Admittedly, among my clients, I have worked with very few enterprise architects. However, many of the key ideas you have shared in your article are still completely relevant to the non-architect experts I coach and their organisations.
This gets to the heart of my own work with experts: perhaps one of the best measures of expertise success isn't what happens when the expert is in the room. It's what can happen because of their expertise when they're NOT in the room.
Organisations often respond to valuable expertise by creating more demand for the expert. More escalations. More meetings. More difficult problems sent to the same person.
Get a number and get in the queue.
Which feels like success right up until it doesn't - when the expert(s) becomes the bottleneck. And when the expert only has the capacity to deal with the fires and no time to seek to add real value to the organisation and its future.
As a coach, I find a large part of my time is helping experts become coaches themselves. So that the organisation is less dependent on them, not more, because they have worked to lift the capability of everone around them.
That might mean guardrails, as you describe. But it also means developing other people's judgment, transferring context rather than simply procedures, helping people recognise when the normal rule doesn't apply, and making very clear which decisions genuinely do require expert escalation.
Because sometimes, it really does need to be done by the top expert. But there may be other work that doesn't need to be done as well, or as quickly, as the expert can do it.
Really enjoyed this one, Kaine. I also came across your LinkedIn post earlier, and the idea stuck with me enough to read the full piece. Just subscribed.
The point about architecture becoming a bottleneck the moment everyone needs an architect really resonated. The goal shouldn’t be to make architects indispensable; it should be to help the organisation develop the ability to make good architectural decisions without always needing an architect in the room.
That connects closely with something I’ve been exploring in my own publication: **“Architecture Is Not a Blueprint. It’s a Bet.”**
I look at architecture from a slightly different angle — less as the production of artefacts and more as the discipline of making decisions under uncertainty, understanding trade-offs, and being explicit about the bets we’re making.
Thought there was an interesting overlap between the two pieces.
Admittedly, among my clients, I have worked with very few enterprise architects. However, many of the key ideas you have shared in your article are still completely relevant to the non-architect experts I coach and their organisations.
This gets to the heart of my own work with experts: perhaps one of the best measures of expertise success isn't what happens when the expert is in the room. It's what can happen because of their expertise when they're NOT in the room.
Organisations often respond to valuable expertise by creating more demand for the expert. More escalations. More meetings. More difficult problems sent to the same person.
Get a number and get in the queue.
Which feels like success right up until it doesn't - when the expert(s) becomes the bottleneck. And when the expert only has the capacity to deal with the fires and no time to seek to add real value to the organisation and its future.
As a coach, I find a large part of my time is helping experts become coaches themselves. So that the organisation is less dependent on them, not more, because they have worked to lift the capability of everone around them.
That might mean guardrails, as you describe. But it also means developing other people's judgment, transferring context rather than simply procedures, helping people recognise when the normal rule doesn't apply, and making very clear which decisions genuinely do require expert escalation.
Because sometimes, it really does need to be done by the top expert. But there may be other work that doesn't need to be done as well, or as quickly, as the expert can do it.
I like the angle you share; coaching the expert. That way, you scale the capability within the organisation.
Really enjoyed this one, Kaine. I also came across your LinkedIn post earlier, and the idea stuck with me enough to read the full piece. Just subscribed.
The point about architecture becoming a bottleneck the moment everyone needs an architect really resonated. The goal shouldn’t be to make architects indispensable; it should be to help the organisation develop the ability to make good architectural decisions without always needing an architect in the room.
That connects closely with something I’ve been exploring in my own publication: **“Architecture Is Not a Blueprint. It’s a Bet.”**
I look at architecture from a slightly different angle — less as the production of artefacts and more as the discipline of making decisions under uncertainty, understanding trade-offs, and being explicit about the bets we’re making.
Thought there was an interesting overlap between the two pieces.
https://newsletter.themoderntechguild.com/p/architecture-is-not-a-blueprint-its?r=8yxkfu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web