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August 18, 2021

Enterprise Architecture Live- SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT : Changing the Perception of Enterprise Architecture.

Courtesy of Mark McGregor, below is a transcript of his speaking session on 'Changing the Perception of Enterprise Architecture' to Build a Thriving Enterprise that took place at BTOES Enterprise Architecture Live Virtual Conference.

1-Aug-16-2021-04-23-00-41-PM

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Session Information:

There is a golden rule in change, to change others you first have to change yourself. Never has this been truer than in the case Enterprise Architecture. Current events have highlighted the need for holistic approaches to responding to unexpected business challenges. But, the pure IT centric approaches to Enterprise Architecture have been found lacking. In order to stay relevant and keep your Enterprise Architecture alive, you need to change people’s perception, and that starts by rethinking and reinventing yourself as an Enterprise Architect.

In this keynote session Mark will explore several key areas of change for you to consider, along with the rationale and value of making those changes. Topics to be addressed include:

  • Switch from Artefacts to Outcomes to Better Engage Business Teams.
  • Increasing Business Architecture and Innovation Efforts for Greater Relevance.
  • Moving from Governance to Guiderails in Order to Avoid Conflict.
  • Questioning the type, use and value of Enterprise Architecture Tooling.
  • Collaboration and Consumption Beats Creation Hands Down.

Session Transcript:

Welcome are our first speaker.

Author, consultant, and coach Mark MacGregor has been active in the enterprise architecture space for almost 30 years. Mark spent several years, as analysts at Gardner, where he was responsible for the Tools Magic quadrant.

Having working with most of the significant vendors in the market. Mark has has, what, some of his former colleagues at Gardner suggests is rivaled insight into the types use and nature of tooling.

Intraday. He's going to share some insights into why and how we need to change the perception of Enterprise architecture.

Mark, we're really thrilled to have you here and look forward to your presentation.

Thanks, ISO to you all. Just bear with me then.

We'll get the screen sharing underway.

Center.

Let's get the technology working.

Looks good, Mark. Yeah, with that, Right, So, hi everyone, And thank you for joining this session. Thank you for that very kind introduction. And, of course. Thank you for the team of Beach House, for inviting me to share with you today. So.

The challenge that we have, as ever, is, you know, it's always easy to write, a long book writing short books, it's kinda hard, and so it is with presentations, and how we run through the material. So, I'm going to do my very best to stay within the time, I was just gonna keep me honest, I'm absolutely sure. And hopefully, we got those time for those questions afterwards.

So, I think we can all agree that in the last 20 years, yes, the world's been changing a lot. I mean, everyone talks about change happening faster and faster. And the pulse for six months, I've seen ridiculous amounts of change now, I've said 20 years. We could go back 30, 35 years in terms of the beginnings of Enterprise architecture.

Screenshot - 2020-07-15T222021.114The reality of it is, most of us think about it as being in, just over the last 20 years, certainly a roundabout land when tooling really started to come into it.

So, the problem though, is that, although the world has changed a lot, I suggest to you that for many of us, the EIA practices, tools, and approaches, still rooted in the past. We're still thinking like we were then.

We don't seem to have moved on and if you ask people about Enterprise architecture, what it is and how to describe it the most often going to come back and talk to you about, well, it's about all ... or Zachman frameworks, repositories, toga governance standards.

These are the words that we keep associating, witty.

And of course, the end result is that often, people will say, you know what, this stuff just take way too long, and costs too much. And you can't even agree is Enterprise Architect what Enterprise architecture is.

And, you know, LinkedIn is an amazing place for us all to share our ideas.

But if any of you look at the groups on LinkedIn, we're forever arguing. No. That's not the right framework. It's this, it's that, it's the other.

And I think there was another debate on the same thing that was fired up just half an hour ago on LinkedIn.

Well, we can't even agree What business architecture is.

Where does AI fit with the AI, and the post put up three different schools of thought as to whether it's an adjunct to, I see whether it belongs in a subsite, et cetera, et cetera.

And if we're all having those debates and discussions, is it any wonder?

So, the perception of enterprise architecture isn't around, wow, this is something really neat.

and I just wanted to share some statistics with you, Some of you may be aware of this, but 66% of all enterprise architecture initiatives are perceived as failures.

61% are not integrated with the investment decision process. well, if we're looking at bringing in new systems, new ways of working, new practices, Completely new edge far as designs, how can we do that, If would you solve the investment decisions?

But then conversely, we don't do the best that we can because less than 20% of us recognize the TA to help improve customer service, margins, cost customers, drivers, these types of things.

In other words, less than 20% of us are actually focused on business outcomes.

Queries are focused on architecture for architecture site, always focused around the technology base.

Now, as just as an aside, when we're looking at tooling, 51% people find that the budget request for key actually get turned down, because it's not seen as providing value, and not being Business Secretary.

This is a problem.

Now, we're going to hear some great stories over the next few days, from amazingly successful folks as to how their programs have succeeded some of the lessons that they've learned along the way. And that's really great. And we all we all want to learn from loads.

But let's also remember that's in this current situation, enterprise architecture is under the caution.

OK, over the last three months, I've spoken to a number of organizations and spoken to a number of vendors.

And I find it fascinating that when we look at the current pandemic situation, this is a massive received by the way that many of us do business for the business will be in the future. The ramifications we haven't even seen yet touched the tip of the iceberg of how much and how big that change is going to be.

And yet, many of those organizations actual with a telling me that AI is being cut, it's seen as non essential.

Btog CTASo, tools are not being provided.

Budgets are being cut, programs, being cut, architects to be, let go of furloughed them, maybe even on the longer term.

And that's really sad, because never have we needed architecture, what we do now.

So, what are some of the things that people might be thinking about and how we change?

Well, no, we talk about switching from artifacts to outcomes.

People don't want time. So, you know, I often said the thing about modeling in particular is that nobody wants models.

However, most people have problems that a model will help them solve.

And I'm sure that many of you have also found it as interesting as I have watching some of the statistics around the spread of Corona.

I'm talking about, you know, what the potential mortality might be, what the caseload is going to be, and these these are model based comes right? What we want to know is the outcome.

However, in order to drive those outcomes, the guys in the various institutions based educational or scientific research, or having to create modems.

Now the other thing is also amusing, is that if you pin it down to them and say, well, six months ago, you told me it was going to be this.

And now you're telling me it's going to be that their response is.

But, of course, the model is constantly evolving. The model is changing. We're getting new information, or fresh information, which enables us to make better predictions of outcomes, and such, like, and this is the way that we should be thinking about enterprise architecture.

It isn't a one and done, We never have all the information, and we shouldn't even try to get all of the information.

However, when we started talking about outcomes, and many of you all, likely, we now say, I've already moved to an outcome based approach, and I'm working ambitious outcomes.

I'm hoping that this applies to the people that are not with us today.

We're holding the unlikely group that we have with us but when I talk about, well, what are the business outcomes that you focus on? They say, well, it's application rationalization, maybe data center consolidation, technology standardization, Internet of Things.

What I suggest is these are really useful for the business but they are IT.

They're not business outcomes. A business outcome, which we just discussed could be creating a new business model. Looks at how the world has changed. It could be that digital transformation. It could be new revenue streams or increasing revenue. Improving customer experience, dealing with regular change.

Making mergers and acquisitions happen faster. It's easier.

These are the types of examples of business outcomes.

The C suite and ambitious leads as one.

question then becomes, how do we talk to them in a language that enables them to see that the value that we bring as enterprise architects isn't helping solve those problems. How can we help them solve those problems easier, faster?

So all of those diagrams are models that we're creating, it has no real value unless they relate to a business outcome.

This can be done, it's requires a little bit of work, sometimes, drawing the strings up.

Many of you will trade things like Business analysis and your views, business analysis, to get into root cause and looked at the five Whys as an example, drilling down to find the root cause, But you can only you also use the five whys to come up with.

So, you know, why are you wanting to put in this new desktop application?

Well, because it's going to make it easier for somebody to do something, well, why's that?

Well because if they can do that, then they can take calls quicker wise that, well, if I can handle calls, Flickr, they can improve customer expects. All right, so it's not a new IT system that you're fussed about putting in improving customer experience, is the budget why you got. So try asking the five whys going up for your projects, your programs, or anything else you're doing, until you can tie it to a business outcome. And by the way, that business outcome is an outcome that your business leaders perceive as the desired outcome, not something that we imagine to be an outcome that they be interest. That's sometimes what I describe as an accident, looking for somewhere to happen. So, ask questions, deal with that.

Just to give you an example, this is a slide that I've taken actually from one of my Customer Excellence presentations based on some work I was doing, as you can see it with, with Gary Danko gym sign-up.

And there's an example Craig Venal, CEO of Home Depot said hey, I'm going to get out there, and we are going to. Completely transform the way that we're doing business digitally. So, they set aside a budget for 300 million.

To enable, call and click click and click services for customers, all looks great.

Except that within six months of the original announcement, you have to go back to the board.

To explain, I actually needed another one point two billion to actually build a new distribution centers, and completely overhaul the order fulfillment process.

So, if we think about it, they weren't teaching an enterprise architecture type of approach. They will say, oh, well, I can just do this in this small space.

Without looking at those bigger impacts, These are the types of things where I had probably been engaged with these 80 and the EAS with their colleagues. So, they could have foreseen.

This, they could see, that said, right, OK, if you're going to do that, this is the things that go in place. And this is all of the aspects.

And the nice thing about this one for me in the context of EA is it reminds us that actually physical locations are a part of enterprise architecture. As well as in mind.

the debate between E, A and B A. And we'll come onto that a little later.

Copy of Email Graphic Virtual Conferences (3)
Actually, it's also the organization and location stuff.

So think about what your organization is doing or where you can perhaps run intercept or help them understand how they have questions that you can help answer. And this next slide is a little busy, and I apologize about that.

So, for now, I just want to take a little look at the left hand side, where we can see, the components, shall we say, of an enterprise architecture.

So, in the orange, I've got the technology, application and data.

That's the stuff that many people, especially those leeching people I'm talking about, and many of you, maybe association, has big enterprise architecture, but that's not, let's be really clear.

As IT architecture, or as IT architecture for the enterprise, only when you start adding in the green stuff, process, the organization or location, do you start to say, ah, when I add the green stuff? Which effectively is the business paste, the business architecture.

When I add that widget. The orange. Now I'm starting to look at the enterprise.

Now the one of the sliver that I have in this slide, and you can see, in the gray, is security.

Historically, security architecture has never really been mentioned much. It sees a six softener. Now, the department, or it's part of infrastructure, But increasingly, I think that was saying, *****.

The advent of more people working from home, or whether it's the regulatory and compliance issues, or whether it's through increasing use of Sass. But actually, security architecture is coming into its own as a discipline in its own right. But it all comes together, And you need all of those pieces, if you're delivering the enterprise architecture.

And if you want to be looking the innovation piece of the jigsaw that you need to be covering those things.

So, that just gives you a flavor of, say, decide for yourself, whether you're doing IT architecture, as in the orange business architecture, as in the gray, or enterprise architecture, by looking at the complete pace. And I will leave each of you to form your own opinion as to where you fit all.

On the right hand side is something that I created a few years ago is a different way of selling and promoting spies architecture. And I can only share with you that, in my experiences, is not selling any technology or consulting, but just trying to help people in promoting the value and the needs of their organizations. And what I created here with something called the Wheel of Change, which seems, for the most part, to generate a lot of aha moments among business managers.

Because, OK, we're not talking about enterprise architecture, We're talking about the value of the pieces. Now, what I'd like you to imagine, is that each of those rings, the hopefully on your screens has come out as a pinky red. You've got the purple, cyan, and then the blue on the outside, if you can just imagine for a moment.

each of those rings were independent.

Could have rotate, then, you know, you can get questions, and let's just stay with, with where we'll is now, But, you know, how is this technology gonna deal with the governance that we need to satisfy stakeholders?

Or, when will this application be ready to help us identify and deal with this opportunity in the market?

How can we differently use data to reduce, waste, and improve our societal responsibility, et cetera, et cetera?

Now, as those rings rotate, they generate 1296 questions at a minimum, assuming you just have one question in each section.

So my question that I always ask is, how do you answer those questions?

What system do you have that helps you answer those questions?

And often, you'll get a lot of scratching of heads of say, um, I don't know, a fetch.

We don't even ask some of those questions, Perhaps you should.

So, these are the ways of thinking, and talking to people, know, it still still.

Suggestion of, how do you describe something without using the word itself? Rarely do you hear enterprise architecture described in a way that doesn't become self referencing.

I suggest to you that the wind of change is a way of talking to people about the value of what do you break?

Talking to them about the questions that they might need to seek answers to in order to achieve their objectives. So I'll leave that with you, is something to have a .... And I'll come back to later at the end of the presentation, because I've got some other resources around this that might help you. And if you want to reach out, I'm happy to share.

So so me, OK, and as I said, the leaching views all over the place. And some of you all here will agree. Some of you will disagree, as some of you, just want to know what to agree with.

For me, Enterprise Architecture, without Business Architecture, is just IT architecture.

There's nothing wrong with that.

We need an IT architecture, we need IT architects', however, it becomes really difficult for those that are passionate about enterprise architecture to move the practice forward, to help organizations.

Screenshot (4)When I see architecture style and described by people that sees themselves and keep calling themselves enterprise architects and keep moving the definition to fit the job title, so be cautious.

So, what will be all the topics that I want you to talk to you about in terms of that changing perception?

Walls?

The use of governance, you hear a lot of people from the aha, it's our job as architects, we govern the standard, we mandate what's going on, people must follow, And I'm here to tell you that actually, governance is one of the prime reasons that many people evil is in high achievers.

Want to avoid or work around the enterprise architects.

They see them as policing.

This is not a way to engage people.

Some of it is just a linguistic change.

We know that some stuff needs to be govern, but it's not your job to tell me what to do.

It's a good idea for you to have guardrails or policies in place to protect me, but you are not the people that should be mandating everything.

I just wanted to share with you a very quick, simple story. I don't know if any of you have read this brilliant book, an old now FedEx delivers, and its story of many things that goes on within FedEx.

But one of the stories I particularly liked was when Fred Smith got together with his IT folks many, many, many, many, many years ago, and said, Look, I've got this idea.

And what I'd like is a way to electronically capture the signatures for deliveries. I don't want to go away and come back and tell me how we can do it.

And the guys went away, They came back, and they said, sorry, we, we can't have one.

So what do you make?

Sure, well, we've looked everywhere and nobody thinks it's a great idea, but nobody makes it, so we can't have it. Right, you weren't listening.

I didn't ask who made it or whether to buy it for awhile, she too.

Great to give us one.

How do they go away? And once again, they go away for awhile and they come back and then come back and say, well, how to look. And it's not gonna work, because it's going to take too long, it's gonna cost too much.

And he said, I don't remember telling you.

So there was a time on a budget, I asked you to go back and come back and tell me how to do it.

And eventually they went away and they created the first handheld scanners.

And now, of course, everyone's using them all over the place, but as an example where they had in mind that they will govern in trying to govern the ways that the business worked.

Guardrails would have been say, Hey, well, we can create this, but here's a security risk, or here's the risk, is the risk that the business gets to decide, not the enterprise architects, with a proxy, We're there to provide the suggestions, provides the advice, is not to govern the business.

If we keep pushing governance and policing, then the only thing we're going to do is to keep pushing ourselves further and further, further away, from a central role.

So be cautious when you think about governance and think about how you can change the language. Guidelines and guardrails, see, the supportive governance is seen as something that's disabled, it's not enable. We want to be enabling the business.

So I wanted to share just a little bit around Charlie's. Let me build the build the slide. So, I've got a lot more informational initially, Again, I'm gonna give you some links so you can reach out, but we can use this afterwards.

one of the things that JJ lost, you used some surveying around this. And some of this was done by me. Some was done by others.

But we look at the surveys.

It will what's important to you in terms of tooling and everything else.

And what you can see is that the architects were very much up there in the yellow. It's going to be easy to use. It's got to be easy to import, connect to external data. Yeah, yeah, Those guidelines and governance, we need to be doing less.

Have a look at it and say, Should we have to come down a number of levels?

So what I've got a degree here, things like easily consumable for non architects only scored a 3.6 impact analysis for people across systems.

But it was only 3.5 ROI.

That can be shown in weeks, not months, scores lowliest three, these are the types of reasons that we're struggling. Sometimes we'll be bringing in. Truly, people want to sell two weeks, not months.

Screenshot - 2020-07-15T222021.114Another piece of work that I've done, and I'll go here for you, showing that the, some of the newer tools now are able to produce tangible business results in under three months.

Whereas, most of the traditional tools seem to be around 6 to 9 months, was many, 12 months plus.

And then one of the other questions that I ask people about was, well, what about getting useful answers? from the tool, is more important than drawing pictures. Now, good news is that 63% strongly agree.

Tobacco use is 37% didn't actually see beyond the diagrams and the drawing.

And then, when I asked the question about the focus of tools, or models, but as opposed to insights.

People agreed that actually, they needed more insights from the tools, which is interesting.

And as much as the vendors don't seem to focus so much on insights.

But, also, when we're trying to get that budget for the tools, we tend to focus on the tool itself, and rather than the inside.

So just something to think about is, that, it's around the insights and time of the things that are gonna make a difference to you.

And as a separate piece of work that I data, I've found that actually, new base hold when it comes to a tolling. So, I want to say, Oh, I mean, the traditional vendors, and many of them, by the way, can be up in the top right of certain, well-known, graphical representations of, actually, some of the others.

In the lower half, Sometimes even the left, when I look at the head to head analysis of wins versus losses, then the newer guys are facing the old hands down.

So, I talked about in that previous slide, one of the bullets there being around the consumption, the use of that material, buy out a broader group. And I think this is something that is worth taking a few minutes. So.

Enterprise Objects are very concerned with getting to that single source of truth, you know, whether it's bringing in from other systems, whether issue, bringing in, from traditional Excel, Visio PowerPoint stuff, And, however, they frame it, whether we use vertical frameworks or horizontal frameworks elation. And we're very, very focused on that.

And here's the challenge.

If the only people that are going to use that information, all the architecture Team, X, going to be seen as an expensive exercise either from maturing or from the work involves respect.

If you want to actually broaden your value, both to perspective and from the 18 points of view, then you would need to approach it differently.

We have a whole group of people there, whether it's in the business, whether it's on the IT side, whether it's developers, whether they're innovators, they need accurate, timely information, and if we're not providing that information to them in a way that they can pursue, then we're missing massive amounts of value in our work.

And, by the way, if we're providing that accurate, timely information, and we should stop doing it for that reason, You don't be surprised when someone asks why. We're not investing more in that architecture, and why we're not building more stuff into the repository, and why we're not keeping it up to date. It's a completely different mindset. We move from a push to, oh, because people are seeing value in the work they do.

And that's a really big group of people.

On the flip side, on the right-hand side, then, we can think about, Well, how are we presenting that information in a way that population management dashboards not about the architecture? Because I don't care about that, that's just the model underneath. But about the things they do, care about, what information are we able to source and whole of the impact analysis? And such like something that people can proactively seek homes. So in other words, it becomes a vicious navigation system that some of you will see some vendors talking about, so it's a pretty old concept. But using it as that business navigation system.

If we're doing that, people will auto magically want to see investment in the teams and in the value of those central teams.

You won't have a budget issue, as much as you'll have a resource issue, because the amount of work that's going to be coming as constantly will make all the difference. So my advice to all of you is to spend your time focusing on what I call the congregation, not require architecture for architects, is never gonna go very far. We've seen it. Some of the vendors in the space where they focused on architecture tool for architects and the revenues are not growing R&D going backwards. Those break out of that mold finding much greener pastures, a much brighter revenues.

So I always suggest the creation without adoptions of waste, so whether we are looking at it from a process perspective or an architecture perspective, if you're not thinking about how you can make information more easily, more digestible, more useful, more helpful to all of these types of people, then you're missing an amazing opportunity.

And on the right-hand side, then you can see just some of the things that it can be usually around the broader management team, in terms of how everyone altogether. So really focus hard on that congregation.

And if you want to ignore people, then please do so.

But I suggest that you all potentially ignoring limit your panel. This was something I took here.

You should see some Guides spar, whether it's in research showing examples of G for Procter and Gamble and others spending one point three trillion.

It's a transformation.

Initiatives, yes? Suggestion. 70% or 900 billion was wasted all fatal program.

Copy of Email Graphic Virtual Conferences (3)Because they failed to effectively communicate the goals, strategy, and purpose and outlook with their employees.

Now, we could go one step further and say, Actually, what I did, will say, fail to take an enterprise architecture perspective, and use the architecture teams to communicate to all of those people, and to connect the goals, the strategy, the purpose.

Whereas the other aspects of process systems, technology, such that they were all moving together as one.

In fact, we know many of these organizations like many others, these pockets of projects and programs are all going on in isolation.

We're not doing them in joined up ways.

We're not getting the best value from them, and some of which, because as enterprise architects, we've managed to either lose, or not create, perceived value in what we do.

We should actually help, so we've got to pay those enterprise advisors.

So I thought it might be useful to make a few suggestions for you.

This is my suggestions for you for the next week, next month next Bootstrap approach.

Just going through, giving you some things to think about that says, well OK, what about mission with you acquire to discuss the risks and timing?

If possible, EA counts because unless you're very lucky.

I'm see lots of them happening now and suddenly I see even more, we'll be coming.

So have a look at the timing of those and be ready to make sure that you're not waiting until arrives to put the mitigation in place.

So identify who your congregation is, what they need, what they want to hear, and how they won't ever don't try using your language.

Use, they're, like, you know, there's a saying in change that the easiest way to change others is, by changing yourself, sadly, this is something that is enterprise architecture.

Pretty poor, wrong, for a long time.

Spend a little bit of time on some introspection, what could you have done differently?

What actionable insights should be delivered? By the way, I didn't have it on here.

Have a look at projects or programs or initiatives that have failed within the business.

See if you can identify what the cost of those failures were, either a lost opportunity, hothouse, and try to elaborate how architecture could have saved some of those things. And that might help.

Absolutely, over the next month.

identify those key business outcomes from those business stakeholders, and work out how to tie your relationships to them.

Have a look at what governance you can stop doing.

Which advice you need to start?

Let's see if there's some tweaks that you can make there.

Some of you will still have separate business and IT architecture.

I suggest that you be really well place to start planning how to better you nightfall re-unite to back into one.

Over the next quarter, communicate.

You're architecting business. Focus language can't say that enough. Really get practicing and thinking about how to change it.

If you could talk about what you're doing without even talking about enterprise architecture, you're going to be in a really, really good place.

For many of you, you may find that it's a good time to start to revisit the ways you use your ..., assess whether it's fit for purpose. There's still a lot of organizations that I, that I talk to.

Screenshot (4)Then it's still trying to put square pegs in round holes and there's some pretty good round pegs out there and it could be time to start re-evaluation.

And for what it's worth, in some cases now, the switch could actually be almost cost neutral, because the cost of some of the mutuals could be no more expensive than the cost of the maintenance from the old tools, putting aside the cost to changing, moving stuff around.

Spend more time with your innovation change. And work out how to become the trusted advisor they turn to when they say, well, we think we're going to do this, but what are the implications?

So, just some pieces of advice in terms of some of the steps, you're going to pick and choose the ones that work for you, and that's great, but as long as you're getting the pieces you want.

So before I stop sharing and hand back over to Josie for the Q and A, I've got three resources I just was looking at literally just before I came on board. That might be used to, I did some insights into the use of AI tools I mentioned here last year. If you want a copy of that e-mail, me, connect on LinkedIn and all for having to share.

I've also got a paper I wrote some years ago, but I was thinking the other day, I think it's still still pretty relevant today, and some of the diagrams on Views have come from that on seven Steps to Business Architecture. Again, if you'd like that, e-mail me.

And I didn't dig into it, because it wasn't part of the brief and our time was short to date around looking at the personas that would use architecture and the best way of creating and building use cases. I've got a bunch of material. They are ambitious outcomes. The use of personas in enterprise architecture or comparing use cases gate. If you think it could be of help to you, then e-mail me, connect on LinkedIn, and I'll be happy to happy to share that. So, I am now going to stop sharing my screen.

And Jose is going to come back with us as we go.

The Q and A, very go, mark, thank you very much for your, for your presentation. We had lots of questions that came in while you're speaking, which is great, because we're, I'm gonna draw from those questions. And, and for those of you who are listening, just keep providing questions, I'll try to get to as many of the questions that you submit as possible. So, the first one Mark comes from Antonio, or Keizer. And he's asking your personal perspective on the, on the issue of a broader appreciation of the strategic value of enterprise architecture. What do you think may be?

And, the, and the way I read his question is that, There are, There is perhaps a little understanding, and, certainly, you know, with that, some appreciation from our senior leaders in the organization, about enterprise architecture. So, I'll talk a little bit about that, in terms of, you know, whether that's true or not. And then, also, what can we do as practitioners to increase that appreciation?

So, let's start with the second part first. So, wasn't in the introduction. Some of you on the call, My, may know, a bit about the background of some of you won't, but one of the things is, I'm also a licensed traitor in your program, so I'm passionate about the People side of Change.

one of the best books that I can recommend, if any of you, it was a book by Lady Shelley ..., right, she wrote a book about how words change lives.

And I can't emphasize enough. But the challenge that we have, which is the second part of the question and touches on the first, is, We're not willing to change our words.

We get frustrated while I've been talking to charge A about enterprise architecture now, all week and he still doesn't get it.

Well, actually, he doesn't need to get it, he doesn't want to get it is frustration, is primarily because he's been telling me that he needs to increase revenue, decrease cost, will bring a new product to market, is still struggling to see, what I do, helps do those things. So, part of the reason that we're not getting that leadership engagement.

Because we're not talking the language, I actually don't care about.

You know, we, we talk about if you're a really good change professional, working inside a project. The great thing is that when you leave the project, nobody notices. Right?

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That's the market success. And so it should be with what we're doing.

Yes, we want to feel good that we managed to convince Jose to buy into AI when he wouldn't, Then we do it with other ... in the ball, and we're all chasing, yeah, I managed. It. Didn't even know that I'm just sold in AI. And he's just spent 200,000 on tooling and he didn't even know it was by a pay. That success.

Because I wasn't using the language that they expect to be to use. I might've been talking about that, We'll have changed, impact analysis, or, Whoa, hey, I'm going to do this over here, Jose, but if I stop you, wow, this is valuable.

So, I agree totally that Alicia doesn't get it, but then, they never do need to get it.

really, all the tools out there.

So, flipping around and think about what we change, don't want my check.

Very good, very good. on that. Michael King had a question on the, on the constant on the Wheel of Change that you, that you share. And he was, and you just mentioned something related to that, an author related related to that. He was asking if you had any further literature on the Wheel of Change, and any other recommendations related to that topic specific, where they can go a bit further.

Yeah. So, it's something I created myself. I've used it in a number of different ways, and lots of bits of material around it, certainly slides with a little more depth on the examples. So I'd like to suggest is that reaches out to me, and I'm happy to share. Maybe even have a call with him, too, but with anybody else, happy to share it out there.

Very good, very good. Also, Mark, there was a lot of commentary that happened during our session. And then I think that the gist of it was that that a lot of people's experiences were that EA had more holistic people who understood business. And processes, and they foresee how to improve the process, and where the digital transformation may fit.

And so, that's, that's good. And, and does so different perspectives there. I think the gist of it is that people feel that they are already taking more of a holistic approach. But I couldn't help, and then my own bias way is that I work with hundreds of organizations. And, and I think that sometimes the architecture of people feel that way. But, I, as a, as a non IT person, I don't think that they, I know I see a major gap, and I think you highlighted that. Why do you think there is such a gap between this honestly and awareness issue, that the IT folks actually believe that they are connected with the process. They believe their connection with the people.

They believe that they are working on the right things for the business, but when you talk to senior leaders, are alike, you know, they feel a distance, and they feel a disconnect. Why do you think this happens so often?

Yeah, I mean, so the first thing is, I've got to totally agree with you.

I mean, you know, we spent a little time together in Orlando last year so you know, that I spend as much of my life in the Operational excellence.

Customer excellence process space as I do in the AI space.

And I absolutely agree with you that when talking to people the AI space, they change that we're doing all that?

They said, well, that's interesting.

Because the thousands of people attend those other events around Operational Excellence.

To say that they're doing it and none of them doing it in association with the AAT, some, if we push them, will say that we're doing it despite our ET, Tom will say we keep them out of the room.

And I think there's lots of things at play, and by the way, for those of you that are on the call and you get ready to scream at me, there are other examples, of course, where everyone is working in both, how many, And that's great. We love you all. Unfortunately, it is the minority. I don't care what you're telling me, He raised the minority.

I think, partly, is because the days of push, so hard on the IT architecture and I saw this a lot in my research director days and you look at the reporting line and you realize that many ATMs junkies report into the CIO.

They report maybe 2 or 3 levels down to the CIO.

And given that some of the speakers, you know, and let's use the, the operational conference last year. Many of those speakers with CEOs, right? They were driving the digital transformation.

Well, they're not likely to be working with an AA down here, somewhere in the structure.

And I think that, to a certain extent, the CIO is to blame, because they're not recognizing the value of the EAC as their trusted advisors, And, therefore, then labels have the right conversations with them.

Because it keeps coming back to, yeah, well, that's OK, but what about system? That's OK, but what about system?

And eventually, someone says, You know what? I've got more than assistants worry about. I've got an organization, I've got a new business model, I've got people, all those other aspects.

Screenshot (4)So again, it's a roundabout language.

And, also, here's the question.

If you talk to an AI, can they help you solve?

Give you advice to solving the problem without telling you about a cyst if they can, right?

But usually, they'll come down to, Well, I've got a system for that, or there's an application levels, and the question, Some of it is language.

Yeah, that that comment you just made there is really interesting from the type of questions that people pose and then what it says about their, this connection with the business. Mercedes ... and Harish, Chair Coonerty, I want to make sure YouTube that I got your questions and, and they are both around a bit of comment area as well.

And with, respect to a architecture, and the, and organizational skills, and closing that gap, and the, and the question that comes across on both of the, the, the statements that they submitted, is, Let's look at them minority. And let's look at the ones who do it very well. That you have had the privilege of working with organizations where they are, where it's where EA is working in a holistic strategic way.

Um, what, what, what are this are the What is the best design practices to get to a point like that? if you are where you are today, you're, you know, you may be OK, but you're not. That connected just yet. What are, you know, 2 or 3 things that you think people should be working on right now? Maybe skills to develop what direction or guidance you'd give to them, Those who want to be great?

Yeah.

So if I look at those organizations where people will be really successful, there's a real similarity here between some of the OpEx.

And DI is that people don't use those labels.

We're the enterprise organizational design team or some other way, so they don't use Enterprise architecture in the label, in the same way they don't use OPEC's in their label.

They find another name.

By the way, the recent finding another name, especially, if you call it. Let's suppose, yeah, we we would be chosen one team.

See you all. next generation Beach OTT.

When you go googly, you don't find anything that contradicts what I'm telling you.

When you use OPEC's or AI, or any of those labels, there's always someone that's going to say, oh, yes, but Google said, well, I've read what Mark said, Ryan read. Well, just, and it says something different. But you spend all your life having to justify definitions. So one key trick in all of these things is to draw the name. Call yourself something different.

Now, once you've done that, you can take whichever bits of any discipline that you want, and bring them together to help deliver results. So that's, that's the most important thing, that I think people forget the label.

Yeah, I'm sorry for those of you who are starting out as an EA and you map out your entire career going, senior da, da, da, da, with the title. It's not helping you.

Unless you're on the IT side, on the business side, drop the label.

Become an enterprise consultant, whatever labels to enable, you should move more freely and that's what the successful organizations like work done. And then the other thing I talked about it, my shed is a talk about the business outcome, and I'm talking about how. So, for example, Jose. I need you to give me a million dollars worth of budget for a tool. You're not going to do it.

But if you tell me that you need to generate $100 million of new revenue, and I say, if you give me a million dollars, I'm pretty sure that here's how I'm going to help you do it.

You didn't ask what I want you to meaningful.

We're so busy trying to justify What are we going to do with a million that we forget? but he doesn't care.

He cares about the result. And one of the things that I suggest is that the problem for many people, when justifying ... doesn't matter the same phase.

We don't think about the fact of what's the ratio of the spend to the result.

We actually Ofsted, and I've seen this a lot, say, Yeah, I need you to give me this money.

But I'm not sure how long it's going to be before we give you a return, What the return is now. That's not an investment. That's a gamble.

Sorry, good health help people stop gambling and start investing.

Mark, thank you so much for a masterclass on the holistic and strategic view of a real pleasure to have you here and share your insights with us.

My pleasure and guys, you know listen to these other talks. We've got coming up this and some great details, success stories of how people overcome some of these and other issues and deliver success. I have a great time everyone and also to be listening. So enjoy.

Thank you very much Mark. Ladies and gentlemen, we are we are at the end of our first session. Very excited about our next session coming at the top of the hour. We're going to have the manager direction the Managing Director of the Go to Market efforts in the Americas. For a Lean I X. Join us and talk about how the Global pandemic has really impacted and shifted EA and the in the work the EA leaders do as they become the Champions for several very important initiatives as a result of the pandemic. So we'll be talking about that at the top of the hour. As I close this, as you close your session, close the goto Webinar interface and there will be a little popup that you can fill out our survey with, Any feedback you have on this segment. And we'll close the webinar and re-open soon, and with the new session. So, look forward to seeing you back soon. Thank you very much.

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About the Author

more (5)Mark McGregor,
Author, Performance & Business Coach.

A former Research Director at leading IT industry analysis firm Gartner, Mark has an extensive background in enterprise architecture, business process management and change management, having held executive positions with a number of technology companies.

Mark has authored or co-authored four books on business and process management, including “Thrive! How to Succeed in the Age of the Customer” and “In Search of BPM Excellence” and  “People Centric Process Management.  Widely respected for his knowledge and views on business change, he is the creator of “Next Practice” and has variously been described as a ”BPM Guru”, a “Thought Leader” and a “Master of Mindset”. 

Mark is passionate about the people aspects of change, he has spent much of the last ten years travelling the world, learning, teaching and researching the cultural aspects of change and how executives perceive business and process improvement In this capacity he has literally taught hundreds of people and been fortunate to interview and interact with many CEO’s .

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