Session Information:

Session Transcript:

He's coming today from the UK to the world, his name is Peter Evans and theater. Please do join us if you're a camera. Peter is the director of Lean Continuous Improvement, and a lego, He joined, let go in 20 16, continuing a long career in Change Leadership Continuous improvement. Operational excellence with great businesses, including GE Capital Vodafone, Virgin Media Emerge Line he lives in mid Wales in UK. Unusually spends his life traveling between various Lego locations. So very excited to have you with us, Peter. I mean, you have a tremendous expertise and knowledge and enterprise architecture, and beyond when it comes to company strategy, processes, and culture. So thanks for joining us. Look forward to your presentation.

Thank you, Joseph.

Term sharing, OK.

Hopefully you can all see my presentation and hear me well, is, there we go? You join us.

You got it. Yep, yep. Good, amazing opportunity to join us and speak to you, and I hope you find it of interest.

I have to, I have to admit, to, not being an expert in enterprise architecture. But I think I know how businesses run, and I think I know how they're organized and how they work, And that's kind of what I want to talk to you a bit about today.

And as I say, I hope you find this interesting and some fun along the way.

So what am I going to talk about? I'm going to talk a little bit about Lego. Just a very small amount on that. I will come back to a bit later on, But also, how it can, still, dealing with Enterprise Architect, and I do intend to have a little bit fun here. So please bear with me and don't get too annoyed with me if you are an Enterprise Architect, and but maybe you recognize some, Some of these things I talk of, and then.

Go into a bit of around system thinking, which is something that really deeply interests me. And is part of the way I think about how great organizations worked. And then connection it all with an operational excellence journey, and the language of the business, which is, again, something I deeply believe in. And the ability to tell stories and to bring people with us on our journey.

And then, of course, we'll follow up with some Q and A, and as I say, I hope you enjoy the journey. And I look forward to it.

So, Lego, um, mission is to inspire and develop the bonus of tomorrow. This is, this is a mission that we all deeply believe in and let go. I'm sure many of you have heard the stories of NASA and the Apocryphal stories of JFK asking the janitor. While he was there to do and he said he was to put a man on the moon. Well, if you, if you did something similar in Lego, then you don't see, you would get is around this and inspiring and developing the builder tomorrow.

And it's one of the reasons why Legos, Brandon, as a company is so successful, is how connected, we are not going to be a big theme for this presentation today, today.

So a couple of, couple of little fun fact before we really get going. If you take six to buy for Lego bricks, are the same color, there are 915 million different ways to put that those bricks together, like, give you some sense to the Limitless creativity. And innovation that, this very simple.

Like a Lego brick brings to the world and why, particularly in the hands of children, of course, who are probably some of the few people capable of finding or 950 million different ways. Then it's very important part.

We also joke in my world and business services at the moment that we've got just about as many ways of ******** up the payables invoice, but that's perhaps not quite so. So entertaining.

There's a little piece, which I love to share, is that we are the world's largest tire manufacturer, 700 million plus tires every year. Of course, that we wouldn't claim at all that they're anything like as complex as a road type, but just a little sun factor share with you.

So let's get into the main body of this, what's it like dealing with, with Enterprise Architecture?

Well, I guess, in its worst case, and I have, and I should say, by the way, that this is not my experience at legoland Lego group, but in its worst case, you know, it can be viewed as a complete black hole.

We know that things go in there, because we put it in there, but we're not sure what comes out, the other end.

We know that a lot of money goes in there, but we're not quite sure how that turns into anything, and, and we find is almost impenetrable.

And that for many people, and particularly in businesses that are that well connected, where enterprise architects tend to live apart somewhere, you can tell them, they're all called Dave, and they all go to lunch together, that you can't.

You can't quite get to what's going on, But if you do get through the black hole, and if you do manage it through that, then you hit something dark and sinister. And that dark incentives to saying, of course, is the Death Star. And so, because you know that your ideas are going to die, that is going to be long and painful, and that you're not going to really enjoy it very much.

And, even if you managed to break the outer layer and get further, you get to the office door. Which, of course, has a stop, do not enter sign and a fairly well. Well, Muscled bodyguard, looking after it.

And you and you with Trepidation, you finally get inside and you finally get there, and you're faced with this.

And we're, no, you all love it.

We know that you spend your time drawing these boxes and doing this stuff in my world, in the business process world.

Then, I have this, I have similar, similar things there, but it's over complex.

It's in a language that only you guys understand and it doesn't really speak to the business.

And this happens a lot, not just in enterprise architecture. Britain a whole range of different world so much in my days.

In telecoms as an example, there was the much loved, a Tom motto, and each one had thousands and thousands of boxes and nobody actually in the business, other than the few nerdy geeks who liked that sort of stuff, talk in that way.

And, and therefore, we're already distracted, and we're already taken away, because we can't find ourselves in that, and we can't recognize anything.

And it certainly doesn't meant my mentioned customer, by the way, because who has I mean, that all they do is pay the bills, right?

I guess if you, even if you manage it through there and you find out where you really exist, you then hit the inevitable Gantt chart and the inevitable project map and all of those other things, And.

And if you're really lucky, Dave will tell you you can't have it.

But it's not in the plan until 20 31.

Now that's a pretty dark, of course, and a lighthearted version of the truth. But in many ways, that's what it can feel like. I'm particularly in, in businesses, which have very strong divisions, which really exists to maintain themselves, almost like dart styles and then in themselves. Then the connectivity isn't that the language of co-operation isn't there and in fact, or becomes a massive chore to get anything done. And all you end up doing is kind of at best steering clear, not worst hating people for it and it's not a very healthy place to be. Now, of course, it doesn't have to be like that.

It can things can be considerably brighter.

The world can be considerably brighter and we can have much more fun and actually, in the best of worlds, than what you need. Is a Yoda's as saying, welcome you all.

Because that's exactly what's the way the world should be.

And in fact, the more that we get that piece of it right, and all the interaction works, the easier it is for businesses to perform and outperform other businesses.

And, one of the main reasons, I think, why Leggo is so incredible as a business is not, I say just, it has an awesome project, of course, products, of course, it does, But it's also incredibly well connected, It talks to each other on a very regular basis. We talk across that the, the areas and the teams, we learn from each other, and that's how real change happens.

And, when I say connected business, it starts very much from the family where as you probably know where we are a family owned business, we remain a family owned business based out of the bill and in Denmark.

And that family started the business in 19 32 and have been at the helm of it all all the way through now.

Changes have happened, of course, over time, But one of the things which we do, is we keep very true to our beliefs. So you can see on this chart, the lego brand framework, and it's the first thing as a, as a Lego employee.

You learn, and you get comfortable with, as I say, you know, I told you the mission a little bit earlier, but the idea of system in play. The values of imagination, creativity, fun, learning, care, and quality of our promises.

And when I say promise, what I don't mean is in the same way as somebody says, Well, I promise, I'll come to your party, which probably means that aren't going to arrive. These are the things we work very, very hard to deliver.

Included in my world, for instance, in the partner promise, that includes paying, ask vendors on time, for example. We don't get it right all the time. Of course, we don't. And things go wrong. Of course, they do, but we strive all the time against that, and we measure ourselves against some very lofty goals with a spirit which says, only the best is good enough.

And because of that, we we are completely connected as a business.

And because of that, as I said, if you Cassius, you'll find a Lego brick. If you cut us, you'll find people talking about the mission, mission, and the vision. And we're very clear about, and we're very connected to that. By being connected to that, we can deliver.

And that includes in all of all of our working areas, just a little insight in terms of how strategy gets deployed in our business. And, you know, so no fancy words like Ocean Camry or any of those sort of things. But it's quite simple, really, about, particularly as we went through some, some changes a year and a half or so ago.

We started early in the year with the owner family, telling us about their vision and their picture for the future.

And that was very quickly followed by our, our leader, as CEO, neal's, be talking to us about how that translates it down to the lego group, and a piece of the business. That's followed by our board director. Talking to everybody in his area, translating down from the original version from the family, and then, of course, our local leads doing the same thing.

That meant that in a very short period of time, every single employee in the business had heard the same story 4 or 5 times, before we even start to build our transformation improvement plans.

And it means that we are so locked together, then unlocked instead that it gives us some great opportunities to constantly gage whether we're doing the right thing, constantly gage whether we're pointed in the right direction. And, surprise, surprise, we're a business that succeed in pretty well right now, and that becomes a snow shock when you know that all the way down to the lowest staff levels in the business. People understand the big picture.

They understand how we're all measured, because we're all measurements in the same way, and they understand how we perform to improve.

So a massively important part of what we do.

one of the things that I talk a lot about with people is systems thinking.

And of course, some of you may be very, very comfortable with, This is a concept some of you may, This meant you may be new to. This is not IT thinking.

This is about the whole holistic approach of a business.

And the important thing here is that it focuses on all of the constituent parts and how they work together, and how systems work over time, and when the, within the concept context of larger systems.

And you can see on this slide, some, some words around key concepts of the reinforcing unbalancing of processes, the attention to feedback, the behavior over time. What is happening, what's changing, how is it changing?

Why is it changing causal loop diagrams so that we understand the relationship between the system elements. So, what drives what? And how does it all work?

And the management flight simulator, which is the effective management decisions.

So, in a connected business, what you don't have, which I know through my own experience of the businesses, sometimes I equate bullets as a bit like parents at a soccer match at a football match. They stand at the sidelines and they shout for their kids to run faster or Jump higher doesn't actually help harness. it, makes them feel better. It doesn't actually help, you'll hear it today in business with people saying, We need to be agile but, what does that mean? Well, for some people, that's a godsend, right, because they're agile specialists and they can go off and do the approaches stuff for others. It means quick for others It what does it mean? And so businesses that connected find it much easier to have these discussions and to really drive together.

Um, but one thing to be very cautious of, and I have to say that: when: when I first, when I first read About this stuff in my G days, and I'm going to share that in the nineties, and share a little bit what that was about in a minute or two. But, it became kind of invoke to talk about systems thinking around the turn of the century and into the early two thousands.

And while the problem then of course, as you just end up with another tool, and actually, there was a whole bunch of strange behavior going on. There were people with Systems Thinking specialists who would be quite rude about other speciality is about Sigma or Lean or other things. There would be people kind of fighting over it, but actually in the end, it was, they were describing another tool, and the problem I've found throughout my career is that if you are working in places that have absolutely set one tool, whether that's Lane or Sigma or system thing, you know whatever it is. Or in the change will add car, or cuts, or whatever it is, then, that tool is kind of used to hit every possible thing, like cat. And whether it's whether it's a nail or not, they still try and hit it. So, we have to think, all the time, about, what is it we're trying to achieve here and not forcing our thinking enforcing at all?

It's told into people's processes, and into people's heads, but actually learning and developing. And one of the reasons I like system thinking, in its pure sense, is that it's very much about it.
I, my kind of early learnings were from a book by Peter Singer.

The details are at the bottom of the slide, called The Fifth Discipline, written in about 1990.

And he talked about five things that come together: personal mastery, clarifying and deepening of our personal vision, focusing our energies, and developing patients. Seeing, seeing reality, objectively, mental models, unearthing, deeply ingrained, assumptions, generalizations, or every Oh, Oh.

And you can see the rest of the words on there.

And I have to say, by the way, in all of my experience of change, assumption busting and getting rid of the base assumptions as property cause more change and move just further along than almost anything else that I've used.

Building a shared vision is massively important, of course, and practicing and nursing shared pictures as future. and a tool that I learned very early in my days, in Legos, zinc, or backward imaging. The ability to tell a story about what the future actually feels like, and the power of that story to help other people to commit, to help other people mobilize and to help other people get focused on the goal.

And of course, team learning, which starts with dialog and the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into genuine thinking together.

And the fifth systems thinking brings all of those things together in a very powerful Groot.

So, check, basically, form, a learning organization.

There are some laws as a Fifth Discipline, I won't. I won't go through them all, but you will recognize many of them. Today's problems come from yesterday's solution. I particularly like.

The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.

Newtonian, I guess, and it's in its essence, split.

Something we know, The cure can be worse than the disease. And of course, we know, we know that only too well in the, in these rather desperate times.

And number 10, I laugh, because the idea that dividing an elephant could produce two small difference, just makes me smile all the time, that you can understand how people think that way, and how that starts to things start to fall about, when you, when you do things.

And then simply put, if you take the body corporate.

So that's all of the mechanisms, all of the ways, the body that built the businesses work together, The processes, the systems, the organization, the supplies, the customers, all of those things that make it make the body corporate have to work in sync with body corporal. And it's been great to hear people in this last few days. talk about the importance of the human in all of this.

Because we all know, and we've, if we didn't know before, we've certainly learned to in these last these last week's, that if we don't, not looking after the well-being, if we're not looking after our people, if we're not caring for them, then the body corporate cannot function.

And, of course, then, you have a vision, and a mission, which brings it all together.

And in that middle piece, of course, it's the system working at full power.

And you can then start to work out why things are not working at full power.

Because you can see them very clearly in the ways that they work, and the way that the business works.

So, although that's a very simple model. You could argue, it's not a model, it's a Venn diagram, Of course it is, But that's kinda how it all comes together.

And that may feel like nirvana, but I can tell you in businesses like the Lego group, that is exactly why you end up with a very, very powerful engine in the middle. Because the people and everybody else together are working to get things right.

You get so many indicators of that, I can tell you, in the first weeks, that that locked down was announced from our beloved headquarters, We didn't first get e-mails about making sure you're working and making sure, what, what time you start, or any of that sort of stuff. The first e-mail I saw was from a very senior leader in the finance organization, reminding people that they have families to look after. And that they should get that bit right before everything else, and it's those messages that care, that really bring the company together.

I think one of my absolute favorite sayings, and I think, you know, as I get older, and I'm getting much, much closer to retirement now.

And I think if you understand this, and you start to think about your job as a leader, particularly as you get older in an organization, and particularly as you learn more, and you began, you get more power, or you're given more power, then your job is to find that the statue the angels inside, the stone, and Michelangelo, I think, had it. So right, when he, when he talks about that.

one of the big issues, of course, is that we see in this day and age, lots of training people say, that change is the only constant and we see lots and lots of change.

The problem comes when the indicators of when things are not going brilliantly well, is when you see lotsa change but very little improvement.

And you see people fiddling around with things Rosalyn, understanding how it all works together, and another reason why that system thinking about that, that bringing it all together is so important to what we're trying to achieve.

So, one of the things I wanted to share with you is our operational excellence journey for Business Services organization.

And this is a set of stories, but it's also a very practical and very pragmatic approach to excellence and to improvement.

And it doesn't just look at 1 or 2 areas, it looks at the full gamut of everything we do and who's involved. And that includes our systems, how they all work, how we, how we, how efficient we are, all those other things.

But at base level, it's a simple story.

At the bottom of every mountain range, there's a, there's a, there's a large, wet area, which is very, very hard to get out of.

And actually, if you live in the swamp, you can't see the mountain. Generally, You don't even know it's there, because all you're trying to do is get out of it as soon as you possibly can, or at least, be steady in there. So no waves at a drowning whilst mushroom.

But if you can clamber our son, if you set out on a journey and let's change and say, that's the journey to the summit of Everest, then you know that at, once you set out, on the first part of that journey, to Base Camp.

As long as you've got the right equipment, as long as you've got some good, the right clothing, and a good guide, an expert guide, then, generally, jaron reasonable house, generally, you can make it.

And, it's not too hard to get there. It's tough, but it's doable. And many, many people do it.

That things change, when you get to base camp, when you get to base camp. You don't just thing, go up the mountain on your own. You you, a climber ties you spend a fair amount of time, a base camp.

Learning new tools, new techniques, meeting new, more experienced, higher level guides and using more sophisticated systems.

Whether that's a rope, or a ladder, or, or whether that's the latest technology in climbing.

And unless you're a world-class, clymer or complete idiot, you don't go on your own, you then join hands with a group of people around you or more metaphoric. You tell yourself together as a group of people around you and you go to the summit together.

And by going together, you have the security of the people around you and all of the other things that you need in order to go to make this work.

Now, if you change that to an operational excellence journey in the swamp, you don't know who your customers are. You don't know what they want. You don't know what they need. You can't measure what you're what you're doing. You're not sure whether your processes actually deliver to the customer needs because you can't tell.

And that's not a commonplace to be.

but in some companies and in companies that I've been in, we have found departments, and we've found groups of people who are well and truly in the swamp, they can't see the summit. They can't see the sun let alone. Anything else.

But, that journey to base camp, and when you get to base camp, is the point of complete control.

And complete control means that you do understand your customer, you do on disbandment needs, you also understand the needs and expectations of your suppliers of, you know, how your systems work, and how they help you know how all of these things work together.

And it's a crucial time in the journey, in the journey of the mountain.

Because that point of control, which is a relatively easy place to get to, it's a hard place to maintain leads, discipline.

And it needs discipline across all the facets of your business. It's no point being the greatest team in the world.

If everything else around you, it has gone to rats. So, everything needs to work well.

And, of course, as you start to climb towards the summit, you need more sophisticated tools. Whether that is Sigma, or Design for six Sigma, or Innovation or all of those many other tools that you can use, to find ways to improve, and to move along.

And it could well be full on, ..., can come by the time you get to strategy appointment, but you can only do that together, as I said.

And in fact, the pull for it comes from your lead, from the leaders of the business, from a very co-ordinated group, very connected group of people who can help you on that journey.

But it's by being able to tell these stories. And by being able to talk about how it feels in each of the situations, which is how you get how're you have people around you?

Absolutely. Buy in to what it is you're talking about. Absolutely.

Join the journey, and half the fun that you can have in a journey like this, which doesn't necessarily have to be about deep tools and deep, and complex things. Actually, it's fairly simple, but it's a lot of sample parts working together.

A bit like the Centipede, you need all of the 100 likes working together. You can't do it separately.

So, let me talk a little bit more more about change.

... Danish philosopher says that all all perspective is individual.

And yet, we tend to say things like there is no I in team.

Well, actually, teams are made up completely of eyes. And people see things in different ways.

And if you don't understand that, and if you don't understand that your colleagues in IT, or your colleagues in finance, or your colleagues in HR, may come at things that complete and from completely different ways, both professionally and personally, then you don't understand how change happens and how change lands.

And, of course, all change is situational, as well, because in a crisis, of course, we can change, you know, the platforms on fire. We know how to make change happen in those. In those environments, we find it much harder. Of course, when you're in a winning team, when everything is going well, then changing, then, it's a very difficult thing to do.

But it's situational and you don't know the background. So the people you're talking with, you don't know if they've got a sick child or if they've had a bad night, if they've fallen out with their spouse, if, if, if, if, if, if, there are so many things going on. And yet we think if we apply a few tools, change will happen.

But our journey does have to be consensual.

We do all have to agree on the direction, which is why it works so well.

In a context like, like the Lego group.

Because we want to go where, where Lego wants to take us, we want to be part of that journey.

We're very proud to be part of that journey, and because of that, change becomes easier, because costs don't all need to go at the same pace, and that's not possible.

Often, know, back to the scenario of the us asking for, you know, something new that can't happen for a few years, that doesn't mean you can't move forward. It just means you have to find different ways to do it, And it may mean that you have to do something, you know, in the worst case scenario, yet another Excel spreadsheet. But you can find ways to make that work, but if you understand the journey, and you understand what the future looks like, that journey so much easier.

So much is.

So the goal is to build a learning organization, not group, thinking.

So this isn't about making clones'.

it's not about the Borg, This is about an ability to learn together.

To your previous speaker today, talks about the importance of understanding the business, understanding the value streams.

And if you do that in a, in the same way as our finance partners or our HR partners, these days, at least in my organization, do very strongly that it makes it so much easier to work together. Because you can have open conversations with open feedback and understanding of causal loops, of course.

So in summary, build a picture of where you want to go.

Connect your picture to the whole business. This isn't about IT. It's not about a, It's not about finance or HR or business services, or that it's about the whole business.

Find your compelling story.

And, by the way, tell it over and over and over again, in the language of the business. Not those, Millie Unbox process maps and System maps and nobody understands the language of the business.

Deliver on that story relentlessly.

So, keep the drive going and find ways to celebrate big and little victories. Always keeping it real.

That use of language or in our world sometimes recalled tone of voice is so important because working together you can you can, you can make it work for everybody because you're using a language that everybody can understand in the business.

So, keep it real, that Josie is the end of my presentation. So, I hand it back to you, I guess.

Peter, a fantastic, thank you so much, I'm gonna ask you, Yeah. Perfect to stop sharing, and you have already.

Terrific insights on the, on the business, and the culture, behind effective enterprise architecture, And so I encourage the audience to keep typing your questions. I will get to as many as we can, in the next few minutes that we have together here for our live Q&A. So type your questions. They come in, I get to see them in the, and I'll pass it on to two Peter. So Peter, on, the very first question came from Michael King. And Michael asked, As you don't seem, you know, I think he's referring to your initial comments on the black hole and the death star. So as you don't seem to like the overall model, big picture of the Enterprise Architecture Management Team, which deliverables, from a personal point of view would you like to receive from your enterprise architects?

And what do you need from the enterprise architects to get your work done in the business?

So first off, I love my Enterprise Architect, by the way. And even though his name, and it's not Dave, so that's a good starting point.
Quite quite simply, put, what I, what I asked for is, for somebody to interact with who actually does really understand the business. I know that's a lot to ask in some cases, but understands the business in a way that says, I know how. I know how my systems help. You do what you need us to do.

I know how by changing those, by modernizing them, by finding by, automation, by, whatever it means it is that, there are opportunities to improve with That and I can bring to you ideas and solutions, Not no carsten concrete solutions, but ideas that will turn into solutions that you can work on together.

And when that really works well, when you are having open, positive conversations about the outcomes that you're trying to achieve for the business and those outcomes are aligned, then it becomes a very, very easy conversation.

It doesn't mean, I get everything I want to get immediately when I want to.

Of course, it doesn't mean that, But it means that we have an understanding of the future, and where it is we're trying to pick, and how, then we can work together to achieve that.

Whether that's in a change to architecture, whether that's in a, in, in, something funky that we can do, that makes it different. But we can make it work together and we can make it work together much quicker because we understand the why, of what we're trying to achieve. So the first thing I asked for: its time.

Time to understand. And that goes both ways.

It's not just you understand me mister or Mrs. EA, but actually let me help me understand. You helped me understand where your app help me understand the constraints that we're working under.

And then let's work together to get to the best possible solution we get to as fast as the budget, and everything else will allow us to do.

So that's where I'm kind of, OK.

Very good, fair, good, that makes sense. I hope that answers the question.

Absolutely, absolutely Peter. This is a common question that has come up with the with, of course, the pandemic and the impact that it has in so many different businesses. How has it impacted the business Lego and specifically, how has it impacted its strategies and engage those strategies moving forward?

Well, I think, first off, I kinda talked a little bit about some of the attitudes.

So when, when, when, when these things happen, and it has been a very severe changing course in terms of the way we thought business was going to run, then first off, we have got it right from a people point of view.

And that's been at, that was our early focus, was to make sure we got it right from an app People.

Point of view, as it happens, like Lego has been often the purchase of choice for parents and for adults looking for things, for their children and for things to do. So.

We've actually had a pretty strong, wrong period.

And in many ways, it's the business, in a time when all of our people, and particularly all the people in my part of the organization, have been working from home.

And we were thinking about, now, what our business models for the future are going to look like.

In the past, we said, Yeah, you can work from home, but mostly, you must be in the office. Now, in the new world, who knows whether that will change or not. But you can see a world in the future, which is that this job is from home, and please come to the office once a month for your team. You know, you could see things changing, and we, we embraced, goes to that very quickly. We made some changes to the way we communicate were much bigger uses of teams, and that sort of thing. Now, we use it for a whole bunch of things. I, in, my own team, we have a team page called Working from Home, But not alone where? we share fun and we have some our range of stuff that we do together. So, so socially. As well as from a business point of view, and from an IT point of view, one. Of course, the guys have done an amazing job for keeping everything running.

But at the same time, you know where in some fairly meaty programs right now in terms of the future technology roadmap, how that's gonna work. We've all worked together on that remotely. We haven't had to be in the office to do it.

We've had some great discussions, very robust discussions. I've seen the inside of living rooms that people had hardly even met, let alone anything else, and it's worked. So, for us, I think, you know, it's shown. What a strong business. We are.

We've supported the business very, very, very well across a whole range of different things, and that people, of course, most importantly, and, and we've blown a few forecasts. So, that's going to be interesting. So, you know, when we're already in the busy time of year when, normally that would be a little bit later. So we've had to change some of our mottos and some of our working in some quite difficult circumstances.

Very good, very good. You know, I have to make a comment here that, for those of you who are in attendance, next week, we have a, the entire conference. next week, we'll be focused on, on this topic of digital transformation workplace. And so I think, I know that those who are attending today, you saw the announcements through the chat on how to register for that. So this is, this is something that's impacted. Of, course. All businesses right now, and the Peters experiences are very much aligned with what what we have observed a lot of different business. So that's that's really interesting, Peter jet MacIntyre. He made a comment adding on to the, to the subject that you're just talking about, with respect to the.

To the connection between the enterprise architecture leaders in the, in the business. He makes a commentary that there was a lot of distance between conceptual and implementation.

And I think you have alluded to this already on your previous answer, but I just want to make sure, uh, no?

Give me a bit more of a tactical, best practice on on closing the gap between enterprise architecture and the business side. What have you seen? What kind of mechanisms do you use? illegal that on the on your, on your work, and the way you do work to, to have that closer, tight connection with the, with, with the teams, with the business teams, and the enterprise, or genes?

I guess put put, simply, we talk a lot, so, it doesn't seem to matter where you are in the organization. You can talk to your AI, guys, You can talk to our whole rank that you can talk to news be if you, if you want to, but you will get an answer, so that's a starting point where an organization that listens to each other. That's a good, that's a good starting point. Now, clearly, there's a point in time where you have to say, No, this is where we're going, and this is the plan, and this is when it will happen, and this is how it will do, and we have to solidify. But we're in a process at the moment where we're having these discussions about the future over the next 3, 5, 10 years and what that's gonna look like. And during that period, there were a couple of things I think are very, very important here. one is somebody much brighter. the noise once said, first, seek to understand and then be understood.

And I think, I think our AI, guys know, I think digital guys have done an amazing job of that first piece to really understand what the drivers are.

So, not just tell me what hardware and software you need, but tell me about what it is you're trying to achieve here. What is the purpose that you're trying to get to?

And by understanding that, then, that alignment becomes much easier.

We know I'm in my world as an example, We, at the moment, we have a kind of, when we know we want to be more automated, we want, we want to be a bit more efficient. We want to be able to do more so that Lego can continue to grow. We wanted to support that. but we don't know exactly what that looks like right now.

But we have an idea of what it could look like, and we have an idea of what that will bring to the business, and by articulating that well, we can then get to the point where people will say, OK, that seems worse, putting into the plan. Let's put that into the plan. Now now, let's look at the art of the possible and start the discussions about what that future will really look like from a technological point of view. And it's that journey that we've been on an hour on at the moment, which is for us, for me, I think, is working incredibly well. And of all the times in my working career, where I've been involved in processing like this, this feels the most rugged in many ways in that we're having a discussion, an open discussion about the future of the business and how technology is going to support future.

And it's not just about the IT, and it's not just about productivity, But it's also about the people experience. How would you energize everybody every day? How would you make sure that we build all that in to the journey that we're trying to achieve? What tone of voice should we use? All of those things working together.

So, my, my, my feet, by the way, I think over a long period of time now, most people in business will have an HR business partner, would have a finance business partner and if you're in an enlightened world, they are also part of your OT's and they, they join in and everything.

That almost never happens in IT and I think the business could do a much better job of understanding than it does.

It's very easy, sometimes to sit here and say, ah, well, you know, if the architecture, but better systems, work better, you know, we could do anything that actually, we have to take ownership.

And if we really understand systems, thinking on how it all together, there's a big onus on the business, as well, to work with you guys to work, to pull them into the discussion. And to make sure that we understand them in the same way as most of us, now understand, the balance sheet, know, which size, credit and debit, and can do net present value if we had to.

Awhile back, that never happened. But it does now because the world has changed.

Similarly, in HR or change, and it needs, I think, in IT, the business, to be much clearer and able to articulate in a much stronger way, and be more powerful, around what is what it expects.

Peter, that's a great message. A great way of wrapping up this segment. We really appreciate you coming, taking your time and joining us today, sharing your expertise through, through decades and in the how you apply that at your work today. Thank you very much.

Just so you're welcome, thank you very much, it's been a privilege. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate everybody who's sending questions. I couldn't get to all of them, but we'll continue the conversation on LinkedIn.

Also, we will have our last session today, at the top of the hour, and I will be presenting the session for you. And on that session, we're going to talk about intelligent business process management, which is an enterprise architecture approach, looking at business process management, and Joanne in the organization. And, most important, I want to give you some fundamentals, not only on, on, on, on, best practices, but, also, social share with you, some real-life applications on how that's done. It's really not just me, but the experiences of over 30,000 excellence and innovation leaders across more than 100 organizations.

It, across all industries, and it's specifically, I'm going to focus on the journey of an, of an energy organization that, in a period of eight years, increase its market value from $2 billion to $36 billion, real value, not fuzzy stuff. Real market value. And I'm going to show you how it's done from the inside out. So for those of you who are going to be here with me, at the top of the hour, look forward to that. Look forward to your questions. And we're gonna get deep deeper into the subject on, how we build value creation with enterprise architecture, and specifically with intelligent business process management. So looking forward to that, looking forward to meeting you, again, at the top of the hour and, And we'll see you soon.