An excerpt follows from an interview with Elton Tucker, Business Strategy Manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, on the Chief Architect Forum Podcast. Elton, a member of the CAF, was interviewed by Brice Ominski, global chief technology officer at DeepDive World. The full interview can be heard here.
Question: Elton, you’re one of the people who does not exude an ivory tower. You focus on practical things and have a direct approach to change. Can you tell us a little bit about your approach?
Answer: During the years we worked together, myself and one of our other ex-colleagues, we landed on a talk track that was basically defined by two beats.
One was we’re here to help you do the right things for the right reasons. When that occurs, we expect you will consume more of our products and services. And the time we don’t, we get the opportunity to learn and provide that feedback. So, win-win. Win-win is a big thing for me.
The second beat was a phrase that came out of a couple of long nights of trying to save the world and cure world hunger, which was an approach I call, “blue collar architecture.” In other words, you can go ivory tower, but at the end of the day, if you’re not driving outcomes and results, you’re effectively wasting time and energy. So, how can we impart momentum and deliver incremental change so you can see it? You can feel it, and there’s effectively a bank account, a value that is being built upon which you can draw down upon when things get a little more hairy.
Question: And that’s really important that you are showing the value to the stakeholders. How often do architecture groups get the boot because they didn’t show value? What do you specifically do to show your stakeholders’ value?
Answer: This was one of these conversations I literally had this morning already. Understanding value to whom? Because that’s one that we very often get wrapped around the axle on. Who actually are the stakeholders for whom we want to drive value? It’s very easy to get very myopic. On a couple occasions in the last six months, I was pretty certain I was about to get fired because I had a rant track going off, such as:
“There’s nothing as permanent as a temporary solution.
“And the organization I’m currently working with, we are our first, best and only customer.”
And that doesn’t ultimately drive the best outcomes. You know, culturally, top of the house, we must put the customer first. But it’s too easy for internal processes to become very self-reflecting and introspective in a way that doesn’t enhance value, which in the case of where I am is:
“Hey, are we engaging with our end customers? Are we driving value for them? Or are we enhancing our brand reputation? Are we making ourselves sticky in these situations?”