​AWS Cloud Adoption Framework Part 3: People Perspective

​Welcome to Part 3 of our series on the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework. In this article, we delve into the critical role that people play in bridging the gap between technology and business, propelling organizations toward a culture of continuous growth, learning, and embracing change as the new norm.

As organizations embark on their cloud journeys, it becomes increasingly evident that success lies not only in adopting cutting-edge technologies but also in cultivating a supportive and adaptive culture that empowers employees and aligns with digital transformation aspirations. The People Perspective encompasses seven essential capabilities that contribute to this cultural evolution, organizational structure, leadership, and workforce development.

​People Perspective: Culture and Change

​The People Perspective acts as a vital link between technology and business, expediting the cloud journey and enabling organizations to swiftly transition to a culture of continuous growth, learning, and embracing change as the new normal. This perspective encompasses seven key capabilities, as illustrated in the following diagram. Key stakeholders in this perspective include the CIO, COO, CTO, cloud director, and leaders across different functions and the enterprise.
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Figure 1: AWS CAF People Perspective Capabilities

Culture Evolution
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• Evaluate and gradually evolve the organizational culture by integrating digital transformation aspirations and best practices for agility, autonomy, clarity, and scalability.
• To thrive in digital transformation, it is crucial to leverage existing heritage and core values while incorporating new behaviors and mindsets that attract, retain, and empower a workforce committed to continuous improvement and innovation in serving customers.
• Foster a long-term focus, customer obsession, and a bold approach to innovation.
• Establish an organization-wide approach for recognizing behaviors and goals that shape the desired culture, considering rapid experimentation, agile methodologies, and cross-functional teams to drive ownership, autonomy, quick decision-making, and minimize unnecessary approvals or bureaucracy.

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Transformational Leadership

• Strengthen leadership capabilities and mobilize leaders to drive transformative change and facilitate outcome-focused, cross-functional decision-making.
• Successful cloud transformation requires leaders to prioritize the human side of change as much as technology.
• Gain active and visible executive sponsorship from both technology and business functions, who will play a critical role in making strategic decisions regarding vision, strategy, scope, and resource allocation.
• Executives and program-level leaders should co-develop, co-lead, and co-deliver culture change strategies.
• Ensure clear and consistent communication from every level of management to align the organization on cloud value, priorities, and new behaviors.
• Consider evolving the cloud leadership function through a transformation office and/or Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) to drive and evangelize transformation efforts using consistent and scalable patterns.
• Adapt this function over time to meet the changing needs of the transformation journey.

Cloud Fluency
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• Develop digital acumen across the organization to confidently and effectively leverage cloud technologies for accelerated business outcomes.
• Building an exceptional workforce goes beyond adapting to a digital environment. The greatest challenge lies in hiring, developing, retaining, and motivating a talented, knowledgeable, proficient, and high-performing workforce.
• Given the rapid pace of technological innovation, address your overall training strategy, including timing, tooling, and technology-specific training.
• Assess existing cloud skills and create a targeted training strategy.
• Establish a skills guild to generate enthusiasm and momentum for the transformation journey.
• Emphasize data literacy to enhance talent skills and knowledge in data analytics.
• Combine various training methods such as virtual, classroom, experiential, and just-in-time training.
• Leverage immersion days and validate skills through formal certifications.
• Implement mentoring, coaching, shadowing, job rotation programs, and create communities of practice that focus on specific areas of interest.
• Reward individuals for sharing knowledge and formalize processes for knowledge elicitation, peer review, and continuous curation.

Workforce Transformation

• Enable talent and modernize roles to attract, develop, and retain a digitally fluent, high-performing, and adaptable workforce capable of driving key capabilities autonomously.
• To succeed in cloud transformation, take a proactive approach to talent enablement planning that goes beyond traditional HR functions and involves C-suite leadership.
• Modernize approaches to leadership, learning, rewards, inclusion, performance management, career mobility, and hiring.
• Strive for a diverse and inclusive workforce with a balanced mix of technical and non-technical skills.
• Identify skill gaps across the organization and develop a workforce strategy that enhances overall cloud capability.
• Leverage digital-skilled talent and individuals eager to learn and set an example.
• Strategically consider the use of partners and managed service providers to supplement and support your workforce on a temporary or permanent basis.
• Build a strong employer brand by publicly promoting your digital vision and organizational culture to attract new talent. Incorporate this brand into your recruitment strategy, social networking channels, and external marketing.

Change Acceleration

• Speed up the adoption of new ways of working by implementing a structured change acceleration framework that minimizes the impact on people, culture, roles, and organizational structure during the transition from the current to the future state.
• Cloud transformation brings about significant changes across business and technology functions. Organizations that employ a structured, integrated, and transparent change process achieve higher rates of success in realizing value and adapting to new ways of working.
• Customize and apply a change acceleration framework from the start of the project to foster organizational alignment and create a shared enterprise reality, reducing wasteful practices.
• Mobilize cross-functional cloud leadership, define success criteria early in the journey, assess the organization's readiness for cloud through impact assessments, identify key stakeholders and dependencies, and address risks and barriers to transformation.
• Develop a change acceleration strategy and roadmap that includes leadership action plans, talent engagement, communications, training, and risk mitigation strategies.
• Engage the organization and equip it with new capabilities to increase acceptance of new ways of working, foster skill development, and accelerate adoption.
• Track well-defined metrics, celebrate early wins, establish a change coalition, leverage cultural levers for momentum, and ensure changes endure through continuous feedback mechanisms, rewards, and recognition programs.

Organization Design

• Assess and evolve organization design to align with the new cloud-based ways of working as you progress through the transformation journey.
• When leveraging cloud technologies for digital transformation, ensure that your organization design supports core business strategies, the needs of your workforce, and the operating environment.
• Develop a case for change and evaluate whether the current organization design reflects the desired behaviors, roles, and culture necessary for business success.
• Assess team formations, shift patterns, reporting lines, decision-making procedures, and communication channels to ensure they align with desired outcomes.
• Design the new model and implement it using the change acceleration framework.
• Consider establishing a centralized team that can evolve over time and initially facilitate the transition to a cloud operating model aligned with your vision.
• Weigh the trade-offs between centralized, decentralized, and distributed structures, aligning the organization design to support the strategic value of cloud workloads.
• Clarify relationships between internal and external teams, including managed service providers.

Organizational Alignment
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• Foster ongoing partnership and alignment between organizational structures, business operations, processes, talent, and culture to enable rapid enterprise adaptation to market conditions and capitalize on new opportunities.
• Organizational alignment enhances the realization of cloud value by ensuring that technology changes are embraced and effectively integrated by the business units responsible for driving business outcomes.
• Prioritize business outcomes such as operational resiliency, business agility, and product/service innovation.
• Enable talent to work autonomously, focus on key objectives, make informed decisions, and improve productivity.
• Gain leadership commitment to applying a change acceleration framework early on to integrate people capabilities such as leadership agility, workforce transformation, talent enablement, culture, and organization structure from the beginning.
• Establish measurable targets, joint goals, and mechanisms for cloud adoption.
• Create expectations for skill development at the individual role level to foster sustainable change ownership.
• Adopt a top-down approach to developing shared values, processes, systems, working styles, and skills that collectively drive business outcomes and break down functional silos.
• Align innovation efforts with customer experience.
• Recognize and reward individuals who embrace continuous adoption and innovation.

Summary

 
The People Perspective is instrumental in driving successful cloud transformation by nurturing a culture of growth, learning, and change within organizations. By focusing on the key capabilities, organizations can create an environment that empowers their workforce and accelerates their cloud journey.

In Part 3, we explored the importance of culture, leadership, workforce development, and organizational alignment. We highlighted the need to evolve organizational culture, strengthen leadership capabilities, build digital acumen, enable workforce transformation, accelerate change adoption, align organization design, and establish organizational alignment. These aspects are vital for organizations seeking to thrive in the cloud era.
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Join us in Part 4 as we explore the Process Perspective and discover how organizations can drive impactful changes that revolutionize their operations and drive business success in the cloud era.