I’ll start by posing a question. What is the most important attribute of an architect? What is it that makes him effective?
Is it technical skill, experience, communications skills? I’d suggest that it is credibility. Where does this come from, obviously it can have it’s foundation in any of the skills noted above and probably many more that I’ve not mentioned. However, I’d argue that ultimately, credibility is about trust. It’s about people trusting the architect. Trusting that he’s telling the truth and that he is giving them as accurate and impartial assessment of the topic as is possible for a mere mortal.
Impartiality is an important lesson that too few architects seem to have learned. Architecture is not about who’s right it’s about what’s right for the client. One way that we ensure impartiality is by having objective processes that minimize individual bias and provide transparency for decisions. By no means are any of these processes perfect, traceability makes the process transparent and so when someone is unhappy with the decision the reasoning behind it can be explained. By this means a good architect protects his client’s interests and indirectly his greatest asset his own credibility.
I’ll give you an example. Recently a technically competent, but frankly rather arrogant architect at a client of mine made a “judgment” call. Without consulting the rest of his practice or recording his process. This resulted in him excluding a particular vendor from a selection process for a pretty much commoditized capability. His reason he’d seen the product “years ago and it wasn’t that good then. I doubt it would have changed..” he went on “besides I don’t like XXXXXX”.
The problem with this is he’s lazy he’s made a call based on information that he admits is old and hasn’t given XXXXXX a chance to change his mind. This isn’t what your boss pays for when he hires you. This architect has no doubt done this many times and because his client trusts him he can get away without due process, he is abusing their trust.
This particular architect however has come unstuck. The vendor unhappy with the unfairness of the decision has forced a meeting with higher management and because the architect has been lazy and not a little bit arrogant he has no defense. There is no recorded assessment process, no defined principles, just his say so. He’s looking pretty vulnerable right now, his management are more than a little embarrassed and have insisted that a proper assessment be done. Architecture is about rigor, being told by executives that you haven’t been rigorous enough should be a humiliation for an architect. Now I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy fixes the assessment process so that the vendor can’t win, because for him it’s about him being right. But, the fool doesn’t seem to realize that the real damage has been done. From now on every decision he makes will be questioned by his executive because he was lazy, biased and has betrayed their trust. He’s credibility is now shot.
Hi Tom,
Good article. More broadly, wouldn’t you say that credibility&trust (and their ghostly twin, perception) is a basis of all human relationships – especially particularly business ones?
My question would be – when you take a step back – is any of this specific or special to architecture?
I agree with your argument that this architect was not really doing their job, however I disagree with your conclusion that his position is necessarily weakened. Unfortunately in my experience it seems more likely that he and management will bond over their newly discovered common ground – their fear of being seen making a decision – from now on everything will be passed onto committee’s, team evaluations, and all manner of interal review groups what will either rubber stamp the initial prejudice or just waste resources while nothing gets done.
Inaction is a bigger competitor than any vendor.
Pfeifer’s Principle:
Never make a decision you can get someone else to make.
Mike,
I think there’s a couple of ways of answering this, so I’ll start with this one. Your point is dangerously close to perception is the truth. Now, if one believes that truth is a social construct then that’s fine. And arguably in some abstract relationships for example politics and maybe some business transactions it may be true.
However, IT and other engineering disciplines and so architecture are positivist objectivist disciplines. For these disciplines there is a verifiable answer. Where the bits hit the wire the machine doesn’t care it is either correct or not, there is no perception that can alter that fact.
Therefore the social construction of the reality has no place in architecture. The purpose of architecture is to make explicit the implicit and remove ambiguity allowing the most complete analysis possible.
The rigor of architecture is what makes it different to the “usual business” relationship. Business transactions are concerned with relationships. Architecture drives towards sometimes uncomfortable objective truths.
Closing your eyes and hoping that everyone will agree that the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train is a business approach. Going up the tunnel and finding out if it is a train and then reporting the facts back without fear or favor is the architectural approach.
The courage to call it as it is, particularly when that shatters someone’s ill founded perception is the hallmark of a good architect. Rigor is what makes architecture different.
Decamerone,
I think your point turns on the nature of the organization. Unfortunately, management culture in Australia (don’t take my word for it, do some research) is amongst the worst in the OECD top 20. At the macro level the purpose of architecture is to transform the organization from one state to the next. This intrinsically requires change, change requires decisions, those decisions are often complex and nearly always technical. Therefore architects are required to facilitate that change. Architecture is about making decisions about difficult trade offs in as logical and complete way as possible.
Humans do not like change, this is a fact that architects need to keep in mind. The literature tells us that two kinds of people seek management positions. Those who wish to achieve something and those who seek security by establishing themselves at the top of a status quo that they will defend come hell or high water, regardless of intellectual integrity. Organizations that accumulate too many type B managers can not adapt. (Again, don’t take my word for it, do some reading).
If architecture degenerates in to indecision or rubber stamping then it adds no value. You no longer have architects, what you have overpaid clerical assistants. In this case our architect has abdicated his responsibility and changed his role into a clerical position. I’ll finish by mis quoting Spewak and Hill authors of one of the earliest and still best books on architecture. Architecture “should not be attempted in an unfavorable climate.”