Cloud leadership: the champion
Transformation is hard, especially in large, traditional enterprises optimised for stability. In fact, transformation is so hard that any traditional enterprise of age and scale will be littered with the wrecks of previous transformation programmes, and it takes courage to try again.
Cloud transformation is particularly hard because, if you are serious about it, you will change many aspects of your enterprise at once: the way you run technology, the way you build and manage software, the pace of innovation in your enterprise, and the experience you offer customers.
What do you do when you meet challenges? What do you do when your teams want to change, but seem trapped by their own processes and policies? What do you do when it seems easier to give up than to keep going? Answering these questions is the job of the Champion.
A couple of weeks ago, I introduced seven leadership roles essential to Cloud transformation. This the second blog post to explore those roles further.
Why do you need the Champion?
The Visionary has defined where you are going and has laid out the path. The Board has backed your investment programme. You have chosen your Cloud platform and the partners who will help you implement it. You have assembled your team. Surely all that you need to do now is execute.
If you have ever attempted to deliver any large change programme in any large enterprise, you will know that it’s not as easy as that. True transformation challenges the way people work, the way they are organised, the processes they follow and the policies that guide them. Sometimes people get blamed for not wanting to change - but this is neither helpful nor fair. Often, the enterprise they work for and the environment they operate creates a stable status quo - and explicitly asks people to protect it.
I think that many large enterprises are like chemical reactions with a high activation energy: they need a high input of energy to get the reaction started and make it self sustaining. If we fail to reach that activation energy, we will drop back to the stable status quo. It is the job of the Champion to keep building that activation energy, and I think that they can do this in three ways.
First, and most obviously, Cloud transformation will face a series of procedural challenges. The way in which Cloud works will not be immediately compatible with the enterprise’s existing policies, standards and controls: it may achieve and exceed the same goals, but it will do it in ways which the existing procedural infrastructure did not anticipate. Part of the role of the Champion is to be willing to challenge these existing constraints, to prevent them getting in the way, and to keep the transformation programme moving forward.
Second, the role of the Champion is to figure out how to stop these obstacles from being obstacles. For the deployment of your first workload to Cloud, it may be good enough to gain exceptional approvals, to push through the process with sheer force and energy. But this is not sustainable. As part of challenging existing procedures, structures and other things that seem to get in the way, the Champion must help change them - they must become part of the transformation. In doing so, the Champion’s best tool is the question ‘Why?’ Why do we need this approval? Why do we do this step manually? Why are these two teams separate from each other? Why do we value this outcome?
Third, the role of the Champion is to be a visible signal of persistence and determination. Transformation efforts in large companies fail so frequently that it often seems no shame to give up - or to find some markers of success which allow you to close the programme gracefully without achieving your goals. The Champion should be the sort of person who will not accept either of these outcomes, especially when the path seems hard.
Where do you find the Champion?
Just like the Visionary, I think that the Champion should be part of your organisation.
You may hire someone from outside your company or outside your industry to bring a fresh perspective - and to give a licence to keep asking ‘Why?’ But that person needs quickly to acquire empathy and respect for the people already inside the organisation if they are to lead transformation without blame.
Or you may appoint someone who is already inside the organisation, who is familiar with your challenges and goals. But that person would need quickly to acquire a deliberate naivety and impatience with the way things are already done: to find the ‘Why?’
But whether you find the Champion inside or outside your organisation, you need them - because, however tough transformation is, it is better to keep going than to give up.
