Cloud leadership: the team
A team is more than the sum of the people who make it up - if you put the work in.
Over the last several weeks, I have written about seven key leadership roles for Cloud transformation. These are all demanding and difficult roles, and it will be hard to fill all of them. However, even if you have a name in every box on the org chart, you don’t yet have a team: you have a collection of individuals.
Despite all the literature on effective teams, despite all of the training available, and despite the ubiquity of those team building events that many people dread, I believe that one of the most common mistakes we make is to fail to invest time in team formation, cohesion and performance. I know that I have been guilty of assembling groups of talented people, aligning (or so I thought) on task and mission, and then setting off together - before realising (usually when facing tough challenges), that the members of these groups did not yet trust and support each other - or even properly know each other.
It might seem that the kind of people who qualify for those leadership roles would never make this mistake: they should be senior, experienced experts who have built and been part of many teams throughout their career. However, sometimes it is just such a group that falls into the trap of skipping team formation. After all, they are senior, experienced experts: surely they know everything that there is to know about teamwork. But, however deep their experience, however many teams they have built in the past, I believe that they should approach their task with humility, recognise that each new team requires building, and that we never stop learning how to work with each other.
There is an enormous amount of help on building leadership teams available from people much more expert than me. However, I have three specific suggestions for new Cloud transformation leadership teams which I hope may be helpful.
Commit to purpose, concepts and language
Teams motivated by a clear purpose are more successful than teams which don’t have such a purpose. Leadership teams motivated by such a purpose are more successful in leading others.
It may seem obvious to say that any new leadership team should define their purpose, but I think that it is a particularly important (and often neglected) part of Cloud transformation. There are many reasons to undertake a Cloud programme. Your drivers may be as tactical and immediate as an expiring data centre lease or support contract. You may be attempting to make medium term changes in your cost base or risk profile. Or you may be trying to transform technology and business capabilities for your enterprise. Many companies are attempting to achieve all these goals at the same time. If you have not clearly stated your purpose, you cannot expect your leadership team to be united in pursuit of that purpose - much less the teams that they lead.
Furthermore, given that Cloud is still relatively new, I believe that it is important for the Cloud leadership team to make sure that they are all working with the same concepts and all speaking the same language. Even the concept of Cloud can itself be ambiguous, and the transformation which Cloud brings can change the meaning of seemingly familiar concepts such as hosting, configuration management, change management, and even the concept of a server. If the leadership team are not clear on concepts and language, nobody else will be.
Identify conflicts and make them productive
Conflict is not bad, if conducted in good faith and with respect. If you assemble any group of senior experts, you should expect them to disagree with each other. As with any team, it is important to establish the norms for dealing with conflict, reaching agreements, and committing to those agreements - even when you don't get your way.
I believe that part of the value of identifying the seven key leadership roles for Cloud Transformation is that it allows us to anticipate potential points of conflict. Indeed, some of these roles seem designed to conflict with each other.
For example, the Champion, whose role is to remove obstacles, unblock blockers and accelerate processes, may clash with the Guardian, whose role is to ensure that the use of Cloud is safe, controlled and secure. It’s not possible - and not desirable - to anticipate and avoid all of those situations in which the Champion’s desire for speed appears to be in conflict with the Guardian’s desire for safety. It is possible, however, to recognise this tension, and for the Champion and the Guardian to figure out how to balance safety and speed - and ideally make the most of Cloud to achieve both at the same time.
Great teams are not teams which avoid conflict: they are teams which make conflict productive.
Learn by doing
Learning by doing should be a fundamental principle of all Cloud transformations. One of the key goals of a Cloud transformation programme should be for the enterprise to become confident, competent and self-sufficient on the platform - and this cannot be achieved by delegating all execution to others, or by designing theoretical architectures and deployment patterns which are never put into practice.
The same is true of the Cloud transformation leadership team. While it is important to define the purpose, language and concepts of the team, to figure out who does what, and what behaviours the team should expect of each other, none of this will become real until the team puts it into practice. It is not until the team hits its first setbacks, its first conflicts and its first crises that it will truly become a team. There may be some teams which become true teams through nothing but easy success, but I have never been a part of one.
It is important when planning Cloud transformation to build opportunities to do practical work into the plan, and to reflect on the lessons learnt from that work. Leadership is work too.
Finally, if you are a member of the Cloud transformation leadership team, then time invested in team formation will not only make your programme more successful - it will make it more fun and fulfilling too. We come to work because we believe in the missions of our companies, because we want to achieve important things, and because we want to learn and grow (and also, of course, because we want to get paid). But we also come to work to support our team mates, to enjoy the relationships of trust and respect that come from joint achievement and challenge, underpinned by thoughtful team formation. Being part of a true team makes work better.
