Overvaluing the Outsider

Harvard Business Review (HBR), April 2010, has an article entitled “Envy At Work” by Menon and Thompson that describes research that shows that “people want to learn more about ideas that come from other companies than about ideas that originate in their own organizations.”

The reason that we value outside opinions over inside ones is that we fear elevating the person whose opinion we espouse. In other words, if we endorse an idea of a person in the organization, then we risk being seen as not only supporting the idea, but the person, and then having our power potentially being subsumed by that person.

The HBR article states: “When we copy an idea from an outsider, we’re seen as enterprising; when we borrow an idea from a colleague, we mark that person as an intellectual leader.”

This kind of thinking harms the organization. For rather than seeing our colleagues as teammates, we see them as competitors. We work against each other, rather than with each other. We spend our time and energy fighting each other for power, influence, resources, and rewards, instead of teaming to build a bigger pie where everyone benefits.

According to Menon and Thompson, “The dislike of learning from inside rivals has a high organizational price. Employees instead pursue external ideas that cost more both in time (which is often spent reinventing the wheel) and in money (if they hire consultants).”

I’m reminded of the saying, “You can’t be a prophet in your land,” which essentially translates to the idea that no matter how smart you are, people inside your own organization will generally not value your advice. Rather they will prefer to go outside and pay others to tell them the same thing that it cannot bear to hear from its own people.

Funny enough, I remember some consultants telling me a few years ago, “That’s what we get paid for, to tell you what you already know.”

Remember the famous line by Woody Allen, “I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member”? The flip side of this is that as soon as the organization brings you into their club, they have contempt for you because you are now one of them.

How do we understand the capability of some people to overcome their natural tendency toward envy and be open to learning from others inside the organization? More specifically, how do we as leaders create a culture where such learning is facilitated and becomes a normal part of life in the workplace?

One way to start is by benchmarking against other organizations that have been successful at this—“Most Admired Companies” like Goldman Sachs, Apple, Nike, and UPS. When one starts to do this, one sees that it comes down to a combination of self-confidence, lack of ego, putting the employees first, and deep commitment to a set of core values. It may not feel natural to do this at first – in a “dog-eat-dog” world, it is natural to fear losing one’s slice of the pie – but leaders who commit to this model can delegate, recognize, and reward their people without concern that they personally will lose something in the process.

The leader sets the tone, and when the tenor is “all for one and one for all,”— the organization and its people benefit and grow. This is something to be not only admired, but emulated.

Overvaluing the Outsider

Embracing Instability and Enterprise Architecture

Traditional management espouses that executives are supposed to develop a vision, chart a course for the organization, and guide it to that future destination. Moreover, everyone in the enterprise is supposed to pull together and sing off the same sheet of music, to make the vision succeed and become reality. However, new approaches to organizational management acknowledge that in today’s environment of rapid change and the many unknowns that abound, executives need to be far more flexible and adaptable, open to learning and feedback, and allow for greater individualism and creativity to succeed.

In the book Managing the Unknowable by Ralph Stacey, the author states that “by definition, innovative strategic directions take an organization into uncharted waters. It follows that no one can know the future destination of an innovative organization. Rather, that organization’s managers must create, invent, and discover their destination as they go.”

In an environment of rapid change, the leader’s role is not to rigidly control where the organization is going, but rather to create conditions that foster creativity and learning. In other words, leaders do not firmly set the direction and demand a “cohesive team” to support it, but rather they create conditions that encourage and promote people to “question everything and generate new perspectives through contention and conflict.” The organization is moved from "building on their strengths and merely adapting to existing market conditions, [to insted] they develop new strengths and at least partly create their own environments.”

An organization just sticking to what they do best and incrementally improving on that was long considered a strategy for organizational success; however, it is now understood as a recipe for disaster. “It is becoming clearer why so many organizations die young…they ‘stick to their knitting’ and do better and better what they already do well. When some more imaginative competitors come along and change the rules of the game, such over-adapted companies…cannot respond fast enough. The former source of competitive success becomes the reason for failure and the companies, like animals, become extinct.”

Organizations must be innovative and creative to succeed. “The ‘new science’ for business people is this: Organizations are feedback systems generating such complex behavior that cause-and-effect links are broken. Therefore, no individual can intend the future of that system or control its journey to that future. Instead what happens to an organization is created by and emerges from the self-organizing interactions between its people. Top managers cannot control this, but through their interventions, they powerfully influence this.

With the rapidly changing economic, political, social, and technological conditions in the world, “the future is inherently unpredictable.” To manage effectively then is not to set rigid plans and targets, but rather to more flexibly read, analyze, and adapt to the changes as they occur or as they can be forecast with reasonable certainly. “A ‘shared vision’ of a future state must be impossible to formulate, unless we believe in mystic insight.” “No person, no book, can prescribe systems, rules, policies, or methods that dependably will lead to success in innovative organizations. All managers can do it establish the conditions that enable groups of people to learn in each new situation what approaches are effective in handling it.”

For enterprise architecture, there are interesting implications from this management approach. Enterprise architects are responsible for developing the current and target architecture and transition plan. However, with the rapid pace of change and innovation and the unpredictability of things, we learn that “hard and fast” plans will not succeed, but rather EA plans and targets must remain guidelines only that are modified by learning and feedback and is response to the end-user (i.e User-centric). Secondly, EA should not become a hindrance to organizational innovation, creativity, and new paradigms for organizational success. EA needs to set standards and targets and develop plans and administer governance, but this must be done simultaneously with maintaining flexibility and harnessing innovation into a realtime EA as we go along. It’s not a rigid EA we need, but as one of my EA colleagues calls it, it’s an “agile EA”.

Embracing Instability and Enterprise Architecture

Taking the Politics out of Enterprise Decision Making

Some people say power is primarily exerted through military might (“hard power”), others says it is through use of diplomacy—communications, economic assistance, and investing in the global good (“soft power”). Then, there is a new concept of employing the optimal mix of military might and diplomacy (“smart power”).

It’s interesting to me how the Department of Defense—military approach—and the Department of State—diplomatic approach—is as much alive and well in our enterprises as it is in the sphere of world politics to get what we want.

At work, for example, people vie—some more diplomatically and some more belligerently—for resources and influence to advance their agendas, programs, projects, and people. This is symptomatic of the organizational and functional silos that continue to predominate in our organizations. And as in the world of politics, there are often winners and losers, rather than winners and winners. Those who are the “experts” in the arts of diplomacy and war (i.e. in getting what they want) get the spoils, but often at the expense of what may be good for the organization as a whole.

Instead of power politics (hard, soft, or smart), organizations need to move to more deliberate, structured, and objective governance mechanisms. Good governance is defined more by quantifiable measures than by qualitative conjecture. Sound governance is driven by return on investment, risk mitigation, strategic business alignment, and technical compliance rather than I need, want, like, feel, and so forth. Facts need to rule over fiction. Governance should not be a game of power politics.

Henry Mintzberg, the well-known management scholar, identified three mechanisms for managers to exert influence in the organization (Wall Street Journal, 17 August 2009):

1. Managing action—“managers manage actions directly. They fight fires. They manage projects. They negotiate contracts.” They get things done.

2. Managing people—“managers deal with people who take the action, so thy motivate them and they build teams and they enhance the culture and train them and do things to get people to take more effective actions.”

3. Managing information—“managers manage information to drive people to tale action—through budgets and objectives and delegating tasks and designing organization structure.”

It is in the third item—managing information—that we have the choice of building sincere business cases and creating a genuine call to action or to devolve into power politics, exerting hard, soft, and smart influence to get what we want, when we want it, and how we want it.

When information is managed through the exertion of power, it can be skewed and distorted. Information can be manipulated, exaggerated, or even buried. Therefore, it is imperative to build governance mechanisms that set a level playing field for capturing, creating, calculating, and complying with a set of objective parameters that can be analyzed and evaluated in more absolute terms.

When we can develop decision support systems and governance mechanisms that take the gut, intuition, politics, and subjective management whim out of the process, we will make better and more productive decisions for the enterprise.

Taking the Politics out of Enterprise Decision Making

No Choice But to Change

It’s easy to get into a rut and just follow the status quo that we’re used to.

People do it all the time. It’s doing what we know. It’s comfortable. It’s less challenging. It feels less risky. It doesn’t “cause waves” with various stakeholders.

Don’t we often hear people say, “don’t fix it, if it ain’t broke”?

Here’s another more arrogant and obnoxious version of the anti-change sentiment: “don’t mess with perfection!”

And finally, the old and tried and true from the nay-sayer crowd: “we tried that one before.”

Unfortunately, what many of these die-hard obstructionists fail to acknowledge is that time does not stand still for anyone; “Time marches on.” Change is a fact of life, and you can either embrace it or make a futile attempt to resist.

If you embrace it and moreover become a champion of it, you can influence and shape the future—you are not simply a victim of the tide. However, if you resist change, you are standing in front of a freight train that will knock you out and drag you down. You will lose and lose big: Change will happen without you and you will be run over by it.

In short, it is more risky to avoid change than to embrace it.

Therefore, as a leader in an organization, as The Total CIO, you have an obligation to lead change:

• to try to foresee events that will impact the organization, its products/services, its processes, its technology, and its people.
• to identify ways to make the most of changing circumstances—to take advantage of opportunities and to mitigate risks, to fill gaps and to reduce unnecessary redundancies.
• to develop and articulate a clear vision for the organization (especially in terms of the use of information technology) and to steer the organization (motivate, inspire, and lead) towards that end state.
• to course correct as events unfold; the CIO is not a fortuneteller with all knowing premonition. Therefore, the CIO must be prepared to adjust course as more information becomes available. Sticking to your guns is not leadership, its arrogance.
• to integrate people, process, technology, and information; the CIO is not siloed to technology issues. Rather, the CIO must look across the enterprise and develop enterprise solutions that integrate the various lines of business and ensures true information sharing, collaboration, and streamlined integration and efficiency. The CIO is a unifier.
• to institutionalize structured planning and governance to manage change. It’s not a fly by night or put your finger up to see which way the wind is blowing type of exercise. Change management is an ongoing programmatic function that requires clear process, roles and responsibilities, timelines, and decision framework.
• to bring in management best practices to frame the change process. Change is not an exact science, but we can sure learn from how others have been and are successful at it and try to emulate best practices, so we are not reinvesting the wheel.

Change is a fact of life, even if it is often painful.

I’d like to say that maybe it doesn’t have to be, but I think that would be lying, because it would be denying our humanity—fear, resistance, apathy, weariness, physical and mental costs, and other elements that make change difficult.

But while the CIO cannot make change pain-free, he can make change more understandable, more managed (and less chaotic), and the results of change more beneficial to the long term future of the organization.

No Choice But to Change

Choice Architecture and Enterprise Architecture

In a free society like America, we are generally all strong believers in our rights and freedoms—like those often cited from the Bill of Rights-- speech, press, religion, assembly, bearing arms, due process and so forth. More broadly, we cherish our right and freedom to choose.

According to an recent article in Harvard Business Review, December 2008, one way that enterprises can better architect their products and services is by “choice architecture.”

Choice Architecture is “design of environments to order to influence decisions.” By “covertly or overly guiding your choices,” enterprises “benefit both company and consumer by simplifying decision making, enhancing customer satisfaction, reducing risk, and driving profitable purchases.”

For example, companies set “defaults” for products and services that are “the basic form customers receive unless they take action to change it.”

“At a basic level, defaults can serve as manufacturer recommendations, and more often than not we’re happy with what we get by accepting them. [For example,] when we race through those software installation screens and click ‘next’ to accept the defaults, we’re acknowledging that the manufacturer knows what’s best for us.”

“Of course, defaults can be nefarious as well. They have caused many of us to purchase unwanted extended warranties or to inadvertently subscribe to mailing lists.”

“Given the power of defaults to influence decisions and behaviors both positively and negatively, organizations must consider ethics and strategy in equal measure in designing them.”

Here are some interesting defaults and how they affect decision making:

Mass defaults—“apply to all customers…without taking customers; individual preferences into account.” This architecture can result in suboptimal offerings and therefore some unhappy customers.

Some mass defaults have hidden options—“the default is presented as a customer’s only choice, although hard-to-find alternatives exist.” For example, computer industry vendors, such as Microsoft, often use hidden options to keep the base product simple, while at the same time having robust functionality available for power users.

Personalized defaults—“reflect individual differences and can be tailored to better meet customers’ needs.” For example, information about an individual’s demography or geography may be taken into account for product/service offerings.

One type of personalized default is adaptive defaults—which “are dynamic: they update themselves based on current (often real-time) decisions that a customer has made.” This is often used in online retailing, where customers make a series of choices.

There are other defaults types such as benign, forced, random, persistent, and smart: each limiting or granting greater amounts of choice to decision makers.

When we get defaults right (whether we are designing software, business processes, other end-user products, or supplying services), we can help companies and customers to make better, faster, and cheaper decisions, because there is “intelligent” design to guide the decision process. In essence, we are simplifying the decision making process for people, so they can generally get what they want in a logical, sequenced, well-presented way.

Of course, the flip side is that when choice architecture is done poorly, we unnecessarily limit options, drive people to poor decisions, and people are dissatisfied and will seek alternative suppliers and options in the future.

Certainly, we all love to choose what we want, how we want, when we want and so on. But like all of us have probably experienced at one time or another: when you have too many choices, unconstrained, not guided, not intelligently presented, then consumers/decision makers can be left dazed and confused. That is why we can benefit from choice architecture (when done well) to help make decision making simple, smarter, faster, and generally more user-centric.

Choice Architecture and Enterprise Architecture

Embedded Systems and Enterprise Architecture

Information technology is not just about data centers, desktops, and handheld devices anymore. These days, technology is everywhere—embedded in all sorts of devices from cars and toaster ovens to traffic lights and nuclear power plants. Technology is pervasive in every industry from telecommunications to finance and from healthcare to consumer electronics.

Generally, embedded systems are dedicated to specific tasks, while general-purpose computers can be used for a variety of functions. In either case, the systems are vital for our everyday functioning.

Government Computer News, 15 December 2008 reports that “thanks to the plummeting cost of microprocessors, computing…now happens in automobiles, Global Positioning Systems, identification cards and even outer space.

The challenge with embedded systems are that they “must operate on limited resources—small processors, tiny memory and low power.”

Rob Oshana, director of engineering at Freescale Semiconductor says that “With embedded it’s about doing as much as you can with as little as you can.”

What’s new—haven’t we had systems embedded in automobiles for years?

“Although originally designed for interacting with the real world, such systems are increasingly feeding information into larger information systems,” according to Wayne Wolf, chair of embedded computing systems at Georgia Institute of Technology.

According to Wolf, “What we are starting to see now is [the emergence] of what the National Science Foundation is called cyber-physical systems.”

In other words, embedded systems are used for command and control or information capture in the physical domain (like in a car or medical imaging machine), but then they can also share information over a network with others (think OnStar or remote medical services).

When the information is shared from the car to the Onstar service center, information about an accident can be turned into dispatch of life-saving responders. Similarly, when scans from a battlefield MRI is shared with medical service providers back in the States, quality medical services can be provided, when necessary, from thousands of miles away.

As we should hopefully have all come to learn after 9-11, information hoarding is faux power. But when information is shared, the power is real because it can be received and used by others and others, so that its influence is exponential.

Think for example, of the Mars Rover, which has embedded systems for capturing environmental samples. Left alone, the information is contained to a physical device millions of miles away, but sharing the information back to remote tracking stations here on Earth, the information can be analyzed, shared, studied, and so forth with almost endless possibilities for ongoing learning and growth.

The world has changed from embedded systems to a universe of connected systems.

Think distributed computing and the internet. With distributed computing, we are silos or separate domains of information, but by connecting the islands of information using the internet for example, we can all harness the vast amounts of information out there and in turn process it within our own lives and contribute back information to others.

The connection and sharing is our strength.

In the intelligence world, information is often referred to as dots, and it is the connection of the dots that make for viable and actionable intelligence.

As people, we are also proverbially just little dots in this big world of ours.

But as we have learnt with social media, we are able to grow as individuals and become more potent and more fulfilled human beings by being connected with others—we’ve gone from doing this in our limited physical geographies to a much larger population in cyberspace.

In the end, information resides in people or can be embedded in machines, but connecting the information to with other humans and machines is the true power of the information technology.

Embedded Systems and Enterprise Architecture

Political Capital and the CIO

Leaders wield power through many means: formal authority, control of scarce resources, use of structures, rules, and regulations, control of decision processes, control of knowledge and information, control of technology interpersonal alliances and networks, and so forth. (Images of Organization by Gareth Morgan).

But one often-neglected factor when it comes to power is likeability, sometimes known as political capital: the late President Ronald Reagan was the epitome of this.

“Political capital is primarily based on a public figure's favorable image among the populace and among other important personalities in or out of the government. A politician gains political capital by virtue of their position, and also by pursuing popular policies, achieving success with their initiatives, performing favors for other politicians, etc. Political capital must be spent to be useful, and will generally expire by the end of a politician's term in office. In addition, it can be wasted, typically by failed attempts to promote unpopular policies which are not central to a politician's agenda.” (Wikipedia)

Every leader (including the CIO)—whether in the public or private sector—manages to get things done in part through their political capital.

For the CIO, this means that while their job is certainly not a popularity contest, they cannot effectively get things done over the long term without rallying the troops, having a favorable image or degree of likeability, and generally being able to win people over. It’s a matter of persuasion, influence, and ability to socialize ideas and guide change.

The CIO can’t just force change, transformation, modernization. He/she must expend political capital to move the organization forward. The CIO must make the case for change, plan and resource it, train and empower people, provide the tools, and guide and govern successful execution.

The Wall Street Journal, 4-5 October 2008, has an editorial by Peggy Noonan that touches on the importance of political capital:

“Young aides to Reagan used to grouse, late in his second term, that he had high popularity levels, that popularity was capital, and that he should spend it more freely on potential breakthroughs of this kind or that. They spend when they had to and were otherwise prudent…They were not daring when they didn’t have to be. They knew presidential popularity is a jewel to be protected, and to be burnished when possible, because without it you can do nothing. Without the support and trust of the people you cannot move, cannot command.”

Certainly if the President of the United States, the most powerful position in the world, cannot execute without political capital, then every leader needs to take note of the importance of it—including the CIO.

Lesson #1 for the CIO: effective leadership requires political capital duly earned and wisely spent.

Political Capital and the CIO

Self-Determination and Enterprise Architecture

There is an age old question whether we make our own fate or whether it is predetermined.

For thousands of years, people have turned to prophets, fortune tellers, mystics, and star gazing to try and divine their futures. Yet, at the same time, we are taught that every child has the opportunity to become the President of the United States or an astronaut, or whatever their hearts desire; that laser-like focus, discipline, repetition and determination breeds success. Haven’t we always been taught to always try our best?

Surely, this is one of the irresolvable conflicts that philosophically can never be truly resolved: If the future is already predetermined, then how can we affect it? Further, if our actions can impact the future, then how the future be predetermined?

The way ahead is to work to influence our future, knowing full well that many things are indeed beyond our control.

From an organization perspective, there are no guarantees for the future, so we must take the reins of change, plan and manage it: one way we do this is through enterprise architecture.

In Fortune Magazine, 5 May 2008, in an article entitled, “The Secret of Enduring Greatness,” it states that “the best corporate leaders never point out the window to blame external conditions; they look in the mirror and say, ‘We are responsible for the results.’”

The future of our organizations are not static and so our leadership cannot rest on its laurels, rather we must continually plan for and execute innovation and transformation.

If we look at the largest corporations in America, the Fortune 500, we see that companies rise and fall to/from prominence with almost unbelievable speed. Here are some examples:

• “The vast majority of those on the list 50 years ago are nowhere to be found on the current list” (only 71 of the original 500 companies from 1955 are still on the list today).
• “Nearly 2000 companies have appeared on the list since its inception.”
• “Some of the most powerful companies on today’s list—businesses like Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Dell, and Google” didn’t even exist in 1955 and conversely, “some of the most celebrated companies in history no longer even appear on the 500, having fallen from great to good to gone.”
  

So if the tides start to turn down for a company, what are they to do—simply accept their fate, and perish like so many of those that came before them or do they fight to survive, knowing full well that they may not or will likely not succeed?

I say we fight to survive—we plan and execute change—we transform, and we live to fight another day.

“Just because a company stumbles—or gets smacked upside the head by an unexpected event or a new challenge—does not mean that it must continue to decline. Companies do not fall primarily because of what the world does to them or because of how the world changes around them; they fall first and foremost because of what they do to themselves.”

One example is IBM that stumbled in the late 1980’s in relying on what was becoming commoditized hardware, but transformed themselves in the early 1990’s to a software and services juggernaut. Similarly, Apple transformed from a niche computer manufacturer to a consumer electronics dynamo with their innovations such as the iPod and iPhone.

Essentially it comes down to the ability of the organization to manage change and complexity (as John Zachman stated) to adapt and transform, and we do this through enterprise architecture

Self-Determination and Enterprise Architecture

Types of Followers and Enterprise Architecture

A leader directs or guides and is in charge or commands others. Almost by definition, a leader must have followers. An enterprise architect leader influences and guides decision-making and direction of the enterprise business and IT planning and governance.

Harvard Business Review, December 2007, reports “there is no leader without at least one follower” and “increasingly, followers think of themselves as free agents, not as dependent underlings.”

HBR provides an interesting typology of followers based on their engagement—there are five types:

1. Isolates—“completely detached…scarcely aware of what’s going on around them. Moreover, they do not care about their leaders, know anything about them or respond to them in any obvious way. Their alienation…by knowing and doing nothing...[they] support the status quo…[they] can drag down their groups or organizations.”
2. Bystanders—“observe but do not participate. These free riders deliberately stand aside and disengage, both from their leaders and from their groups or organizations. They may go along passively when its’ in their self-interest to do so, but they are not internally motivated to engage in an active way.”
3. Participants—“are engaged in some way. Regardless of whether these followers clearly support their leaders and organizations or clearly oppose them, they care enough to invest some of what they have (time or money, for example) to try and make an impact.”
4. Activists—“feel strongly one way or another about their leaders and organizations, and they act accordingly. These followers are eager, energetic, and engaged. They are heavily invested in people and process, so they work hard either on behalf of their leaders or to undermine and even unseat them.
5. Diehards—“are prepared to go down for their cause-whether it’s an individual, an idea, or both. These followers may be deeply devoted to their leaders, or they may be strongly motivated to oust their leaders by any means necessary…they are willing, by definition, to endanger their own health and welfare in the service of their cause.”

Some lessons for leaders:

• Follower engagement--“Followers who do something are nearly always preferred to followers who do nothing.”
• Leadership support--“Good followers will actively support a leader who is good (effective and ethical) and will actively oppose a leader who is bad (ineffective and unethical.”
• Organizational contribution—“Bad followers will do nothing whatsoever to contribute to the group or organization.”
• Power and influence--“Followers act in their own self-interests, just as leaders do. And while they lack authority, at least in comparison with their superiors, followers do not lack power and influence.”

From a User-centric EA perspective, it is helpful to focus not only on leadership qualities, skills, and their development, but also on the types of followers and on their engagement, support, contribution, and power.

To lead an enterprise--establishing a target architecture, transition plan, and governance--the chief architect, must be able to develop a high energy, synergistic, A+ team of individuals that care, can perform, and are engaged and committed to drive effective change and organizational excellence.

Types of Followers and Enterprise Architecture

Power of Persuasion and Enterprise Architecture

In Fortune Magazine, 12 November 2007, Retired General Wesley Clark explains “Leadership is the art of persuading the other fellow to want to do what you want him to do.”

Wesley K. Clark, Former Supreme Commander of NATO, explains that effective execution of power, includes the following:

Key lesson #1:

“In business, it is important to motivate through the power of shared goals, shared objectives, and shared standards.”

Clark goes on to explain that there are three ways to persuade others:

• Education—“Employee education is one of the most cost-effective investments that businesses can make.”
• Participation—“Employees need to become vested in their work through participation.”
• Co-option—“Building and maintaining the emotional bonds of teamwork, loyalty, and trust.”

Key lesson #2:

”Essentially leaders have to sell themselves and their programs to their teams, in order to influence.”

Leadership, influence, persuasion, building shared community—these are all necessary skills to developing and maintaining an effective User-centric EA program. Architecture isn’t done in a vacuum or an ivory tower, it’s a grass roots effort that takes leadership skills to motivate others through the development of shared goals and objectives—such as, business-technology alignment, information sharing and accessibility, systems interoperability and component re-use, technology standardization and simplification, and information confidentiality, integrity, availability, and privacy.

We get to these EA goals, through educating others, engaging with them, and building a shared vision and sense of team, and “not by calling in the air-force.” as Wesley Clark would say.

Power of Persuasion and Enterprise Architecture

Organizational Awareness and Enterprise Architecture

In User-centric EA, we are focused on the end-user and that means that we are not only aware of the needs of the end-users, but that we are organizationally aware as well. This situational awareness includes an understanding of the actors as well the formal and informal structures they play in and the influence they wield.

The Wall Street Journal, 21 August 2007 reports that “one of the competencies in every study of outstanding leaders is their degree of organizational awareness—reading the informal networks, like influence in the organization.…misreading the choke points, sources of influence, or all of those whose rings need kissing, can spell disaster.”

The chief enterprise architect is responsible for identifying the baseline and establishing the target and transition plan. Setting targets and establishing transition strategies that will really be adopted by the organization (and hence really work) requires a keen sense of the organization, the stakeholders, and the networks (formal and informal).

You can't just plop a plan down and say “here it is, follow it!” Instead, the plans and strategies must truly reflect the people of the organization, their needs and requirements, and be accepted by its power brokers at all levels.

Organizational Awareness and Enterprise Architecture