Un-think – A Haiku

Mind trapped in mirror:
Darkness yearns for light beyond.
Fish un-thinks its pond!

- Balaji Prasad, April 2012

Enterprise Architecture is One Thing; Action is Another

Cognitive capacity is limited.  Content that can consume the capacity is unlimited.  The content can be sense-based or non-sense-based, or more often, a combination of the two.  Ultimately, what gets thought or done is a function of what gets the focus.  And what things get the focus depends on what capacity is available.

If two things can be coalesced into one thing, they may fit into the limited cognitive space that is available – something that may not be possible if they are handled individually. A OneThing.  The OneThing may provide an understanding that can be equivalent to the two things, less than the two things comprehended individually, or greater than the sum of the parts.  Again, it can also be a combination – in some respects, the OneThing can yield more insight, in some respects, less.  Of course, the OneThing does not exist; it is, but a View, into the reality that it represents.  But isn’t everything, ultimately, a view?  Thought can only point to a reality that it cannot touch with its feelers.  This is what makes views important as well as limited.  You never get the thing.  You get a view.  You can get multiple views if you desire.  Views touch the mind, just as things do.  More views touch more things, and touch more parts of the mind – a collective mind, if we are considering this in the context of an enterprise.  More views create more complexity … and confusion.  But isn’t reducing confusion the goal?  Perhaps not.  Maybe one view of the notion of confusion would show that there are different types of confusion – some that are productive, and some that are not.

In Enterprise Architecture, as with any other form of architecture that can be said to exist, Views are important.  They can bring the right kind of confusion to the people that make up the enterprise.  Multiple views, in combination, can get people to see things that they could not see before.  They can bring focus to some things, and facilitate de-focus on others.  They can enable action in some directions, and inaction in others.  If Enterprise Action is more important than Enterprise Architecture, EA would have served its purpose by illuminating, confusing and enabling.  Architecture is interesting, but action is where the action is.

Balaji Prasad, April 2012

I need to go ogle

I didn’t need to prioritize things.

But that was when I was not in search.  I would not just go ogle – because there wasn’t much to go ogle at.  I knew a few people and a few things and had even fewer resources.  My world was small.  I spent time with the people I knew and got to experience them, know them and love them.  I devoted myself to the few things that I slowly and steadily grew to love.  Love!

I didn’t need to decide to love things and people.  I didn’t call it love.  It just was. They just were. Things and people just grew on me, and into me; I grew on them, into them and fused with them.  Fusion.

Now, I go ogle.  I search.  In vain.  I know not what I search for.  I search because I can.

There are many people.  There are many things.  Maybe too many.  I go ogle.  The touch is wisp-like, impalpable.  Did I touch you or not? Please forgive me, for I don’t have the time to check.  Time!  I don’t remember speaking much about time, let alone using it as an excuse.  It is a strange feeling now – the tyranny of time weighs on me.  Constantly.

“What ever happened to our love?  I wish I understood”. I’m sounding like the Swedish band, Abba, from the 70’s, wistful, lost and confused. I didn’t particularly like the song, but it was one of those things that grew into me because it and I were pushed into the same space in the littler world we inhabited.

Now there are too many things.  Too many people.  I search.  Dazed and confused.  Confusion; it’s not fusion, anymore.

But I digress. I need to go ogle.  ‘Tis a tangled web that we have woven. I need to search; I need to untangle.  I need to find love, to find the time that I seem to have lost.  I need to prioritize.  The Web beckons like a beacon that promises a destination.  I need to go ogle.  To find the life that I have lost.

Later.

- Balaji Prasad, April 2012

Enterprise Architecture Artiquette

Enterprise Architect to The Enterprise:
“If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can’t I paint you?  The words will never show … the you I’ve come to know …”  - Bread/David Gates – from the 70’s.

It’s not easy to be an Enterprise Artist nowadays with lots of people making lots of noise, and throwing things all over the place…and insisting on being co-artists. 

Enterprise Art has become a collective exercise.  Lament, rejoice or shrug? 

As with many things in life, the shrug can be a helpful technique to bridge the present and the future into a semblance of seamlessness.  For the present has become what it has become, as thought and action individually and collectively has evolved in enterprises of all kinds – commercial, social, and political.

Art.  Not Architecture!?  What’s in a word, one may ask.  Well … quite a lot, really, when you abstract so much into one word and then expand it back into reality in many, many ways depending on the slice of reality that each individual happens to focus on.  This continual bouncing back and forth between the word and the reality it attempts to represent eventually tapers off, slinky-like, into a resigned acceptance that results in the reality being altered forever by the word – the butterfly that flapped its wings and changed the world.

When a certain kind of complexity started to overwhelm our minds, Zachman and others chose the butterfly (c1980’s) – “Architecture” – and metaphorized the IT industry.  This conceptual shoe-horning continues to have strong left-brain appeal, with its simplicity, its cognitive-bootstrapping capability and an existing framework that has been contorted to fit a different world – the world of IT Architecture.  Alas, IT itself may have been another butterfly that flapped its wings and created its own turbulence, including things like The Business, Business/IT Alignment and an entire spell-book, mystical chants and a coven that deals with all things IT.  It is dubious whether it is helpful to conceptually orphan IT from its parent, The Business, a term that IT people use to indicate Everything other than, and outside of me.  But that’s a whole new discussion for a different day. (Zachman, The Open Group and other EA denizens do consider and discuss this expansion of EA beyond IT).

Butterflies are free.  So let us propose one more, and get it to flap its wings … let us call it Art, not Architecture.  And let us consider people working together collectively, messily, drawing shapes and patterns somewhat whimsically at times, in a decidedly narcissistic pursuit of self-expression and self-interest.  This certainly has right-brain appeal, but may cause our already overworked Left considerable grief.  Can the twain meet – Does the enterprise have a Corpus Callosum that allows some coordination, synergy and asynchronous operation between our right and wrong halves?  Can we worship our engineering bent of mind and our desire for self-expression and whimsy at the same time? Maybe.

As the motley crowd of people with different interests, experiences and motivations in an enterprise work together, would it not be good to have some method underlying this madness … something that’s a bit beyond metaphorical frameworks that may mislead … Artiquette, anyone?

- Balaji Prasad, April 2012

Governance, Emergence or Govmergence?

Governance is a concept that has assumed a place of considerable prominence in the corporate world over the last few years.  Our general modus operandi seems to be to create lots of concepts that overlap, contradict and obfuscate one another, as well as the real-world phenomena that they represent.  Does this concept-fetish show up with regard to governance?  Maybe.  Leadership, Management, Control, Stewardship and other such concepts do seem to play in and around the same semantic space.  In one way or another, the general focal area for all of these words seems to be about things of value (Assets) and the need for thoughtfulness about conceiving, developing, realizing, providing, using and evolving these things of value. 

It’s about thought and it’s about action.  It’s about channelizing thought and action along some guided path toward some desired destination, some objective.

Sometimes, to understand something, it helps to consider the absence of the thing and imagine the world that would have existed in its absence.  If there were no governance, would there be pure chaos?  Would thoughts and actions disperse and vaporize, and leave little behind in their wake?  Is this how things were, when governance was not the rage? That does not seem to be so, considering the success of many organizations that hardly spoke of governance.  Either these organizations were practicing some form of governance without calling it that, or their success derived from the lack of governance.  Or maybe it was a bit of both?  Really?  Can the lack of governance actually be beneficial?  If one looks at examples of emergent behavior arising from apparently disconnected and uncoordinated activities that almost magically coalesce into a complex, rich design, it would be hard to argue against the benefits of approaches based on emergence.  On the other hand, one can easily see examples where a lack of thoughtfulness and coordination can lead to pell-mell and abuse.  Examples are not hard to come by – the recent troubles on Wall Street and at financial institutions have often been attributed to the lack of governance.

In the end, as with many other things, there is a tendency to romanticize words and concepts, and shift our collective gaze from the underlying reality, which arguably should occupy center stage.  Governance can help, emergence can help, and everything in between…which is where things in the real world often lie – in the spaces between the words.

So, in the spirit of romanticizing concepts, let us propose one more concept to muddle the mix: Govmergence.  Maybe this new word will find a sweeter spot in the reality we try to hit with our words.

- Balaji Prasad, April 2012

Architecting the People

An organization’s most critical capability lies in its DNA: most often, the people that make up the organization.  Thoughts and actions (within and outside the organization) are determined by the way the people think and act.  An organization’s vision for its future can be realized only if it lives in, and is amplified by the thoughts and actions of its people.  But thoughts and actions from different people are not always synergistic, nor even additive. Also, individual thoughts and actions are driven by many forces that may be at odds with the organization’s objectives.  Architecting the power structure, governance, motivational and cultural aspects of an enterprise may be the key to positioning an enterprise to achieve its objectives.

EA is not complete (and may even be undermined) without an appropriate consideration of these aspects.

UNLEANING – A Poem

UNLEANING
I stand between
my world inside and out,
Have simply seen
past reasonable doubt,
It is the sheen …
how thought begets its clout,
It fastens keen
as hook to mouth of trout,
So meanings mean
and thought turns into shout,
Can I unlean?
Can North turn into South?

- Balaji Prasad