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"Maintain a game-changing vision but move towards it in small increments."
-- Mark Schwartz
Getting to know
Mark Schwartz, AWS Enterprise Strategist
Mark's AWS beginnings
Mark Schwartz joined AWS as an Enterprise Strategist and Evangelist in July 2017. In this role, Mark works with enterprise technology executives to share experiences and strategies for how the cloud can help them increase speed and agility while devoting more of their resources to their customers.
Mark's expertise
Mark has extensive experience as an IT leader in the government, private sector, and the nonprofit world, and with organizations ranging from startup to large. Prior to joining AWS, he was CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (in the Department of Homeland Security), where he led a large digital transformation effort, moving the agency to the cloud, introducing and refining DevOps and Agile techniques, and adopting user-centric design approaches. From his work at USCIS, he developed a reputation for leading transformation in organizations that are resistant to change, obsessed with security, subject to considerable regulation and oversight, and deeply bureaucratic. Before USCIS, Mark was CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange, a leader in global youth exchange programs, and CEO of a software company.
Assume with me that the digital world is a world of fast change. Organizations need to excel at responding quickly to those changes—that’s what we call agility or nimbleness. When it comes to technology, we have well-understood ways of increasing agility and making technology delivery processes lean. Organizations worldwide and in all industries are moving to the cloud, adopting agile and DevOps approaches, using flexible software architectures based on microservices, and retiring technical debt that has slowed them down.
I wonder if we’re overlooking an important implication of AI and generative AI for the future of the enterprise. If, as seems to be the case, many employees will use generative AI applications to assist them and interactively support their work, then a new style of work is emerging. Success for an employee will mean making the most of the AI tools with which they collaborate. We will want to hire employees who are especially good at working interactively with AI (remember how the ability to use word processors and spreadsheet applications were qualifications for a job in the old days?). We will design employee roles to maximize the benefit of collaboration with AI tools. Remote work and the gig economy have already dramatically changed the nature of work; generative AI is another potential disruption on the horizon.
We’ve all been busily transforming for the last few years. Now there’s this big AI thing. How does it relate to the rest of our transformation? Should we be changing or rethinking our transformation plans?
The easy answer is no, but there are some subtleties. We transform to increase our agility in the face of change, and we accept that the future will see major changes and disruptions. The sudden attention demanded by AI is just a vindication of that belief. You can even test yourself: can your company respond quickly and effectively to the sudden, disruptive intrusion AI represents? If so, you may be further along in your transformation than you thought. As we’ve always said, responding appropriately requires setting up nimble governance processes, an ability to experiment, a culture of innovation, and automation of the good practices, security, and resilience you require.
You’ve taken your company in a new direction; the impact is a 10% growth in year-on-year revenue. Your new marketing program has increased leads by 5%. Your telecom costs have decreased by 5% because of your successful negotiations. Measuring results is an important part of our business lives. But measurements are meaningless without context, and adequate context can be hard to come by.
It won’t surprise you to hear that there’s been lots of excitement and speculation about generative AI in our meetings with AWS customer executives lately. The question on their minds is: “What does this mean for my business?” That’s a good way to frame the question; it’s not about what generative AI can do, but what it can do for your business. And the seeds of the answer are there in that framing as well. How generative AI will affect your business depends on how you and your competitors will use it to innovate new business models and derive new competitive advantages. It’s not about what the technology itself does—exciting as that is—but about how you will combine it with other technologies, your people’s skills, your values and competencies, and your distinctive vision.
The Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) new rule on Sustainability reporting requires listed companies to disclose detailed information on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, climate-related risks that are reasonably likely to have a material impact on their business, and transition plans to achieve net-zero targets. If passed with an effective date in December 2022, these new climate reporting requirements would be phased in from fiscal year 2023 to fiscal year 2027.
This book describes what changes with digital transformation and how executives can frame their ethical choices and use them as a way to succeed in the digital economy.
Find out why and how executives and business leaders must create a shared strategy with their IT organizations to drive innovation, enhance their competitive positioning, increase revenue, and delight customers.
As the CFO's role continues to expand, new approaches to technology are becoming critical to delivering business value. Mark Schwartz, Enterprise Strategist at AWS, explains why Agile, Lean, and DevOps practices could very well be the best thing that has happened to CFOs since the invention of the spreadsheet, helping them to increase returns, oversee investments, implement controls, gain transparency, and more.
In the digital world, we are willing to be surprised and to learn. In the old days, we relied on a plan, prepared in advance, to guide our activities. But in a world dominated by uncertainty, in a world in which none of us knows all there is to know about our customers or about what will change in our competitive or regulatory environment, how can someone presume to develop a plan that will deliver business value? AWS Enterprise Strategist Mark Schwartz shares his thoughts on why humility is the essence of digital transformation.
When it comes to digital transformation, every enterprise is different. There is often a change agent with a vision, a knowledge of good practices, a sense of urgency, and the energy to battle impediments. The change agent may be anywhere in the organizational structure: high, low, or—in a typical scenario—somewhere in middle management. AWS Enterprise Strategist Mark Schwartz discusses why change that is driven from the top of the organization is a particular type of change requiring a particular approach.