About the guest Stefan Ries is a highly experienced Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) and Labor Relations Director. He served in these roles at SAP SE and was a member of the Executive Board with global responsibility for HR.

With a background in executive roles at companies like Microsoft, Compaq, SAP, and Egon Zehnder International, Stefan is also passionate about sports, particularly German football, tennis, and European Handball.

These days, he enjoys supporting HR tech startups as a business angel and is an external advisor for McKinsey on digital transformation projects.

Shownotes: 00:00:00 Intro & Summary 00:02:25 Stefan’s start in Tech in the 90s 00:05:40 IBM’s focus on Hardware and the early vision of Microsoft 00:07:40 Microsofts expansion strategy 00:11:37 HP & first manager experience 00:14:45 Analogies from handball teams 00:20:15 Team size & biggest gap in skillsets 00:28:30 Crossfunctional teams & People product development 00:31:30 Old school HR structure, static 00:35:30 Scaling SAP from 40.000 to +100.000 people 00:40:00 From on-premise to cloud 00:45:00 SAP founders, Sr. Executives and Eghon Zehnder 00:57:50 Mergers & Acquisitions 01:04:40 Advisory & HR Tech Angel investments

Links: Linkedin Stefan Ries: https://www.linkedin.com/in/riesstefan

Book recommendations:

#4 - Stefan Ries | Ex-CHRO SAP | HR Punk