Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
I once again have the pleasure of speaking with the friendly and enthusiastic EA community in Calgary, this time on the relationship between Strategy and Enterprise Architecture. With EA gaining traction within the business community there is a whole new…
Last week was Gartner’s marquee event for its customers, Symposium ITxpo 2013. Gartner Symposium/ITxpo brings CIOs and senior IT executives together under one roof, the event offers 500+ analyst sessions, workshops, roundtables and mastermind keynotes across five full days. With…
As I mentioned again quite recently, I’m always pleased to see how others use my work, because there are usually themes in there that I hadn’t seen before. So the other day, whilst listening in on the Open Group webinar…
Reading Recognize Intrapreneurs Before They Leave – Vijay Govindarajan and Jatin Desai – Harvard Business Review, I was struck by the commonality between the intrapeneurs referenced in the article, and the best enterprise architects I’ve met, worked with.
Quite possibly, it is because really great enterprise architects are forward-thinking, creative, reflective and execution-capable.
The pattern match:
“Pattern #2: Strategic Scanning. Intrapreneurs are constantly thinking about what is next, one step into the future. These passionate change agents are highly engaged, very clear, and visibly consistent in their work and interactions. They are not sitting around waiting for the world to change; they’re figuring out which part of the world is about to change, and they will arrive just in time to leverage their new insights. Learning is like oxygen to them.
Pattern #3: Greenhousing. Intrapreneurs tend to contemplate the seed of an idea for days and weeks between calls, meetings, and conversation. As they shine more light on it, the idea becomes clearer, but they don’t yet share it. They know that others may dismiss it without fully appreciating it — so they tend to ideas in their greenhouse, protecting them for a while from potential naysayers.
Pattern #4: Visual Thinking. Visual thinking is a combination of brainstorming, mind mapping, and design thinking. Only after an exciting insight do intrapreneurs seem able to formulate and visualize a series of solutions in their head—rarely do they formulate just one solution. They do not act impulsively on a solution immediately, keenly aware of the need to honor the discovery phase for the new solution, giving it time to develop and crystallize.”
I am very excited about my next speaking opportunity. I will be speaking at the Building Business Capability conference in Las Vegas, November 13, 2013. The event runs from November 11-15 at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino. The event…
Just how should we use models and frameworks in enterprise-architectures – particularly in the exploratory phases of architecture-development? What’s the best way to use them? And how do we prevent the frameworks from constraining our options in those processes? These…
In enterprise change environments – be they driven by architecture, process improvement, supply chain transformation, or any other kind of organisational change – we often focus on capabilities. As an example: “Business capability” is the ability for the organisation to perform a certain function, process, or service in order to serve a particular market, client, …read more
Can Social Media create new ideas? Here’s an example where the answer is “yes.”
I recently blogged about EA models, and what makes them interesting. I was thinking about providing insight to people who were in the mo…
Most of us look upon committees with the same level of anticipation and admiration as a dental exam. We accept that they are necessary, but could easily do with out the picking, flossing, or emotional preparation.
We’ve recently undergone a signific…
Most of us look upon committees with the same level of anticipation and admiration as a dental exam. We accept that they are necessary, but could easily do with out the picking, flossing, or emotional preparation.
We’ve recently undergone a signific…
Which way forward for enterprise-architecture? It’s common to think of enterprise-architecture (EA) as a discipline that’s mainly about getting the best use of the organisation’s IT. Yet whilst, yes, most job-descriptions for EA these days will still revolve around some…
(The previous post, ‘The science of enterprise-architecture‘, covered a lot of ground, but ended up kinda long – again… So for those with tendencies towards TL;DR, here’s a somewhat shorter version. ) How much is enterprise-architecture a science? To put…