Digital Transformation 3.0, Part 3 of 3: Enterprise Eudaimonia
Previously we covered some topics in terms of what a new wave of Digital Transformation would entail. We covered some key issues, primarily adaptability and a more fluid total enterprise or organization. Lofty conceptual topics such as:
Adapt or Die
Adaptability
Historical Trends
Hype Cycle Falacy
Dexterity GOALS
Product Centrism
Embed Governance
Simplify RACI
Teamwork before Bravery
No Silos
Task Based, Not Time
DesignOps
Empathy as a Principal
Some of these concepts I’ll expound upon further and provide perspectives from experience.
‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’
People in general dislike change; as it introduces risk. Conceptual notions of the chaos and order of change led to various mythologies, both good and evil (e.g. Aion). Since we’re not a cosmic deity, how do we measure a culture of extreme fluidity, rigorous accountability, and open communication? Happiness.
At first glance, HaaS and ‘Happiness as a Service’, seems a bit candid or campy; to use a traditionally subjective term like ‘happiness’. I’m certainly not the first progenitor of this acronym, ‘as a Service’ has been tacked onto just about any verb. As an architect with 20 years of experience, overly symbolized rhetoric in any solution or meeting instinctively sets off red-flags.
Candidly, my experience with EA metrics has been a mixed bag. I’ve seen and instituted fully quantifiable meta-models, but more often I see subjective queries to application or platform owners that dictate dispositions. If you don’t have a quantifiable meta-model, a simple “Are you happy with this product/service?” will more than likely net the same survey disposition results without misleading and confusing subjective rhetoric. This is a simplification in lieu of a hooked-up meta-model (less complex = less risk), freeing up time to think about that, instead of this.
Happiness is a very real metric and KPI. We talk about it all the time in modern business: “customer experience”, “customer-centric”, “customer satisfaction”, “employee relations”, “vendor relations”, “sales” etc. Employee happiness isn’t a new metric, and one that will always be debatable in terms of efficiencies; many tyrants in history espouse the use of free labor, but history has taught us that these policies were geo-politically myopic, and unhappy people will always attempt to find a way to be happy; biologically we’re wired for it.
A long standing paradox also holds true, economic growth does not equate to measurable happiness; happiness for a person is complex, ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’. And if we have quantifiable paradoxes, it may seem a daunting proposition, but one we hold dear to every day: Who doesn’t want to be happy?
Eudaimonia or ‘You-da-huh?’
Well I’m not Maslow or Plato, so I’ll leave it to the psychologists and philosophers to debate ‘what is happiness?’ I’ll introduce a new word for many of us: Eudaimonia.
Sounds like an off-brand ammonia brand, but its a ancient Greek term that distinguishes between temporary euphoria and flourishing happiness with virtue; e.g. tactical and strategic. The true definition of Eudaimonia has been debated since ancient Greece, up until this day. But we’ll lean on some classical smart people here.
‘Eudaimonia depends on all the things that would make us happy if we knew of their existence…’
- Aristotle's, Nicomachean Ethics, book 1.10–1.11
Balancing Useful Transparency
‘If we knew of their existence…’ is the correlative factor here for architects, a challenge we know all too well. Information is powerful and a fundamental building block in the practice of I.T. (it’s in the name!), but one architect can’t hope to accumulate hundreds of professionals concurrent knowledge, though we try. Happiness, and eudaimonia, may be purportedly achieved by knowledge and adaptability; but we all have heard of ‘depressed geniuses’ or parallels between creativity and mental illness, historically ascribed to world changing intellects like Einstein, Oppenheimer, Hemingway, and even Issac Newton. There’s a line between creativity and madness, the pragmatic utility of the result is what we’re looking for.
"We of the craft are all crazy. Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched"
-Lord Byron
One thing is however true, experience usually is a great teacher: the better requirements, the better the solution. Transparent initiatives, without malicious intent, usually are more successful; transparency however does not need to leave the core organization, though it usually pays to be open externally, outside of competitive factors. Drive transparency through use of collaborative structured platforms (e.g. Slack and MS Teams), frequent and consistently relevant status updates, AGILE backlogs, and short polite professional conversations.
Get Real with IP
Confidentiality is essential in highly competitive markets, it’s another tool in the tool-belt. What I have experienced however, is that many things aren’t IP (Intellectual Property); common frameworks, COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf Software), and open-source relegate non-patent centric IP as fluff. IP governance that stifles, not innovate.
I recall working in a Fortune 150 insurance company, and a theme one year from a respected thought leader was a hard look, with legal, at what actually is IP at a company that large and tenured. The end result, everything but the risk analytics, was not unique IP; 99% of the companies TOC (Total Operating Cost) functionality was derived or based in product or services available to any business.
What this means to large enterprises, is that their predefined notions in a pre-Internet world of what is unique, is largely flipped on it’s head; and close reflective understanding is required. Most Fortune enterprises are still operating with their head in the sand in this regard, with perhaps a small contingent of untethered ‘innovation’ groups. The looming threat of a larger market player quantifying this reality, e.g Walmart or Amazon, is a very real and proven cloud of concern I’ve seen on many wrinkled brows.
The sooner enterprises take a close look in the mirror regarding what makes them unique, the better. Differentiation is a trendy word this last decade, but knowing yourself as a foundation, leads to prioritization that matter.
People and Automation
If we’ve accomplished both useful transparency and a reflective look at what constitutes the unique aspects of your initiative; we’ve associated the things that matter, and communicated them clearly to the group. We’re prepared for adaptability, now we need to execute change. Claiming both a clear foundational business model and full organization transparency, is a struggle; individual motives and outside determining forces can swerve the clear navigable path into a confusing quagmire. During this reflective period, individuals may decide a change is required, or this new perspective attracts talent.
This crucible of change is a great barometer and experience builder. I recently completed a long multi-billion dollar M&A (Merger Acquisition), not my first, that moved a significant amount of business and systems into an existing enterprise. Change is a double edged sword; losing experienced contributors creates a void, but with this new void comes further reflection, and hopefully passionate people fill the spot or the role is deemed unnecessary.
Gin = Engine
No, not the delicious herbaceous beverage. Consider the cotton gin (Gin’ stands for Engine); universally praised in history books as a mechanical marvel and the industrial revolution, but the cotton gin also may have led to the American Civil War as production demand for cotton was so high, slavery boomed. Mechanical automation doesn’t always lead to a better enterprise. As an Enterprise Architect, no system is more complex than a human being; replacing an individual for architectural simplicity via automation isn’t a new concept; it is impactful and should not be taken lightly.
New Architecture Principals
So we’ve discussed a lot of topics, that all sound well and good in theory, in practice; a real challenge. Let’s organize a set of principals that can be adopted. I wouldn’t consider this an “operating model” per’se, as each Op Model is significantly tailored to specific business goals and processes; but as we discussed above, established IP may need investigation to uncover what these specifics really are.
Internal vs. External Forces / Radii vs. Control Vertices : e.g. Projects vs. Forces
Practice Dexterity
Focus on the mechanism of adaptation, HOW are we achieving flexibility, a paramount and foundational principle for any transformative movement.
Fluidity
MVPs and “fail-fast” successes require a quick and fluid organization, use the principal of practicing dexterity as the catalyst. The nomenclatures of human organization practices, e.g. PMO, will always evolve and reflect market trending verbiage.
I’ve seen “Op Model” changes to large enterprises reach over $1 Billion in IT cost alone; a very real cost to stagnant or struggling agility, imagine the possibilities of innovation if that was invested elsewhere. Understanding the forces that change this model is very important, shifting the paradigm of centrism (e.g. large projects) to smaller projects and consistent monitoring of the forces (control vertices) that impact the path. These real influencing forces shape the operating model, quantify and use them to shape the path as you walk it.
CaaS/GaaS
Compliance-as-a-Service is a very new and trending automation framework in software development houses. Audits and certifications require extensive manual labor, embed metrics for this via direct infrastructure monitoring and analytics; or even bake these configuration and KPIs directly into your applications. A green-field solution exists, in dependency management, a core principle of Cloud Native applications. I think many would be surprised to see the full cost of regulatory and compliance; leverage the traditional brain-trust of these specialists to design and implement a system that fits your enterprise.
Governance-as-a-Service, is a different animal, and one much harder to achieve. Governance is traditionally the responsibility of executives and architects. However, governance is a rolling tide in my experience, a reaction and investment that usually occurs only after a critical issue. Many organizations will fill specific roles for governance, with a teetering maturity that unfortunately loses it’s luster after any crisis or large transformation. Avoid this cycle, think differently about what governance means to your organization. Options I’ve seen in the past include smart correlation between architecture modeling tools and real infrastructure metrics and configuration data (cloud helps here) or micro-service architecture (see 12 factor app) that distinctly includes configuration and dependency checks against existing architectural standards and principles. Similar to CaaS, removing manual processes and complexities, frees up the expensive governance folks to spend their time and leadership on more profitable innovations.
Real Responsibility
Roles ideally tie directly to revenue; responsibilities tied to real cost provide not only great trace-ability; but real tangible and measurable rewards when uplift occurs. Conversely when declination’s occur, agency and clearer understanding of why failure happened, fail fast and adapt!
This sort of performance calibration usually is the realm of executives, where aggregation of success is presented, and usually painted in the pageantry of salesmanship. Salesmanship is a great skill, but should not be a determining factor in functional and operational work. The key issue here is lost time, ‘striking when the iron is hot’ doesn’t just mean functional deliverables but also quick and clearly defined decision making.
Microservice Parity, a correlative principle of AGILE micro-service architecture allows for ownership of both the product and it’s associated technical components, micro-services. This functional and organizational parity gives agency to the stakeholders as they are directly influencing the architecture, but more importantly this provides clear responsibility duties. Allowing for faster and more effective pivoting.
Where this becomes more challenging is scale; e.g. an Amazon size enterprise cannot have one individual responsible for warehouses, though an executive is most likely assigned, the scope for individual functional parity is too large.
Tower of Babel
Use tools to collaborate, on platforms people enjoy. Many large enterprises host a bevy of collaborative tooling, and many are stagnant or burning licensing costs without significant or measurable returns. I’ve seen ivory tower collaboration fall over time and time again; focus on the true users and developers, what do they want to use? It is assuredly not multiple platforms, pick one, and drive transparency across and up the enterprise. The longer an enterprise waffles on it’s clear collaboration platform, the further folks get entrenched in what they are using; pull the trigger, centralize collaboration as soon as possible, avoid self-harming tertiary silos, and avoid creating and maintaining a Tower of Babel.
Tools for a Silo Free Workplace
A singular enterprise collaboration platform is a great starting point for useful transparency. But how do we perform traditional duties of siloed organizations; such as escalating decision making? Escalation infers a hierarchy of decision making and governance, use GaaS and CaaS to drive away repetitive escalations; and focus on task-based escalations vs. static governing executives. Another effort in self reflection, what do we commonly escalate for? Can we automate these decisions? Well, the answer is yes, it happens every day with RQ systems (Real-time Quoting); e.g. an average auto quote at a large carrier takes into account thousands of variables, in real-time, to produce an accurate risk vs. reward policy, systemically doing what escalated leadership decisions provide.
DesignOps
The importance of CX (Customer Experience) and UX (User Experience) for both employees and customers can differ greatly. Oftentimes, large enterprises have very little UX standards for internal applications; it’s why call center or front-line people usually have multiple monitors and a bevy of applications in front of them. Transformative initiatives usually focus on this symptom, but don’t really talk to the true pain, the user experience.
At one point in my career, I was an architect at a large bank during the subprime mortgage crisis in the 2000s. The internal users of the mortgage platform were in the tens of thousands; a statistic that sounds small compared to a public user base, but does not reflect that these users were on these platforms 40-60 hours a week across international time-zones.
I pushed UX hard for an internal platform, with the simple statement to developers and DBAs (Database Administrators): “would you want to work on this application eight hours a day?” Assuredly in most cases, you would not; but integrating DesignOps into all facets of IT delivery will more than likely increase employee productivity and happiness, and undoubtedly customer satisfaction as well. Formulate and mature DesignOps before DevOps.
Ethical Culture
Nothing can sink a companies potential faster than a majority of disgruntled employees or customers. You can get a doctorate in Business Ethics, so I won’t harp on this one too much.
What I’ve experienced moving into 2020, is that trending high productive companies, put ethics and morality at the forefront of their mission statement; but also function by a Code of Ethics. Ethical principles and practices at a company shape the culture directly, and culture is always the hardest thing to change. How a company adapts to changing moral and ethical norms is a challenge, many companies start on a cultural bedrock, sometimes before all of the current employees were even born. Most Code of Ethics are generic, take some time to craft a meaningful message that aligns to both your visionary culture and aligns with the mission statement, and be sure to use these as not just HR policies; but as true functional objectives and measures.
Strategy
Try this when kicking off a solution workshop or stand-up meeting, ask “If money and time weren’t an issue, what is the ideal solution?”.
This mental exercise throws assumptions out the window, and more often than not, leads to a better solution or at least an iterative step to the vision; this works at any scale. This isn’t to say you avoid architectural assumptions and design decisions, but a simple conversation, in this regard more often than not, opens up new avenues of conceptualization, and potential strategic synergies.
Currently with MVPs, AGILE, incubators, etc.; small teams are task based and tactical, backlogs and kanbans rule the workplace. Oftentimes, contributors that experience a true successful pivot may become disillusioned with ‘strategy’ and therefore road-maps. However, just like historical military maneuvers, tactics serve a larger strategy. Militaristic tradition centers on discipline and ‘orders’; a hierarchy of command structure is important due to the real-time decision making that must occur in the heat of battle. Any military personnel can attest to the frustrations of ‘hurry up and wait’, it’s a common military complaint. At peace time there just isn’t a lot of orders going around, and more often than not, busy-work. Sound familiar? Strategic visions however, should always be shared and collaborated on, outside of confidentiality or skunk-works IP. More importantly, like any soldier or general, start on tactics before strategy; a ground up approach will remove bias and provide a pragmatic strategy rather than frivolous industry jargon.
Conclusion
So here we are, with a traditionally subjective metric, happiness. The rub is, human emotions and feelings are generally universal, anyone can speak the language of happiness or virtuous good.
A quick story to wrap things up. I had to interact with a Lead Enterprise Infrastructure Architect pretty often. This person was a consummate IT professional, with great experience and an air of pragmatism. An established respected relationship developed among this architect and others, including myself. At a certain point this leader would call for “architecture goodness”, and surprisingly we all knew what that meant. Whether the leader knew it or not, they were proposing architectural eudamonia, a strategic virtuous good, that classically results in happiness.
A New Decade
Ringing in 2020 is a new decade, I hope in due time to expand on these concepts, and learn some more along the way. Good luck out there fellow architects.