Can Enterprise Architects Be Young?

The other day, I was following a discussion on one of the enterprise architecture social networks I enjoy following, and the question came up:

Can Enterprise Architects Be Young?

Being a 55 + graying enterprise architect myself, and having seen the size and complexity of the beast at close quarters, I had to scratch my head to come up with a balanced answer and not resort to the usual, "Age is good when the going gets tough" argument.

You see, enterprise architecture is a little different from building that blockbuster product that sold a million copies or taking a company public in two years and then the company goes on to become the next Google. Those are very laudable achievements and have made their achievers both rich and famous.

To mix metaphors, if you pull out all the really big home runs out of the "success" equation, (because those very founders will tell you that a number of unknown and unpredictable circumstances conspired to provide the "win"), predictable success and predictable survival usually falls on the shoulder of the graybeards - be they valiantly paddling behind the poster boy CEO, or standing up in front like John Chambers, or Meg Whitfield. They are the ones with mortgages to pay, children to send to college and imbued with a strong sense of loyalty and duty to their organizations and people.

My response was, therefore:

It's not age that is an asset but the ability to have accumulated and learnt from a variety of broad AND deep experiences - which unfortunately doesn't happen overnight. It's also from having practiced incessantly as the recent book, "Outliers" so ably asserts.

Patients who are looking to pick surgeons tend to pick those with the maximum number of successful surgeries behind them. Perfect practice is a safeguard against risk. With all the exactness of surgery and modern equipment, the surgeon is still a key part of the success formula.

On the other hand, the ability to take astounding risks and succeed is a attribute of the young! As is the ability to dismiss conventional thinking and come up with innovative solutions. The ability to take exceeding risk is usually coupled with the inability to see or comprehend dire consequences. That's why young people have no problem taking risks!

Risks pan out -- sometimes. Any habitual risktaking, for it to succeed, requires pondering on probabilities of success, downside mess etc. and playing the odds and steering middle courses. Enterprise architecture, in my opinion falls into the surgery category and the habitual risk managing category. This is where a single home run will not work in a series that goes on forever.

A one trick pony cannot cover the breadth of knowledge, skills and experiences needed to understand, assimilate, aggregate, arrange, assemble, disseminate, communicate, propagate and evangelize - these are experiences that are accumulated over many jobs, many corporations, many setbacks, many varieties of tasks by a person who is driven by passion, curiosity, puzzles and quickness of mind - a true enterprise architect.

Ultimately when the messes from too many risks gone bad happen, as they usually do, it's always the adults cleaning up after the children have left.