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Wellness
Reach for the SIY: How to grow a grassroots movement into a global initiative
Anand Narasimhan, Heather Cairns-Lee, and Nancy Lane explain how an executive at SAP in California made it his mission to spread mindfulness around the world.
What is mindfulness?
Originating in ancient Buddhist and Eastern philosophy, mindfulness is rooted in the Buddhist concept of sati, which means ‘moment-to-moment awareness of the present.’ It is a technique that involves being fully aware of the present moment, without judgment. By helping to focus in this way, it can help you manage your thoughts and feelings and improve your mental health. Many practitioners use the ‘Three Cs’ of mindfulness – curiosity, compassion, and calm center – (and many other acronyms!) to achieve this. Essentially, mindfulness involves developing self-awareness, managing one’s internal states, impulses, and resources, and practicing beneficial mental habits such as cultivating ‘realistic optimism.’
The practice began to permeate the West in the latter half of the 20th century when Jon Kabat-Zinn founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The secular, evidence-based program he developed was a significant step towards introducing mindfulness to global organizations such as Monsanto, General Mills, Target, Verizon, and SAP.
The benefits of mindfulness
Mindfulness has been proven to offer various positive benefits for individuals.
Reduces stress
- Decrease in the stress hormone cortisol and self-reported improvement
Improves mental health
- As effective as psychiatric medication in preventing relapse of depression
Enhances cognitive function
- Enhances attention, enabling sustained focus and executive functioning
Boosts immunity
- Increased activity in immune cells and better vaccine response
Lowers blood pressure
- Reduces systolic and diastolic blood pressure in hypertensive individuals
Diminishes pain symptoms
- Changes in processing of pain signals, diminishing pain-intensity perception
These benefits can lead to:
- Increased self-awareness
- Better work-life balance
- Enhanced ability to manage stressful situations
In the late 2000s, Peter Bostelmann, a delivery executive at SAP in California, began practicing mindfulness privately after witnessing its positive impact on his partner and soon noticed its profound mental health benefits.
In 2012, aware that organizations such as Google had introduced successful mindfulness programs, he resolved to introduce formal training at SAP and spread the benefits throughout the company – although many colleagues were not convinced the company was ready.
The ‘Search Inside Yourself (SIY)’ program had been used so successfully at Google that the tech giant set up the non-profit Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI) to disseminate it more widely.
From grassroots to global mindfulness at SAP
Peter decided the most effective way to gain visibility and support would be to use an existing, externally created course that had a good reputation, choosing the ‘Search Inside Yourself (SIY)’ program created by a Google engineer, a neuroscientist, and a noted mindfulness teacher. The program had been used so successfully at Google that the tech giant set up the non-profit Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI) to disseminate it more widely.
In late 2012, Peter met with SAP’s chief medical officer and global head of health and well-being management, Natalie Lotzmann. Natalie agreed that SIY would benefit employees and that Peter, with his deep background in business and mindfulness, was the right person to bring it to SAP. She also challenged him to define a strategy to scale the program globally, offering him a temporary role in her department while he set things up.
In parallel, Peter decided to test his theory. At that time, California was the epicenter of organizational mindfulness in the Western world, with other global companies, including Cisco and Genentech, providing courses for employees.
In May 2013, Peter organized an event with leading figures in mindfulness in the US at SAP’s Palo Alto office. It was packed, with 500 employees attending. Peter asked attendees if they would be interested in finding sponsorship from their managers to attend the two pilots he was organizing for the second half of 2013 and was able to recruit 25 managers and 25 employees for the pilots.
Deepening the roots
In 2014, Peter was appointed director of SAP’s Global Mindfulness Practice (GMP). His objective was to organize mindfulness-based programs and foster the community of mindfulness practitioners globally at SAP to transform the fledgling movement into a global initiative.
After successful pilots, Peter found his first sponsor, the director of human resources for Germany, who was convinced SIY would be positive for employees in his organization and added SIY as part of the Learning and Development (L&D) portfolio in Germany. This was a key step in scaling it throughout the organization.
News about the impact of SIY spread quickly, with long waiting lists for the program. Now, to scale the initiative again, Peter needed to create a multiplier effect and deliver SIY in a cost-effective way. He subsequently recruited a pool of in-house trainers to educate new cohorts and soon had 10 internal teachers.
SIY at SAP went from strength to strength, with the waiting list peaking at 9,000 employees in 2016. As a result, the GMP began integrating elements of SIY into its internal Learning and Development programs and developed a portfolio of modules for organizational mindfulness. The GMP mandate was then expanded to include delivering organizational mindfulness training to the company’s clients.
The GMP surveyed 650 participants at four weeks and six months post-program and found improved well-being, happiness, concentration, creativity, and less stress in the work context.
The results
In the space of a decade, Peter grew a grassroots mindfulness movement into a global initiative. From the beginning, he gathered data to build a business case for organizational mindfulness. The GMP surveyed 650 participants at four weeks and six months post-program and found improved well-being, happiness, concentration, creativity, and less stress in the work context.
The program also contributed to an increase in the Employee Engagement Index and a reduction in sick leave. These values significantly impacted the company’s business results. SAP’s annual Employee and Business Health Culture Index surveys showed that every percentage point increase in the Employee Engagement Index added €50-€60m to the company’s operating profit. A percentage point increase in its Business Health Index raised profits by €85-€95m. Taking these results together, Peter calculated a return on investment of 200%.
How to do it: lessons from the SAP mindfulness program
- Build your business case. Peter developed a business case for the mindfulness program step by step and was diligent in setting up a data-collection system to show the program’s positive impact on both employees and the organization.
- Canvass support in influential places. Reach out to potential sponsors and secure the support of senior leaders.
- Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Mindfulness is an established practice with many devotees. Peter chose SIY, an externally developed program with a stellar reputation, to bring it to SAP, without trying to put his personal stamp on the initiative.
- Use in-house resources to scale. To offer the experience to as many employees as possible, Peter developed a group of in-house teachers. This helped control costs while creating a multiplier effect.
This article is based on an IMD case series written by the authors, reference IMD-7-2489 and IMD-7-2521.
Read more here.
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