How good are you at your favorite activity? Wait—don’t answer yet, because you’re probably wrong. Your perception of how good you are is influenced by how good you actually are. This is explained by the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is cognitive psychology’s name for the disparity between self-perception and reality. Here is what it looks like: The Dunning-Kruger Effect demonstrates that the less you know the more you think you know. ...
I am often asked by CEOs and CIOs to explain the ROI of cloud computing. My answer goes something like this. How well do you see? The main consideration in evaluating the ROI of cloud computing is your eyesight. What is the scope of your vision? What do you believe about the future? Ask yourself, as we create the ideal future for our customers, what kinds of changes will my organization need to accommodate? Think about how these changes will impact your use of computing - and indeed your entire operation. Consider the four major dimensions that change will include: technological, economic, organizational, and risk. ...
Succeeding with cloud computing requires incorporating your organization’s unique economic, cultural, risk, and technological considerations. Success with cloud computing means adopting more than just technology change. It requires addressing the elements that make your organization unique: how you work, the risks you’re prepared to take, and the market in which you sell. Even a tailor with all the right supplies - several yards of fabric, a sewing machine, and an iron - needs to craft a garment that looks good, is of high quality, and is done in an efficient manner. Here are the key ways to incorporate your organization’s economic, cultural, and risk factors into your adoption of cloud computing and accelerate your success. ...
Before you ask yourself “what can and can’t I do in the cloud,” stop to consider the larger picture. How will your customers know that you have adopted cloud computing? What resulting radical improvement will delight your customers? These questions help you focus on the impact you want to achieve with your initiative. The answers help you understand the facets that you’ll need to address - technology, skills, procedures, and behaviors - in order to achieve and measure that impact. Then you’ll be ready to talk nuts and bolts about vendors, tools, and cloud-appropriate workloads. ...
This coming year tens of thousands of medium and large companies will conduct initiatives to adopt cloud computing - and most of these will fail. The cause of these project failures will be unrealistic expectations. The inoculation is a hefty dose of reality. Get your vaccine here. No one questions the fact that IT is undergoing a revolution and cloud is at its center. You need only glance at the article titles in any business and tech publication to see this. Cloud is a critical element in achieving unprecedented agility and supply-chain optimization. ...
It may sound strange, but your organization does not need a strategy for cloud computing. You no more need a strategy for cloud computing than you need a strategy for toothbrushing: as long as your teeth are healthy, who cares if you brush from top to bottom or from left to right, or what brand of toothpaste you use! So it is with cloud computing: your organization has a business strategy (if not, give me a call). Does that strategy include developing enhanced agility, improved time to market, and increased innovation? If so, then take a deeper look at cloud computing, and build a concrete plan to use cloud computing to fulfill your business strategy. ...
Simon Wardley recently satirized the typical response of corporate IT departments to technology change as follows: Ignore, ignore, ignore, “no”, “no”, “I said ’no,’ dammit”, “Oh no”, “Oh, f**k”. It reminds me of the classic Toys-R-Us TV commercial from the 1980s featuring children singing about not wanting to grow up. Resistance to change is not unique to children or to IT departments - it is a feature of every organization. How can you help your organization avoid being stuck, and instead drive change before it’s unnecessarily painful to “grow up”? The key is urgency. Growing up is a good metaphor for organizational change: both are normal, both feature resistance, and in both the stakes increase over time. Immature people, like immature organizations, do not reliably achieve their goals. And the longer that inertia dominates, the further behind they remain. Failure to adapt - getting stuck - can be fatal, as it was for the Eastman Kodak Company. In personal as in organizational growth the pressure to change - the urgency - is fostered by discomfort. To increase urgency you need to cause people to feel discomfort with the current state of affairs. John P. Kotter’s seminal work Leading Change offers several kinds of tactics to increase urgency: ...
A very good repeat client introduced me to his own customer, CEO of a fast-growing company, with the words “you should talk to Shlomo - he does wonders.” When I get an enthusiastic referral like that - which happens often, as most of my business is via referrals - I move fast to see how I can help. The CEO and I met and began to explore important areas of his business that I typically help with: usage of cloud resources, leveraging the data collected, streamlining processes and team dynamics. The discussion was progressing quickly - in fact, too easily, too rapidly - toward defining a potential project. I sensed something was wrong. He couldn’t describe why he wanted these things to get done; all he could say was, “this is the next issue we need to tackle.” ...