Maximise the benefits of cloud deployment with Well-Architected Organisational Culture

Often referred to as the 'personality' of an organization, organizational culture defines how people work, interact, and respond to change and challenges. There is a strong belief, supported by evidence, that an organization's culture is a powerful determinant of transformation success. The impact of culture is even more significant in cloud transformation, where its extraordinary capabilities are limited by how people use them.

However, while everyone agrees that organizational culture exists and shapes employee behavior, it is subjective and intangible. Can organizational culture be thoughtfully designed and constructed with intention, just like a well-designed system? With the help of this article, the authors will outline best practices for intentionally building the right organizational culture to accelerate cloud deployment and achieve business results.

Why is the right organizational culture necessary for cloud deployment?

The cloud offers myriad benefits, including cost reductions, improved business flexibility, operational resilience, and staff productivity. Despite the cloud's rapid growth and widespread adoption, some organizations have been more successful than others in understanding the value of cloud services.

AWS customers say the biggest challenge in driving the enterprise's digital transformation using the cloud is non-technical change, especially cultural change. Every organization has an existing culture. Some aspects of the culture are conducive to cloud readiness; some are neutral, and others conflict. Successful companies accelerate cloud implementation by using cultural levers to identify and resolve potential points of conflict.

For example, successful cloud deployment requires an open and collaborative culture, focusing on self-service and reuse. The cloud encourages companies to prioritize speed over perfection. Decisions are not over-analyzed for every possible outcome. Experimentation is actively encouraged, allowing employees to learn by doing and failing. On the other hand, an organization with a hierarchical culture that makes decisions based on command and control may face challenges in adopting the cloud as it stifles innovation.

The architecture of an organization's culture

Every organization has a culture by default or design. Successful corporate cultures are not the result of accidents; rather, they are carefully and deliberately constructed. While culture has a certain level of spontaneity and unpredictability, it can also be influenced and shaped by intentional actions.

Customer-centric culture. Cloud platforms provide ready-made building blocks for business solutions. They promote a customer-centric culture because teams can focus on business value and innovation rather than internal IT elements as they eliminate 'undifferentiated heavy lifting.' A customer-centric culture instills a deep understanding of customer needs, preferences, and behaviors. At Amazon, this is called working backward from the customer. Employees at all levels should be encouraged to prioritize customer satisfaction, actively seek feedback, and continuously improve products and services based on customer insights.

Leadership culture by example. CEOs often implement principles that define their company's culture, values, and long-term goals. These principles help galvanize employees towards a common goal. However, to be truly effective, these principles cannot just be formulated; they must be practiced at every level of the organization. Leaders should communicate specific, measurable, and expected business outcomes by clearly articulating the question, "Why the cloud?". By establishing and communicating a cloud strategy, transformational leaders signal their businesses that "this is our future; we have the roadmap to get there, and we will equip you with the resources you need to succeed on that journey." By building trust, providing resources, and promoting autonomy and collaboration, leaders enable employees to take ownership and make a positive difference. They also promote an open and safe environment where employees can escalate without fear of punishment.

A culture of data-driven decision-making. Decision-making today requires real-time analysis of the following steps and prospects, not just static operational information. The cloud provides companies with powerful artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools to process massive amounts of data to make strategic decisions. A data-driven decision-making culture that emphasizes using data to inform, prioritize, and guide decision-making is essential to maximizing the benefits of cloud deployment. For example, manufacturing companies can use cloud-based AI and ML tools to analyze sensor data to predict and plan maintenance to minimize downtime and reduce costs. By implementing a culture of data-driven decision-making, a company can use insights from predictive maintenance analytics to prioritize maintenance tasks and allocate resources efficiently.

A culture of agility, innovation, experimentation, and risk-taking. Cloud computing fits well with an agile software development culture. It is based on experimentation, flexibility, and incremental delivery principles. Cloud-native technologies support rapid and frequent changes to systems without affecting service delivery. An agile development approach favors speed over perfection. It is helpful to know what not to do when adverse effects occur. Amazon, for example, uses mental models to help guide and implement leadership principles. One such principle is 'Bias for Action,' which states that 'speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not require extensive research. We value calculated risk-taking.

A culture of continuous learning. This means that organizations must prioritize employees' training and education to ensure they have the skills and knowledge to navigate the cloud environment. This includes technical training on cloud services and soft skills such as communication and collaboration. Learning should be built as a muscle and not be event-driven. There should be mechanisms to measure and reward continuous learning in organizations. In addition to training, internal mentoring programs can be established where experienced cloud workers can mentor new team members.

Culture of reuse. To increase the value of the cloud, the reuse of software resources is essential. Reuse enables organizations to leverage existing, proven, and reliable software components, improving performance, saving costs, and reducing time-to-market. For example, software developers traditionally spend time figuring out the intricacies of infrastructure resources, which takes time away from building software that delivers business value. In the cloud, using infrastructure as code (IaC), developers choose ready-made, tested, and validated reusable templates to provide the infrastructure components needed to build applications automatically. A culture of reuse requires a mindset based on openness and collaboration, where individuals are willing to share their knowledge, experiences, and resources with others.

A culture of automation and self-service. Adopting cloud principles involves using powerful cloud automation tools and self-service capabilities to share, manage, and use resources. Self-service requires a cultural shift where employees are trusted and empowered to take ownership of their tasks. For example, in on-premises environments, application teams typically provide requests to IT infrastructure teams to share infrastructure. In the cloud, teams provide the infrastructure (self-service) using automated processes. This allows developers to be flexible and spend more time delivering business value rather than waiting for someone to handle requests. Cloud deployment requires a focused and organized effort, which can be facilitated by a Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE). This multidisciplinary team can ensure enterprise maturity by delivering cloud policies, best practices, training, and architecture in a repeatable, automated, and self-service manner.

Security and compliance culture. Cloud deployment introduces new security and compliance issues. Organizations must prioritize data protection, privacy, and compliance in a cloud environment. A culture that strongly emphasizes security and compliance, with a focus on shared responsibility, ensures that security measures are integrated into every aspect of cloud deployment.

Governance culture. Subscribing to cloud services has become more accessible, but cloud deployment in the enterprise is more complex. Without proper management, cloud usage can quickly get out of control. In the cloud, the capacity and scale of infrastructure change from 'fixed' to 'unlimited.' The cost model changes from fixed to variable (payment according to actual usage). While this provides much-needed flexibility in delivering value, it can sometimes result in hidden IT and unexplained costs. This is where cloud governance culture becomes essential. This is a set of policies, procedures, and processes that an organization puts in place to manage and control the use of the cloud. They are implemented with automated, continuous, real-time 'guardrails' to ensure agility without losing control.

Final thoughts

It is widely acknowledged that every enterprise is complex and unique, and its culture will vary. Organizational culture is essential for transformation because it shapes employees' mindset, commitment, collaboration, adoption, and resilience. By fostering a supportive and aligned culture with transformation goals, organizations can increase the likelihood of successful and sustainable transformation outcomes. At Amazon, the approach to innovation is based on a set of methodologies, concepts, and tools that extend from culture to process to technology.

Additional resources

AWS CAF - Culture Evolution

AWS Well-Architected

Mental Models for Your Digital Transformation

AWS Prescriptive Guidance - Accelerating cloud adoption through culture, change and leadership

Learn from Amazon's Approach to Innovation

Leading and Innovating with Leadership Principles

Elements of Amazon's Day 1 Culture

The Imperatives of Customer-Centric Innovation

How to create a data-driven culture