Being a good chief operating officer involves being innovative and looking at the horizon to predict what may be on the forefront of technology and adapting an organization accordingly.

Having a diverse background spanning multiple industries also helps bring forth the necessary thought diversity to best fill the role, according to Megan Hayes (pictured), managing director, chief operating officer and chief product officer at Blackstone Inc., a private equity and real estate investment company.

“Being a good COO is about asking really good questions, being thoughtful and looking for opportunities where organizations can keep driving excellence, keep getting better,” she said.

Hayes spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Lisa Martin for the “Special Program Series: Women of the Cloud,” during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed diversity in the workplace and the migration to the cloud for the finance sector. (* Disclosure below.)

Collaboration drives innovation

Blackstone recently went through a migration, moving all four of their data centers to the cloud and moving 240 applications to the cloud. This brought with it extensive internal cultural changes, as many teams had to come together to figure out how to work through the migration.

“[Cloud migration] enables this creativity and this uplift that they haven’t seen from prior ways of working, and I think that just creates a huge amount of ways of thinking about how we’re going to work going forward,” Hayes stated.

With these changes, organizations must also consider diversification of the workforce, as the new creativity afforded to employees will benefit from the differing ideas coming from all walks of life, Hayes added.

“In technology, specifically, it’s still a challenge to really ensure that we can get into minority and lower income communities to ensure that there’s great access to training and to folks that really want to participate in this kind of a field,” Hayes said.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the “Special Program Series: Women of the Cloud”:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “Special Program Series: Women of the Cloud.” Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE