Preface

This book focuses on digital enablers for the human side of these “big three” business topics: Leadership (Humanity), Decision Making and Communication.

John Adair’s three circles of business are accomplishing the task, building the team and developing the individual.

Consider as the task the 2030 Agenda, as a team the living members of humanity, and as individuals each of us, but as you read this book, especially you.

At first glance, decision making seems to be relevant only to that first circle, “getting the job done” at the top, whatever that may be.

But, as Adair reminds us in his books, in the context of leadership, (human) decision making (which here includes problem solving and creative thinking) necessarily involves the team (collaboration) and individual (skills) circles, and these circles are always interactive.

In the age of digital interdependence, these circles are also connected globally to locally, and the teams include a wide variety of (ICT) professionals who provide and operate the digital platforms that empower the human side in an increasing number of today’s enterprises. These digital platforms and the digital artefacts flowing through them have been created over decades and after much analysis.

Currently, these circles are plagued by a variety of divisions, including those of content versus ICT, those with access to externalized knowledge versus those without, rich versus poor, center versus periphery, informed versus misinformed, and constructive versus destructive attitudes.

The #tagcoding handbook and the #xy2wiki portfolio have made it their mission to bridge the ‘digital’ divide between those who have access to externalized knowledge and those who do not, between the center and the periphery of learning and communication.

In recent years, I have made the #tagcoding manual and online tools a priority because the contradictions of access and center versus periphery are most salient. However, the slow uptake of #tagcoding and #xy2wiki has led me to conclude that the separation between content and ICT also needs urgent attention.

This book’s message is clear: semi-formal models, delivered through and evolving in a societal architecture, can dramatically improve communication between content and ICT professionals. In fact, they can lead to a talent explosion for sustainable development.

With a little effort and smart use of methods, models, and tools, everyone in the “content and ICT ecosystem” can “free their mind from all kinds of traps” and dramatically improve understanding of issues, decision-making effectiveness and efficiency, and collaboration when deploying digital skills in society and contributing to the 2030 Agenda.

After reading this book, you will be able to apply Societal Architecture and CPIM in the stakeholder role and for the partnership episode that fits your context, using the Archi or Modelio models that accompany this e-book. As you apply the proposed activities for one episode of the partner journey, you will build the skills to move to the next episode with the recruited partnership. Value creation and value erosion prevention will create virtuous and viral cycles in support of high-priority sustainable development goals and objectives. The additional resources gained will enable the partnership to take on new and bold goals and targets.

You will find that the comprehensive, organized online content that accompanies this book is instrumental in fostering virtuous and viral knowledge creation for development.

It will undoubtedly require more effort, practice, and experience to overcome all kinds of habitual traps if the deep mind is deeply entrenched in some levels of social and organizational roles.

Apply the principles, models, and tools described here. Free your depth mind and reflect on the collective experience—both successes and failures. Contribute to the progress of humanity as envisioned in the 2030 Agenda.

One day, more and more members of humanity will acquire the quality that the ancient Greeks valued so highly in their leaders. They called it phronesis, which is best translated as “practical wisdom.” It is the product of a rare combination of keen intelligence, a wide range of experience, and a deep sense of goodness.

What you need to look for elsewhere

This book is the definitive guide to the subject matter. However, some information is beyond the scope of this book and must be sought elsewhere.

This book uses a lot of jargon. To keep it manageable, we assume the reader is familiar with enterprise architecture jargon, such as that defined in the Common Approach to the U.S. Federal Enterprise Architecture, the TOGAF® 9.1 Architecture Development Method (ADM), or the ArchiMate® 3.1 Specification.

The key service of Enterprise and Societal Architecture is the lean implementation of change in complex environments—organizations or other technotopes. Therefore, the jargon of portfolio, program, and project management is also relied upon. We use the terms and meanings consolidated in the open PM² Project Management Methodology and the Portfolio and Program Management Guides, published by the Publications Office of the European Union. These are freely accessible and usable.

Unless otherwise stated, terms from these standards are used according to their definition. If you’re not already familiar with these standards, you’ll find key definitions, their interrelationships, and examples in the techno-order chapter of the ens.wiki.

Societal architecture employs methods and components from enterprise architecture frameworks such as TOGAF and the architecture description standard ArchiMate. However, in the societal landscape, we can expect participants in the “social enterprise” to bring their domain knowledge, their own devices, and applications. We anticipate the application of Societal Architecture in three domains: public services, industry, and households.

This book focuses on the preliminary, vision, and business architecture phases. It provides guidance on how to define the scope, requirements, and architecture. These phases of societal architecture development do not have a chief executive. This book will support many autonomous stakeholders in finding common ground and discovering what they can contribute to the societal architecture as a cognitive infrastructure.

On a positive note, the United Nations system is revolutionizing its approach to development and communication. The Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform (https://sdgs.un.org/) is evidence of this, with global consultations and a more open approach to initiatives. The notion of societal portfolios from global to local is gaining ground.

We refuse to be deterred by the extreme right’s attempts to equate the 2030 Agenda with a global deep state power grab. We see the Sustainable Development Goals, Targets and Indicators as a fair framework of societal values and goals. This framework provides direction for societal portfolios, and we will not be dissuaded from pursuing it.

This e-book is a work in progress.

Not all chapters are ready. This is indicated in the remarks following the table of contents of these chapters.

Also, while the open source tools Archi for ArchiMate and Modelio for UML and BPMN would be sufficient to do all the modeling needed for this e-book, I have not yet had the time to migrate some older material to these tools. As a result, you will find some older material that was modeled in other tools, some of which, such as UML in Visio, are no longer available.

Fortunately, the Leanpub Publish Early, Publish Often model allows me to publish this e-book early to get reader feedback, and to publish new versions as often as needed.

If you are reading the sample text: In a number of chapters the original text has been replaced with the phrase: “This content is not available in the sample book. The book and its extras can be purchased from LeanPub”. Note that the minimum price for the e-book is currently $4.99. Once you have purchased your copy, you will receive all upgrades for free. The minimum price may increase in the future.