Page 34 - FCW, May 2021

Defense
CULTURE
CREATING SPACE FOR CLOUD INNOVATION
Why the Army’s enterprise cloud leader encourages his colleagues to run with scissors
Paul Puckett, director of the Army’s Enterprise Cloud Management Agency (ECMA), shared his thoughts on the importance of culture change at FCW’s Cloud Summit in April. His comments are excerpted below; they have been edited for length and clarity. The full presentation can be viewed at FCW.com/cloud_culture.
Making cloud a mandate for change
Some Army senior leaders had seen the movement to cloud as the next iteration of technology, this new thing that was replacing data centers, and they just simply needed to get on board. And what they were start- ing to realize is, “You know, we’re not actually seeing the value that we thought we were supposed to see. We’re not actually seeing improve- ments to the way we fight.” There was a feeling that there’s something deeper in how we act, how our busi- ness processes are created, how we’re supposed to be going about solving these problems that also needs to change.
When we talk about culture change, we talk about kind of doing something new, something innovative, and taking some risks. To be honest with you, it hurts a little bit.
Oftentimes the people who are
actually injured here are the senior
leaders who are creating space for
people to take that risk. This is all
about creating space as leaders for us
to go on this journey when it comes to
adopting cloud. And that’s precisely why my office was created.
How to talk to the skeptics
With the speed and scale of cloud, we now have to look at everything about how we do this. And that hurts some- times because the way that we’ve been doing business has been formed over years and years and years of expe- rience. Adopting cloud really grates at the way we do business.
Within the first couple of weeks of coming on board, I heard three big objections. The first being, “That’s too risky.” The next one is, “You know, that’s not the way we’ve always done it.” And the third being, “Well, that’s not going to work here.” On this journey of cloud adoption, you’re
going to experience that as well. There are two ways you can approach it. One could be that you approach with the sense that you are now the enlightened, you’re now the one who gets it, and that you’re right and they’re wrong. There needs to be some kind of fight here for your way
of doing business.
Please don’t do that.
Please choose the second
approach, which is: Technology has changed the world around us. We are now on this journey of learning where there’s new opportunity in front of us. And we think we have an idea of what that better way might be.
What this creates is space for peo- ple to come along with you.
Make it safe to be wrong
We’ve hired some wonderful and extremely smart people in the ECMA. We want to tap into the way they think; we want to tap into the way they see problems. It’s my job to cre- ate room and space for them to feel
safe and to kind of be a little bit wrong. There’s no way that you or I can know everything on this journey. We have to create space for learning. And so we’re a learning organization culture first. People on my team know that it’s OK to say, “I don’t know.” This is all about how you create space and room for people to
take risks when it comes to adopting the cloud.
I want you to understand that if you’re a leader of an organization, sometimes the people you’re letting run with scissors are going to cut you. You can demonstrate this change culture and this new way of doing business by looking at what happened, trying to understand what hap-
pened and making sure we learned from it.
“PEOPLE ON MY TEAM KNOW THAT IT’S OK TO SAY, ‘I DON’T KNOW.’”
PAUL PUCKETT
32 May 2021 FCW.COM