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Last week, I talked about the importance of establishing a firm foundation on which to build the EA program. Easily half of the key points of that “cornerstone” are directly related to dealing with people: growing support, establishing credibility, and building a rapport.  While Enterprise Architecture is technically a systematic approach to the linking of business, strategy and technology, in practicality, EA is a lot about managing change and influencing the perception of people in the organization.

According to Deborah Weiss, “a truly effective EA team must be able to have an organization-wide impact, regardless of positional power; this can be achieved through increasing influence and personal power. (D. Weiss, 2005)”  In order to gain the buy-in and confidence of our stakeholders, enterprise architects must concentrate on the people aspects of the organization as well as the technical and strategic aspects.

Some suggestions from the same article:

• Speak the language of stakeholders
• Create a favorable impression
• Negotiate and bargain
• Become more personable/likable
• Get to know your stakeholders personally

These are all positive actions. Yet, we typically don’t associate them with business strategy or technical systems.  We always need to keep in mind that behind those business processes and technical systems, there are real, live people with whom we can make a connection and potentially win their support and trust.

By building a rapport with our stakeholders, we gain support within the organization, establish our credibility, and we can start to clearly identify and meet the needs of those stakeholders. This is not only good for the EA program, but for the organization as a whole.  It is important that we realize this is not a one-time effort, though.  Throughout the life of the EA program, there must be concentrated effort to have clear communications with all the different levels of stakeholders.  Only in this way will the EA program continue to have a positive impact on the organization.

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References:

Weiss, Deborah (2005). Winning Friends and Influencing People in Support of Enterprise Architecture (G00134689). Gartner. November