Link: http://www.etc-architect.com/?p=77
We architects are a bit of a strange breed within most enterprises. Usually architects are divided into two groups, one more technology focused and one more business focused, but regardless of the place that we report to as managers on a technical career path rather than managers on the staff leadership path. It is something that has gone on for many centuries long before modern enterprises came into existence and it is important to understand this when you look at the promotion of an architect.
In the British Army 2 centuries ago, as well as many other armies, it was common to by your commission as an officer and there were extremely few promotions on merit alone. The buying was usually a combination of cash, political influence and favours. You can still see this in some parts of the world today and when you strip the cash element out of this it is a pattern you see in armies, enterprises and public services everywhere. Now in the British Army there were some areas where officer commissions could not be bought, these were the officers usually in charge of highly skilled engineers that were engineers themselves. However the units usually had a mix of the usual officers in charge of people leadership and those senior experts often used as advisors and planners. You will still see these kind of offiiciers in their own career path in modern forces such as with warrant officers in the American forces.
In the same way an architect is often just like a warrant officer in terms of a career path who is promoted within a closed system of seniority outside of the normal career path. Organisations that understand this kind of special career path for architects and other highly qualified thought leaders have usually done well. Now the problem often arrises as many organisations have a less than best career development HR department and that is usually where the stupidity starts. During my career as through many organisations I have seen a freelancer many strange architecture functions where being an architect was part of getting into higher management, similar of taking a out-time from staff leadership and getting more the thought leadership. This may sound like a great idea to take a plant director, a head of procurement or region head of tax collectors into such a position for a few years to try to teach them additional skills needed, but usually this will reduce the architecture function to a pretty useless state (this was often why I as a freelancer architect was hired to fill the position with knowledge).
So if you want an architecture team with high standards in any organisation you will need to set it up apart from the usual career path. This however also means that the architects know this and know that their only way of promotion is in seniority, not in the people leadership area, as we as architects have not really be trained in this area, nor have we have had any experience with managing teams of people that usually see a job as a necessary evil. So any architect such as myself who has is or has been head of architecture or CTO should never forget this as we only have had to manage teams with high expertness consisting of highly motivated people.
