Mary-Beth Hosking is Global Chief Information Officer at PointsBet. Through her career she has focused particularly on ‘change’ and has written on this subject in her 2020 book “In One Piece – A step by step guide to surviving change” and her upcoming book (“When now, means NOW! – A handbook for career change, advancement and progression”). Mary-Beth will be delivering the principal keynote – “Is Cloud simply the panacea?”- at CDC Melbourne at the Convention and Exhibition Centre on May 4th 2023.
Hosking’s insights into cloud, data centres and IT are founded on her focus on change. This focus has evolved through her own career, firstly as a professional singer then through corporate experience in the finance sector, retail, transport and logistics, casinos, gaming and wagering. She has observed the opportunities that change can bring. She has also worked on the challenges that arise when change is resisted:
“And I learned how challenging that was whilst working in transport and logistics. You now see everyone that delivers to you has a terminal used to sign on, but there was a time when that was all paper based run sheets and consignment notes. Taking people on that journey replacing paper using a terminal device was really quite interesting and challenging.”
Her experience has led her to think about the principles of change as a process, rather than as a series of outcomes and to arrive at a number of ways to deliver on the key question of “how to get organisations and individuals to embrace change?”
To achieve more effective understanding and management of change, Hosking offers several insights. Firstly, that it pervades all that individuals and companies do. It is not something that can be switched on and off:
“Every role that we take as leaders has an element of change. That may be a process change or just changing something minor.”
To deliver change, it is key to understand and communicate why change is required: “Organisations need to understand the ‘why’. The books about change start with why. There’s got to be a very clear statement, a very clear problem statement. Why are we doing this change?”
Change can breed resistance, therefore understanding the impacts for involved parties, including the ‘What’s in it for me?’ angle will apply. People may be suspicious of change especially after the past couple of years of unforeseen and often uncontrollable and restrictive changes. The case for change therefore needs to appeal emotionally not just rationally: “You must ensure that your statement. really taps into the head and the heart.”
Hosking has developed a particular focus on IT through her experience with introducing technology into organisations through her career: “I was always interested in the IT side of things because it does move so rapidly.”
She emphasises that executing change in technology follows the same principles as any other business sector and should be driven by the same questions: “What is it you’re trying to achieve? What’s the problem you’re trying to solve? Always start with the problem. There has to be a problem you’re trying to solve otherwise why are you doing it?.”
These key questions form the basis of Hosking’s keynote presentation. Her observations on cloud migration are that it should not be based on reasons of cost alone:
“Going to the cloud should not just be a cost saving exercise and if it is just a cost saving exercise for you and your organisation, then that is not enough of a ‘why’ statement and is possibly not achievable. The why statement needs to include things such as scalability, supportability, security, innovation and efficiency and, yes, possible cost saving measures.”
She identifies the cluster of issues understood by governance including security and meeting customer requirements as the key drivers behind this process: “Governance has got to be your highest priority, doesn’t it? Governance, what is it you’re doing in that space? Then if you start to think about if your strategic imperative is best supporting the voice of the customer.”
She points to the capacity and the experience of major cloud providers as a key in meeting these requirements:
“Cloud services are doing the same thing for everybody and at scale. The expectation is that they are going to be very good at it. So therefore, you’ll be more secure, etc. Cloud services, you’ve got a plethora of people globally who can work on those sorts of things.”
She suggests also that decisions such as those on cloud migration deal with the people changes that any commercial decision usually entails:
“When you move to the cloud, there will be changes impacting individual roles within the organisation. So, you need to build a narrative around that entire change.”
In terms of cloud, Hosking advises to do research to understand what the organisation wants and needs.
“What is the problem you’re trying to solve? Don’t try to solve the problem with the new shiny thing. If you’re not cloud ready, then you need to ask how you get cloud ready?”
Hosking’s recommendations include embracing the idea of continual change, demystifying change processes to make them more accessible, being aware of the impact of broader changes and learning from responses to change:
“The only thing that you can control with change is how you respond to it. Take away that learning, digest it – sit back and go okay, well, how did I respond to that situation, what could I have done differently? What was I afraid of? What didn’t I know to enable making an informed decision and respond accordingly? Finally, what do I need to learn so that I am no longer afraid? Because change is scary.”
To register, visit: https://w.media/events/melbourne-cloud-datacenter-convention-2023/
