You've just been promoted from a network manager position to CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of your company. While this is a tremendous boost to your career, you also find that you're less involved in the technical aspects of the functions of the IT infrastructure and more focused on managing people and interacting with other executives. You already know from your experience as network manager that people management goes more smoothly for you when you support the decision-making processes of the people you manage rather than making all the decisions yourself. Now you need to employ this strategy on a much larger scale.

This shift in work responsibilities has come at an interesting time for your organization. The previous CTO had set the wheels in motion to begin a major migration of your IT infrastructure to the cloud. You've always been a supportive proponent of this kind of progress, and now you get to step into the visionary role for making it happen. However, this means that Angel, who replaced you as network manager, will need to make many of the detailed decisions that will actually bring about this transition.

As Angel digs into the planning phase of the migration, he comes to you for some advice. He's trying to decide which cloud platform will be best suited to the company's needs as well as meet the budget constraints, and he's feeling an overwhelming sense of responsibility for this decision. You realize the first step in navigating a major decision like this is to clearly identify the problem. At the same time, you know it's your job is to coach Angel through the decision-making process by helping him to think it through and clearly understand his options along the way to meet a balance between function and budget, rather than making the decisions for him.

How can you best define the problem for Angel?

You explain that he will need to determine the platform that will provide the easiest transition for the least amount of money.

You explain that he will need to determine the platform that will serve as the best fit for the company's anticipated growth.