Happy Whatever!

‘Tis the season for… something, probably? For many people, it’s ‘the ‘Holiday Season’, or Christmas, or New Year, or something like that. A calendrical marker-point, anyway. Something to celebrate, perhaps. The culture I come from is nominally Christian, hence ‘Christmas’ and suchlike, so that’s the label others around me tend to use. (Though it doesn’t […]

Work-in-progress – two more books

Another follow-on to the earlier post ‘Helping others make sense of my work‘, just a quick note to let you know about two current book-projects. The first has a working-title of The enterprise as story: the role of narrative in enterprise-architecture. This has been a major theme on this blog for the past couple of years […]

Competition-against or competition-with?

What’s the point of competition, in a business-context? Perhaps more to the point, what is competition in a business-context? And why? Another of those ‘obvious’ question-themes that turn out to be not so obvious at all… And the answers are very important in enterprise-architecture, business-architecture and business-model design: not least because if we get it […]

SCAN – work in progress

Yes, I know I’ve gone a bit quiet in the past couple weeks, and no, I haven’t abandoned those ideas about SCAN sensemaking and real-time decision-making and the like. Reality is that those ideas are very much in the ‘work in progress’ stage at the moment, and as yet still quite some way from a […]

Belief and faith at the point of action

What is it that drives decisions at the exact moment of choice and action? – even in the most mundane, everyday action? If the choice-point itself is a true moment of chaos – a point where literally anything is possible – then what is it that guides us through each of those infinitesimal yet ubiquitous […]

Marketing and the service-oriented enterprise

As the economy shifts ever onward from manufacturing toward services, how do marketing and market-relationships need to change with this shift? And what enterprise-architectures do we need to support this? [In part this is a follow-on from Dave Gray’s excellent Dachis Group article ‘Everything is a service’: I strongly recommend to read that post first […]

For or against?

Looking at your enterprise vision – or any kind of future intent – is it defined in terms of being for something? Or against something? That distinction can sometimes seem subtle – yet it’s very important indeed… On the surface, it always seems a lot easier to be ‘against’ something. Many NGOs define themselves this way; […]

More on starting EA from scratch

A follow-on to the previous post ‘Where do we start with EA? – a practical question‘, to address a number of comments and questions that came up via the Twitterstream. Again, I’ll keep the emphasis on the ‘how-to’, and hold back on the theory this time. (Have a wander elsewhere through this blog for the […]

Where do we start with EA? – a practical question

You’re an experienced enterprise-architect, having spent most your working life in one industry. You now have a new job, in a new company, in an industry that’s entirely new to you. And the company at present has no architecture at all: you’re ‘it’. Where on earth do you start? That’s the situation my friend Alan […]

Causal Layered Analysis, SCCC, and Cynefin

Why is it that some mornings start off with such a flood of ideas and connections that there’s no way to get it all down and done in the day? Hmm… [One urgent point first: this is not about Cynefin. I’m not going there: don’t worry. It’s in the title only because I thought that if you’re […]

Making plans, sort-of

Okay, I’ve moved on to a different garden: what next? What’s the plan? Uh… probably that ‘The Plan’ is that there isn’t one? In fact that’s the whole point? (Or, if you simply must have a plan, I could paraphrase a former colleague and say that the plan is to not have a specific plan.) Why? Simple reason, […]

Women’s rights? – just say No!

You what? “Say no to women’s rights” – you’re kiddin’ me, right? What kind of misogynistic claptrap is this…?!? I’ll admit it: I’m being deliberately provocative here. (Did get your attention, though, didn’t it?  And don’t forget I did warn you that what I’m doing these days could be a lot more challenging for many folks? […]