When I was beginning my career in technology (a long time ago…), it was a closed shop. The most innovative technology was beyond the budgets of most companies. Transformation was a luxury few could afford. While those with deep pockets could spend their way to competitive advantage and success.
How things have changed. Today, you can provision and scale the technology you need at the click of a button, and at a fraction of the cost. Technology has been democratised. Everyone can use it to win.
But not everyone does win. A 2020 study by Boston Consulting Group found that a staggering 70% of digital transformation projects fall short of their goals.
The paradox of choice
Paradoxically, one reason is the greater access we now have to technology. With more choice comes the challenge of choosing right. So buyers must be better educated. That can be overwhelming. Every sub-sector of the technology market—from cloud infrastructure to cybersecurity, productivity software to Big Data applications—is flooded with vendors. Increasingly little differentiates their capabilities.
But looking beyond the technology, and into the heart of a supplier’s culture, may reveal what can really make a difference. Are their warm words of partnership backed up by their deeds? Do they live their values everyday? Are they interested in being first, or being best? This search for the symbiotic—where a vendor wins only when their client wins—is the final barrier to making technology work better for everyone.
This is my North Star as I take the lead for Red Hat across EMEA. Technology has become a people business, and so how we look after our people matters to me more than anything else. And by ‘people’, I don’t just mean our employees. I mean everyone involved in the open source community; our customers, our partners and the legions of developers. As the largest open source company in the world, the first job of Red Hat will always be to safeguard this community, and facilitate the knowledge, tools and protections to ensure it continues to flourish.
Get what you give
To believe in open source, you must believe in the old adage: ‘You only get what you give’. To get the best ideas, we give diverse talent and assorted minds the chance to grow. That means pay is based on the value you bring, not the gender you are, the colour of your skin, or your sexual orientation. Winning ideas have nothing to do with the seniority of the person who said them. We understand that failure is a part of the process, as is scrapping hard worked plans when times demand a different course. It’s only by facing up to reality that you fix things faster.
For me, it’s impossible to aspire to these traits without open source principles and practices running through your corporate DNA. The alternative would be to create value by shielding what you own. Some vendors have built very successful businesses doing just that. But in the process, they are starving their customers of choice. That business model is increasingly out of sync with a world where transformation is no longer a one-off project with a finite end, but the ongoing adaptation to new behaviours, innovations and opportunities that emerge with breakneck regularity.
My new role is not about predicting what’s ahead. I don’t need to, because open source comes with agility built-in. Instead, it’s about ensuring businesses are never beholden to their technology and their suppliers, but are the ones calling the shots.
Change is not a game of chance
It’d be impossible to do the job ahead of me—to empower organisations to transform—if I didn’t love change myself.
Living in 20 different cities in nearly as many years (I have just moved to New York from Munich for my most recent role) will test your appetite for new things. I remain as hungry as ever.
Living abroad is exciting. I often think about how settling into a new city is similar to working with a new customer or partner. Sure, you can soon find your way around a place with the help of a map; but it’s only by listening to the locals that you really understand what’s going on. That’s how you go from sightseer to citizen; and it’s how you go from salesperson to strategic partner. The former often ends with the wrong technology deployed for the wrong task. The latter leaves far, far less to chance.
A few years ago I was fortunate to have been part of the Red Hat team working with the World Health Organisation to build a new learning platform. Though the end product made all the headlines, it was the unseen work where the really interesting story is for me. Through the Red Hat Open Innovation Labs, we were able to bring WHO into the heart of our operation, and define what we wanted to achieve together, why, and how we were going to go about it. The technology came after.
No transformation is ever guaranteed but starting with the technology is a good way to fail fast. Alas, the pace of innovation and the fear of being left behind leaves many organisations tempted to do just that. And there are vendors only too happy to enable their mistakes.
Once a rebel…
I started working in technology around the same time that Red Hat was created. Back then, it was the rebel, breaking the established business models and democratising technology. But rebellions can be easily thwarted. What has propelled us to where we are today is the evidence that open source works. Our community must never get tired of telling that story.
Today’s opportunities—hybrid cloud, containerisation, microservices—feel like a new watershed moment. Open source, in the most complete definition of that term, is making these technologies available for everybody to leverage. It has broken the final barrier to tech equity. The potential to do amazing things has never been greater. The excitement is palpable.
Red Hat is at the centre of it all. It’s a huge privilege to lead us into this new era; to marshall our rebels and reinforce the professional standards our customers expect of us. I can’t wait to see what they will achieve with our support. And I’m equally excited about seeing our people fulfil their potential too. Because that’s what being part of a community is all about.
