It should be obvious that corporations need to pay attention to the medium- to long-term if they are to deliver sustainable results. Hence in world terms US corporate law is unusual in that in effect it _demands_ behaviours that are demonstrably dysfunctional and destructive to the sustainability of the corporations (quite apart from the impact on anyone else). As a result, US business-architects are amongst the most skilled in the world in inventing new ways to minimise the damage!

‘Perception is reality’ – yes it is, especially in the attention/respect and reputation/trust economies. And much of the perception is not rational – hence the reason why dismissing complaints on the assumptions that they’re wrong because they seem ‘wrong’ or ‘unfair’ from the companies’ perspective is never going to work. Likewise, yes, “another way of considering ‘perceived value’ is ‘whatever sells’”. So we need to work with the value _as_ value – the _feeling_, not the nominally rational ‘truth’. Hence the reason why I push for a properly-structured values-architecture – particularly one that describes the key intersections between the transaction/money economy, attention/respect economy and reputation/trust economy – as a central part of any whole-of-enterprise architecture.

Perceived value is important. It helps define the potential success of the business. It is an input on the value a customer, business partner, or shareholder sees and values. Why do people want to own an ipod…what does it give him/her? How does it make him/her feel. Different stakeholders, even in the same classification, have a different perceived value that affects the corporation and impacts the enterprise architecture (which is more than a corporation).

Its providing business with enough information to assist it make a decision at the time. Wait there’s more. The information must be presented in a structured repeatable form so that when the information changes the business can quickly understand and decide again. One more and my favourite bit. Consultants don’t like the repeatable bit and if companies maintain the information (aka knowledge) they use fewer consultants and can decide with their current staff! Examples. Strategy against capability, Project change request against process model, Project as built documentation updating capability and being verified against strategy, Sales material catalogued and versioned against market model, Company acquisition targets against Strategy/Capability & Process and many, many more.
PS – I’m a consultant too…

I so often miss values like these underpinning an EA at a customer. Nowadays “standards” and “interoperability” not to mention “future” seem to be able to be used as an excuse to justify any “architectural decision (ahem)”

My enterprise (me myself) has happiness as a vision and goal. Tough to qualify let alone quantify, or objectify. But it’s been my core value ever since I felt the need to declaim one, and it hasn’t changed. The means to this goal change over the years, as does the ecosystem around me and thus the stakeholders, models needed and used. But never That One Value that is essential to the enterprise, which is as intangible as can be

Holding up so far…