About Greg Olynyk

My name is Greg Olynyk, I am a Canadian living in British Columbia, originally from Quebec. MMC interviewed me awhile back if you are interested, listen to the podcast here.

My teaching career started over 30 years ago, at McGill University, coaching researchers in various software and building databases in DBase 4. I went on to teaching software at various schools, offices and industries.

In the late ‘90s I started the MS Office courses at North Island College campuses, teaching Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, and the Internet.  The College and Government formed a Joint Union Management Program to teach all the employees of Catalyst Paper and Timber West during the extended 5 year strike. I designed and delivered all the courses during this period, then they hired me as an employee after the strike as their corporate applications instructor, especially SAP, for 10 more years.  When the site closed down, many of my planners found excellent opportunities with their advanced SAP skills, and I went on to be an independent SAP Consultant, working in various industries such as mining, oil & gas, chemical and utilities. 

My programming and database skills have always come in handy but my passion lies in educational design and delivery. I have run “Train the Trainer” programs and developed many manuals and tip sheets for SAP users over the years.  Consulting has allowed me to visit many countries and interesting places, I love to explore wherever I go. 

Here’s a few maps of some of the places I have worked so far;

I currently have 9 SAP courses online and the feedback has been very positive. I love helping people become more efficient at using software and I feel my enthusiasm to learn is contagious. 

Here are some recent comments from course evaluations;

The focus of most of my courses are in SAP, and I often ask people what they think the acronym SAP stands for.  One of the SAP conferences I attended as a speaker, in Australia, the topic being “How to Effectively Teach SAP”, I asked the audience (mostly fellow instructors) the same question. As expected, I heard lots of the standard, negative jokes; “Systems Against People”, “Send Another Planner”, Suicide Assistance Program”, “System Ain’t Paying”, etc.  My first slide comes up, showing Superman with the SAP Logo on his chest,  and a large title “Super Amazing Program !!!”, and I commented, “YOU cannot teach SAP unless YOU have a positive attitude, and students cannot learn unless they also have a positive attitude”.  Of course, I do explain how the acronym stands for “Systems, Applications and Products in data processing, but that is boring. I also now say it stands for “Super Amazing Pizza”, to explain how it is very customizable and how some companies, driven solely by upper management ideas and not user experience, put too many anchovies, and spend the first few years removing them.  

I usually start teaching folks the easy way to do things, and keep it simple to begin with, spirally teaching, by repetition, with scenarios of more and more complexity. The students then know the basics very well and “can see the forest for the trees”.  A favorite quote I heard years ago is “begin with the end in mind”,  so I show them the charts and visualizations of the data that they will be entering, so they understand the reasons to input data; they see the purpose. I recommend to always explain why we do things, not just the steps to performing, and also explain the common errors or pitfalls so they can be aware and avoid them.  I joke how learning software is not just what to do but also what not to do and why.

So if you want to see some of the courses I have developed, pop into my website at www.ca5a.com.  In future blogs, I plan on discussing more specifics on each topic I teach, with valuable tips and tricks to help make your experience learning and retaining better and better.  If you have any suggestions of a topic you want me to address, you can reach out to me directly, at greg@ca5a.com.