Executive Advisory Program

Gideon's Children

Posted by: Jack Santos

By now you may know that Gartner has purchased Burton Group. This post is a perspective on that purchase, and not meant to be any way, shape, or form an official announcement of intentions, or any type of inside information.  So take it as such. 

That said, the behemoth in the analyst/2nd opinion space has, to some extent, validated the business model and market approach that Burton Group has taken.   That is heartening.  As briefed to me, the Burton Group brand will live within Gartner, Burton analysts will continue as a group, and the emphasis on in-depth, technically-oriented, front-line targeted research will continue to be a focus.

Given my role as a technology officer, CIO, and within the industry  for thirty odd years, my relationship with Gartner (and Gartner EXP) has been a long and intensive one.  It will be hard to not say “Gartner Group”, Gartner’s original moniker. 

These are Zelig-ian perspectives.  I’ve sat down face to face with the heads of Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Novell  - sometimes cordially, sometimes in negotiation.  I’ve been in arms length contact with just about everyone who’s who in the tech industry.

The same path crossing is true with Gideon Gartner.  Still have some of the earliest Gartner Group analysts on my rolodex (or the 21st century equivalent: Linked In) from when the company was less than 20 people.  I have vivid memories of Gideon’s swagger in the room in those early years, and my admiration for his grasp of the big picture – and his business acumen.  He sold the company, and bought it back (in a flip of the classic maxim) by “selling high and buying low”. Smart guy.  After his Gartner Group years he moved on as a serial entrepreneur – creating similar firms (like Giga).

Gideon has been well known for his support of the arts in the New York area, another admirable quality.  Somewhere in his DNA is nurtured the fact that life is not all “work”, but “play” as well, and that sometimes “work” is “play”.  The ancestral (and current) Gartner home base of 56 Top Gallant Drive was ostensibly chosen so that one could dock a boat out the back.

The argument can be made that Gideon is the father of the IT analyst industry, and that all analyst firms owe a debt of gratitude to him.  Most businesses do, too.  If there is one thing that the information age has made clear is that information about information (the “meta” layer) has value as well, and Gideon Gartner’s progeny have proven that.  Google, in later years, would prove that point through its search engine.  In some ways, manufacturing, services, day to day commerce becomes a commodity, and understanding that commodity and how to plan for the future and react to events has value beyond the basics.  It’s not all about how quickly you get that information (stay glued to twitter if that’s how you feel), but the quality and thoroughness of the interpretation of information – the analyst industry has proven that over and over.  It’s the difference between a day trader and Warren Buffet, one-night-stands and long-term commitment.

I stand with the latter, and I hold my practitioner badge proudly; 30 years in the business of managing technology for financial services and healthcare firms,  That gives me (in many ways) an edge over folks that have been analysts their whole career, or have worked solely in the vendor space.  There is a joke somewhere about the similarity between analysts and priests with regard to marriage and sex. The fact is, over that time I have relied heavily on the analysis provided by the likes of Gartner, Forrester, Giga, and Burton  (kind of like pastoral counseling).  It’s all about perspective, and ideas, and firing new synapses to solve problems in different ways.

Burton has an approach that works well for technologists. Gartner’s approach has always been technologist based, but over the years has grown to emphasize technology management.  My role at Burton is to bridge that, especially with senior level IT and business management.  The combination of Burton Group  and Gartner (Group) is a good thing, even if it means one less analyst firm in the landscape. No doubt there are many of Gideon’s children that will take this as a business opening and opportunity, just like Gideon did.  And Burton Group will be there as part of Gartner to compete on quality, independence, and thoroughness.

So in that sense, we are all Gideon’s children.

2010 arrives: Hope stays alive, and CIOs should look hard at the mirror

posted by Jack Santos

There is a lot of talk about the role of the CIO, the future of the CIO, and whether CIO’s are taken seriously.  Hogwash. As leaders, one of the last things we need to do is bellyache about how we “don’t have a seat at the table”.  If you want to be at the table, act like you should be.

Along those lines, One of the things I have always tried to do as a CIO and IT leader was balance my work life, home life, and community life.  The latter has led me down some interesting paths – like ladling soup at a home less shelter once a month for about 4 years, or chairing the Chambers’ economic development efforts for hi-tech companies. 

Many years ago I also was involved in selecting college scholarship recipients for an inner-city scholarship program: The Jacob L and Lewis Fox Foundation (of which I am an alumnus – but that’s another story).  For hours I would diligently pour over the high school student apps, rank their responses on key criteria, help with the interviews, and participate in the final selection.

This past Tuesday evening I took a ride back to my “ancestral homeland” (Hartford, CT) and joined the annual Fox Foundation Holiday Dinner – a tradition which I attended religiously, but (sadly) due to schedule  and distance it has not been something I have gone to in at least 10 years.  My loss. 

I had forgotten how invigorating it was to listen to these kids (click here for the current year winners), at such early stages in their lives, yearn for opportunity and learning.  It was even more poignant since most of these kids didn’t come from well-to-do families, but were products of an inner city school system in the first minority-majority state capital in the nation. 

Besides engrossing conversation with old-timers (former scholars), we were entertained by poetry, dance, and acting performances by this year’s crop of scholars --- and a talented bunch they are.  What are they doing with the financial backing the foundation gave them?  Attending local schools like UCONN and the University of Hartford as well as Dartmouth, Temple, NYU, Trinity, and others.  An impressive lot.

In a time where terrorist attacks are on our mind, religious and racial  hatred and bigotry is almost unavoidable, and peace seems like such a foreign concept…it brought tears to my eyes to see our future.  Lewis Fox, lawyer,  philanthropist, devout Jew, dedicated community member, and  founder of the Foundation (in his father’s memory) would have been proud.  His legacy continues, and our future as a country is in good hands with these kids.

And for CIO’s concerned about their place in their company – think broader, look in the mirror, and take action.  “The table” is a lot bigger than just your company…and the compensation much more heartening.

Happy New Year!

BPM #fail - Organizations adopt disciplines and people adopt approaches

posted by Mike Rollings

Last week I went to Cocoa Beach Florida to collaborate with Richard Watson, Anne Thomas Manes, Chris Haddad, and Kirk Knoernschild on our Business Process Management (BPM) research initiative.  Throughout the week we analyzed the results of our client and non-client interviews.  Many interesting insights were formed regarding their experiences, and we learned a lot from their struggle to do BPM.

One insight that I want to share with you is related to the same struggle that organization's have with pursuing enterprise architecture (EA) and service oriented architecture (SOA) -- BPM is a discipline not an approach. 

If you think that a methodology or a 'way of doing something' is the secret sauce for BPM, EA,  SOA or any other programmatic change initiative then look a bit harder.  The real secret sauce is recognizing that you are dealing with adoption of an organizational discipline -- a lifestyle change.  For these initiatives to be successful you need to get the whole body involved. 

BPM is no different.  Many struggle with finding the right approach, gaining adoption, rising above an automation mindset, and several other challenges.  Yet, all volunteer that culture is something really hard to overcome.  Culture has become our favorite punch-line to a very bad joke.  "Did you hear the one about the organization adopting _ _ _?  They could not change their culture".  Just fill in your favorite initiative, chuckle, and then commiserate with your neighbor.

It seems that organizations give up on transformation and put in place coping strategies to live within the status quo.  They give up on asking the question "should we be doing this process at all" and instead ask "how can we automate what you are doing". More often than not they give up even before trying and look for the path of least resistance.  It appears easier to go after automation, then monitoring, and then improvement.  But would you really make it any easier to change status quo? No. The net effect is further calcification. 

BPM will not make any automated process easier to change if humans never examine its relevance and value to the larger whole.  The notion that you can convince someone to change later after you have further solidified their beliefs is delusional.  Want to hear a radical thought?  Some have even figured out that doing process execution is the LEAST valuable part of the endeavor -- they are focused on business optimization. Notice I did not say 'process', I said 'business'.  Yes, like we have learned before, you can do a discipline without shiny new tools.  Tools can help, but a tool-centric approach is not going to give the organization discipline.

Repeat after me "Organizations adopt disciplines and people adopt approaches". 

For more information, Burton Group clients can refer to "Real Transformation: Why IT Change Is Not Enough".

100% Organic Thinking

Posted by Jack Santos

The term “organic” is making the lexicon rounds, and has come a long way from its health food store beginnings in the 70s.  Take organic business growth (versus growth by acquisition).

The most recent manifestation of “organic” came from a column in Forbes, by Dan Woods.

Dan’s approach, and back-handed chastisement of traditional IT, certainly fits trends that we at Burton group talk about.

Specifically the  consumerization and democratization of IT.   A recent Computerworld report brought the point home:  Internet access is now a human right, according to the EU.

So, as information technology continues to become integrated in everyday life,  the trend toward “organic IT” will only get worse – or better depending on your POV.

That’s why I often talk about IT integration versus IT alignment.

But the flip side of organic is chaos (both data and process) and unintended consequences.  Think invasive species. 

The business has ultimate control and responsibility for both data and process, and the organic approach, if not managed, can negatively impact both.

Usually what that means is that the organization looks for someone to mediate the decision-making and organizational/systems decisions…and the only piece of the organization that has the expertise and (ostensibly) the umpire-like lack of line responsibility skin-in-the-game is IT – so IT ends up managing the use of technology, and all that goes along with it -- including governance processes.

Whether governance fully involves the business, or IT just takes on the mantle of responsibility is a tricky balance.  The latter often occurs at the urging/delegation/abdication by business units.  I would submit that IT needs another set of skills – that of making sure that technology (read data and process) decision-making is business driven.  

It’s a  biblical “give a fish vs. teach to fish” scenario – but  teaching to fish assumes learning acceptance by the target, and some level of skill by the teacher.  And these skills are not technical skills – but relationship and influence skills.  Not the usual courses taken by a rising C programmer, or a database administrator.

When getting the business to be fully involved in technology decision-making doesn’t work well,  it's just a short hop to blaming IT, or for IT to overreact (again as proxy to the business) and set inflexible standards that squelch business innovation.

That’s why architecture (and governance) is so important.

It’s all about collaboration and communication, and neither a soviet-style centralized approach (which, incidentally, has strong similarities to how capitalist companies are managed), nor a total laissez-faire anarchy (which is where organic has strong tendencies) will work.

Which reminds me of a t-shirt…

“Give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll sit in the boat drinking beer all day…”

Would that be…organic beer?

Let's do the time warp again...

Posted by Mike Rollings

Rocky Horror Picture Show fans will immediately sing the title of this post in their head.  It's funny how the mind associates things.  The same thing happened when I read a recent article:

(Edited excerpt) "The initial reaction was anything but positive. They thought it was a horrible idea... every institution he funded demanding ever more computer power and duplicating research on those machines. At the time computers were completely incompatible and moving data was a huge chore. The resistance came about because those institutions wanted to keep control of their computer resources. But, they soon saw that hooking up to it meant a huge increase in the potential computer power they had at their disposal.  They quickly learned that there was a tremendous gain for them, and it also fulfilled the goal of cutting spending on computers".

I read this and thought it could apply to a discussion about cloud computing, decisions about shared corporate computing environments, or just about any transformative change. 

What did this quote apply to?  Forty years ago today data flowed between the first nodes of what was then known as Arpanet -- the beginning of the Internet.  Mark Ward of BBC News interviewed Dr Larry Roberts, the MIT scientist fundamental to Arpanet.  The article "Celebrating 40 years of the net" describes what happened.

Happy Birthday Internet! The story is just another reminder that human behavior is a critical aspect of change.

 

Ravaging the Industrial Commons

Posted by: Richard Watson

(Mike Rollings and I are guest posting to each other’s blog today to give our readers another perspective – check out Mike's post on role reversal at the Application Platform Strategies blog here.) 

Robert Hayes from Harvard Business School posted a provocative blog entry last week, “Outsourcing Is High Tech's Subprime-Mortgage Fiasco”. This post helpfully provided me with some new language and clarity to add my take on what Burton Group is describing as “Externalization of IT”.  The desire to use external providers to replace or augment IT functions presents a menu of options including cloud computing (at its multiple tiers), and outsourcing (including off-shoring).

Here’s my Homer Simpson one line summary of causes of the financial crisis:

Institutions did not price risk correctly because they were making too much money.

What was the lesson we learned from IT business process outsourcing (BPO) efforts, (primarily off-shoring software development) in the mid-2000s?

Enterprises did not price risk correctly because they (believed they) were saving too much money.

Many of these efforts were me-too strategies, driven entirely by short-term cost saving outcomes.  For IT organizations that couldn’t adapt, an expensive repatriation exercise for some IT functions has cost who knows what.  The costs were both hard: penalties for extracting themselves from BPO contracts, rehiring local development expertise; and soft: lack of business and project continuity, and the loss of trust with the business customer.

Robert Hayes again:

The supposed savings they expect to generate from such activities are based on costs that often do not properly reflect the damage they are causing.

Hayes is primarily discussing high-tech manufacturing, but the same arguments are valid considering software delivery.  Shifting those developer FTE numbers from the New York or London rate to the Bangalore rate on a budget spreadsheet got the CFO excited, but hid the damage caused by dismantling a (possibly distributed) team knitted closely together by culture and shared goals.  It also massively underestimated the complexity of rebuilding “industrial commons” as a hybrid of internal/external capabilities. Executive strategist and ex-CIO Jack Santos remarks “When outsourcing first started, everyone knew it was human arbitrage, and like all forms of arbitrage, the numbers eventually even out.”

When Robert Hayes says:

A company's competitive advantage is rooted in things it can do (e.g. design, make, distribute, or market) that its competitors cannot do as well, if at all. As the number of these core capabilities decreases, the company's competitive vulnerability to those that are able to master the same capabilities goes up.

The key discipline he highlights the need for is portfolio management. Not all IT functions provide us with the same value. We need to treat them accordingly.

I’m with Nick Carr on the impossibility for sustained IT-derived competitive advantage.  With notable exceptions, running an IT shop does not give you that advantage.  Sure, grinding down the cost per claim in an insurance company is supported by IT automation, but really it’s having a more optimal business process that does it.  Data transmission arbitrage that once afforded the bulge-bracket investment banks an advantage in high-frequency trading is now available to all willing to pay the exchanges for co-location space. As Carr points out, an advantage based on infrastructure rapidly accrues to all.

Please do not misinterpret my message here. I’m no IT protectionist.  And I disagree with Robert Hayes fundamental thesis that by outsourcing enterprises are “simply cashing out their intellectual assets”.  With cloud computing, we have a chance to take an amazing step towards the industrialization of our profession, a transformation even, but only if we approach it with the right mindset.

1. Do we even know the cost of our existing infrastructure commons?  For example, do you know your internal cost per processor hour, storage size, or network bandwidth? What is the lifespan of an infrastructure investment? Or what does maintenance per function cost for your existing software?

2. Do we have an architecture that is flexible enough to withstand the elimination of boundaries?  Mike Rollings has just published (Burton Group clients-only) “Planning Considerations for Externalization in Cloud Computing” and discusses the implications of removing the location, perimeter and application container boundaries that have served us well in the pre-cloud era, but can no longer be assumed.

3. Do we have a mature enough solution delivery process that values transparency, and has the right blend of formal and informal governance?

4. Can you segment those core competencies from your commodity IT processes and infrastructure? Focusing internal talent and investment on those competencies will help maintain or regain competitiveness.

5. Are we correctly managing the expectations of what’s possible from current offerings?  Chris Howard on keeping our feet on the ground:

“Externalizing IT can be a means of driving down cost, but there is no guarantee. The same risks organizations experienced with past outsourcing, for example, still exist. Organizations that view externalization as a panacea will be sorely disappointed. Cloud and SaaS options are simply not mature enough (yet) to handle the scale and complexity of enterprise computing. Immature IT shops will not gain the benefits of externalization, but are likely to incur greater costs and complexity.”

Let’s do some planning first this time, to avoid another off-shoring fiasco.

Is the business result more valuable than "EA"?

Posted by Mike Rollings

Last week I attended the first meeting of Penn State's IST EA Advisory Group.  This group is helping Penn State define undergraduate education, graduate education, and professional development education and research related to enterprise architecture.  The four different teams really took off over the course of the 1.5 days we were together.  Many good ideas came out of the kickoff and I look forward to helping these ideas move forward as part of the professional development team and the group.

However, even among those at this event (around 70 people) who have been around EA for a long time, the question still remains -- What is EA? Thankfully the leader of the session did not go down this rathole.  Instead we focused on what needs to be done to develop enterprise architecture professionals. 

Who is an EA professional?  The point of view I shared with the professional development team was that I did not think that our focus should be just for those that identify with EA.  If you have to decipher the term EA before you can get value from the courses then I believe we miss a great opportunity to introduce useful methods and disciplines to many business and technology professionals.

For those of you who have followed my writing in Burton Group research and also this blog, my position should not be surprising.  For instance, since we launched our enterprise architecture coverage 18 months ago I have been calling for a focus on business outcomes, influencing decisions across business and IT, and a move away from the notion of an ‘EA devotee society’.  This is just a part of the brokenness of EA.  I would much rather discuss how to correct EA-related fractures in organizations and describe competencies or practices (e.g. business optimization techniques, dependency analysis) that heal the patient, rather than first convincing someone that they need EA. 

I think that the competencies that make up EA should be offered to a broader audience of professionals.  For instance, the business strategist who is looking for a way to broaden their ability to examine implications of a strategy to include a technology impact assessment.  I don't want to put a barrier between them and the method by first having them get the term EA. 

I believe that the broadest benefit comes to those who focus on the competencies and not the EA term.  The reason we care at all about the analysis techniques etc. in the EA bucket is because we want to improve business outcomes – not because we care what you call the bucket!  When you focus solely on the bucket it leads to ivory towers, ineffective processes, a lack of participation, and low stakeholder commitment. I would rather focus on the value to the business.

2010 Trends: Externalization, Consumerization, Democratization (ECD)

Posted by Chris Howard

My blogging hiatus has been longer than Jack's, I'm afraid. One of the boons and banes of being an analyst is that you think in public much of the time. I needed to think in private for a few weeks, so took the month of August for myself. Consider it a mental vacation.

During my absence from public view, I've been pondering trends for 2010. At this time of year, Burton Group fields requests from the press and clients about our vision for the next 18 months. This month, I wrote a document that outlines the highest level trends: 2010 Executive Planning Guide: The Difficult Path to Recovery. Each of our coverage areas will incorporate aspects from my writing into their domain-specific planning guides.

In addition to global economic and societal trends, I discuss three related concepts impacting enterprise IT: externalization, consumerization, and democratization of IT. These trends have been coalescing for a while and will persist past the artificial boundary of a guide for 2010.

The Externalization of IT

Externalization plays an important role in IT economics, prompting value assessments of what capabilities should be treated as commodity. Enterprises are refocusing their efforts on core business capabilities while examining alternatives for the non-core activities. The benefits of IT externalization include the potential of reduced cost, renewed focus on the core, and strategic partnership with the business. A growing number of options for externalizing IT, including the cloud, holds the promise of streamlined and efficient operations, demand elasticity, and more effective business-driven priorities.

The Consumerization of IT

The average person has become a sophisticated technology user and this is reflected in the desire for individual choice of devices and applications for maximum personal productivity. The growing trend of allowing information workers to choose their own equipment imposes significant burdens on the enterprise; it`s hard to secure equipment you don`t own, and it`s hard to manage and support a very diverse hardware and software base. IT innovation, once emanating from internal IT out, is now predominantly driven inward by employees and customers.

The Democratization of IT

Democratization is evident in the rise and importance of social networks within and outside the modern enterprise which changes the "ways of work" and challenges traditional organization structures and schema. The challenge to the organization is to facilitate the coexistence of hierarchical and democratic styles of communication and choice-making. Democratization is being forced by generation Y`s familiarity with technology, and new social networking solutions within the enterprise.

You can read the press release regarding our Executive Planning Guide here: http://www.burtongroup.com/AboutUs/newsdetail.aspx?id=33

CIO Types

I recently had forwarded to me a piece from Dimension Data. It was one of those marketing blurbs, highlighting their CTO. This is an excerpt:

Ettienne Reinecke, Chief Technology Officer, shares his thoughts on the recession, and the three types of CIOs <…>     CIO Type A is very conservative and works in organisations that do not understand the business value of IT;  he is expected to cut costs during a recession and, if there is to be any investment at all, is permitted to invest only in IT that will deliver more savings.     CIO Type B lives in a sort of middle ground, where the boardroom has some understanding of the business value that IT can add. So, while he’s is focused on both cutting costs and investing for further savings, he is also cleaning house and preparing his company’s systems for the new projects that will make their demands on those systems when the economy turns. <…>      CIO Type C sits at the boardroom table. And he sits at the boardroom table because the business has understood that business is about process and systems - and that the person who knows most about how those processes and systems should work optimally is the one who enables them through technology.     CIO Type C therefore has already gone through the cost cutting exercise – long before the recession hit. He invested for savings, long before the recession hit. And he cleaned house. Now, continuously, he’s investing to support the business’s strategy.     CIO Type C isn’t really a CIO any more. He’s the COO of IT, in charge of executing the strategic growth plan. His business will be ready for the upturn. His business will be one of the first to profit from the upturn. His business will have happy shareholders.

So the bottom line of his comments are that a CIO's success has more to do with the business’ perceptions and expectations of IT, rather than the CIO type.  It would be more appropriate to speak to this in terms of “types of organizations”, and recognize that the true CIO (type Z) knows how to manage with respect to his corporate culture, and has techniques to help companies move between the cultures.

Inherent in his analysis is that type C is best, while I would submit that there are companies that succeed (read: make a profit within the timeframe defined by the stakeholders) with all three types of companies.  So to paraphrase:

The best CIOs have the skill
to accept the things they cannot change;
courage to change the things they can;
and wisdom to know the difference

That all said, given the context of the article I am reminded of a joke:
Did you know there are three kinds of people in the world? Those that can do math and those that can’t.

What to do when waking out of an EA induced Coma...

Posted by Mike Rollings

Architects around the world are voicing their opinions about Gartner's press release regarding a “new approach for enterprise architecture”.  Caution is best for those who are new to architecture and think this is new.  Those that have been calling for change are not fooled.

Personally, I think Gartner finally woke up to the facts of life about EA (read my post Gartner wakes out of an EA induced coma...). Their seven properties show that they are just now realizing things that have not worked -- not just now, but for years!   “Gartner said that enterprise architects must be ready to embrace the inversion of control. Where in the past, they controlled all EA decision making, they must now accept that that business units demand more autonomy". Centralized, top-down, autocratic decision making never worked! EA is about influencing better decision making with a focus on business outcomes.    

But what do you do if you wake from an EA induced coma and want to turn things around?

To start, don't be fooled by new packaging on old ideas.  As Todd Biske points out in his post, "Do we really need a term for what many of us are already doing"? 

Second, get your head out of the sand.  Michelle Tripp points out, "Our world is changing. Beyond the obvious. Beyond the Obama. Beyond the recession and drama in the Middle East. Beyond cars that look like insects and phones that measure contractions and 10 year-olds that that know brands better than college professors. Things are really, truly different." Whether or not you agree with all Michelle offered in her post, the "6 Essential Skills for Exponential Times" are worthwhile to keep in mind. I have added my own twist for architects:

Rule-Breaking: Re-examine policies, standards and other rules. Make sure that they have a clear connection to business outcomes and things you truly want and need to govern. If rules are being broken it can signal outdated thinking and the need for something different. Real collaboration provides the ability to come to a common understanding -- maybe the existing rules are only important to you. It is time for transformation and the time to question assumptions. Assumptions, feelings of futility, and other phantoms reinforce status quo and are roadblocks to transformative discussions. Stagnation - the lack of innovation and agility - happens when you become married to your phantoms.

Entrepreneurial: Seeking out new opportunities is the essence of generating value. In the post "IT Value - We Reap What We Sow"I state that value of IT comes from being transparent about your business contribution. Burton Group client should also read Establishing and Maintaining Enterprise Architecture Momentum.

Self-Educating: Yes, it is important for a person to stretch their knowledge, but don't feel you have to be the font of all knowledge. Embrace varying ideas, collaborate vigorously and respectfully, assure that you tap into the variety of perspectives that exist. Architecture is an active sport and requires broad communication and collaboration to be successful. The problems and new thinking are discussed in Enterprise Architecture Is More than Engineering  and The Anatomy of Effective Enterprise Architecture.

Bonding: INFLUENCE! If you take one thing away it should be that the lack of influence is probably a main cause of your EA coma. As for facilitating the conversation -- If you focus on the problem, examine the decisions that need to be made and by whom, you have a greater chance of matching the way you describe the issue to the audience's context. Also, I have found that the more I understand how humans perceive, learn, and make memories that it opens new avenues to help organizations change behavior.  Behavior is at the center of transformation - societal, organizational and personal transformation. Burton Group clients should read Modeling Influence and Communications.

Revolutionary: Encourage transformation and new thinking. When the assumptions fundamentally shift, incremental improvement that addresses “change” is the less-able brother of transformation. I have discussed this in respect to transformation and cloud computing. If we truly intend cloud to revolutionize IT then it must be revolutionary. Beware of new stickers that suggest doing the same thing will give you a new result.

Visionary: Help your organization create its future. Alan Kay said "The best way to predict the future is to create it". Don't wait till GAME OVER! Get connected to business outcomes and understanding the dependencies, implications and constraints.  Be a leader, be a team player, participate and collaborate.

Want a new approach for enterprise architecture?  Read Burton Group's EA research (clients only):

• Enterprise Architecture Is More than Engineering   
• The Anatomy of Effective Enterprise Architecture
• Using Metrics Effectively: Proving and Improving the Business Value of IT
• Facing the Headwind: Good Ideas for Bad Times
• Real Transformation: Why IT Change Is Not Enough
• Moving Out: The Externalization of IT
• Measuring Enterprise Architecture Success
• Modeling Influence and Communications
• Presentation Techniques: The Power of Making a Point
• Establishing and Maintaining Enterprise Architecture Momentum