Avengers Assemble!

Okay, we are not superheroes.  But a group of people hoping to do some good together with our clients in Morocco are gathering and I am struck by the excitement, energy and optimism as we start to link up. We are the IBM Corporate Service Corps for Morocco (CSCMOR13)

It is easy as a long-time consultant to be blasé about business travel. Airports all look the same, hotels are the same and ‘road warriors’ really want to just get home at the end of the week.  I’m lucky that, living in Toronto, there is enough client work to keep me busy locally – and I’ve still spent long stretches of my career traveling every week. A year in Europe, 4 additional years in Montreal each week. And shorter stretches in Vancouver BC and North Carolina.

This time is different.  It started on Wednesday when our WhatsApp chat showed a picture of two of our crew linking up to start their journey from Australia.  Soon the chat was buzzing with selfies as groups gathered in 2s and 3s and started to connect.  ‘Can’t wait’ and ‘Looking forward to it’ was common.  Or ‘See you in Dubai’ or some other place where they would change planes.

Jinzi and I connected briefly at the Air France desk in Toronto-Pearson airport before we took separate flights to Paris. Colleagues were texting each other gate information, tips for how to be prepared as we arrive in Morocco, and just ‘safe flight’.  It’s great to see a group of people who’ve only met over webex finally connecting in person.  This team is definitely moving from ‘forming’ to ‘norming’ quickly.

Almost half of us are on the same flight from Paris to Rabat and as we were waiting at the gate for the final flight to our destination some things became obvious very quickly.

  • This group of near strangers who are spread across 5 continents share a lot of common concerns, beliefs and interests. It felt like old friends chatting from the moment we met.
  • There is a lot of passion for our role – working together with our clients – government agencies or NGOs in Morocco – co-creating on a strategy that can improve an economic or social challenge
  • Unlike many project teams from IT consulting firms – the team is mostly women. Of 15 total, 11 are women and 4 men. Very happy to get some experience being in the minority!

By end of day Friday, we should all be together. This weekend we get acclimatized to the city and each other, and Monday we start working with our clients!

 

Recent blogs I wrote/co-wrote not on this site:

9-May-2022

I realized as this following blog went live that over the past year or two I’ve written, co-written, or participating in writing as many blogs that aren’t on this site as on it.  For completeness in my own mind, I’m posting here the set of links to each of them.

Jul 2022

Modernization is a must in a #multicloud world, but it needs to be done in a way that provides clients with choice and flexibility to enable a truly meaningful #transformation. That demands the right technology, skills and support to execute and succeed. They need to execute that modernization in a way that manages important issues like #security, vendor lock-in and #resiliency. This is where #RedHat comes in:

https://www.ibm.com/blogs/ibm-canada/2022/07/the-red-hat-openshift-advantage-innovation-for-seamless-customer-experiences/

  1. May 2022

Just 1/4 of Canadian businesses have a workable management strategy for their hybrid multicloud infrastructure. Here’s how the right skills & experience can help:

https://ibm.co/3yoIVrc

  • Sep 2021

Public Sector Network (Certified B Corp) turned a talk that Todd Wilson,  Pascale Duguay and I did on cloud for public sector into a blog post.  

  • July 2021 – Hybrid Cloud: The New Normal for Enterprise Transformation

In this blog I talk about why #HybridCloud is the new normal for Enterprise Transformation and how to manage and succeed in that multi-cloud world with a strategy that drives a single experience. Check it out here:

https://ibm.biz/BdfYZ5

  • June 2021 – How to be a Transformational CIO

This was a great conversation on how the pandemic has affected digital business transformation and the role of the CIO. Thanks to Elevate for arranging it (and turning it into a blog) and to Michael Krigsman for sharing the global perspective. And thanks to all the CIOs who participated.  

After that  Elevate session, my team and I put together a video taking some of the above discussion further (with Ted Tritchew and Hilary McVey, MPNL):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96CovsgjudQ

  • Spring 2020 – Digital Transformation:  Lessons from the Hybrid Cloud Journey

Not a blog, a video chat with my colleague (and now Kyndryl employee) Charlotte Wang. We spoke about our own lessons learned helping clients on their various cloud journeys.

https://www.ibm.com/events/ca-en/think-summit/agenda.html

Leadership Lessons from The Beatles ‘Get Back’

23-Dec-2021

The recent Beatles mini-series Get Back on Disney is not just a fascinating glimpse into the creative process of a great band. It also offers some interesting lessons in leadership and project management.

The series is based on film footage and audio recordings from three weeks in January 1969 as The Beatles created and record a new live album. Originally titled Get Back, this material was eventually released as the film and album ‘Let it Be’. While that album is not considered one of their best, Let it Be includes three number one singles, as well as classic songs like ‘Across the Universe’ and ‘Two of Us’.

Peter Jackson took the original source material from 52 years ago, digitally enhanced it and created a new and more complete documentary demonstrating The Beatles in-studio process. The mini-series is eight hours long spread over three episodes, with each episode roughly covering one week in January 1969. Here are eight lessons I observed from watching the show:

  1. Creativity engages people

There’s a moment that’s been tweeted frequently where Paul McCartney is playing on the bass and just riffing and it turns into the song ‘Get Back.’ At the beginning George Harrison and Ringo Starr are watching. They are clearly bored, waiting for John Lennon to show up. When they hear the recognizable tune emerge as Paul is creating in the moment they can’t help but become engaged. George starts playing along and Ringo starts clapping and banging on Riser he is sitting on. It’s almost as if they can’t help but be caught in the moment.

(you can watch that moment here: https://youtu.be/07q95KiVguc )

2. Decision making process needs to be clear

The Beatles famously claimed that they had no leader. That decisions were made unanimously. In today’s terminology they would describe themselves as a ‘self-directed team’. While it’s true that the group made decisions together in reality there was a very clear hierarchy in the band: The same order that they joined The Beatles was basically who had the most clout. John was the leader followed by Paul then by George and Ringo.

At this point in their career John was disengaged and George resented being in third place. Everyone was using that veto power to avoid decisions.

The idea behind the ‘Get Back’ project was to create a documentary about making a new live album. They would create new songs; they would rehearse those songs; and then they would record those songs live somewhere. The band couldn’t agree where to do the live portion. A Roman amphitheatre, a hilltop in London, and the Cavern in Liverpool are all discussed.

As each different idea was floated for consideration, they were all shot down by one of the band members. This of course leads to eventually the iconic rooftop concert on top of their own offices. But in the absence of a decision maker and the absence of a clear decision-making process they end up missing all sorts of chances to do the live finale in other interesting places.

At the very beginning of the show Harrison remarks about his time in Woodstock with Bob Dylan and The Band. He says that with them everything is consensus-driven and how great it was to work that way. Ironically The Band also falls apart a few years later when they can’t maintain consensus and resent the self-appointed leader.

I would argue that in the past The Beatles had actually made decisions based on consensus. Not unanimity. Consensus is more “yes, I can live with what you want to do”, versus unanimity, which is “yes I absolutely want to do that”. If George wanted to go to India to study with the Maharaja, why not? If Paul wants to pretend they’re a different band named ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club’, sure let’s try that. If John wants to put out an experimental drone of ‘number 9’, they can make that work too.

When everyone feels they are getting a chance to drive the consensus, the process can work. But if people feel that their voice isn’t being heard, and people aren’t willing to compromise, it degrades to ‘everyone has a veto’.

Finally, they only all agree to do the rooftop concert when John reasserts his leadership and the others (particularly George and Ringo) follow along.

Regardless of what decision-making process there is, it needs to be clear, and it needs a mechanism to avoid deadlocks.

3. Even a great team needs a leader

Although I earlier described The Beatles as a self-directed team, they in fact had always had clear outside leadership. Brian Epstein and George Martin provided business and musical oversight for them. As they became more musically confident in the studio they needed Martin less and they clearly suffered from a lack of direction after Epstein’s death.

 In that leadership void and with Lennon distracted by his new relationship with Yoko Ono (and heroin) McCartney stepped in to direct the band. He had always had a bit of a role as the music arranger. In the film you see Paul particularly in episode one trying to direct the group and knowing that he is annoying George. Yet someone needs to make decisions.

Lennon and McCartney even talk about the leadership problem after Harrison quits. Paul laments the lack of an authority figure since Brian Epstein died. McCartney says to Lennon something like “you’ve always been the leader and I’ve been number two”. John replies pointing out that Harrison is now their equal as a songwriter. And that by not treating him as an equal they caused the rift.

4. Great teams do great things when their backs are against the wall

The Beatles gave themselves three weeks to create a new album.

When they came into Twickenham studios, they had no songs completely prepared and no real idea of exactly what they were going to do. In that three-week period, you see them creating classics like ‘Get Back’, ‘Two of Us’, and ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’ as well as resurrecting and polishing songs like ‘One after 909’ and ‘Across the Universe’. In fact you hear them starting about half of the songs on the follow-on album, Abbey Road. Some solo songs like ‘All Things Must Pass’ , ‘Gimme Some Truth’, ‘Another Day’, ‘Jealous Guy’ (with completely different lyrics) and ‘Back Seat of my Car’.

With a deadline fast approaching they resolved their decision issues. They finished writing the songs and create some iconic music.

By putting the right amount of pressure on the team, with a tough but achievable deadline,  (particularly one they set themselves) you can achieve big goals.  

5. Leaders need to listen to the other team members and adapt

One of the things I found remarkable is the complete change in Paul McCartney’s behavior between episode one and episode two. In the first episode (at Twickenham Studios), McCartney is frankly bossy. Micromanaging George in particular. But also telling Ringo how to play the drums. That episode ends with Harrison quitting the band in a quiet understated British way. (“I’m leaving the band now. See you round the clubs.”) If you are fan of McCartney’s you might want to fast-forward to the scene where he creates ‘Get Back’, then skip the rest of that episode!

Off camera between episodes one and two the band members meet twice, to figure out how to go forward. They don’t record or report what happens in those meetings, but in the second episode (and even before Billy Preston arrives) Paul is much less bossy; he’s listens more and is more collaborative.

Great leaders see what’s working and what’s not working and adjust to give the rest of the team what they need.

6. People need a safe place to practice (and then can perform anywhere)

In the first of the three episodes The Beatles are playing in Twickenham, a movie studio. The space is large and uncomfortable. The band complain about the cold and that it’s hard to create in that sterile environment.

There is a big change that comes over them in episode two when they move to their office on Savile Row. It’s their own space and they feel comfortable. When they arrive they discover that the space isn’t ready to be a music studio. As a result, there are cables all over the place; the space is small, and they’re on top of each other. But in fact because it’s their office they’re happy, and the mood dramatically lightens. They’re much more comfortable and creative even before Billy Preston arrives.

Then of course once they get to the rooftop concert they are performing live for the first time in years. Its windy, its cold (this is in January in London England). They are confronted by the police. Yet they still manage to get the songs recorded; get the video and create a moment.

That practice in a safe place is what made them able to perform when needed.

7. Changing team members changes the dynamic

George Harrison had previously realized during the sessions for the self-titled album (aka the White album) that people behave better when there’s a guest in the studio. He knew that ‘While my Guitar Gently Weeps’ was a great song but John and Paul weren’t paying any attention. When he brought in Eric Clapton to play guitar everyone became more collaborative. That created a highlight track for the album.

During the Let it Be sessions that guest role is played by Billy Preston. No one likes to air their dirty laundry in front of strangers or friends even. So everyone was on their best behaviour.

Whether it is a guest or adding or replacing a team member, that changes the dynamic between all the players.

8. Leverage the Power of Humour

The Beatles use humour constantly to diffuse negative situations, reduce boredom and help create a positive environment. When Harrison quits Lennon first remarks “if he’s not back by Tuesday we’ll get Clapton”. Then when someone asks “what should we do now” minutes later, Lennon says “let’s split up his gear between us”.

Referring to the difficulty getting Ringo to agree to perform outside of England, McCartney says “maybe Jimmy Nicol will play.” Nicol had substituted for Ringo Starr for a few weeks on tour early in the band’s run. Another scene shows Lennon and McCartney singing ‘Two of Us’ through clenched teeth. To learn the lyrics, They have to repeat the song over and over; this is just one way to do it without losing all the spontaneity.

Humour breaks the tension, and makes people relax.

In that vein, to summarize:  While The Beatles took a Long and Winding Road, they did manage to Get Back to playing live, with songs heard Across the Universe. I’ve Got a Feeling that with these leadership lessons, you will also be able to Let it Be.

The Beatles Get Back is streaming on Disney+.

Coffee in the Clouds – Selections from the Quotes of the Day from the Pandemic

8 November 2021

Starting in March 2020 when we went into work from home to combat covid-19, I held a virtual “coffee” session with everyone from my team invited. “Coffee in the Clouds” was an opportunity to share what was happening and to get some human contact with other people. We started out meeting 5 times per week and gradually as we got used to the strange new world reduced the frequency to twice per week. While there was no set agenda, it was a combination check-in, update, ask-me-anything, and an opportunity to get some social interaction. We had guest speakers, we did short seminars on online productivity tools, we talked about our holiday plans. Mostly it was a virtual ‘water cooler ‘ chat with anyone who wanted to join. As restrictions are easing, and there are more opportunities to meet in person, we held the last “Coffee in the Clouds” session at the end of October.

We ended almost every chat with a ‘quote of the day’, some inspiring words that I found somewhere. I gathered these from many websites, from friends I know, from experiences I had. When we first started meeting, the quote was definitely about finding some hope in this weird work-from-home situation we were all living with. Gradually I expanded the type of quote I was looking for to more generally inspiring, relevant, or simply interesting quotes.

The complete list of all the ~150 quotes is here. I’ve selected the top ten, and added some comments on why I selected them, what they mean to me, or where they come from.

These are in the order that they were shared.

  1. Every storm runs out of rain” Maya Angelou (American author and poet)

The very first of our Coffee in the Clouds quotes of the day. Such a beautiful way to say that challenges – even big ones – do pass. Many quotes by Maya Angelou follow; one that I never used but that is among my favourite of hers is “When you know better, you do better.”

2. “I tried and failed. I tried again and again and succeeded.” Gail Borden.

Researching Borden uncovered one of those fascinating sets of connections about someone you’ve probably never heard of…. Gail Borden was a Texan who lived in the 1800s, a man of many skills. Among those, he was surveyor, newspaper editor and one of the people who planned the original city of Houston. If he is famous today at all, it would be as the “inventor” of condensed milk. Condensed milk could be kept much longer than fresh milk. He was also related to both Lizzie Borden, the accused axe murderer, and Canadian Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden. Which implies that Sir Robert and Lizzie were related.

What I like about this quote is the importance of persistence. So many other great attributes fail when not tied together with persistence. Although I also believe the quote which is often attributed to Einstein that ‘doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity’, so it’s important to make sure you are persistent but also learning and adapting.

3. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” Amelia Earhart. Aviator.

Earhart was the first women to cross the Atlantic by plane. Holder of multiple early aviation records. One of the most famous missing people in the world, lost over the Pacific with her navigator while trying to become the first person to circumnavigate the world by plane. This quote combines nicely with the previous one. As a child I had a poster in my bedroom saying “Not to decide is to decide.” It’s better to make a decision and move forward than to dither.

4. “The role of a leader is to define reality and offer hope.” Napoleon Bonaparte

I often use this when teaching about leadership or program management or helping the leaders on my team understand their role. One of the best definitions of leadership ever. But should it be ‘describe reality’ or ‘define reality’? ‘Define reality’, which is the quote, sounds more like Napoleon – creating what he wanted by force of will. But it seems to me that being honest about where we are, being willing to admit the challenges, and then offer the hope, the roadmap, the vision on how to get to somewhere better is true leadership.

5. “The three most important ways to lead people are by example, by example, by example.” Albert Schweitzer

Also ways four through ten.

6. “When I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? And I say ‘When there are nine.’ People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that” Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

I found this quote for the session right after Judge Ginsburg died. A great jurist and fighter for equality, and this is a great reminder about how far we are from that goal not just in the US but everywhere.

7. “Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will be stretching out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.” Sir Winston Churchill

The eminently quotable Churchill showed up a lot on our calls. A more controversial figure than I realized when I was young, there is no question of his ability to seize the moment, inspire his country and the world with a brilliant line. Not so much a ‘project’-applicable quote where there are milestones and deliverables. But in the long run, it isn’t the destination that matters, it’s the journey.

8. “Start by doing what is necessary; then by doing what is possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” St Francis of Assisi.

One of the roles I’ve had at multiple consulting firms was to take over projects that weren’t going well and getting them back on track. This quote really sums up my approach to managing those troubled project situations. Often the team is demoralized. They don’t believe in themselves or that the goals are achievable. Little victories start to bring them around and lead to bigger and bigger successes. Just achieve one small milestone. That’s enough to start.

9. “We meet no ordinary people in our lives.” CS Lewis

After Churchill, CS Lewis was the most frequently quoted thinker in Coffee in the Clouds. Lewis is probably most-well known today as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe books). He was an Oxford professor, philosopher and theologian, an Inkling, and friend of JRR Tolkien – they reviewed each other’s novels in progress at meetings of the Inklings.

I often say “Everyone is the hero of their own story” as a reminder to try to look at things from the other person’s perspective. Lewis takes that several steps further. If only we could remember this in every interaction with people and see their extraordinariness!

10.  “Anyone can hold the tiller when the sea is calm.” Epictetus

Epictetus was a Greek Stoic Philosopher. Born a slave, he eventually was freed and founded a school of philosophy. One of my all-time favourite quotes.

I think of this several ways; I’m sure that there are more.

The sailboat’s not going anywhere when the sea is calm, so it’s irrelevant who holds the tiller. With a favourable wind the boat can easily achieve its destination, with even someone reasonably competent at the helm. It’s when the seas are rough that we need our best person at the helm. A reminder not only to evaluate the results, but the situation and circumstances that led to those results. A reminder to assign people tasks aligned with their capabilities and capacity to grow too.

Complete list of quotations from “Coffee in the Clouds”

March 2020 to October 2021

Starting in March 2020 when we went into “work from home” to combat covid-19, I held a virtual “coffee” session with everyone from my extended team invited until the end of October 2021.

One of the elements of the session, almost every day, was a ‘quote of the day’, some inspiring words that I found somewhere. I gathered these from many websites, from friends I know, from experiences I had.

I wish I’d kept the complete list of places where I found each quotation. Many of these were on multiple sites. I cannot vouch for the attribution of every single quote. But any one where I did some research about the individual did confirm that they said it.

The complete list, in the order that they were shared in our coffee chats. My comments in italics.

Quotes:

 “Every storm runs out of rain” Maya Angelou (American author and poet)

The very first of our Coffee in the Clouds quotes of the day. Such a beautiful way to say that challenges – even big ones – do pass. Many quotes by Maya Angelou follow; one that I never used but that is among my favourite of hers is “When you know better, you do better.”

“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.” Erich Fromm

“I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.” The Dalai Lama.

“A problem is a chance for you to do your best” Duke Ellington

 “Skill and confidence are an unconquered army” George Herbert, a Welsh poet from the 1600s.

“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.” Elizabeth Edwards. She wrote a book on resilience. An American lawyer and wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards

“He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity.” William Samuel Johnson American statesman, he signed the US Constitution

“Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.” Michael Jordan

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity” Albert Einstein

“Things turn out the best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” John Wooden. American basketball player and head coach at the University of California, Los Angeles. Nicknamed the “Wizard of Westwood,” he won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period as head coach at UCLA, including a record seven in a row.

“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.” ― Jodi Picoult, author of My Sister’s Keeper

“Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems.” Gever Tulley

“What stands in the way becomes the way.” Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. One of the great stoic philosophers.

 “It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself that determines how your life’s story will develop.” Dieter F. Uchtdorf. Pilot, Author and senior church member in LDS

 “Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” ― Nelson Mandela

 “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” Confucius

 “Rock bottom became the solid foundation in which I rebuilt my life.” J.K. Rowling

 “I tried and failed. I tried again and again and succeeded.” Gail Borden.

Researching Borden uncovered one of those fascinating sets of connections about someone you’ve probably never heard of…. Gail Borden was a Texan who lived in the 1800s, a man of many skills. Among those, he was surveyor, newspaper editor and one of the people who planned the original city of Houston. If he is famous today at all, it would be as the “inventor” of condensed milk. Condensed milk could be kept much longer than fresh milk. He was also related to both Lizzie Borden, the accused axe murderer, and Canadian Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden. Which implies that Sir Robert and Lizzie were related.

What I like about this quote is the importance of persistence. So many other great attributes fail when not tied together with persistence. Although I also believe the quote which is often attributed to Einstein that ‘doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity’, so it’s important to make sure you are persistent but also learning and adapting.

 “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Sir Winston Churchill.

Lots of quotes from Churchill appear below. This particular one I’ve used many times in sessions on ‘how to manage a troubled project’ or during troubled projects. When you put it this way, it seems kind of obvious. Don’t stop in the bad place!

“No matter how bleak or menacing a situation may appear, it does not entirely own us. It can’t take away our freedom to respond, our power to take action.” Ryder Carroll

“On the other side of a storm is the strength that comes from having navigated through it. Raise your sail and begin.” Gregory S. Williams. Novelist – best known as the author of Fatal Indemnity

 “When we learn how to become resilient, we learn how to embrace the beautifully broad spectrum of the human experience.” ― Jaeda Dewalt author, photographer author of “Chasing Desdemona”

 “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying ‘I will try again tomorrow’.” ― Mary Anne Radmacher; writer, artist, author of “Courage Doesn’t Always Roar”

“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.” Harriet Beecher Stowe. Author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. American Abolitionist.

“Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” Desmond Tutu

 “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.” Mother Teresa

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” Henry Ford

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence” Vince Lombardi

“Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent of how I react to it.” Charles Swindoll. A US evangelical pastor.

“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” Jimmy Dean, American country music singer, and TV host.

 “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” Audrey Hepburn

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Michael Jordan

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” Albert Einstein

“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” Stephen Covey

While this is true a lot of the time for a lot of us, it’s also true that a lot of people are trapped by birth and circumstance. It’s a good quote for a high performing team, that’s stumbling, it’s a bad quote for someone trapped in a war zone or in the middle of famine.

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” Henry Ford

 “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Alice Walker. Novelist poet. Most famous for writing The Color Purple. Walker won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” Amelia Earhart. Aviator.

Earhart was the first women to cross the Atlantic by plane. Holder of multiple early aviation records. One of the most famous missing people in the world, lost over the Pacific with her navigator while trying to become the first person to circumnavigate the world by plane. This quote combines nicely with the previous one. As a child I had a poster in my bedroom saying “Not to decide is to decide.” It’s better to make a decision and move forward than to dither.

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” Aristotle Onassis, Greek shipping magnate.

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” -Robert Louis Stevenson. Author of Treasure island, Kidnapped, Dr Jekyll. Stevenson died at age 44

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?” Martin Luther King, Jr

“A riot is the language of the unheard.” Martin Luthor King, Jr

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” Ayn Rand

“If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” Vincent Van Gogh

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” Leonardo da Vinci

“Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.” Dalai Lama.

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” Albert Einstein

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” Helen Keller

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” John Lennon

Lennon definitely said this. I’ve always wondered if he actually did have that conversation as a child. It sounds too good to be true.

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

 “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” George Addair

“Be the change you want to see” Gandhi (via colleague Dave Bataille)

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” Plato

“Nothing will work unless you do.” Maya Angelou

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” Theodore Roosevelt

Also, Sondheim in West Side Story’s “Somewhere”

“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” Plutarch. A platonic philosopher in first century best known for his work in biography … Parallel Lives

“Control your own destiny or someone else will.” Jack Welch

“To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to change often.” Winston Churchill

“The role of a leader is to define reality and offer hope.” Napoleon

I often use this when teaching about leadership or program management or helping the leaders on my team understand their role. One of the best definitions of leadership ever. But should it be ‘describe reality’ or ‘define reality’? ‘Define reality’, which is the quote, sounds more like Napoleon – creating what he wanted by force of will. But it seems to me that being honest about where we are, being willing to admit the challenges, and then offer the hope, the roadmap, the vision on how to get to somewhere better is true leadership.

“Once you choose hope, anything is possible.” Christopher Reeve

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Martin Luther King Jr.

“Every man should ask himself each day he is not too readily accepting negative solutions.” Winston Churchill

“Nothing is forever, not even our problems.” Charlie Chaplin

“The three most important ways to lead people are by example, by example, by example.” Albert Schweitzer

Also ways four through ten.

“When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.” Winston Churchill

“The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.” Nicolas Chamfort. French writer, who died in 1794. Chamfort was also secretary to the sister of Louis XVI.

“When I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the supreme court]? And I say ‘When there are nine.’ People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that” Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

I found this quote and the next one for the session right after Justice Ginsburg died. A great jurist and fighter for equality, and this is a great reminder about how far we are from that goal not just in the US but everywhere.

“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”

“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” -Les Brown. American motivation speaker. Catch phrase “It’s possible”; He was married to Gladys Knight.

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Napoleon Hill. US self-help author, died in 1970. Author of Think and Grow Rich.

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. It is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” Winston Churchill

Having read Manchester’s three volume biography of Churchill, I’m not entirely sure he had this particular form of courage!

“Have faith, have hope, have courage and carry on. If we do that we will be tremendously successful.” Howard Boville (became head of IBM cloud in 2021)

“Baseball is a game of confidence, and overcoming failures and fears. That’s what life’s about to.” Yogi Berra

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain

“Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.” Winston Churchill

“The only way a leader can withstand the gale force winds of change is by relying on his or her deep, healthy roots.” Bob Rosen, author of Grounded

“Rivers do not drink their own water; trees do not eat their own fruit; the sun does not shine on itself and flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves. Living for others is a rule of nature. We are all born to help each other. No matter how difficult it is… life is good when you are happy; but it is much better when others are happy because of you.” Pope Francis

“You have to give 100 percent in the first half of the game. If that isn’t enough, in the second half, you have to give what’s left.” Yogi Berra

“One always measures friendships by how they show up in bad weather.” Winston Churchill

“You shouldn’t give circumstances the power to rouse anger, for they don’t care at all.” Marcus Aurelius

 “Nobody can be all smiley all the time, but having a good, positive attitude isn’t something to shrug off.” Yogi Berra

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Oscar Wilde

“Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” Henry James. American author from the 1880s

“We may have all come on different ships, but we are all in the same boat now.” Martin Luther King Jr.

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” Winston Churchill

“Little things are big.” Yogi Berra

As long as you have confidence in your heart, you will never be defeated. Li Ning, CEO of Li Ning Sports.

“Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what have you had?” Henry James

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” Winston Churchill

“There are going to be priorities and multiple dimensions of your life, and how you integrate that is how you find happiness.” Denise Morrison, CEO of Campbell’s soups

“There are a lot of things in life you can’t control, but how you respond to things, that you CAN control.” Yogi Berra

“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.” Martin Luthor King Jr

“You must put your head into the mouth of the lion if the performance is to be a success” Winston Churchill

“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.” Henry James

“Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.” Marcus Aurelius

“Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will be stretching out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.” Winston Churchill

The eminently quotable Churchill showed up a lot on our calls. A more controversial figure than I realized when I was young, there is no question of his ability to seize the moment, inspire his country and the world with a brilliant line. Not so much a ‘project’-applicable quote where there are milestones and deliverables. But in the long run, it isn’t the destination that matters, it’s the journey.

 “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” CS Lewis

“I never dreamed we’d accomplish so much, but hunger accomplishes a lot of things.” Yogi Berra

“What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?” Henry James.

“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it is.” Wayne Gretzky

“Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.” Lucy Maud Montgomery in Anne of Green Gables

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” Steve Jobs

“Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.” GD Anderson

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.’” CS Lewis

“I try to accomplish something each day.” – Yogi Berra

“Learn avidly. Question it repeatedly. Analyze it carefully. Then put what you have learned into practice intelligently.” — Confucius

“Success is about dedication. You may not be where you want to be or do what you want to do when you’re on this journey. But you’ve got to be willing to have vision and foresight that leads you to an incredible end.” Usher

“Selling starts when the customer says ‘No’. Up till then it is just order-taking.” Steve Henderson.

Not sure if my colleague Steve was the first person to say this, but he was the first person I ever heard say it.

“It’s time to start living the life you’ve imagined.” Henry James

 “We meet no ordinary people in our lives.” CS Lewis

After Churchill, CS Lewis was the most frequently quoted thinker in Coffee in the Clouds. Lewis is probably most-well known today as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe books). He was an Oxford professor, philosopher and theologian, an Inkling, and friend of JRR Tolkien – they reviewed each other’s novels in progress at meetings of the Inklings.

I often say “Everyone is the hero of their own story” as a reminder to try to look at things from the other person’s perspective. Lewis takes that several steps further. If only we could remember this in every interaction with people and see their extraordinariness!

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” — Confucius

“Start by doing what is necessary; then by doing what is possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” St Francis of Assisi.

One of the roles I’ve had at multiple consulting firms was to take over projects that weren’t going well and getting them back on track. This quote really sums up my approach to managing those troubled project situations. Often the team is demoralized. They don’t believe in themselves or that the goals are achievable. Little victories start to bring them around and lead to bigger and bigger successes. Just achieve one small milestone. That’s enough to start.

“When you are running a business there is a constant need to reinvent oneself. One should have the foresight to stay ahead in times of rapid change and rid ourselves of stickiness in any form in the business.” Shiv Nadar.

“Adventures are never fun while you’re having them.” CS Lewis

 “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.” Confucius

Or a “Dymond” with a flaw.

“Nothing limits achievement like small thinking; nothing expands possibilities like unleashed thinking.” William Arthur Ward via colleague Faridah Saadat

“You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” Amelia Earhart

“There are many absolutely incredible women working from the grassroots up, whose life experiences, as well as their capabilities, more than qualify them for a voice at the table. Many are unheard heroines that keep peace within and across communities.” Sophie, Countess of Wessex

“If opportunity doesn’t knock; build a door.” Milton Berle

“If you see a turtle sitting on a fence post, the one thing you know for sure is that it didn’t get there by itself.” Steve Henderson

“Do not dare not to dare” CS Lewis

“The game is more than the player of the game, and the ship more than the crew.” Kipling

When I was a university student the Engineering library was temporarily in the old City of Toronto main library building. I liked to study at a desk that overlooked a large fireplace that had this quote carved above it. I probably spent as much time staring at the quote, trying to understand what Kipling was saying as I did on solving partial differential equations. With much the same lack of result!

Looking up the quote now, it is from the chorus of the poem “A Song in Storm”, which Kipling wrote in the period 1914-1918. The poem is about enduring using a travelling in a ship in a storm at sea as a metaphor.

“I hated every minute of training. but I said ‘don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion’”. Mohammed Ali

“Diversity is a fact, but inclusion is a choice we make every day. As leaders, we have to put out the message that we embrace, and not just tolerate, diversity.” Nellie Borrero of Accenture

For Pride month in June 2021 I looked for specific quotes about diversity. The next several represent those comments on diversity I thought most impactful.

“What’s often ignored is that diversity is not only a pipeline or recruiting issue. It’s an issue of making the people who do make it through the pipeline want to stay at your company.” Andrea Barrica

“A lot of different flowers make a bouquet.” Islamic Proverb

“Many conversations about diversity and inclusion do not happen in the boardroom because people are embarrassed at using unfamiliar words or afraid of saying the wrong thing — yet this is the very place we need to be talking about it. The business case speaks for itself — diverse teams are more innovative and successful in going after new markets.” Dame Inga Beale, former CEO of Lloyds of London.

“Diversity is the mix. Inclusion is making the mix work.” Andres Tapia

“Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.” Mahatma Gandhi

“Diversity is not about how we differ. Diversity is about embracing one another’s uniqueness.” Ola Joseph

“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.” Maya Angelou

“I’ve learned that lesson many times.” David Leaver (my nephew. This was said when he was a child.)

“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.” CS Lewis

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” Confucius

“Anyone can hold the tiller when the sea is calm.” Epictetus

Epictetus was a Greek Stoic Philosopher. Born a slave, he eventually was freed and founded a school of philosophy. One of my all-time favourite quotes. I read a book of his meditations early in my career, this one has stuck with me.

I think of this several ways; I’m sure that there are more.

The sailboat’s not going anywhere when the sea is calm, so it’s irrelevant who holds the tiller. With a favourable wind the boat can easily achieve its destination, with even someone reasonably competent at the helm. It’s when the seas are rough that we need our best person at the helm. A reminder not only to evaluate the results, but the situation and circumstances that led to those results. A reminder to assign people tasks aligned with their capabilities and capacity to grow too.

“Clouds came floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.” Rabindaranath Tagnore

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is right now.” Steve Henderson

“Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.” CS Lewis

“Don’t count the days, make the days count.” Muhammad Ali

“I’m a big fan of easy.” Gladys Dymond (my mother)

We were talking about ways to solve some small problem and there was one that was simpler and would take less time, but cost a little more. I thought since I was going to have to do the effort, I should try to save her the money. This was her reply. An important reminder to check the priorities and the budget! Also, the value of expediency.

“When you don’t know what to do, do something.” Gladys Dymond

Mom said this all the time when I was a kid. It drove me nuts. Now its my most frequently used quote from her. (I try to avoid “were you raised in a barn?”) Although I think prioritization is important, there are times when it’s just better to do anything. When you have 10,000 things to do and you do any one of them, you now have 9,999 things to do. Versus spending all day figuring out which one to do.

 “We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.” CS Lewis

“There is not a human being on this planet that does not yearn for the deep reconciliation of the human spirit” Chief Joseph

Chief Dr Robert Joseph is ambassador for reconciliation Canada and member of National Assembly of First Nations. I looked for this quote and the ones that follow for the Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. https://reconciliationcanada.ca/

“The more you want to embrace the notion that you can indeed inspire change, the more power and courage you give yourself to act in the pursuit of justice and equality” Chief Joseph

“Reconciliation includes anyone with an open mind and an open heart who is willing to look into the future with a new way” Chief Joseph

“Let us find a way to belong to this time and place together. Our future, and the well-being of all our children, rests with the kind of relationships we build today” Chief Joseph

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.” Martin Luther King

“Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct”. Thomas Carlyle (via Forbes)

“Half of getting there is having the confidence to show up — and keep showing up.” Sophia Amoruso (via Forbes)

What is DevOps and why is getting it right so important for the cloud?

8 Feb 2021

One of the most over-used and misunderstood concepts in IT today is DevOps.  It’s right up there with Multicloud and Agile as ideas that get more lip service than understanding or actual comprehension.  Most companies today have started to implement DevOps.  DevOps engineer jobs are constantly posted. Yet most companies are unhappy with the return relative to the investment. 

 In a 2020 IDC survey of U.S. enterprise organizations, more than 77% of respondents indicated that they have already adopted DevOps in some capacity. But most of these enterprise organizations are using DevOps for less than 20% of their application estate. Those same companies plan to double DevOps usage in 2021.

So why is DevOps so hard, and why is it so important to get it right? And why is it important for your company’s journey to cloud?

Probably the biggest impediment for organizations implementing DevOps (or DevSecOps as its increasingly known) is a lack of understanding or agreement on just what it is.

What exactly is DevOps?

The term DevOps was first coined in 2008 at an Agile conference in Toronto.  The definition proposed was:

DevOps is a set of practices intended to reduce the time between committing a change to a system and the change being placed into normal production, while ensuring high quality. (source Wikipedia)  

Note that in that 2008 definition there is no mention of tooling. The concept is about new processes and practices to move faster. Implementing DevOps will help accelerate software project development cycle by minimizing costs and driving efficiency. Most organizations seem to think that implementing a ‘DevOps toolchain’ is all that’s required.  And of course tooling is essential to automate, simplify, and accelerate the process. 

But without changing the relationship between the IT Development team and the IT Operations team, and changing the underlying philosophy of both those teams, DevOps is just another way to waste IT funds by purchasing under-utilized tools.  Like the people who think that having a ‘daily standup meeting’ means they’ve implemented agile, buying the latest toolset (or downloading the opensource versions) does not equal ‘implementing DevOps’.

As its name implies, DevOps all about bringing together the two main historical camps of IT: The development team and operations team. Although they have many skills in common, these two groups have always approached  IT with very different perspectives:

    • Developers want unlimited test environments to rapidly develop and test different code streams in parallel. They want to be able to develop test, iterate and not lose any changes. They want the latest cool feature that they’ve created implemented immediately and are happy to ‘throw It over the wall’ into production.
    • The Operations team wants stability. Change is risk. The most likely time for an outage is right after something new has gone in. Cost and time taken to set up and manage all these overlapping environments distracts from the main goal – keeping the production environments safe.

There are other stakeholders with additional views:

    • Business users want the change they want immediately and not wait for quarterly cycles. But like the electrical grid, they expect the systems to be always available and only notice when it is not.
    • Senior IT executives may be primarily concerned is about improving overall operational metrics around cost, risk, quality, productivity and speed in the development cycle. More bang for the buck.

DevSecOps means taking the DevOps approach DEV_SEC_OPSand embedding a security perspective into it right from the start.  Security is not a standalone practice but instead a shared responsibility.  Designing and building security in rather than having it imposed by a separate ‘compliance’ function.

 

To implement DevOps think of the acronym CAMS

Think of the acronym CAMS (Culture, Automation, Measurement and Sharing) as the factors necessary to truly adopt embrace DevOps.

GearsSuccessful implementations of DevOps change the Dev and Ops cultures to make sure we stop thinking either/or in order to get both rapid access to change and maintain production stability. They highly automate the steps of software creation and use from requirements definition through development, integration, testing, deploying and operating. They use combined processes and tools to shorten development cycles, and allows for more frequent deployment to production.  

Well implemented DevOps processes give developers and testers the ability to create, customize and delete their own environments; it is about keeping track of all the components necessary for a successful implementation of a new function into an environment, and it’s about ensuring that change is promoted to production smoothly, efficiently and often while retaining the necessary approvals and controls.

To track progress in implementing DevOps and to continuously improve, it is important to identify and track a set of measurements. In true DevOps fashion, these metrics should be simple, highly automated and accessible to all involved.  While each implementation should focus on the pain points of your own organization, some of the key items to consider include:

Track how these measures interact.  As DevOps capabilities mature, you should be seeing significant gains in quality and functionality per unit time. As you deploy to production more frequently, are defects in production increasing?  As you automate creation of test environments, is code integration becoming more challenging? How have these numbers changed since before you started your DevOps journey?  Calculating the number of releases per period over time will give you an indication of improved velocity. Tracking the number of defects per release in production over time will indicate how quality is improving.

(You can find lots more on DevOps measurements here and here. )

Like any project designed to change behaviour, regular, frequent communications among the stakeholders is critical. Sharing pain points and successes helps pave the way to improve and expand your DevOps implementation.  “Done right, DevOps is a feedback development lifecycle where assessment and feedback are the foundation and are embedded in every step.

In 2020 we’ve seen the importance of automation and tooling to allow this work to be done remotely. And yet, “One of the biggest challenges to pursuing DevOps is a lack of urgency.”

Why is it so important today? And how does it impact our Cloud work?

Multiple trends have increased the importance of properly implementing DevOps. 

    • End-user expectations conditioned by the ‘it just works’ deployment of the latest features on new apps on their Android or iPhones means both increased expectation of the rate of change, higher availability expectations AND more success outcomes expectations.
    • Agile development and continuous integration continuous deployment (CI/CD) create the need for automated deployment and the expectation of easily measuring outcomes.
    • The ability to rapidly create and delete environments in the cloud (particularly development and test environments) means it is even more important to automate code deployment so that you know exactly what is where, and how to recreate it.
    • Increasing use of microservices architecture (or APIs) for software development means there are more “things” to manage in development and production.
    • As use of microservices increase, that in turn is one of the factors driving the increasing use of containerization as the deployment vehicle for cloud workloads. Containers are foundational for the API economy by providing efficient scalability simply and automatically.  In order to deploy and manage those APIs in containers requires enterprise grade DevOps. 
    • Other trends like infrastructure as code, network as code, SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) rely on DevOps or DevOps concepts to be successful (see here.)

Migrating to the cloud – like any new technology – brings its own new operational procedures.  It is all too easy as we build in new environments to recreate the mistakes of the past – or to use something which was successful in the past but doesn’t take advantage of the new approach.  Fundamentally, the cloud is about creating a virtualized environment. As companies implement more solutions on more clouds, the proliferation of workloads to manage will mean the need for consistent tooling to manage while increase.  DevOps process are the approach to managing that virtualization. The right culture, process and tools are critical to IT success in the cloud world. Containers, service mesh, data mesh … these can package up tools, data and technologies to make development faster, quality higher, operations smoother, and our business users happier.  And that’s what DevOps is all about.

What’s Next in DevOps?

Already we see people trying to take the next step in DevOps by bringing in Artificial Intelligence concepts into the DevOps process (also known as AIOps). Moving beyond automation to self-healing, or cognitively-assisted touchpoints to improve service resiliency and make the user experiences better.  Automatic suppression of false alerts, using predictive insights to predict and prevent failures, and log-file analytics to provide real-time problem determination are all possible.


Want to learn more? Some other insights on DevOps found here. (And thanks for all the research by my colleague Abdel Koumare who sifted through these to find the best ones.) 

DevOps and hybrid cloud

Why DevOps is important for the business

Path to get started

Why DevOps for Agile

What is DevOps (aka DevSecOps).  (In case I haven’t been clear)

Tools (everyone wants to talk DevOps tools.  I hope I’ve explained that’s not the right place to start!)

Other

Apollo 13 – Lessons in Crisis Leadership from Failure (part 2)

15-April-2020

In my most recent blog post,  I highlighted several lessons about leadership in a crisis as demonstrated by the story of Apollo 13. This failed mission to the moon is most famously recaptured in the Ron Howard directed film starring Tom Hanks and Ed Harris.  Continuing the lessons learned and how they are shown by this story – either in the movie or in real-life.

Apollo13 (4)

Contingency plans are a great starting place – not the final recipe. You need to plan for emergencies. Even when the one that happens isn’t what was envisioned, they can be a valuable reference for parts of your situation. Because you can’t prepare for every situation. But NASA’s focus on meticulous planning and testing scenarios pays off. Again, this is not shown in the movie. But NASA had already tested the contingency of navigating the combined Apollo spacecraft from the LM during Apollo 9. And on Apollo 8, Lovell himself had tested navigating by visual reference to the stars and to the Earth’s terminator. Both these backup procedures were available and used in unexpected ways during the Apollo 13 flight.

Sometimes you have to find a way to make do. In a situation that seems unbelievable but actually happened, the filters that scrubbed carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere were different shapes on the two spacecraft. To keep the three astronauts breathing, they literally need to find a way to fit a square peg into a round hole, with only the items already on the spacecraft. Kranz assigns a team early to work on this problem and they are given all the items the astronauts might use. Duct tape and the now-useless mission flight plan document are major pieces of the solution.*

It’s not about what things are designed to do, it’s about what they can do. The lunar module wasn’t designed as a lifeboat. The Command Module simulator wasn’t designed as a test bed. The mission flight plan wasn’t designed to be part of the air filtration system. In a crisis it is about evaluating the capability of what you’ve got, and how it can fit in what you need. The same is true whether it is tools or people. Sometimes the best person is not the most technical qualifications, but someone with the determination, commitment or potential. Or all three.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. We all have policies and procedures that are mandatory. Usually there is a good reason for them. But in a crisis it’s much more important to focus on the big picture. In the movie, the flight surgeons on the ground are continually questioning the astronaut’s health and need for sleep. In fact, LM pilot Haise, is quite ill with an infection and fever by this point. But Lovell is fed up with the constant questioning on minor matters. The crew are working round the clock to find ways to survive and get back to Earth. Frustrated, he pulls all the monitors off his body. The other two astronauts quickly join the mutiny. On the ground, it looks like all three astronauts have flatlined. Once mission control has confirmed that everyone is fine Kranz decides to just let it be. They have more important problems to deal with.

Never show you don’t believe. Your team takes their lead from you. If you hint that something can’t be done, that reinforces their fears. In the movie, Kranz is repeatedly being asked for the odds of safe return. These requests are coming from the White House. Even privately, Kranz refuses to allow that there is any possibility of failure. The real Gene Kranz even titled his own autobiography after the other famous quote from this movie: “Failure is not an option.” There is no evidence he actually said that during the Apollo 13 mission, but the statement reflects his determination to find solutions. In real-life, Glynn Lunney, one of the other flight directors, speaking about the mission later said: “If you spend your time thinking about the crew dying, you’re only going to make that eventuality more likely.” Instead you think about how to keep them alive.

If People are inspired, they will work to solve any problem. The movie is filled with inspiring speeches from Kranz and Lovell delivered as only award-winning actors Harris and Hanks could present them. Would that we were all as eloquent in a moment of crisis. But it’s not the speech necessarily that brings the inspiration. In his autobiography Lovell recounts how a senior Grumman executive is recalled from an MIT sabbatical to help once the disaster occurs. Grumman Aerospace Corporation were the designers and builders of the LM. The executive arrives at the office in the middle of the night to find the Grumman parking lot full. Far more people came in than were called – the Grumman factory and office workers wanted to help any way they could. They believed in what they were doing and would do anything they could to help return the astronauts safely. That common sense of purpose and shared commitment made them pitch in without request. And they did that without being asked and without the inspiring speech.

It’s better to set a direction and make adjustments along the way. In a crisis, you don’t always know the exact path to success. You need to get going in the right general direction and fine-tune as you go rather than try to plan for the perfect outcome before moving. In the movie this happens quite literally. First the astronauts onboard stabilize the spacecraft which has been pushed off course by the explosion and the escaping gases. Getting any control at all is the only objective. Then they decide to go for a ‘free return’ trajectory by continuing to the moon and using the slingshot effect around it. Later they speed up the flight to reduce the total time given the limited air and power in Aquarius. They make further minor course corrections navigating by eye with the LM engines. As they prepare for final re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, they are still slightly off-course. But progressively they’ve got closer and closer to their final destination.

Simple solutions often work best. Near the end of the flight, CSM pilot Swigert is in the command module alone executing the power-up sequence with Mattingly on the ground walking him through the procedure step by step. None of the astronauts has slept in days and Swigert is worried about flipping the wrong switch. He places a piece of tape over the one that would allow him to jettison the LM – which still contains Haise and Lovell. Simple and effective.

It’s about getting the job done, not about the most glamorous job. In another scene that would be unbelievable in fiction but is true, Marilyn Lovell needed someone to sit with her aging mother-in-law during the final splashdown. Marilyn wanted to distract her from any upsetting comments that might be made by the many people in the room. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – the first two people to set foot on the moon and arguably in 1970 among the most famous people in the world – volunteer. No one would’ve denied them a spot in Mission Control or elsewhere, but this was another important job to do. (In the movie the mother asks “Oh, are you boys astronauts too?”)

Ask for help and take the help offered. The Apollo 13 drama caught the world’s attention. Every country offered to help, often when there was little they could do. But with the state of technology at the time, NASA had more math & physics problems than they could handle in the time available. In a seldom-told facet of this crisis, Grumman, designers of the LM, reached out to the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies. U of T was asked to help with the plan to jettison the LM from the CSM before re-entry. They needed to calculate the right air pressure in the connecting tunnel between the Aquarius and the Odyssey to get a clean separation. Enough to make sure that the LM did not interfere with the Odyssey during re-entry. And they didn’t want the pressure to change the command modules trajectory either.

Sometimes it’s better not to know the stakes. I believe that generally people work better when they know the big picture. But sometimes when the stakes are high enough that knowledge can be more pressure than help. The U of T aerospace engineers assumed that they were one of several groups calculating the answer to the LM separation problem. No doubt that took pressure off in having to calculate the perfect answer. It can be paralyzing to know lives are riding on how well and how rapidly you complete your work. Years later the engineers were told by LM pilot Haise that no one else was asked to solve this particular challenge. The U of T answer was literally life-critical, not some kind of ‘double-check’.

Sometimes you do have to guess. With the damage to the oxygen tanks and fuel cells, there is a possibility the heat shield was damaged too. If it is cracked, the Odyssey will burn up and the astronauts will perish on re-entry. There is no way to test this, and nothing can be done in any case if there is a problem. So they make the assumption that the heat shield is fine. There is no point in worrying when nothing more can be done.

In the end, with determination, ingenuity and luck, the Odyssey returns the three astronauts safely to Earth. Fred Haise recovers from his illness. Ken Mattingly never gets the measles. Kranz’ white vest ends up in the US National Air and Space Museum. May all your crises end as successfully.


More information:

The flight of Apollo 13 occurred from April 11-17, 1970. It was the fifth manned flight to circle the moon.

If you watch the movie, you may be interested to know that the reason the scenes set in space in the movie look so realistic is that that they were actually filmed while weightless. The Command Module and Lunar Module sets were built in NASA’s ‘vomit comet’ and cast and crew were actually weightless for 20 seconds at a time to get each take.


Footnotes:

* The command module and lunar module were made by different companies with different design teams. The command module was designed by North American Aviation / North American Rockwell and the lunar module by Grumman. Like most large scale government procurement programs, the US government spread NASA procurement around the country.


Learn More / References used:

At the time of writing, the movie Apollo 13 is available on Amazon Prime. Here’s the link to the IMDB page for the movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Books:

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/29/apollo-13-how-teamwork-and-tenacity-turned-disaster-into-triumph

https://www.fastcompany.com/90368723/dramatic-scene-apollo-13-return-to-earth-that-you-wont-see-in-tom-hanks-movie

Apollo 13 – Lessons in Crisis Leadership from Failure (part 1)

8-April-2020

A crisis that snuck up on us. A situation the public is ignoring until disaster strikes. People isolated away from others, at risk of their lives. It sounds like a story from today’s pandemic headlines but I’m referring to something that happened from 50 years ago this month.

Apollo 13 was intended to be the third landing on the moon in less than a year. Interest was waning. The ‘space race’ was over, the US had won, and the USSR denied there ever was a race. The astronauts’ news conferences weren’t even carried live on network television anymore. Just a routine mission. But an accident happened on the way to the moon that creates a set of powerful lessons in leadership that resonate today.

I often tell people that the fastest course that you can get in leadership in a time of crisis is to watch the movie made from this true story. Ron Howard directed Apollo 13 starring Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell – the spacecraft commander – and Ed Harris as Lead Flight Director Gene Kranz. Both in real-life and the characters as portrayed, they demonstrate the creativity, compassion, and determination that brings the best from their team and their situation.

For a quick recap of the challenge that they faced: Mid-way to the moon, while executing a routine maintenance operation, a wiring flaw causes the oxygen tanks in the Command Service Module (CSM) to explode, crippling the Odyssey. The oxygen tanks are needed for the fuel cells as well as breathing. Power levels are falling to nothing. Lovell reports to Mission Control the second-most famous line uttered from space “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”* In the moment it’s unclear exactly what has happened – in all their careful planning and redundancies, NASA had never envisioned a failure like this. But it is quickly obvious that the Odyssey is failing.

In that instant, the mission changes. With no chance to land on the moon, the three astronauts must turn the Lunar Module – Aquarius – into a lifeboat. They need Aquarius to live in, and to execute the course corrections needed to get back to Earth. The astronauts return to the CSM Odyssey only for final re-entry and landing back on Earth. From the moment of the explosion, every obstacle experienced and every plan needed was created just-in-time by the people on the ground, or by the three astronauts. Rather than being ignored, the entire world is gripped in watching the real-life drama unfold.

Apollo13 (4)Just what are the lessons? As I go through them I will refer to scenes in the movie, which is a fairly accurate condensation of the mission. But it is important to remember, this all really happened. I will share some additional lessons from this moment in history that didn’t make the film. And below I will provide some insight where you can find more detail.

The lessons start even before the crisis hits.

Own the situation. Days before the flight is due to launch, NASA flight surgeons discover that the command module pilot (Ken Mattingly – played by Gary Sinise) has been exposed to the measles. They decide he must be replaced with the backup pilot, Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon). Jim Lovell fights for his original team, but eventually he realizes he can’t win. Once that happens, Lovell not only tells Mattingly himself, he takes the blame. “This was my decision.” The lesson: Own the situation. There are no excuses. Then with his new pilot he spends as much time training together in the limited window before launch as possible.

Get the data and make informed decisions. When the accident first occurs, Mission Control can’t believe their instruments. It must be an instrument failure. People are recommending different courses of action based on incomplete information. From the Odyssey, Lovell reports seeing a gas venting in addition to the same data on power loss they are seeing on the ground. Only taking all the information together is there a credible theory: The spacecraft is seriously damaged.

Give your team hope. Napoleon said “The role of a leader is to define reality and offer hope.” Flight Director Gene Kranz – basically the person in charge of the mission on the ground during one of three shifts – continually inspires his team. When told that this is NASA biggest failure he replies “I believe that this will be our finest moment.” Echoing Churchill’s similar comment during the Battle of Britain.

Work the problem(s) There is a tendency in crisis for everyone to pile onto the biggest issue. With the Odyssey crippled they have many problems. Do they turn around mid-way, or do they continue around the moon and return. How will they navigate? How will they stretch the LM Aquarius oxygen and batteries from two days for two people to four days for three people? How will they restart the Odyssey? Kranz assigns teams to various challenges and focuses on the most immediate, the most critical. Shut the command module down. Don’t turn the ship around immediately, continue around the moon as the least risky. On the spacecraft Lovell, Swigert and Fred Haise (played by Bill Paxton) operate the same way. Before they are told to power up the LM, they’ve already started turning on the Aquarius.

Know your limits. This isn’t shown in the movie but one of the smartest things Kranz does is turn over responsibility to Glynn Lunney at the end of his shift.** He knows that fresh eyes and fresh minds will better deal with the next set of problems. For the rest of the flight the three Flight Directors on the ground share responsibility round the clock. But Kranz signals his commitment to success in a different way. For each mission, his wife has provided him a new vest to wear with the mission patch. Kranz commits that he will wear the vest continuously until the three astronauts are safely returned. Many of the ground crew sleep at Mission Control throughout the rest of the flight so that they are available if needed.

Stay calm and project confidence. It’s okay to show your emotions – in a crisis it’s almost impossible not to – but wherever possible stay calm and focused on what most needs to be managed. There is a great scene in the movie – which the real Lovell says is fiction – where the three astronauts are arguing with voices raised – Did Swigert make a mistake that caused the accident? Lovell (Tom Hanks) raises his voice to get the other two to calm down. It’s pointless to argue, because it won’t change where they are or what they need to do next. Then Mission Control calls on the radio. With voice still raised Lovell asks “Are we on Vox” (ie, on an open mike). When he realizes they haven’t heard the argument he responds in perfect ‘pilot announcing something to passengers’ voice: “Houston say again that last transmission”. When you project that sense of calm authority, you help your team believe that they can achieve the task.

On the ground this same confidence is beautifully shown by Marilyn Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan). After the accident, reporters start gathering in front of her home so that they can track the family’s every move. She tells the NASA press agent to have them to stay off her property. In both the spirit of the time and in her commitment to success she tells them that if they are unhappy, they can take it up with her husband. “He’ll be home on Friday.” She says.

Assign people to the problem they are best able to fix. Ken Mattingly, the command module pilot who got bumped from the flight last-minute, is pulled in to figure out how to restart the command module in order to get it ready for reentry. Mattingly knows the spacecraft and the crew better than anyone. No one has ever cold-started an Apollo capsule in space before. And they have limited batteries and time to get the system restarted. He works in a simulator with other ground crew through various sequences to come up with a way to coax the systems online without using all the remaining power.

In part 2 I will continue the lessons that you can learn from this crisis, and I will explain how the mission of Apollo 13 completes.


Footnotes:

*Often misquoted as “Houston we have a problem”. Swigert says “Hey we’ve got a problem here.” Lovell says “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” The exact wording of the most famous line said in space is also controversial. On first stepping on the moon, Neil Armstrong claims that he said “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” In the audio recording you do not hear the word ‘a’. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong

**In the movie, they generally show the same team in Mission Control under Gene Kranz in all Earth-bound scenes. Kranz was the lead Flight director and responsible for the White team. But Kranz, Lunney (Black team) and Milt Windler (Maroon team) split responsibility and with their respective teams handed off to each other at the end of each shift. That way they were able to work the problems continuously and collaboratively.


Learn More / References used:

At the time of writing, the movie Apollo 13 is available on Amazon Prime. Here’s the link to the IMDB page for the movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Books:

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/29/apollo-13-how-teamwork-and-tenacity-turned-disaster-into-triumph

(Image credit Eric Dymond)

Hybrid Cloud – its not just a passing phase

24 March 2020

There is so much jargon in the cloud world, sometimes its hard to follow the conversation! Different vendors use the same words to describe different things, and different words to describe similar things.  And the meanings are evolving over time.  One of the most-used and abused phrases today is some variation of ‘Hybrid Cloud’ or ‘Hybrid Multi-cloud’. Is this just hype or some vendor fud (fear, uncertainty and doubt)?  Or is it a real thing?

My goal in this blog is to explain the term, and highlight the criticality of Hybrid Cloud to your enterprise computing strategy.  Not only is Hybrid Cloud a critical interim step in the goal of getting to the cloud, I believe it is going to part of the long-term strategy for most large enterprises.

What is Hybrid Cloud Anyways?

NIST – the US National Institute of Standards and Technology defines the Hybrid Cloud as “a composition of two or more clouds (private, community or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together, offering the benefits of multiple deployment models.”

While NIST has the benefit of being a standards organization, I think more commonly, people use the term ‘Hybrid Cloud’ most frequently to describe systems spanning public cloud and private or dedicated cloud, or even public cloud and traditional on-premise solutions, rather than any two clouds as NIST defines.  That’s how I’ll use it here, but I will come back the NIST definition at the end. To highlight the point that this term is still evolving, I’ve collected some other example definitions at the end of the blog.

So for the purpose of this article, “Hybrid Cloud” is where different parts of an application system work together and are spread across your on-premise environment and one or more public cloud. (See diagram) That’s how most people are using the term today.  “Separate clouds become hybrid when those environments are connected as seamlessly as possible.March20Illustrationwip (1)Some Hybrid Cloud Examples

To understand where you might want to use Hybrid Cloud, think about the difference between your on-premise environment and Public Cloud. You have more control over the on-prem environment since it runs in your data center, you can run transactional workloads fast, but it is not elastic like Public Cloud is. If you need to scale on premise, then you need to buy new hardware, where as on Public Cloud (and dedicated), if you need to scale you just add more resources and that provisioning is handled separately.  Access to the on-premise environment is at the speed of your local network, access to Public Cloud is at the speed of your internet connection.

One of the simplest and most common examples of hybrid cloud is where your production environment remains on premise in your data centre but you’ve moved your development and test environments out to the cloud.  That gives you the flexibility to create and destroy test environments as needed.  As someone who’s led a lot of large complex systems integration projects, we used to beg for ‘one more test environment’, and as soon as we got it, we’d want another one!

This ‘prod on-premise, test in the cloud’ is a Hybrid Cloud example because to work effectively, the environments need to be connected with a DevOps toolchain that spans the on-prem and public cloud environment.  And the big benefit – besides keeping your test team happy – is that you only pay for those added environments while they are in use, and can eliminate the cost when you are in a cycle of low or no testing.

 

A second Hybrid Cloud example and one step up on the complexity curve would be an on-prem environment that is using a cloud-based API.  Perhaps your application is calling out to Watson APIs, or needs access to Google Maps.  In that scenario, Watson or the Map APIs are a small Public Cloud-based component of your overall solution.  Data is mostly flowing out to the cloud, with a small answer set coming back.

Getting to the highest end of a complex Hybrid Cloud application, you have applications that share large amounts of data. Perhaps an ERP system that is on prem, is updating a data lake in the cloud.  And that ERP is also communicating with a CRM solution like Salesforce on the cloud for quote or order management so that manufacturing and distribution understands backlog requirements.

Hybrid with SaaS
Complex Hybrid Cloud example

This third example starts to show why hybrid will be around for a long time.  As more applications move to the cloud; more and more of them will need to communicate with those ‘left behind’.

For lots of reasons it will take years to get all large enterprise applications to the cloud, if ever. Some applications will be considered ‘crown jewels’ or contain data too sensitive to move out, some applications that have evolved over years may be too complex to move all at once, and for some applications that have been stable for years, there may be no value in migration.

So what’s not Hybrid? You’re not on Hybrid Cloud, for example, “if a company is using a SaaS application for a project but there is no movement of data from that application into the company’s data center.” (Dummies.com) That’s just a single cloud, working standalone from the rest of your application portfolio.

When is Hybrid Cloud a Problem?

Hybrid Cloud is a computing pattern and like other patterns, it isn’t right for every situation.

Of course, if you’re organization started as ‘born on the cloud’, there is probably little likelihood that you will ever implement this solution. There isn’t likely a use case that will force you to build your own data centre if you don’t already have one.

Particularly as the solution gets more complex, you need to be really concerned about the amount and timeliness of data movement between the various environments.  If there is a requirement for real-time or near real-time, bandwidth and latency can become significant issues.  “Managing hybrid cloud is a complex task because each cloud solution has its own API, storage management protocols, networking capabilities, etc.” (Citrix)

How to Manage Hybrid Cloud

When you have a simple hybrid environment, you probably don’t need any new tools or techniques to manage your Hybrid Cloud.  Your existing IT management processes will probably be fine. As more and more on-premise solutions are working in tandem with on public cloud solutions, it gets more complicated and you are more likely to need tools to manage hybrid cloud and/or multi-cloud environment that results.

The tooling to manage Hybrid Cloud and multi-cloud is still new and evolving.  Clients are investing in their own custom solutions and vendors are building out capabilities.  As your hybrid environment grows more complex you will need tools that provide

  • Visibility – With workloads running in multiple clouds and on premise, you need a “single pane of glass” that tells you exactly what is running, and where it is running.
  • Management – Tooling that gives you the ability to set security policies and track spend; and manage workloads based on those needs. Orchestrate how applications start, connect to each other, and scale.
  • Automation – Automation will allow you to deploy applications across environments,  help manage backup and disaster recovery, and provide the ability to move workloads from on-premise to cloud or vice-versa.

Focusing on these will help manage systems that have already been built.  As you’re building new applications or modernizing existing ones, you will need ways to rapidly develop integration methods and data movement across cloud environments rapidly and consistently.

To make it easier to manage workloads and have consistent tooling across private cloud and public cloud, common tooling such as OpenShift from Red Hat / IBM or Anthos from Microsoft can help. The promise of these tools is that they will allow you to orchestrate all of your cloud environments using a single interface.  Built on open source tools such as Kubernetes and Linux, they offer built-in governance and help manage orchestration across the Hybrid environment.  Increasingly, Kubernetes and containers are the de facto organizational process for new application and microservices deployments, so these tools become increasingly critical.

In addition to OpenShift, other companies such as Microsoft (Anthos), Citrix and VMware are all offering competing management frameworks and one of the questions an IT department will need to answer is choosing between these platforms.

Future of Hybrid Cloud

I think it is clear from the examples above that hybrid cloud will continue to evolve over time.  Eventually it is likely to be indistinguishable from ‘multi-cloud’ – two or more different clouds collaborating in an application or system. Which is basically what the NIST definition states.

For now, Hybrid Cloud offers benefits that can’t be gained with just on-premise or just ‘on-cloud’ solutions:

  • It gives business comfort around security and compliance issues – with the right level of security for production by maintaining on-premise for high-security applications, and allowing development and test environments and lower-security needs systems to be on public cloud
  • Integration with the remaining legacy on premise environments is easier (and higher-performance) from private cloud, which facilitates migration. Until a critical mass of the applications that communicate together are ready for cloud, you can keep the portfolio together using private cloud, then gradually move the ones to public when its practical).
  • Hybrid Cloud offers scalability / workload management (ie, test environments, development environment, temp performance testing or training environments) that your on-premise data centre can’t match.
  • Hybrid Cloud gives the potential for cost-optimization between existing assets and public cloud environments
  • Embracing Hybrid cloud gives your on-premise environments access to public APIs and microservices such as AI technologies
  • Hybrid Cloud gives your IT department the opportunity to balance among the competing goals of control, portability, scalability and cost
  • Hybrid Cloud allows applications to move across boundaries over time and to operate across boundaries
  • For more on benefits of Hybrid Cloud see here (RCR Wireless) and here (Gigamon)

New use cases are coming along that will bring new forms of Hybrid Cloud. One example is IoT (the Internet of Things). As IoT becomes more mainstream we will need solutions that deal with collecting and sorting all the data collected by IoT devices, and sending back for analysis summarized or most critical data.  While there are multiple options for this, one of the most likely will be a ‘hub and spoke’ model where IoT devices communicate with a local, private server, and that device then decides what information needs to be shared to the cloud.  This hub and spoke is an instance of Edge Computing, where selected processing is moved closer to the data being collected. There is a great example of how this will work using an example of IoT data collection of a motorcycle and rider example here via TechBeacon.

Some would say that coming rollout of 5G networks will resolve this capacity problem, but particularly in a large country like Canada the rollout of 5G will likely be focused on the largest cities and some narrow corridors between them.  So the hub and spoke model will continue to be in use for a long long time.

Conclusion 

Hybrid Cloud is clearly a flexible and evolving term. The concept of private or dedicated technology working together with systems built or migrated to the public cloud will persist for a long time. Indeed, Hybrid Cloud usage is growing as companies continue their migration to the cloud.  “The global hybrid cloud market is expected to grow from USD 44.6 billion in 2018 to USD 97.6 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 17.0% during the forecast period.” (Markets and Markets ).

Emerging technologies like IoT and Edge computing will bring new Hybrid Cloud use cases over time. The term Hybrid Cloud will continue to evolve but the concept – your own technology interacting with public cloud solutions – will continue to be a valuable part of your IT environment for years to come.


Addendum – Other Hybrid Cloud definitions

As I did some research for this blog, I saw that there is no consistent definition for Hybrid Cloud. And its not just the words that vary, the scope described varies.  See the examples below, all of which differ in meaning from the NIST shared at the start of this article.  Some would argue this comes from the fact that ‘Hybrid Cloud’ is a term that comes from the vendor community, not from clients or some academic pursuit.  But I think when people say that they are trying to imply that Hybrid cloud isn’t valuable or useful or that  it  ‘isn’t really cloud’. I hope I’ve shown that there is more to hybrid than a short-term or interim step on the way to Hybrid Cloud.  The multiple definitions point more to the fact that hybrid cloud is evolving, like most cloud technologies are today.

IBM definition “Hybrid cloud is a computing environment that connects a company’s on-premises private cloud services and third-party public cloud into a single, flexible infrastructure for running the organization’s applications and workloads.”

Forrester Research‘ definition of Hybrid Cloud: “One or more public clouds connected to something in my data center. That thing could be a private cloud; that thing could just be traditional data center infrastructure.”  (As found on this BackBlaze blog post. )

TechTarget definition: “Hybrid Cloud is a cloud computing environment that uses a mix of on-premises, private cloud and third-party, public cloud services with orchestration between the two platforms. By allowing workloads to move between private and public clouds as computing needs and costs change, hybrid cloud gives businesses greater flexibility and more data deployment options.”

If you want a broader discussion of the variation in the meaning of the term Hybrid Cloud, there is a good summary in this IDC Report.


Other Links on Hybrid Cloud

Moving to Cloud Changes How You Run IT (Part 2)

In my last blog, I talked about why realizing the full benefits of cloud requires a fundamental change in how organizations run IT – starting by shifting the focus from technology to business outcomes.

To do this effectively, business and IT must work together as partners, sharing a strategic vision for the organization. Often, a Cloud Target Operating Model (CTOM) is used to map the expected business benefits of cloud technology and resulting in a transformative business model across the organization – people, processes and technology.

No matter what size your company is and where you are in the journey to cloud, your organization can achieve all the benefits cloud has to offer – provided business and IT are willing to work in sync. It’s all about adopting a cloud mindset. Let’s dig a little deeper into how that plays out.

Where are Canadian companies right now?

Not surprisingly, Canadian companies are at varying stages of cloud adoption – and are approaching the journey in a variety of own unique ways. Overall, more than three-quarters of Canadian organizations have migrated at least some of their IT service delivery to the cloud.

A common perception in the IT industry is that Canada lags 12-18 months behind the U.S. in the adoption of most new technology. Whether that is because we are more cautious about new technology, our big businesses are relatively smaller, or if it’s just an industry myth, in my experience it does seem to be true in the journey to cloud. Often, clients have cloud programs with set goals, but the level of transformation activity isn’t at the same level as we see with our U.S. clients.

Whether small or large, Canadian firms often say that they are still in the early stages of building their cloud capability and that they expect to mature capability, processes and skill levels significantly over the next three years.

Adopting a cloud mindset starts with thinking “cloud first” rather than simply “lift and shift.” McKinsey recently noted that the majority of cloud migration spending today is “lift and shift.” This is certainly true in Canada. While this approach has its merits, in many cases, lift and shift can lead to a more complex IT environment. As the McKinsey study explains, “Just taking legacy applications and moving them to the cloud will not automatically yield the benefits that cloud infrastructure and systems can provide. In fact, in some cases, that approach can result in IT architectures that are more complex, cumbersome, and costly than before.”

Not surprisingly, migration is easier for some than others. For “born on the cloud” organizations, digital transformation is as natural as breathing. DevOps, agile, containers – it’s just business as usual. On the other hand, cloud adoption is going to take more time, and change will be more difficult, for older, large organizations with mission-critical legacy applications.

For these older companies, the success metric will depend on how they handle two major shifts ahead:

  • changing the technology itself and
  • changing the culture of the organization as they find partners and gain the skills needed to orchestrate and integrate the total service to the organization.

Developing an agile ethos

Agile is much more than just a daily stand-up! Many organizations haven’t really adopted an agile ethos, nor have they fundamentally changed their processes. Are you part of a large enterprise with a legacy environment? Don’t assume that if “you’re big, you’re slow.” If there is a culture of experimentation within the organization – a willingness to fail fast, learn and adapt – it won’t necessarily take longer to start to achieve the benefits associated with cloud. Similarly, just because you’re small doesn’t mean you are nimble.  Agility is key.

Some may have entered the cloud world without a strategic plan. They may have started acquiring cloud without realizing the challenges of multiple clouds or purchased tools that promise to streamline development without addressing the end to end production cycle.

Make sure you answer the important questions around how you are getting to cloud just as much as why. How are you going to govern your cloud environment? Scale it? Architect and manage it? Starting with the CTOM helps frame where you want to go so everyone involved has bought into the vision – while ensuring minimal losses because risk is understood and accounted for.

How long does this transformation take?

Rewriting mission-critical applications to optimize them for the cloud can certainly be very costly. Many organizations need to see the business value of migrating to cloud to justify the spending. If yours is an organization where change is challenging and cost constraints are an issue, an iterative approach makes the most sense.

And it’s important to recognize not every application belongs on the cloud. Some workloads are better suited to a traditional data centre environment for security reasons or because they are infrequently updated. These workloads will always exist alongside multi cloud and hybrid cloud environments.

The point here is to be sure you are using the right technique for the right services, based on your target operating model. In that case, a technology refresh can benefit from DevOps or agile techniques — whether it’s on cloud or on prem.

How to realize business benefits from cloud

The biggest benefit of cloud is that it enables your organization’s digital transformation. This is most effective when there is awareness and integration between the strategic plans for the infrastructure, the applications, the IT processes, and the business processes. The speed of digital transformation is driven by the availability of your business application components – whether APIs or microservices are ‘cloud ready’. This will drive the agility that digital transformation requires.

When organizations hit roadblocks in achieving benefits from cloud, a deeper look often reveals a series of separate initiatives: cloud migration in one area, digital transformation somewhere else; and DevOps being run without actually merging the functions of the development team and the operations team. Without an integrated vision, you may be migrating the wrong applications in terms of maximizing the value of your digital initiatives.

With the vast amounts of data most businesses generate, equally vast computing resources are required to analyze the data and turn it into actionable information. The ability to scale resources up and down to respond on demand is another cloud benefit, allowing organizations to scale and grow workloads as needed.

Finally, while cloud can save your organization money, there is no guarantee that cloud will always – or even usually – cost less than traditional on-prem. The key cost benefit of cloud is being able to spend at the point of usage rather than upfront; and being able to target spending where it is most needed at any point in time.

Think big, start small

No matter what size your company is and where you are in your cloud journey, adopting a cloud mindset lets you realize business and IT benefits along the way.

ThinkBigStartSmall
image credit: Eric Dymond

We advise clients to start small, learn quickly, then adapt and expand. Pick one area. For example, you can start with a small HR project, and leverage that experience and knowledge across other areas of the organization. Although your ability to reap benefits quickly depends on your CTOM, cloud technologies operating at peak efficiency will:

  • Provide flexibility and scalability. The faster you release services into production, the faster you can respond to business needs in response to market demands.
  • Remove project irritants. Organizations are facing inevitable refresh and replacement demand. By moving that stream onto the cloud, IT can more easily maintain day-to-day services to the business.
  • Provide access management and cost control. Like a utility, cloud lets you pay only for the services you need, when you need them – with the bonus of backup and recovery that might not have been affordable in an on-prem environment.

 

Cloud first puts customers first

As I said in my last blog, cloud by itself will not magically drive savings and productivity, make users happier, or make your company more agile. A cloud-first strategy is designed to remove limitations that have crept into the organization’s business models, and it is fundamentally changing how organizations do business and how they run IT.

A successful move to cloud will align business and IT in a way that supports your organization’s drive to become a customer-centric enterprise. Done right, a cloud for the real world gives you the flexibility, speed and control to capitalize on tomorrow’s big opportunity.

Thanks to colleagues Kristen Leroux and Brian Franks for sharing their thoughts in shaping this post.

 

See How Cloud Storage Has Changed the Way We Work

Read the article Cloud Adoption to Accelerate IT Modernization

Read the blog Cloud modernization: A holistic approach

10 Lessons Learned Taking the Fortune 100 to the Cloud 

Read the blog Cloud modernization: Cultural and workplace adoption

 

It’s Not About Moving to Cloud, It’s About Changing How IT Works

20 November 2019

Cloud by itself is not a silver bullet that will drive savings and productivity, make users happier, or make your company more agile. If you are migrating to cloud without a strategic plan for digital transformation, you are not likely to experience much success – and costs could very well spiral out of control.

In this blog, I’d like to explore how organizations can maximize the value of cloud by changing how they run IT.

Successful early cloud adopters have figured out they must manage IT differently to achieve the full promise of what cloud offers. Organizations that have yet to reap the benefits of cloud are still using traditional IT management frameworks that were biased towards large capital spends or building for longevity – thus lacking speed, agility and an organizational self-sufficiency philosophy up and down the technology services stack.

A joint effort between business + technology

It’s important to recognize that “digital transformation” using cloud is not just a shift in technology, but a move towards business outcome-based transformation.

Consider what today’s businesses are dealing with:

  • Customers and suppliers who want to interact with an organization digitally, on any device, at any time, with an expectation for speedy fulfilment.
  • Processes that require standardization and connectivity to remove the paper buffer and enhance quality.
  • A growing volume of data available for capture and subsequent analysis that requires new skills and tools to exploit it.

The processes and technologies supporting these trends require:

  • Speed to market and automatic scalability in response to demand.
  • Agility and flexibility to interact with, and deliver, new capabilities regardless of where they are developed (APIs, microservices using containers, and open source development).
  • Technologies and skills that vary widely and may not be readily available, resulting in most companies being unable to attain self-sufficiency.

In other words, what is needed are Agile development techniques, DevOps, a focus on a collaboration process that consists of “try, learn, improve, repeat” rather than endless analysis trying to build the perfect end solution – all combined with an improved level of partnership between business and IT.

Moving to the cloud is hard – and ignoring the soft stuff makes it harder

Given these trends, most organizations are changing how they run IT, supported by new operating models and the right skills within the organization to embrace business Integration, supplier management, operations management, business outcome focus and elasticity. They need engagements that will help transform how IT is managed – as much as what IT is managing. Roles will change, skill demands will increase, and many traditional activities will transition.

Here are two key business challenges to keep in mind when moving to cloud:

  1. IT is now delivered “as a service.” Success is measured in outcomes and business results, which requires skills for managing and integrating services from multiple vendors into your existing operations. These are often new competencies within IT or present at a new scale.
  2. Business and IT must work in sync. Business areas may acquire cloud services directly, yet lack the overall skill to address the security, compliance, recoverability and repatriation issues that can result. Collaboration and co-creation between business and IT, together with the discipline necessary for production, is necessary to realize the speed and agility of cloud.

Why “cloud first” requires a new operating model

A cloud-first strategy is designed to remove limitations that have crept into the organization’s business solutions by fundamentally changing the way IT works, in cooperation with the rest of the business. The Cloud Target Operating Model (CTOM) brings business and IT trends together in the context of management, providing an assessment of where an organization is and where they need to go, in order to effectively manage the transition and operations of new services, cloud amongst them. (See 7 key considerations for your CTOM, below.)

Based on a shared vision and strategic direction, the CTOM maps to the expected business benefits of cloud technology and results in a transformative business model across the organization — people, processes and technology. The CTOM combines experience-based design with cloud-based capabilities, and services and capabilities delivered via a cloud infrastructure offer the advantages of:Picture1

  • Cloud industry standards from cloud providers that provide stable and predictable application development.
  • Container-flexible modules that break applications into components and microservices that offer inherent flexibility.
  • Continuous integration / continuous development.
  • Compute and storage facilities that are consumed by IT as a service have security and standards built right in.

 

Building a cloud-first strategy: 5 steps to success

How can you ensure that your organization experiences all the benefits that cloud has to offer? I’d like to suggest five key steps.

  1. IT and business areas must plan and work together.

With 80% of workloads still to be migrated to cloud – through renewal, rebuilding, retirement, redundancies — close collaboration and cooperation with the business is required to understand what’s possible and to build a plan. Acquiring a shared vision between IT and the business is essential to get those two gears in sync. A multi-year roadmap of business capabilities will influence what will happen to underlying applications to meet growing business needs. IT must be able to undertake technical work of application modernization while planning for the functionality the business unit needs in the meantime.

  1. Application ownership must move from project-based perspective to product-based perspective.

Traditionally, IT managed features and budget. Spending on new features and applications was justified on a project basis using a cost-benefit analysis.  In a digital business, there is a budget for continuous innovation, and applications continually evolve. This is similar to the way products are developed, where ideas come up outside the original budget cycle and the application owner has the authority and incentive to change priorities. The more agility your business can have, the faster the business can move.

  1. Changes to IT methodology and metrics will create new value.

With cloud provisioning delivered by service providers, IT management metrics become centred around agility and rate of change to support ‘fail fast, fix and do it better’ mentality. Agility and speed are the top priorities in a cloud-first model. Techniques like DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering – where the focus is on creating new value and going live quickly – are changing the way we manage and deploy to production, encouraging tighter integration between the historically separate camps of Development versus Production Support.

Agile and DevOps are at the heart of the IBM Garage Method for Cloud. Garage is a way to start the culture change at a departmental or team level and to experience and experiment with the process. It is about continuous testing, continuous integration and continuous development to be sure that whatever you’ve got at any moment is ready to be deployed.

  1. Internal governance must change.

Governance is about how we make decisions, and in the cloud space, governance applies from top to bottom in concert with architectural standards and the roadmap discussion of capabilities from the organization. Governance asks: Is the solution consistent with the architecture and a business need? How will this piece of the puzzle fit together? How does decision making change when you are operating at a faster speed with more implementations going into production, each of them incremental? What would the governance processes be over that?

  1. Different skills and new financial management are needed.

With the shift to cloud, IT is no longer in the server management / operations business. Instead, they are managing, monitoring, and governing service providers according to agreements, SLAs, and contracts. This affects the skills and financial management required.

  • Financial management: Financial management changes as you move from capital expenditure to operating expenditure with the additional complexity of consumption variability. An organization can become more agile with a cloud subscription model, but it also increases the need for proactive management. New monitoring skills are needed to prevent cloud spending from spiralling out of control.
  • Change management for skills and processes. Change management is required, not only for the business processes inside IT department but the impact to people throughout the organization. With significant impact to roles that performed traditional Build and Run tasks, staffing roles will change. Planning and commercial skills increase in importance. Role of the operations department also changes.

 

Tomorrow’s big opportunity awaits

The traditional approach to IT simply can’t deliver the speed and flexibility required for today’s speed of business. The best way to stay flexible for tomorrow’s big opportunity is to embrace open solutions. All these steps – and more – can support your IT department’s drive to digital transformation.

Cloud is more than a technology shift; instead, it’s a move towards a business outcome-based transformation. To enjoy the benefits of cloud, today’s IT must change its focus from maintaining systems to delivering services; from technology to outcomes.

Thanks to colleagues Kristen Leroux and Brian Franks for sharing their thoughts in shaping this blog.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this blog, where I will share how long a legacy transformation typically takes, where most Canadian companies are along the path to cloud transformation, and the types of business benefits that are being realized.