Engaging Stakeholders

The Waiting Trap

When I listen to mainstream enterprise architects, I will hear two loud, consistent complaints:

1. "They don’t listen to my recommendations."
2. "They don’t engage me early enough. I don't have a seat at the table."

These architects carry an underlying assumption that they know best.

They know the best problem to solve.

They know the best criteria to judge any answer.

They know the best target architecture.

All they need is for their stakeholders to take the time and energy to plan the architect's work.

I know we have all seen these ivory-tower theoreticians at work. Locked in the ivory tower they build a predetermined architecture that addresses their personal hot-buttons. If any measures are applied, they use their own definition of value.

The waiting architect didn't want a seat at the table. They wanted an engraved invitation with time to prepare the perfect plan. They don't have recommendations in touch with the organization's business cycle, let alone with emerging threats or opportunities.

In one memorable incident, an architect leaned back, crossed his arms, and declared, "They don’t know what they are doing". Bluntly, he hadn't addressed the business cycle, current deficiencies, risk appetitive or change appetitive. He had a private, brittle plan.

He had taken best practice architect—the TOGAF ADM—and tossed everything in the bin.

That wasn't architecture. That was an abdication of our purpose to guide effective change.

I take ideas like Glasswing for a walk.

Advisory in Action

I don't need a seat at the table. I have something more powerful. I help the stakeholders set the table.

Everything comes from my job—enterprise architect. I'm a senior person without responsibility. I don't own a department. I don't have a seat at the table. I don't make decisions. I'm not accountable for the change initiatives.

I just give great advice.

Great, timely advice drives effective change.

So let's unpack this great timely advice.

First, we'll start with authority, with a seat-at-the-table. If you want a seat at the table, it's pretty easy. Put your job on the line.

My favourite executive told me she loves RACIs. The accountability column tells her who to fire. People with a seat at the table are accountable. Accountable for today. Accountable for tomorrow. Accountable for the change initiatives. Their job is on the line every day, for everything.

I make sure every week I have a few minutes with my stakeholders to talk. I earn the time with great advice about their issues. Sometimes we talk about the past. Sometimes, their team. Sometimes their boss. Projects and day-to-day operations. In every conversation, I'm listening twice as hard as I'm talking.

I'm listening because I need to hear the context that must infuse all architecture work. I need to hear about their issues. I need to hear about their constraints. I need to hear about project progress—successes and challenges—and the reality that makes up day-to-day.

I earn a window to test potentially great ideas.

I know I'm doing Phase A. I get to see if an idea has legs. Whether they would contemplate paying for it. Whether I am even attacking the right problem.

Advisory work in action. When the stakeholders say, "No, that isn't my priority," I haven't been ignored. I've learned. Better, I successfully used Phase A to avoid doing doomed work.

When they say, "Yes," I didn't earn a budget. I'm not the pitchman begging for funding. My stakeholder is the one whose neck is on the line. They are the pitchmen. I just earned a fast path to do the hard math—the Value, Effort, and Risk. My stakeholder owns the decision on whether we go further, today.

More than once my stakeholder has left a conversation and taken my idea for a walk. To their boss. To the members of the portfolio committee. To the board. Then won the capital to improve our organization.

When my stakeholder is going for a walk, I need to quickly do the math. Without warning they will come back looking for the next level of detail. After All stakeholders only really see change initiatives in terms of developing the plan (Phase F) and executing the plan (Phase G). The rest of the ADM is where I do my incomprehensible work in the Ivory Tower.

They engage where the rubber hits the road and accountability happens Phase F and Phase G.

The Stakeholder's Voice

Once the stakeholder decides, your posture instantly flips. You move from the collaborative idea explorer to the fierce defender of the architecture decision. Whatever that decision is.

When you take that brilliant idea for a walk, you do the math, you lay out the unassailable facts, you passionately argue the case... and the stakeholder will say "Yes," "Maybe later," or "No." Every answer instantly ends the debate.

This is the hardest line to walk in our profession. The architecture isn't yours. It belongs to the stakeholder. "Yes," "Maybe later," or "No."

This is the hard bargain of being allowed to speak with your stakeholder's voice. Listening. Then fiercely defining the architecture decision.

Engaging Stakeholders with the Architecture of Choice

Great enterprise architecture isn't about being the smartest person in the room. Or developing complex models. It is about having the willingness to do the math, the courage to step up and speak uncomfortable truths about value, risk, and effort, and the humility to listen. Then fiercely defend the stakeholder's selected value.

You earn speaking with the stakeholder's voice by listening, learning, and giving great advice.

I take my ideas for a walk all the time. Sometimes the idea never sees the light of day. I use my listening and learning to test my assumptions and analysis about the problem, or the risk appetite, or the selection criteria. Then, when I had poor assumptions, I quietly drop the idea.

When I took Glasswing for a walk, I discovered something fascinating. My Information Security specialists and subject matter experts have our risk appetite dead wrong. We are not living in red, and Glasswing didn't move us past red. We're in green. It seems my commuting risk appetite, where a weekly inadvertent attempt on my life is acceptable, is a good marker for our Information Security risk appetite. We seem to be ok with the possibility of a fatal collision.

Who knew?

Here is my challenge this week. Look at your portfolio. How do you test what you know? What are your formal and informal information-gathering methods? How are you integrating new facts into your assumptions about problems, priorities, and selection criteria?

Next week, it is my plan to jump back and close off the Digital product architecture thread.

Until then. Have a great day.

As always, I welcome your thoughts.

Regards,

Dave

Dave Hornford
Conexiam

PS. Remember, time is never on your side. Never pass up the metaphorical opportunity to plant something, help it grow, and harvest. Winter is coming!