It took me a long time to come to the discovery that what I had been working towards in my career was the role of Business Architect.
Over my career I’ve garnered experience in different roles, took on extra responsibilities, did projects outside of my scope, read things, done things and turned up to meetings that I wasn’t necessarily invited to all the while justifying it as “I find it interesting, and I want to know more”
This has led me to having a wide and varied experience in many different facets of business and how organisations do things (or how they shouldn’t do things). The trouble with having your finger in many different pies, as I have, means that you can’t say you baked any of them and people have trouble understanding what you actually do. I’ve had many recruiters say to me “you have a lot of experience in so many different areas, I don’t know how to place you” - I always felt that this was being said as a negative, whereas I viewed it as a positive aspect, I just didn't know how I could make my experience a positive asset for others.
Turns out I had morphed into a Business Architect in a totally organic way, and the answer as to how that happened was in the experiences that I had been collecting.
Learning how to deal with clients and internal teams made me good at stakeholder engagement.
Being the first person in brand-new roles has meant that I have had to learn how to create and establish processes and systems.
Working in future based teams has given me the experience of strategic planning and risk management.
And
My love of leadership has taught me how to monitor performance and design org structures.
Business architecture focuses on designing a company's structures, processes, systems, and organisational framework to align with its strategic goals and objectives.
From my experience a business architect is both holistic and specific in the following ways:
Strategic Planning: Collaborating with leadership and teams to define an organisation’s vision, mission, and strategic initiatives. Ensuring that plans are adequate and achievable so that they can be adopted and followed without creating unnecessary extra work.
Process Optimisation: Identifying the need for processes that are human centred and productive as well as evaluating existing processes and workflows to identify inefficiencies and create improvements.
Systems Integration: Ensuring that various systems and ways of working within the organisation are aligned and integrate seamlessly together. Working with people to ensure that everyone is across what is going on and can contribute to organisational goals.
Organisational Design: Structuring an organisation to support its strategic goals, including defining roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships. This also includes optimising resources that free up time and gets work done.
Change Management: Leading efforts to implement changes within an organisation no matter how small or large and ensuring smooth transitions and adoption by employees so that it does not distract from core business.
Performance Monitoring: Establishing metrics and KPIs to measure the effectiveness of business processes and initiatives. Help individuals learn and achieve their best through culture alignment and feeling like they are a part of something that matters.
Risk Management: Identifying potential risks to the business and developing strategies to mitigate them, these include external and internal factors that might prevent an organisation from achieving what it needs to.
Stakeholder Engagement: Communicating with stakeholders across the organisation to gather input, build consensus, and ensure alignment with strategic objectives. Working with clients and customers to create better relationships that achieve better outcomes for all parties.
I’ve become more holistic in my approach to working in an organisation, which is why I find individual roles too specific and limiting. Business architecture lights me up, and allows me to work ON the business not IN the business, with people who are invested to create change.
I don’t feel like my varied experience holds me back. If anything, it propels me forward.
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