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You've probably seen this LinkedIn post before:

"If I was learning Workday from scratch — here’s where I would start:"

And you get the typical answers.

Security. Business processes. Reporting. Learn those three and — congrats! 🎉 — you'll be a fearsome Workday generalist.

But I'd argue that those 3 powerhouses are actually not the strongest starting point.

There's a 🦄 playbook I use instead — and it doesn't start with Workday at all: it starts by getting you rock solid on the question “what is an object-model?”

If you’re thinking huh?

You’re in the right place because in this issue we break it down.

I’ll just come out and say it: most of you Workday practitioners are learning this system the hard way. And it’s not your fault.

The ecosystem is hard to break into — but somehow, you did! Bright-eyed, bushy tailed, and aware of your good fortune, you did what everyone does: you got certified.

You sat through the class. Locked in. Zoned out (x2 or 10).

By the end of the week, you zoomed through the perfectly curated exercises with your brain on auto-pilot just to smack the done button and earn your 10-minute break.

Here’s the thing though — even if you paid attention the whole time, it wouldn't matter. Certs teach you the nuts and bolts, the general mechanics. They don't teach you how to think.

You learn what a supervisory org is. You learn cost center hierarchies, BPs, how to route a review step to a security group.

But did you really get what you were doing?

We sure didn't.

So with hindsight in the rearview, wayyyy too many late nights in obsessive “figure-it-out” mode, here’s how we recommend you start your Workday journey today: the object-oriented model. It's the foundation for everything.

And it doesn’t stop at Workday.

Salesforce, SAP, Greenhouse, Airtable — most modern enterprise software uses the same logic.

Objects contain data. Data has structure. Structure makes it queryable, securable, reportable, extensible.

Learn it once and it travels with you everywhere.

So let's learn it 🤓

Think of a Starbucks order.

The order is an object. Housed within it are fields — size, milk type, syrup, temperature, number of pumps, order type — that describe it.

That’s the object-model.

Once it exists, you put it to use and start generating instances — different Starbucks orders.

For example, my order is a grande whole milk latte, two pumps cinnamon dolce syrup, extra hot. (It would be a cappuccino if they could reliably nail it.)

Yours is probably different.

Same object-model. Totally different instances, each with their own values for the same set of fields.

In Workday, these objects are called Business Objects and describe things like Worker, Position, Job Profile, Location, Organization, Benefit Elections, Payroll Results, Journal Entries… and much more.

Each of these Business Objects has its own set of fields. Each field has the potential to hold a value for each generated instance.

That's it! Objects, fields, values, instances. And together, they make up a data set.

(Psst — these objects don't exist in isolation. They connect to each other, and that web of relationships is where Workday's real complexity lives. More on that another day.)

To get comfortable with this model, you can practice it by using it to describe literally anything. The furniture in your house. The cars you see on the road. The morning drink in your hand right now.

Once you see it, you can't unsee it. And Workday starts making a lot more sense.

Because all those other generalist (and important!) topics layer on top of it.

🔐 Security controls access to view or modify object data.

🔀 Business processes define workflows and rules for how object data gets created or changed.

📊 Reporting retrieves and displays your object’s field values.

🧩 Custom objects extend the model — you're adding your own fields to an existing object or building your own from scratch (like Model Components in Extend).

It’s the same underlying foundation, just different lenses on it.

And that's why it's hard to teach in a cert. It's not a feature. It’s a way of seeing.

Once you’re comfortable with this, you'll start diagnosing problems without opening tickets with your consultants.

You'll see how a reporting issue is actually a security issue is actually a BP issue underneath.

And you'll become the person other teams come to — because you understand the model, not just the associated tasks.

Learn to think in the object-model and you're not just a person who clicks around Workday anymore. You're a systems thinker. A unicorn 🦄

Anddd now you know the start to the whole Well Built playbook — the strong start most never get.

Rooting for you out there 🤓

As always, thank you for being a reader.

We’re celebrating you and your pursuit of a Well Built Workday 🥳

Until next time!

the Well Built Team 🌞🏗️