My dearly loved sister is a pediatrician … has been one for more than 30 years. Her daily routine involves seeing more than 30 patients. Her day is filled with the variety of cases and the range from hope to utter despair that characterizes the diversity of 30 patients a day. A doctor who is firmly rooted in her Hippocratic Oath, she is a physician who will never probably get rich financially (many of her patients cannot pay well), but the queue of patients she treats with combinations of medical and common sense advice, and sometimes provides free physician’s samples and accepts payments in cash and kind, guarantees a slot in Heaven when her time comes.
In my own career as an enterprise architecture consultant more devoted to practice that preaching, but also in the position of a trusted adviser to my customers, the variety of assignments, customers and issues is a constant source of wonderment and interest. In much the same way that my sister’s effectiveness stems from the variety and intensity of the issues she deals with, I am beginning to believe that in the consulting business, the variety of problems that we address, the depth of involvement - from practicing what we preach to looking over other people’s mistakes, we benefit from multiple engagements and multiple customers and multiple types of problems.
Enterprise architecture benefits from consultants who have worked with many enterprises. Enterprise architecture benefits from consultants who are as comfortable with problems of the enterprise as they are with business units (segments) and solution architectures. To pigeon hole themselves into one or the other is often to the detriment of their customers.
If, like my sister’s thirty patients a day, I could handle three enterprise architecture problems a day for six months at a time, I would consider my life well led and my brain well stimulated and the value I bring to my customers multiplies from the lessons learned from many battlefields. Like her, I may never get rich like a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffet, but the enjoyment and happiness factor would definitely make the journey to the enterprise in the sky smoother.
In my own career as an enterprise architecture consultant more devoted to practice that preaching, but also in the position of a trusted adviser to my customers, the variety of assignments, customers and issues is a constant source of wonderment and interest. In much the same way that my sister’s effectiveness stems from the variety and intensity of the issues she deals with, I am beginning to believe that in the consulting business, the variety of problems that we address, the depth of involvement - from practicing what we preach to looking over other people’s mistakes, we benefit from multiple engagements and multiple customers and multiple types of problems.
Enterprise architecture benefits from consultants who have worked with many enterprises. Enterprise architecture benefits from consultants who are as comfortable with problems of the enterprise as they are with business units (segments) and solution architectures. To pigeon hole themselves into one or the other is often to the detriment of their customers.
If, like my sister’s thirty patients a day, I could handle three enterprise architecture problems a day for six months at a time, I would consider my life well led and my brain well stimulated and the value I bring to my customers multiplies from the lessons learned from many battlefields. Like her, I may never get rich like a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffet, but the enjoyment and happiness factor would definitely make the journey to the enterprise in the sky smoother.
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