Lesson #2 – Change in Culture
It is imperative that all players involved understand that to take full advantage of the Cloud, you do want to just take a “lift and shift” approach. By this we mean…in order to see the full benefits, you must change the way your IT organization runs its business. As you move capabilities to the Cloud, there is a fundamental shift in responsibilities – something Amazon calls a “Shared Responsibility Model.” Your responsibility no longer involves managing storage, compute, or databases. Instead your focus becomes application monitoring, data and analytics, and access management.
Are your teams ready to make those changes? Do you have the right skills in house? Are people concerned they will lose their jobs? Change is hard and leadership must address these concerns early on. You must invest in employee training so your teams can ramp up on the new roles and responsibilities. If you do not have the right skills in place, you might have to bring in external resources, or make some tough decisions. Again, change is hard, but it can also be a source of energy, growth and value.
As you begin to reshape your organization, you will undoubtedly face some resistance to the changes being made. Early wins will be important to create enough momentum that any naysayers will have no choice but to get on board or depart with the organization. Although good people leaving brings different challenges, it is not necessarily a bad thing. Start with some simple initiatives such as moving a DNS server, or migrating a simple, static website, to establish early success. Focus on creating a culture of transparency, accountability and innovation sharing and reward those individuals who are embracing the change. And finally, communicate, communicate, communicate! Share your successes early and often to accelerate the change.
How do you accelerate change? Be sure to read our next article on running the business vs. changing the business.
