As we close out the final days of 2019, the Container Solutions teams pause to take a look back at our accomplishments over the past year. It’s a built-in part of our process: following the Hermes strategic execution framework, created by our chief executive officer, Jamie Dobson, means that we take regular breaks to reflect upon our progress. The insights and realisations (sometimes uncomfortable ones, if we happen to be falling short anywhere) get turned into goals and executables for the next cycle.
One of the ways we externalise our collective learning is by publishing blog posts. Everyone at Container Solutions is encouraged to share, and hopefully teach, through writing (or any other applicable form of expression, such as Arien Mol’s charming sketchbook post explaining humble consulting at CS).
Some of the resulting blog posts offer technical tips, tricks, and how-to’s; other posts address the more human-centred aspects of working Cloud Native-style. This latter category covers everything from day-to-day topics in a Cloud Native organisation—leadership, management, and culture—as well as how to do strategy and planning in a constantly changing environment.
Here are three posts from the human side of Cloud Native in 2019 that we think are truly helpful, in different ways, and definitely worth a read. (We’ll also round up some vital tech-oriented blog posts from this past year you might have missed.)
On Risk and Leadership
Our chief technology officer, Pini Reznik, writes about how the established pathways for success when adopting new technology—making a detailed plan, trying to foresee every potential problem—no longer work. Instead, the counter-intuitive method for success in Cloud Native is to iterate and experiment your way toward a solution.
To get started with a transformation, Pini writes, you only need to know where you want to go—not every detail of how you’re going to get there.
Next, in 'The 5 Skills You Need for Strategic Leadership', Jamie describes how to achieve exactly the sort of adaptive, dynamic mindset you will need for boldly going beyond those comfortable ‘old’ ways. Particularly when you’re one of the folks in charge of leading your organisation’s Cloud Native transformation initiative!
Finally, this post from Michal Cwienczek has roots in both the human-centred and technical aspects of our work. Michal uses recent experiences with clients to demonstrate how Container Solutions engineers apply responsive and dynamic problem-solving skills to create customised training for our clients’ teams—and set them up for continued learning once we’ve completed a Cloud Native transformation and gone on our merry way.
This post just ran a couple of weeks ago, but it is one of the most important issues we have covered here on the blog. We feel it shows what our principles of collaboration and learning look like on a day-to-day basis, no matter if you’re a client or Container Solutions colleague. (Hint: we’re hiring!).
Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash
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