Orange, a French telecom giant, successfully tackles cloud spend challenges through "FinOps Clean Days." These events involve engineering teams pausing their regular tasks to collaboratively optimize cloud costs, often with a competitive leaderboard and rewards. Experienced practitioners mentor newcomers, fostering learning through practical application and demonstrating tangible results to sponsors. This gamified approach has significantly boosted the engagement and satisfaction of Orange's FinOps community, achieving a high Net Promoter Score.The company's success is rooted in two core FinOps principles: shared responsibility for cloud costs and the necessity of communication for driving change. Orange emphasizes that FinOps, like cloud security, involves every stakeholder within a project. To facilitate this, they established a FinOps Community of Practice, utilizing standardized communication channels and providing actionable updates to ensure ongoing value.The concept of Clean Days arose from understanding the operational realities of agile teams, where optimization often gets sidelined by delivery priorities. By creating dedicated, collaborative, and enjoyable time for these activities, Orange overcomes this common hurdle. This strategy aligns with McKinsey's framework for change management, addressing conviction, formal mechanisms, role modeling, and talent development. Gamification and visible successes build conviction and role modeling, while peer-to-peer guidance develops skills.Extending this engagement beyond a core group of 100 people requires leveraging AI agents. These agents can handle time-intensive tasks, reduce friction for engineers, and address persistent challenges like awareness gaps, bandwidth limitations, or complexity in reporting. The strategic adoption of AI agents should begin with informing and suggesting capabilities, progressively moving towards agents that execute changes once trust is established and operational risks are managed.Building these AI solutions can be done with varying levels of coding, such as the no-code Gemini Enterprise App or the more advanced Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform for developers. Ultimately, effective Cloud FinOps is shifting from centralized reporting to decentralized action, driven by a strong cultural foundation augmented by AI agents. Orange's achievement underscores the importance of cultivating this community-driven approach as the crucial first step.