I’ve been in the world of architecture all my career I guess.

My first proper boss was a guy called Derek Prosser, he had the “IT business consultant” role title but soon became lead architect.

But it was just over 20 years ago that I was fortunate enough to get promoted into a role reporting directly into the CIO. He saw architecture. very holistically – he recognised and emphasised business understanding prior to solutionising and talked about Target Operating Models in a far more dynamic way than they are even talked about today.

So it probably isn’t surprising that having been “born” somewhat into architecture and having those influences at an early stage of my career that I see Enterprise Architecture as so much more than just the tech.

Over the last 20 years I’ve program managed significant transformations, provided business model options, lead digital journey reviews, worked with multiple CIOs on IT strategy and lead business and solution architects and my passion has always been on the business outcome side rather than just the tech side.

However it’s taken my entire career and a lockdown to truly find “this enterprise tribe”.

It’s the combination of the Enterprise Designer Group led by Milan Guenther and the Architecture Thinking group led by Wolfgang Goebl and its launched as the Intersection Group

A global group of true experts who see the holistic perspective.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/intersection-group

So what is it that makes it the enterprise tribe to be part of? I give you 5 key perspectives and truly encourage you to take a look at the emerging work.

1. It’s the most holistic perspective of enterprise architecture/design that you will find.

It embraces the business identity, it looks to the customer experiences and it understands the need for enabling architectures.

It highlights the need to consider ideas, stories, journeys, processes, tasks and capabilities

It has its ears and eyes open to broader business perspective and disciplines of true business design and business identity

2. It’s members are not trying to out play each other with the understanding of technical acronyms

Although I’m sure every member has deep knowledge of their discipline be that operational or technology – the conversations are rarely if ever about the technology choices.

The conversations are about getting the business outcomes, looking to reference models to help frame context and drive up stakeholder engagement

3. The group are highly respectful and happy to share their stories and insight for the greater good

The group is a not for profit organisation based out of Austria with a global network of advising members who are giving up their free time to progress the framework and models and support each other with framing the contribution that the Enterprise contributor can make.

4. The sheer passion and appetite to research and gain insight from others in the development of the group thinking.

Not a week goes by when the “group slack channel” is suggesting books to read, articles to review – this might sound a tad academic but it truly is aimed at basing the models and concepts on real life business case studies and to try and be at the progressive end of thinking

5. The dedication of the workstreams members

The majority of the group are contributing in their free time – fortnightly evening workstream sessions discussing and sharing knowledge – it just feels like a group of people who want to bring insight to the world of Enterprise design

So you’ll find me every Wednesday morning at 8am attending the intersection groups webinar (open to all) and every other Thursday at 8pm (in the organisation design workstream working sessions).

If you happen to bump into me later in the day on a Wednesday or on a Friday after a Thursday session don’t be surprised if I have a spring in my step and am believing more than ever in the world of Enterprise Design.