Bill McDermott, CNBC, and the Rashomon Effect

SAP Americas, Asia Pacific, and Japan President & CEO (whew!) Bill McDermott recently went on CNBC to talk about SAP's quarterly results and the strong euro's negative impact on them. His performance drew this stinging criticism from ZDNet blogger Michael Krigsman:

In a moment of “irrational exhuberance,” McDermott described SAP as the only software company able to offer these things to customers. I suspect some SAP competitors will take issue with his comment.

One interviewer jokingly asked McDermott whether he had taken media training, because he spun virtually every difficult question into a positive for SAP; the journalists wanted to hear a more balanced presentation.

When Mike sent a note about his blog post (with an even harsher critique) to the Enterprise Irregulars mailing list, I decided to watch the clip myself. Personally, I thought McDermott came off as confident but honest and very well-spoken. The reference by one of the commentators was about his giving media training to other executives given the strength of his performance.

It's amazing how two people can witness the same event and see two totally different things. Cinephilic psychologists call this The Rashomon Effect. Here's the clip in question, so you can decide for yourself.

PS. Hey CNBC, people might want to embed your videos without having to View Source then cut and paste HTML. I'm just saying.

Comments

[Michael Krigsman]

Charlie, turns out the original clip CNBC posted on their website was edited to remove the post-interview banter. Your clip includes the entire television interview.

I misheard the original comments on CNBC and you're absolutely correct, the interviewers were impressed by Bill's handling of tough questions. I've updated my post accordingly.

[Narinder Singh]

Bill and SAP sales are world class. With the lack of product innovation the last several years, they have had to be. The Business By Design Delay is the latest example.

After spending nearly three years in the Office of the CEO at SAP and now two years at Appirio working with Google and salesforce.com, I can fully appreciate the degree of change needed at SAP requires a massive DNA change in all parts of the business. While they can simply try to be a fast followers of salesforce.com on the externally visible parts of the model (free and easy trial editions, trust.salesforce.com, etc.) the more hidden and subtle parts of the equation will be impossible to internalize until they launch. Operational processes around the product are on thing (the current delay), but how you generate leads, inside sales, high volume sales processes, culturally serving the customer every month (support & sales), quickly iterating the product while retaining longer term dev objectives, etc. will only become problems you can solve after a broad release. Planning out the Xs and Os is critical, but there is nothing like being in the game for really understanding what is needed.