We All Love Our Toys

When I was a boy I loved legos, as so many architects and engineers did. It was a deeply calming and deeply engaging exercise in creativity. I would build for hours and hours, in some spread out part of a room and barely look up, passing over designs, enhancing structures, decimating failures until I had reached the pinnacle of my efforts. Then I would rush to wherever my mother was and proudly proclaim, “MOM! Look what I built!”

Look what I built. What a powerful phrase that is in human history. It is both personal and societal. It is endlessly fascinating is it not? That feeling? And it doesn’t all have to be mine. Look what I was part of building. Look what WE built. It resonates with creativity, with structure, with endlessness, with something distinctly human. Look at the mark I made with my mind, with my dreams. And it resonates with our field in a way that nothing else can. Often, when I introduce myself as an architect, people who don’t know what kind, will immediately ask me, “Oh what have you built?” My favorite feeling is their confusion when I say “Oh I’m building an architecture analysis tool to better understand architecture practice models. It is a wonderful piece of software! But you should have seen the POS rollout I did, it was massive… 25l0 million. And so beautiful…”

To this day I don’t know which feels better, the building or the showing. The making or the joy of seeing it used. I am one of those architects who believes that value happens after a product is delivered. So I have to say the later, but ohh the joy of the former.

What Have You Built?

This question has been running around in my mind these last few months. I’ve spent huge amounts of time around lots of different types of architects, from chief to junior, from software to business. This question came up in a LinkedIn conversation, “I’m more of a product-type chief architect, less of a manager type” It has come up in conversations about how to run an architecture practice, “No I manage the application portfolio, other people build things .” (or worse ‘We don’t build things!”) It has come up in engineering vs architecture… “I do the structure of the system for security and reliability and performance” And it has come up in business, “We are designing our capabilities like reusable blocks.”

But there it sits… What have you built? It evokes our fears… our feelings of inadequacy. It evokes our dreams… of building cathedrals. It evokes our anger… we don’t build anything! It evokes our awe… look what THEY built.

What Are You Building?

We all love our tools. Our legos. Our building blocks. It is cliche worthy. Each specialist I talk to in architecture is trying to build things. They just think they are using different types of legos. My business architects want to move company blocks around and connect them with brilliant new technology. My software architects want to hook up all those sweet code blocks with components. My hybrid and infrastructure architects (and systems architects) are building with chunks of virtual and physical systems. My information architects around building with blocks of knowledge. And it’s beautiful to behold. Because in the back or the front they are all trying to build something that lasts and that is beautiful. That is valuable. That changes the way their client behaves. That impacts their clients customer.

It’s a testament to our natures that we are called an Argument. Architecture mindsets are ones in which multiple competing realities can live comfortably while being utterly opposed to each other. We consistently generalize and abstract while at the same time deducing and providing tactical decisions. But watch out for too much abstraction. Watch out for endless, scope-less construction. You cannot build a city. A city is an ecosystem. A building though?

It is time this becomes our question to each other again… What are You Building? The chief of surgery still sees patients. The highest paid architects in the world still build buildings. The chief legal officer still handles cases. So what are YOU building.

What Will They Let Us Build

I believe architecture is at the beginning of its rise in society. A digital society demands a digital profession (at least one!) And I believe it is our time. Today’s ‘buildings’ (systems) are too likely to fall over (Crowdstrike?). There are simply too many charlatans and too many abuses of the system. We still think our stakeholders know what they need to build. Society still gets slammed with technical trends which are more about sales than value. And that is limiting us. Not architects us, humans us. It is limiting our ability to build the society we need. It is time that our stakeholders and clients become that. Not masters but partners. Let us build. Let us lead you. Yes you can make some of the decisions, but not all of them. Some things are bigger than ‘the business’. Sustainability, Identity, Security, Value. These are things that it takes an architecture skillset to see. To make decisions. Let us build your future.

It is time that our lawmakers begin to control who gets to build.

Who Gets To Build

Oh I can hear the masses, ‘but my architect made lots of mistakes’, ‘decisions should be shared’, and so forth and so on. Yes every profession has a blurred past. Before rigorous mentoring and skills development kick in, before licensure, before ethical standards. All the professions you trust now used to be scary. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, architects… all had a past filled with mistakes before they set the standards for who gets to decide! And that is where we sit. Who gets to play in the next economy. In the next ecosystem.

In a digital world there will be both less and more flexibility. Repeatable results yes, but also repeatable standards, skills and training. Engineers will be real engineers. Architects will be real architects. And there will be decisions that only they will be allowed to make. Just like in your home, airport, hospital or law office. Our career path is what makes us excellent, our enforced ethics are what make us trustworthy. Worthy of building things. Worthy of helping dreams come to reality.

So here’s my question, what are you going to build next?