Next, I present an exclusively personal analysis.
I believe in God as my Lord and my Heavenly Father. I believe in Jesus as my Savior and Teacher. And I believe in the Holy Spirit as my Guide and Counselor. I have seen how the Word of God has manifested itself in a powerful way in different aspects of my life. And as an IT Professional, I have been curious to know if the lessons offered by “The Bible” also have a place in my profession.
I wasn’t surprised to confirm it does.
To begin my analysis, I checked the “Leadership Principles” of Amazon, precisely because Amazon Web Services is the Leader in Cloud Computing, an area that I wanted to analyze.
https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles
The first of these principles is “Customer Obsession”, which establishes that:
“Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.”
This reminded me of when Jesus was somehow questioned about the commandments in the law (Matthew 22:35–40):
“One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
I want to emphasize “Love your neighbor as yourself”, since a client is a person or group of people who put their trust in us when they express their concerns or needs for Cloud Computing related projects. The Bible reminds us on several occasions of the value of trust, one of them being in Proverbs 3:29:
“Do not plot harm against your neighbor, who lives trustfully near you.”
For this reason, it is our responsibility to take the concerns or needs of our clients as if they were our own, and give them the priority and importance they deserve.
In this same ‘thinking methodology’ about our clients as if they were ourselves, we find a benefit of cloud computing: “Cost savings”.
“The cloud allows you to trade fixed expenses (such as data centers and physical servers) for variable expenses, and only pay for IT as you consume it. Plus, the variable expenses are much lower than what you would pay to do it yourself because of the economies of scale.”
https://aws.amazon.com/what-is-cloud-computing/
This benefit should be present in any solution to be implemented in the AWS Cloud. Not surprisingly, Amazon Web Services dedicates an entire pillar within its Well-Architected Framework (AWS Well-Architected Framework, https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/well-architected) to Cost Optimization:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/cost-optimization-pillar/welcome.html
So far in my mind I had an idea similar to this:
In order to protect the interests of our clients and meet their needs, it is important to keep in constant learning and training. Almost every day new services are being created or new features are added to existing services on AWS. Trying to know each and every one of them can be a exhausting task, but one way to be aware (at least) of these news is to consult the official AWS blog page:
and once in that website, select the topics that attract you the most or represent a greater individual interest. In my case I recommend at least the blogs of:
- Architecture:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/?&awsf.blog-master-category=category%23architecture
- AWS Cloud Financial Management:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/?&awsf.blog-master-category=category%23aws-cloud-financial-management
- AWS Well-Architected:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/?&awsf.blog-master-category=category%23aws-well-architected
- Analytics:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/?&awsf.blog-master-category=category%23analytics
- Big Data:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/?&awsf.blog-master-category=category%23big-data
- Developer Tools:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/?&awsf.blog-master-category=category%23developer-tools
- Management & Governance:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/?&awsf.blog-master-category=category%23management-tools
- Security, Identity, & Compliance:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/?&awsf.blog-master-category=category%23security-identity-compliance
Regardless of the strategy or tool used, it is important to apply the “Learn and Be Curious” Leadership principle, which states that:
“Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.”
In this sense, The Bible gives us (once again) several verses where it supports us and invites us to learn and acquire intelligence and wisdom. One of them is found in Proverbs 12:1:
“Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, whoever hates correction is stupid.”
Fortunately, learning doesn’t necessarily have to be restricted to just one pillar of the AWS Well-Architect framework. It can be applied to all 6 pillars, including the remaining 5:
- Operational Excellence:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/operational-excellence-pillar/welcome.html
- Security:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/security-pillar/welcome.html
- Reliability:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/reliability-pillar/welcome.html
- Performance Efficiency:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/performance-efficiency-pillar/welcome.html
- Sustainability:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/sustainability-pillar/sustainability-pillar.html
So now in my mind the ‘scheme’ was modified as follows:
Another leadership principle at Amazon invites us to support the growth of the members of our team. It takes quite an ‘altruistic’ spirit to understand that this may even mean that such growth is present in other areas of the company. I’m referring to the “Hire and Develop the Best” principle, which establishes that:
“Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.”
I find this principle quite interesting, since it allows a ‘mentorship’ environment that is established almost as company policy. It is about understanding that not everyone have the same learning process, and we all rerequire ‘training’ in order to develop personally and professionally in the company. And if this learning involves from the beginning the design principles in each of the pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, the person will be able to assimilate them more easily and incorporate them into their daily performance.
It is also interesting to see how within the learning that exists between ‘Teacher — Student’ the 2 previous principles can and should be incorporated (“Customer Obsession” and “Learn and Be Curious”).
For this statement we could take as biblical support the verse found in Proverbs 22:6:
“Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”
Including this 3rd principle, my ‘mental map’ was modified:
I try in my daily activities to remember that beyond doing them for a person, I am doing them for God, applying what Colossians 3:23 teaches:
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,”
It doesn’t mean that perfection is achieved (since only God is perfect), but as Vince Lombardi, American United States Football coach, said:
“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence”
And it is precisely this ‘pursuit of excellence’ that Amazon’s leadership principle “Insist on the Highest Standards” is about:
“Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.”
Again, this foundation should be instilled in people who are beginning to walk through the Amazon Leadership Principles.
For this first analysis, my resulting schema is as follows:
I hope in future opportunities to continue the analysis of the Amazon Leadership Principles, and their possible correlation with some Biblical Principles.
Top comments (1)
You can't be serious? This is the most pathetic post ever .. Congratulations!!
*Mathew 6:6 *