Bigger, Faster and in Control.
Robert Christiansen
Going big is a leadership construct that requires a vision unlike any other. We
must see what is possible and lead our teams to the goal. Cloud enables much
of what is possible — but to accomplish this, there are three critical tenets of
every significant change.
Lifting Team Value – The team’s value must be lifted. Tools, resources, and
training must be provided so they can deliver on the promise of cloud. Without
the tools and resources to do the job, the team’s inner emotional core does not
feel supported. This is when they fracture and stop acting like a team. As a
leader, your top priority is to enable your team with what they need to get the
job done.
Mentors and Leaders – Every team wants to succeed. However, when a team
is plowing new fields, the rocks in the dirt are hard to see and even harder to
navigate. Teams can get derailed and make choices in a vacuum, putting the
project at risk. Let me give you an analogy. I’m a fly fishermen and tour the
world fishing new waters. Early on in my learning, I spent many a wasted day
on the water trying to figure out how to match the bugs with my flies. Frus-
trated with my results, I hired a guide and within one hour I was catching fish.
Since then, whenever I’m on new waters, I hire a guide. As a leader, bring in
partners, vendors, and experts who have done this before. It is an insurance
policy against project failure.
Safe to Try – The team needs protection. Agility is about rapid failure and dis-
covery. A team can iterate on a project 20 or 30 times in a short period before
they get version 1.0 right. Under the right circumstances, and especially when
using cloud platforms appropriately, the risk and cost of failure is dramatically
lowered. However, the leadership mindset must change to enable a culture of
trust. Leadership must encourage a fail-fast mentality. That means, it must be
safe to try new avenues, new technologies and new ideas. If the team does not
have significant executive trust, agility is killed because the team does not feel
safe. If they don’t feel safe, they innovate less for fear of failure.
FALL 2017 | THE DOPPLER | 51