I told you I was sick
Spike Milligan’s epitaph, which was declared by the Daily Mail as “Britain’s Favourite Epitaph” appears in Irish on his headstone “Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite”. Although born in India, and served for six years in the British Army, he was refused a British passport and chose to become Irish in 1962, because his father was Irish.
Although, in this case, his epitaph could be regarded as the comedian getting his last laugh, like all good jokes, it reflects all our feelings when we have been ignored by so-called “experts”.
“With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility” is a Biblical expression used by leaders from Winston Churchill to Spiderman. Sadly when we need corporate leadership, we often just get “management” as an unsatisfactory alternative.
In relation to validating that your organisation is fit for purpose, a colleague asked me recently to explain the difference between an Enterprise Architect and a Solution Architect. I knew intuitively because I have performed both roles. One establishes the means of an organisation to fulfil business strategy, and the other uses the resources of an organisation to deliver a solution to a customer. I had to think because I never saw the roles as independent, but rather interdependent, and dynamic, as you must design your organisation to deliver what your customers need, and that need changes over time.
Managers often get trapped by their titles and hence such roles as Enterprise and Solution architects can become like oil and water. They may even use TOGAF as a weapon rather than a pragmatic tool. It is obviously necessary to align the organisation to business needs in a dynamic market, so best be agile, and avoid organisation silos.
I find that in such situations, managers can tout their expertise as a weapon to achieve the compliance of others — rather like IT regarding Marketing as idiots — this can be challenging for a leader to overcome. An obvious solution is to put all the cats in a bag, and not them out until they resolve their differences — better “experts” get a few scratches than failure.
Failure is fatal in business, and, as in life, nobody will listen to your excuse for failure. When leaders become managers you should expect that “Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite” will be your epitaph too.
