How to become an enterprise architect ?

For past few years, quite a few employees, contractors, consultants, right sourcing consultants in the organization asked me this question, what they should do to work for me? In other words, how they could become an enterprise architect. Generally, when someone has this question in the organization, I asked them to schedule a mentoring meeting and try to understand what they want to do and how their aspiration and ambition fits into an enterprise architect’s requirement and coach them accordingly. When this questions became a frequently asked question to me, I decided to document the state transition diagram for an enterprise architect and started providing it to whom ever wants to become an enterprise architect.

I believe this has a value to anyone who wants to become an enterprise architect. This state transition is an ideal road map to become an enterprise architect. When I attended a Gartner conference recently, I informally bounced this idea with fellow enterprise architecture managers, chief architects, chief strategist and most of them agreed that this is the ideal road map for developing enterprise architect talent in an organization.

Good attitude is required to learn and grow in any organization.

If you have a good attitude, you will never have a bad day and if you have a bad attitude, you will never have a good day. Good and bad days depends on you and your attitude. Generally speaking, there is abundant opportunities available in any organization in any market condition and it is all up to the individual how effectively use it and thrive in the organization.

No matter what, there are whiners in any organization. No matter who their bosses are, no matter how their organization perform, no matter how their external environments are, they whine, they are stress full people and whining is their stress releasing technique. Generally, there is a small percentage of whiners in any organization. Please STAY AWAY from them. As stated in the matrix movie, if you stay close to any system, you will become part of the system. You do not want to be whiners and stay away from them.

The moment you think the organization style & growth does not meet your pace, style, acceleration, aspiration, that is the time you need to seriously think to prepare your resume. No matter what the market condition is, there is always high demand for highly talented individual in any field. If you do not make your self available in the market then you will become part of the existing system. You will lose acceleration, aspiration, ambition, pace, motivation and interest and will become part of the system and start doing what is required to fit into the system.

Abundant opportunities exists in any organization and it is up to an individual to use it and thrive in the organization. Behavior and attitude matters every day to thrive in the organization. If you have a good positive attitude you will never have a bad day and if you have a bad attitude you will never have a good day.

Attitude is what required to learn and grow in any organization.