Recognized in 2014 and 2015 as one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology by the National Diversity Council, Jenny Dearborn is a thought leader in learning, human capital management, sales performance, and business culture. A regular contributor to Forbes, Huffington Post, and Fast Company she has also written for USA Today, TechRepublic, and industry magazines including Chief Learning Officer, TD and HR Executive.
Jenny is the Senior Vice President and Chief Learning Officer of SAP, where she is responsible for aligning and driving all corporate learning and enablement activity for SAP's ~75,000 employees worldwide. This is her fourth Chief Learning Officer role. Jenny received the 2014 Silicon Valley Women of Influence Award and the 2013 Silicon Valley Tribute to Women in Industry Award. She is also the executive producer of "Game Changers: Women in Business," broadcast on the Voice of America Radio Network. Jenny's first book, "Data Driven: How Performance Analytics Delivers Extraordinary Sales Results," was published earlier this year.
What, in your opinion, is the most critical challenge faced by business leaders today?
Putting strategy into action.
Business leaders--across all industries and functional areas--may have a clear vision of what they want to happen in their organizations, but it's a much different story to get their people aligned and executing against that vision. It's an age-old challenge that comes up over and over like a skip on a record. Learning and talent development practitioners are at the epicenter, smoothing out the groove, as it were: turning corporate strategy into reality through an enabled and aligned workforce pushing ahead like a well-oiled machine.
In what ways (if any) have you seen the strategies of leaders change during the course of your career?
I've seen greater recognition of the importance of the people side of the business. In the 1990s and early 2000s, leaders were so consumed by amazing advances in technology that they lost sight of the people who were driving them. Now they seem to have come full circle, focusing on developing people, without whom there would be no innovation.
What is the one characteristic that you believe every leader must possess?
More than anything, people look for authenticity in their leaders. Transparency of self. It's far more important than charisma. Leaders can be soft-spoken, thoughtful and reserved--as long as they are comfortable being true to themselves, their teams will respect and appreciate them for it.
What do you consider to be your greatest strength as a leader?
Building great teams. I start by building strong relationships with my executive clients and conducting deep research into the strategy, goals, objectives and challenges in their businesses. From that foundation, I can build a team that can address those challenges, close gaps and drive measurable business impact and results.
That's what I really love best about my work. The building mode of starting from a blank slate or (if I'm lucky) starting with total chaos, then building an awesome team to drive significant measurable change.
Who has had a tremendous impact on you in terms of shaping you as a leader? Why and how did this person impact your career?
Karie Willyerd has had a tremendously positive influence on my career. She saw my potential early on at Sun Microsystems and appointed me to my first executive-level role. She saw when I had outgrown that role and appointed me to my next, which was more than twice as big and challenging. Then when I had outgrown that, she encouraged me to leave the company for an even bigger role, one that she had been recruited for. She was great at creating a vision and communicating it with passion and clarity, driving real change, setting the pace in the industry as a thought leader, developing her staff, and so much more. I try to model and emulate that as much as I can. When I find myself in tough situations I often think, "What would Karie do?"
What was the biggest professional risk you've taken so far?
I see trying anything new as an opportunity to learn, grow, and improve, so I achieve my goal regardless of the outcome. Most people think of risk as a scary thing you do right before something bad happens to you. But in a business context, the worst thing that could happen usually isn't life or death. When something doesn't work out as I had originally planned, I take a deep breath and prepare myself for something even better that's about to happen that I didn't anticipate.
What experience has contributed significantly to the development of your business acumen?
I was an English major in college and when I graduated all I knew was literature, poetry and creative writing. When I made the move at the age of 25 from being a high school English teacher into my first corporate job as a trainer, I didn't have a clue about how business worked. So I started reading business books by the stacks, sat in on every meeting I could and I asked a lot of questions. I asked for informational interviews from everyone in every department to learn about how all the pieces of the business come together.
Also my years as part of the senior executive team at a start-up was an opportunity to learn all the functions across the business. My approach is just to jump in and start doing it and learn along the way.
What can organizations do to support the professional growth and development of women leaders?
I think a company needs to start with some soul searching around goals and motives. Are they simply jumping on the D&I bandwagon or do they genuinely think that diversity, gender or otherwise, enhances business decisions, products, customer connections, and employee engagement? Without that reality check, without sincerity, whatever program they put in place is going to fall flat and maybe even do damage. You don't want the people you intended to help saying, "Oh, here we go again, another fake effort from corporate just to keep us quiet."
Once there's real motivation, put a stake in the ground. State a clear goal and create a plan to achieve it. That includes establishing metrics: Where are we now? Where do we want to be and why? What programs are going to be put into place to reach our goals? What are we going to do with the managers to help them feel comfortable executing on this? Each step of the way the company needs to reaffirm their commitment to making things better.
What advice would you give to someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
I like the SAP leadership principals-I think they are clear and valuable for both first time and experienced managers. They are: Drive Simplicity; Develop Amazing Talent; and Ensure Customer Success. At SAP we also have values, "How We Run," which give the how-to on executing those leadership principals. They are: 1) Keep the promise, 2) Tell it like it is, 3) Build bridges, not silos, 4) Embrace Differences, and 5) Stay Curious.
Walk us through a typical day for you.
A typical day for me has a lot of balls in the air. I weave work meetings in with my mom routine and make time to exercise so I get a bit of time for myself. I start with phone calls with EMEA at 5 a.m. Pacific, get kids off to school, head to the office for meetings with staff and clients, back home to put dinner on the table and get kids to bed, then back on-line and on the phone for meetings with Asia. That's been my routine for about 10 years or so and it works great for me.
If you could recommend just one book to women who aspire to leadership, what would it be?
I recommend the same books for men or women. I usually mention "Execution" by Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy and "The First 90 Days" by Michael Watkins; those are my go-to favorites for young professionals.
When you were age 10, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A professional skateboarder. When I was about 10 I had a paper route on my bike delivering the Davis Enterprise, an afternoon newspaper. I did it to make money to enter skateboarding contests in beach towns like Santa Cruz and to keep up with expenses like new boards and trucks and wheels. My skateboard is still my primary mode of transportation around town.
Describe yourself in one adjective.
Driven.
More about Jenny Dearborn
Jenny is on the Boards of Directors at the Association for Talent Development (ATD) and The Commonwealth Club, as well as the Chief Learning & Talent Officer Board at the Institute for Corporate Productivity, . Through the Fortune Most Powerful Women Network, she is a mentor for the U.S. State Department to female entrepreneurs in developing countries. Jenny earned an MBA from San Jose State University, a M.Ed. from Stanford University and her BA from UC Berkeley. A professional artist and competitive athlete, Jenny and her college sweetheart husband of 24 years have four active children. They live in Palo Alto, California.
Photo courtesy of Drew Altizer.
Jenny is the Senior Vice President and Chief Learning Officer of SAP, where she is responsible for aligning and driving all corporate learning and enablement activity for SAP's ~75,000 employees worldwide. This is her fourth Chief Learning Officer role. Jenny received the 2014 Silicon Valley Women of Influence Award and the 2013 Silicon Valley Tribute to Women in Industry Award. She is also the executive producer of "Game Changers: Women in Business," broadcast on the Voice of America Radio Network. Jenny's first book, "Data Driven: How Performance Analytics Delivers Extraordinary Sales Results," was published earlier this year.
What, in your opinion, is the most critical challenge faced by business leaders today?
Putting strategy into action.
Business leaders--across all industries and functional areas--may have a clear vision of what they want to happen in their organizations, but it's a much different story to get their people aligned and executing against that vision. It's an age-old challenge that comes up over and over like a skip on a record. Learning and talent development practitioners are at the epicenter, smoothing out the groove, as it were: turning corporate strategy into reality through an enabled and aligned workforce pushing ahead like a well-oiled machine.
In what ways (if any) have you seen the strategies of leaders change during the course of your career?
I've seen greater recognition of the importance of the people side of the business. In the 1990s and early 2000s, leaders were so consumed by amazing advances in technology that they lost sight of the people who were driving them. Now they seem to have come full circle, focusing on developing people, without whom there would be no innovation.
What is the one characteristic that you believe every leader must possess?
More than anything, people look for authenticity in their leaders. Transparency of self. It's far more important than charisma. Leaders can be soft-spoken, thoughtful and reserved--as long as they are comfortable being true to themselves, their teams will respect and appreciate them for it.
What do you consider to be your greatest strength as a leader?
Building great teams. I start by building strong relationships with my executive clients and conducting deep research into the strategy, goals, objectives and challenges in their businesses. From that foundation, I can build a team that can address those challenges, close gaps and drive measurable business impact and results.
That's what I really love best about my work. The building mode of starting from a blank slate or (if I'm lucky) starting with total chaos, then building an awesome team to drive significant measurable change.
Who has had a tremendous impact on you in terms of shaping you as a leader? Why and how did this person impact your career?
Karie Willyerd has had a tremendously positive influence on my career. She saw my potential early on at Sun Microsystems and appointed me to my first executive-level role. She saw when I had outgrown that role and appointed me to my next, which was more than twice as big and challenging. Then when I had outgrown that, she encouraged me to leave the company for an even bigger role, one that she had been recruited for. She was great at creating a vision and communicating it with passion and clarity, driving real change, setting the pace in the industry as a thought leader, developing her staff, and so much more. I try to model and emulate that as much as I can. When I find myself in tough situations I often think, "What would Karie do?"
What was the biggest professional risk you've taken so far?
I see trying anything new as an opportunity to learn, grow, and improve, so I achieve my goal regardless of the outcome. Most people think of risk as a scary thing you do right before something bad happens to you. But in a business context, the worst thing that could happen usually isn't life or death. When something doesn't work out as I had originally planned, I take a deep breath and prepare myself for something even better that's about to happen that I didn't anticipate.
What experience has contributed significantly to the development of your business acumen?
I was an English major in college and when I graduated all I knew was literature, poetry and creative writing. When I made the move at the age of 25 from being a high school English teacher into my first corporate job as a trainer, I didn't have a clue about how business worked. So I started reading business books by the stacks, sat in on every meeting I could and I asked a lot of questions. I asked for informational interviews from everyone in every department to learn about how all the pieces of the business come together.
Also my years as part of the senior executive team at a start-up was an opportunity to learn all the functions across the business. My approach is just to jump in and start doing it and learn along the way.
What can organizations do to support the professional growth and development of women leaders?
I think a company needs to start with some soul searching around goals and motives. Are they simply jumping on the D&I bandwagon or do they genuinely think that diversity, gender or otherwise, enhances business decisions, products, customer connections, and employee engagement? Without that reality check, without sincerity, whatever program they put in place is going to fall flat and maybe even do damage. You don't want the people you intended to help saying, "Oh, here we go again, another fake effort from corporate just to keep us quiet."
Once there's real motivation, put a stake in the ground. State a clear goal and create a plan to achieve it. That includes establishing metrics: Where are we now? Where do we want to be and why? What programs are going to be put into place to reach our goals? What are we going to do with the managers to help them feel comfortable executing on this? Each step of the way the company needs to reaffirm their commitment to making things better.
What advice would you give to someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
I like the SAP leadership principals-I think they are clear and valuable for both first time and experienced managers. They are: Drive Simplicity; Develop Amazing Talent; and Ensure Customer Success. At SAP we also have values, "How We Run," which give the how-to on executing those leadership principals. They are: 1) Keep the promise, 2) Tell it like it is, 3) Build bridges, not silos, 4) Embrace Differences, and 5) Stay Curious.
Walk us through a typical day for you.
A typical day for me has a lot of balls in the air. I weave work meetings in with my mom routine and make time to exercise so I get a bit of time for myself. I start with phone calls with EMEA at 5 a.m. Pacific, get kids off to school, head to the office for meetings with staff and clients, back home to put dinner on the table and get kids to bed, then back on-line and on the phone for meetings with Asia. That's been my routine for about 10 years or so and it works great for me.
If you could recommend just one book to women who aspire to leadership, what would it be?
I recommend the same books for men or women. I usually mention "Execution" by Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy and "The First 90 Days" by Michael Watkins; those are my go-to favorites for young professionals.
When you were age 10, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A professional skateboarder. When I was about 10 I had a paper route on my bike delivering the Davis Enterprise, an afternoon newspaper. I did it to make money to enter skateboarding contests in beach towns like Santa Cruz and to keep up with expenses like new boards and trucks and wheels. My skateboard is still my primary mode of transportation around town.
Describe yourself in one adjective.
Driven.
More about Jenny Dearborn
Jenny is on the Boards of Directors at the Association for Talent Development (ATD) and The Commonwealth Club, as well as the Chief Learning & Talent Officer Board at the Institute for Corporate Productivity, . Through the Fortune Most Powerful Women Network, she is a mentor for the U.S. State Department to female entrepreneurs in developing countries. Jenny earned an MBA from San Jose State University, a M.Ed. from Stanford University and her BA from UC Berkeley. A professional artist and competitive athlete, Jenny and her college sweetheart husband of 24 years have four active children. They live in Palo Alto, California.
Photo courtesy of Drew Altizer.