Change Management and EA, Influence without authority.
The enterprise architect is rarely in a place of true authority. Because they generally work across the enterprise, their sphere of direct authority pales in comparison to that of the enterprise. Usually aside from a handful of like minded architects, the position itself requires an architect leverage influence to get things done. This is a challenge because of the large toolkit that an architect must emplore. Among the tools used to influence a few are the more prevalent such as incentivization, gameification, organization and interpersonal. Leveraging these to move the organization takes a mix and match strategy that is directly contextual. Even with the best social engineers, the change must be the right mix of strategy, structure and support.
Understanding the currencies of the organization is anothe important factor towards managing changed beyond your sphere of authority. CalTech’s Rich Hefner had documented the general currencies within an organization. As seen in currencies chart below, these influential categories are tightly linked to the psychological theory of Maslow.
Not all of these are applicable in every situation, but this toolbox is a great guide to approaches to change.
Additionally it’s safe to mention that not everyone is ready for change and many resist. So instead of taking an explicit approach, a more subversive indirect approach may help to influence those who resist. More practically, making those people who are resistant your allies is crucial. Making them feel a part of that change and empowering them to take ownership of the change can help. Even though this is a formidable approach, resistance to change is also something that may still need more finesse. Depending on the situation, if it is possible to change behavior the environment is also something that you can use to indirectly influence behavior. This is often more effective but much more difficult to use. Often there are unintended consequences or results that can arise. As one example, changing the enterprise to take ownership of their platforms within the lines of business was changed by changing the resulting images for new platforms. The platforms rather than adding new features, a reduction in features had driven the application teams to take ownership of their own platform images. They would create their own rather than using the enterprise available ones, in essence taking ownership facilitates the desired change.
Again, Change management is hard, period. There is no definitive formula, only tools that can be used together with the architects judgement to make those influential changes without authority.
Adaptation from Peter Block’s work
Views: 0
