“We use words like honor, code, loyalty…we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use ‘em as a punchline.”
Colonel Jessup ( Jack Nicholson ) in the movie A Few Good Men.
I will be attending Gartner’s Enterprise Architecture Summit events in the UK (May 14) and the USA (May 22) to present findings from new 2013 CEO and senior business executive survey. As I was working on the slide deck, I was reminded again about just how much weight is behind some of the simple words business leaders use, and how easy it is to misinterpret them.
More than many other professionals in business life, Enterprise Architects know just how much words matter and how the context of those words matters. Different groups or individuals within a company will use the same words to mean different things. Different interpretations can lead to sharp confrontation – as in that famous movie courtroom scene. Using someone else’s shorthand without understanding the associated richness of context that the cognoscenti take for granted, can get you into trouble.
Take the simple word “growth”. In our annual global survey we asked CEOs this year about their top business priorities and that that word came to the top of the list. Often it is given without any additional explanation. If a CEO simply says ‘growth’ should we be affronted because he didn’t expand it? Is he displaying irritation via a very terse response? In a word – No. To understand why such a single word answer is not meaningless, let’s switch context for a moment.
Imagine that I ask a group of senior IT professionals about their priorities and they all quickly agree on the single word ‘cloud’ – they can do so, because they understand a huge amount about what that word means and what it implies. There is a whole contemporary agenda behind it, they know there are difficult security issues, there are privacy issues, they know BYOD is a factor, they can describe layers like SaaS and Paas, they know there are licencing issues and portability issues and standards in development. They know what kind of corporate systems can migrate to the cloud, given today’s market and technical capabilities and what might be possible 3 years from now. A whole room of IT professionals, at a conference, who may never have met each other before – all know all of that stuff and it rises into their minds the moment somebody puts just that one word up on a screen: cloud.
The same is true when CEOs say “growth”. They know that investment capital is cheap, but certainty in markets is low. They know consumer confidence is volatile and investor tolerance is fickle. They know that double taxation is skewing US company global investment planning and that the emerging markets play is changing – with “Chindia” being a bit less of a gold rush, but Africa looking like a smart play.
The second priority for CEOs in our annual survey, was profitability and the third was cost. Some might be tempted to say “duh!” – business leaders are focused on growth costs and profitability – so what. Well profitability is a word that arose in the responses with far higher frequency than in the last two years – and that tells us something about the business cycle stage we have reached. The gap between growth and cost as priorities - has widened. That tells us something about CEO’s confidence.
Our survey this year explores CEO reaction to that everything and nothing word “digital”, in the context of another very misunderstood term: “strategy”. It also finds that more CEOs are likely to hire chief data officers, when they already have chief information officers. How’s that for a subject in need of close language scrutiny?
It’s my belief that much of the of the misalignment and misunderstanding between the agendas of business people and technology professionals begins with a simple lack of careful listening and that the roots of the problem start at the top – and then get amplified by the organisation below. Enterprise Architects occupy a key position to help the organisation perform well by understanding and translating appropriately. But that must be a two way exchange. Explaining what technology can or should do, to the business leadership team is the supply side of the equation. Strong Enterprise Architects will be equally good at interpreting the demand side – understanding what CEOs mean, what problems they must solve and then helping assemble the macro technology toolset that will help. If they do so, EA professionals can really move the needle on business results.
So to sharpen your thinking on how business leaders are thinking and expressing themselves – why don’t you join me, at one of our EA Summits?