,step one.

Step two, calling it out. So building the confidence of the psychological safety to call out those behaviours. And then over time course correcting that, right? So you have true inclusion in every interaction, which is, you know, obviously that’s got nothing to do with a particular demographic. It’s, it’s actually to do with the behaviours.

So yeah. That’s a, that’s a whole topic in itself.

Kerry Boys: It is. There’s so much more we could, we could dig into, but what I think we’ll do now, cause we’ve covered a lot, is just ask, what is your biggest takeaway from this conversation? If you wanted to leave the audience with one thing to think about, what would that be?

Paul Marriott: So look, firstly, thank you for just having me to have the conversation and for all the listeners, you know, I hope what I can share is useful to you. And I always just hope that I can, you know, also get continued feedback right, from others that are, are passionate about this topic. But I guess in closing, my, my advice is, firstly, be clear about your own belief and your own purpose. You have to dig deep. You have to be vulnerable, and you, you have to be clear about what it is that’s driving you as a leader, because until you do that, it’s very hard to be authentic about these topics with everybody else, right within the workforce. That, that would be my step one.

Once you’ve, once you’ve established that, Go and find out what all of the people that work for you, what are their beliefs, and encourage them to do the same thing. And this starts to create the psychological safety. And then of course, you know, start to drive, you know, the, the programs and the initiatives, right?
That then moves the needle, you know, on the, on the demographics or the behaviours and, and then, Live up to the behaviours, you know, be, behave in the way that you want the organisation to behave, right? You really must lead by example and, demonstrate that and show it. And then I think you get the followership and and the progress.

Kerry Boys: Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing that and a really like thought through way of, of ending to give people some really clear actions they can take. So as a final thing from us then we’d love to ask you a couple of getting to know you question.

Paul Marriott: There we go.

Kerry Boys: Ready? So we’ll start with what obsessions do you explore on evenings and weekends?

So when you’re not driving good and inclusion at SAP, what are you up to?

Paul Marriott: Oh, so I, I actually read I do read quite a few books, so, cuz this stuff is, is, it is an interesting topic I just read Rebel Talent which is a great book in terms of challenging the workforce around, you know, some of that, some of those topics I’ve, I’ve discussed.

I’m also, I’m a very passionate rugby fan. I’m a rugby coach. I used to play, so I, I coach rugby in you know of kids of all ages, but youth rugby and I do that because I love the sport. I love team. But it’s also an opportunity to work with, youths, they’re both male and female where you can not just help them with the rugby, you can help them with some of the life skills, right?

And you can spot mental health and have, have an impact, you know, in a, in a different way. So I, I do a lot of that. That’s a big passion for me. So yeah, the, they’re two, two things that keep me occupied outside of SAP.

Veronica Llorca-Smith: Next question. What are some of the organisations that inspire you in terms of the good that they do in the world?

Paul Marriott: I was reading about, well, I was reading about Twilio recently, and I really liked, some of the really simple behaviours that they’d established. They have this you, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll like this one, Kerry. They talk about no shenanigans. I don’t know how that translates into all the languages around the world but it was a, a value and a behaviour where kind of a no nonsense, right? So if you, if you’re in a situation and it cans like, kind of feels like it’s getting political or people are not getting to the point, right? You have this notion, shenanigans, slogan if you like, that’s established like a value. So, I love reading about companies like that and leaders that establish that type of culture.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, right? So you can have an amazing strategy, but the culture can destroy it. That’s the stuff that, but that’s the behavioural science stuff, right? Is that I, I find that stuff, super fascinating. Not sure if I answered your question , but…

Kerry Boys: You get to answer closing questions however you want.

Paul Marriott: Yeah. So, yeah, so Twilio is a company that I look at and I think, you know, you, you know, you’ve got a great workforce culture. It just happened to one that I read about recently, but I, I love companies that establish that. For me, like as a, as a tech company, there’s three things you’ve gotta do.

You’ve gotta have great products that your customers love. Even more so you have gotta have great people that your customers love, that deliver the products and the service. And when you’ve got those things, then you have the right to have a cultural connection with those organisations around impact. So any, anything, any companies that establish that, our customers inspire me when we get that level of connection.

Other tech organisations and of course other organisations in general. Right. When you see that connection, I find that super motivating. And there’s lots, lots of, lots of customers and companies that are establishing and, and doing that right. Very motivating, big and small.

Kerry Boys: Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing and thank you for joining us on The Leaders For Good Podcast. It’s been a wonderful conversation. You’ve helped me think differently about a couple of things, particularly about how we think about our DEI leads within organisations and, and actually positioning them as championing and supporting. So thank you very much for joining us.
Veronica Llorca-Smith: Thank you very much.

Paul Marriott: Thank you, Kerry. Thank you, Veronica. Always better together and an absolute pleasure. Thank you for spending the time.

To all the listeners out there, good luck and love to engage online or through social or any other mechanism where we can connect and advance this crucially important topic.

Kerry Boys: Perfect. Thank you so much.

Phil Cross: If you found this episode, The best way to support us and spread the message is by telling a friend or a colleague. You can also give us a rating or a comment on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you’d like to learn more about Leaders For Good and how you can start making positive change, head on over to leadersforgood.org and join our free community.