Cloud is emotional....

One of the greatest things about people is that we are emotional beings. We use emotions to define our mental state, our expressions of satisfaction, sorrow and everything between. This is no different when it comes to the adoption and implementation of new technologies into the business. I have observed 4 key areas where emotion plays an important, yet often underestimated part in such scenarios:

1. The cultural challenges of adopting cloud are often understated as commentary is focused on technological success;

2. The outcomes of cloud enabled technology deployments are often driven by the desire of someone wanting to do things in a different way. This could be from "working in the way in which I live my life" - cloud centric apps, more social based platforms to communicate and share ideas to accessing productivity and Line of Business apps on personal devices. The user experience is driven from emotion, the execution is technical. This often tried to be expressed in process and technical ways as the User Experience, but not many truly fully grasp the emotional element;

3. Organisations embarking on large scale cloud transformation programmes forget the IT debt that will inevitably be incurred within a few years into a multi-year transformation. Business cases and planning should reflect the ongoing need within cultural and personal change as well as continuous evolution of skills, capabilities whilst also safeguarding against application and data debt. Failure to do so often results in negative emotional feelings about the true success of the transformation after the impact of early benefits begins to fade; and

4. Thought is rarely give to the personality types that suit certain types of role. Technologists, are generally, outwardly extroverted introverts or classic introverts. Namely that they seek technical excellence in what they do and extending trust and confidence in understanding what they do is naturally hard for them. They also do avoid conflict and by isolating a technological capability is a logical thing to do in order to mitigate that risk. It is recognised for this short piece, that this is a gross over-simplification - but it is meant to get the point across. Counter-balance this with roles that are likely to have more extroverted and influencer types personalities such as Programme Managers, Sales People and, indeed, C-Suite leadership roles that seek decisive action. They will tolerate a level of friction and demand seamless interoperability of working. It is no wonder that there is a high probability for natural tension to occur.  

I would argue that the cultural aspects of cloud adoption are often significantly under estimated and their impact not fully understood, mainly because it is hard to justify in a classic business case. Perhaps it is time to think a little differently…..

DISCLAIMER: This article is the personal opinion of the author and does not reflect or reference any view or opinion of my employer.