When I started in tech sales, I was a nightmare of a salesman.
As an entry level Technical Sales rep for Client Devices, I was a hot shot 23-year-old, fresh faced, ego centric, naïve (and not remotely self-aware of it), with a bachelor’s degree in theatre, of all things! Specifically, Acting and Directing, and the joke I would tell was “I’m still using my degree every day; I direct my customers to products, and I act like I give a sh*t!” (This joke killed with my fellow artsy friends who looked down on corporate culture. My boss and coworkers at the time… not so much). And worse, the most I knew of sales methodology was what I’d seen in The Wolf of Wallstreet, a culture of exploitation that glamorized the idea of aggressively convincing customers to buy for YOUR reasons, not theirs. I would rush into calls, ready to convince the other of MY perceived pain points, why what I had to sell them needed to be paramount, and win the sale!
As you can imagine, this didn’t go over well for my personal brand. I barely survived on my technical acumen and market awareness as a PC enthusiast, but it alienated me from my peers and customers alike. A pandemic, a PIP, a few reality checks and a reading of “How to Win Friends and Influence People” later, I started to figure out what my missing ingredient was: listening. It’s very easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of what we want and what we need, we alienate our audience by dismissing what matters to them. Especially when the goals we have are pursued with well-meaning zeal. It’s a trap any professional can fall into as KPIs and quota’s increase, pressure to deliver complex projects on timelines boils over, and our pressing need to succeed becomes more and more desperate. FinOps teams are no exception.
As cloud costs mount and wasted resources maintain a staggering 27 – 32% (according to Flexera.com), the heat is on. The C-suite is turning red as they fail to see all the benefits of public cloud and variable cost structures they were convinced of. Finance is on fire as they have no visibility or forecasting for their budgets. Engineering doesn’t want to be handcuffed with rightsizing and building reports. And procurement can’t keep debasing themselves in front of the hyperscalers for more discounts.
Here comes FinOps, with their newly accredited practitioners with the answers to it all! They’re here to promote healthy cloud practices, free up spend, and reduce resources. All intended to net more budget for innovation, promote sustainable cloud practices, reduce carbon footprints, and potentially save jobs!
Who wouldn’t be onboard with that? Shout it from the roof tops, evangelize in the streets, “ICEBERG STRAIGHT AHEAD! IMPLEMENT A CHARGE BACK MODEL BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!”
As any practitioner will tell you, it’s never that easy. Introducing FinOps to an organization is a full IT culture shift, often falling on deaf ears. All some personas are hastily told is “here’s a new team that has central authority and executive sponsorship to tell people how to do their job better”. With that approach, resistance is guaranteed. Even with every area of the business having a seat at the FinOps table, these strategies must be carefully implemented to avoid toxic pitfalls of forced agendas.
App owners who are brilliant in the data center but hesitant (and perhaps fearful) of the public cloud are valid in their concern (and insulted) when approached and told to push their apps into the cloud, and break them by going serverless. It’d be like telling Michelangelo “dude, why are you still using a chisel? Haven’t you heard of a jack hammer?”. But if we sat with Michelangelo, asked why he chose the tools he did, we’d learn of his detail-oriented approach and desire for precision to maintain the quality of his work. One clumsy or uncontrolled movement can soil months of delicate creation. And then, instead of pushing a jack hammer, maybe we can offer and enable him with a dremel.
Similarly, listening to your app owner’s fears would inform you which cloud services could be offered to appease their fears. But you can’t know if you don’t ask.
The Inform phase of FinOps can and should go both ways! As we inform finance, engineering, and Executive teams with the necessary reporting, we should be informing ourselves of how we can best support and align with their goals, while also familiarizing ourselves with their own vernacular. “I’ve found being able to change communication styles depending on the audience is the most important lesson or skills you can have in FinOps,” shares Kate Ferguson, Senior Data Analyst at Liberty Mutual, on the podcast FinOps Pod. “The senior director or the CIO [is a] completely different audience with completely different knowledge base then to a developer or product owner. Being able to communicate effectively with each of those personas is super important.”
As cloud sprawl increases and teams remain siloed, Kate Ferguson’s words resonate more than ever. But finding a common language or a starting point for the conversation can be difficult, and something we see at DigitalEx.
The FinOps team at a large banking company was working to socialize their initiatives throughout their org. They needed to demonstrate their current achievements to receive sponsorship from leaders, while effectively communicating the ongoing battle for rightsizing, scheduling, and overall cloud efficiency. We reviewed existing systems that provided partial insights (COIN, ESR, etc.), but they lacked an accessible language for all personas, and showed either too few or too many metrics. For this company, we needed to find their Rosetta Stone. Inspired by Kate’s words, we worked through multiple iterations, and finally developed a Cloud Efficiency Score (CES), which served as a common language between teams. CES highlighted both positive and negative trends for cost, resource utilization, SP/RI coverage, tagging efficacy, and achieved savings.
With an agreed upon CES, they could now raise awareness among leadership, offer a clear picture of their efforts and progress and act as a soft accountability partner among teams, fostering a supportive FinOps conversation. The FinOps team could use CES to pinpoint opportunities for improvement while celebrating successes, making it a versatile tool for internal communication, and socializing FinOps to their audience.
At its core, FinOps is a culture shift towards healthy cross team communication and validation, while remaining focused on the bigger picture. Like our banking friends who understood they needed a FinOps decoder ring, their understanding between teams has improved their own efforts, and their company’s cloud efficiency. It feels poetic for myself, being here now as someone who once was bashfully a bull in a China shop for sales. But with cloud expenditures mounting, we can’t Crawl, Walk, or Run if we kneecap ourselves with self-sabotaging urgency that dismisses our audience’s perspective. And inadvertently, dismisses the key to our own success. I believe the plight of a salesman and a FinOps practitioner is very similar; “how do I sell myself, sell my solution, and support the stakeholder?”
So as my generation of new FinOps practitioners sells our new knowledge, I offer my new mindset that’s redeemed me thus far; “People buy for their reasons, not yours. So listen up and get to know them.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eli Berke is a CSM at DigitalEx with a passion for public cloud computing and helping early cloud adopters healthily expand. Although young in his FinOps journey, his love for technology started at 9, and he’s ardent in supporting companies maximize their cloud investments. When not at his desk, you may find him hiking with his dog Brutus or performing improv comedy in downtown Austin, TX.