Case study
SAP — Learning Days across China.
Twelve Learning Days, five cities, 167 participants, an NPS of 94. A 13-month executive training program for SAP’s China teams across 2019–2020 — the kind of long-horizon relationship I keep being asked back into. Clients who start with a single workshop almost always extend into multi-quarter programs once they see what iteratively-improved cohort training compounds into.
The engagement
Twelve days, five cities, one cohort design.
SAP’s China organization wanted a consistent learning experience for high-potential staff across five offices. The brief: a one-day intensive that felt both useful immediately (skills you can use tomorrow) and signalled that SAP was serious about investing in its people.
I designed and ran a single curriculum that travelled — twelve instances of the same Learning Day, run consecutively across Shanghai, Beijing, Dalian, Chengdu, and Xi’An over twelve months. Each cohort was 10–19 participants. Each day was followed by a retrospective call with site leadership and findings folded into the next iteration.
The program focused on the durable executive skills that travel well across any tool stack: how senior people work with their teams, how they communicate across functions, and how they translate strategy into the work that actually gets done. The same things AI-era teams still need.
| Site | Learning Days | Participants |
|---|---|---|
| Shanghai | 7 | 98 |
| Beijing | 1 | 12 |
| Dalian | 1 | 14 |
| Chengdu | 1 | 12 |
| Xi’An | 1 | 12 |
| Total | 12 | 167 |
What participants said
Six quotes from the post-day survey.
- “Best training in my time at SAP.”
- “Most engaging training I’ve ever attended.”
- “Useful and practical. Hope they come back next year.”
- “It was the best training I’ve been to. Coach Mike was really professional and funny at the same time.”
- “Coach Mike was always able to answer our questions. It was so helpful.”
- “Open Q&A was the best part. Coach Mike made sure everything was clear and easy to use in our daily works.”
Survey n=52. Published with SAP’s written permission for use with future clients. Individual participant names withheld.
One-pager
Forwardable summary for your team.
A single-page exec summary of this engagement — stats, narrative, three quotes — designed to be forwarded to your CHRO, board, or L&D lead without losing context.