Chapter 3.
Who Really Designs Your Business?
The morning began with two completely different companies.
Even though there was only one company.
Michael arrived a little before eight. The office was still quiet. Anna had just switched on the light in the reception area, the coffee machine was warming up, and outside the first vans were slowly taking their places near the warehouse.
Yesterday’s sheets of paper were lying on the table.
Arrows.
Circles.
Names.
Connections.
Reinhard came in holding a cup of coffee.
— You didn’t take this home with you?
— I was afraid my wife would ask why I needed a diagram of someone else’s company in the bedroom.
Reinhard smirked.
Klaus appeared next.
— Good morning.
— Morning.
He looked at the sheets.
— Are we drawing again?
— Today you’re the ones who’ll be drawing.
— That already sounds worse.
Michael placed a blank sheet in front of Reinhard.
— Draw the company for me.
Reinhard looked at him.
— How?
— The way it is structured.
— An organizational chart?
— If you like.
— And what’s the right way?
— There isn’t one. I’m interested in how you see it.
Reinhard sat down.
He thought for a few seconds.
Then he wrote down his own name.
Below it — Klaus.
From Klaus he drew lines to the site managers.
From the site managers — to the tradespeople.
He drew the office separately.
Anna.
Accounting.
Purchasing.
Then he added the warehouse.
— Something like that.
Michael turned the sheet toward himself.
— Good.
He placed a second one in front of Klaus.
— Now you.
— The same thing?
— The same company.
Klaus picked up the pen.
At first, he also wrote Reinhard’s name.
But almost immediately he put his own next to it.
He drew several lines directly to the site managers.
One separately to the warehouse.
Another to Anna.
Then he paused and added the suppliers.
— The suppliers aren’t part of the company, — Reinhard pointed out.
— But without them, half the decisions don’t work.
— Then draw the customers too.
Klaus thought for a moment.
He drew in the customers.
Michael watched in silence.
A couple of minutes later, two diagrams were lying on the table.
Similar.
But not the same.
— Well? — Reinhard asked.
— Interesting.
Klaus laughed.
— Here we go again.
— No. I’ll explain.
Michael placed the two sheets side by side.
— You have one company. But you’ve just drawn two different systems.
— Nothing surprising about that, — said Reinhard. — I drew the structure. He started drawing absolutely everything.
— Possibly.
Michael looked at Klaus’s diagram.
— Or perhaps Klaus drew part of what actually affects the work.
Reinhard took a sip of coffee.
— So which one of us is right?
— That’s exactly what interests me.
He took a third blank sheet.
Placed it between the other two.
— There’s nothing here yet.
— And?
— And by this evening, we’ll try to draw the company the way it actually works.
Klaus looked at the blank sheet.
— Then what are these?
Michael pointed at Reinhard’s drawing.
— This is the formal architecture.
Then at Klaus’s drawing.
— This is the architecture as you imagine it.
Then at the blank sheet.
— But I’m interested in the actual one.
Reinhard leaned back in his chair.
— Architecture, architecture... You keep using that word. What exactly do you mean by it?
Now that was the right question.
Michael thought for a moment.
— In the simplest terms?
— Preferably.
— Business architecture is how roles, decisions, information, responsibility, and connections are distributed between the different parts of a company.
Klaus looked at his drawing.
Michael continued:
— Who has the authority to decide. Who is responsible for the outcome. What they need to know in order to do that. Who they are connected to. What happens after their decision. Where the issue goes next if they can’t resolve it themselves.
— So, the organizational structure.
— No. That’s only part of the architecture.
— What about processes?
— Also part of it.
— Software?
— Also.
Reinhard smirked.
— Then architecture is basically everything.
— No. Bricks are not the architecture of a house. Windows are not architecture. Pipes aren’t either.
Michael picked up a pen.
— Architecture is how all of these things are organized in relation to one another so that the house can perform its function.
Reinhard looked at him.
— Good. That’s clearer.
— And now the most interesting part.
— What?
Michael tapped the blank sheet with his finger.
— I want to see who actually designed your company.
The Rule That Doesn’t Exist
Forty minutes later, they were in the warehouse.
The morning calm was over.
The gates were opening.
Someone was pushing a cart loaded with sacks.
A forklift beeped as it reversed.
The air smelled of cardboard, wood, and construction chemicals.
Markus was standing near the gate.
The same Markus they had dealt with at the Webers’ the day before.
Next to him stood Helmut, the warehouseman.
Boxes were lying on a pallet between them.
— I can’t give you this, — Helmut said.
— Why?
— Not without Reinhard’s approval.
— What approval?
— The usual one.
— Helmut, I need to be on site in forty minutes.
— I understand.
— Then load it.
— I can’t.
Markus exhaled irritably.
— Klaus!
Klaus came over.
— What?
— Tell him.
— What’s going on?
Helmut named the material.
Klaus looked at him.
— Give it to him.
Helmut didn’t move.
— Reinhard told me not to release anything without him.
Klaus frowned.
— When?
— I don’t remember.
— I’m telling you now: release it.
— And then your father will ask me why I did it wrong again.
Reinhard, who was standing a little farther away, heard the last words.
— What’s going on?
Helmut explained.
Reinhard stared at the pallet for a few seconds.
— Did I really say that?
— You did.
— When?
— After that order in Gauting.
Reinhard remembered.
— Ah.
Klaus turned to him.
— That was about two years ago.
— Could be.
— So what now?
Reinhard waved his hand.
— Give it to him.
Helmut started loading the boxes.
Markus looked at his watch.
— Great. Fifteen minutes wasted.
— At least the material wasn’t stolen, — Helmut said.
— Very funny.
Markus walked toward the van.
Michael looked at Reinhard.
Reinhard noticed.
— What?
— Nothing.
Klaus laughed.
— There you go again.
— Fine.
Michael pointed toward the pallet being taken away.
— We just saw an element of architecture.
— Which one?
— A rule.
— An old rule, — Reinhard said.
— But it’s operating today.
— Not anymore.
— It was operating fifteen minutes ago.
Reinhard said nothing.
Michael continued:
— At some point, something happened.
— A site manager ordered expensive material for the wrong site, — Reinhard recalled. — Almost four thousand euros got tied up.
— And you made a decision.
— Yes.
— The decision became a rule.
— Looks like it.
— The rule was never written down.
— No.
— But Helmut followed it for two years.
Klaus smirked.
— Even after Father had forgotten about it.
— Exactly.
Michael looked at Reinhard.
— That’s why I ask who designs the company. Sometimes a manager creates architecture consciously. And sometimes it’s created by one unpleasant incident on a Tuesday afternoon.
Reinhard smiled.
— Fine. Point taken.
— And that isn’t necessarily bad. Perhaps the rule was right at the time.
— It was.
— But the conditions changed.
— Yes.
— And the rule remained.
Michael watched the forklift drive away.
— A system can remember even what people have already forgotten.
For a moment, it became quiet.
Klaus looked at Helmut.
He was already dealing with the next order.
— So how many rules like that do we have?
— That, — Michael said, — is a much more interesting question.
The Boundary Nobody Could See
Closer to midday, Michael was sitting with Anna in the office.
Several customer proposals were lying on the table.
He was trying to understand where a site manager’s authority ended and where a decision by Klaus or Reinhard began.
The answer kept changing.
— If it’s something small, they decide themselves, — Anna said.
— What counts as small?
— Well...
She thought about it.
— It depends.
— On what?
— On the project.
— For example?
— If a customer asks for something extra worth a hundred euros, nobody is going to call Reinhard.
— What about five hundred?
— Probably they would.
— And three hundred?
Anna smiled.
— Michael.
— What?
— You’re trying to find a number that doesn’t exist.
— Looks that way.
At that moment, quick footsteps sounded in the corridor.
The door opened.
Reinhard came in abruptly.
— Where’s Markus?
Anna looked at him.
— At the Kramers’ site.
— Call him.
— What happened?
— Just call him.
A few minutes later, Markus came into the office.
His face made it obvious: he already knew why he had been called.
Reinhard was standing by the window.
— Did you approve an additional partition wall for the Kramers?
— Yes.
— For eighteen hundred euros?
— Yes.
— Who exactly do you think you are to make that decision for me?
Anna lowered her eyes to the monitor.
Klaus, who had entered behind him, stopped near the door.
Markus tensed.
— They couldn’t wait.
— What does that have to do with anything?
— The crew was already working. We either had to proceed or stop the site.
— Then you should have called.
— I did.
— Me?
— Klaus.
Reinhard looked at his son.
— I had two missed calls, — Klaus said. — I was at the Bergers’.
— Then you call me.
— I called the office, — Markus continued. — You weren’t there.
— And that made you decide you could spend company money?
— I decided I wasn’t going to leave four people sitting around without work for two hours.
— That isn’t for you to decide.
Markus pressed his lips together.
— Then who?
— Me.
— You weren’t there.
— Then you wait.
— And what do I tell the customer?
— That the decision has to be approved by management.
Markus raised his voice:
— And what do I tell the workers? Sit down, have some coffee, Reinhard will call back eventually?
— Don’t twist my words.
— I’m not twisting anything. I’m explaining what the situation was on site.
— And I’m explaining that you exceeded your authority.
— What authority?
Silence.
Reinhard looked at him.
— What?
— Exactly what authority did I exceed?
— You know perfectly well.
— No. Show me.
Reinhard took a step toward him.
— Markus, don’t play the idiot with me right now.
— I’m not.
— Then don’t act like one.
The room went quiet.
Completely.
Even Anna stopped typing.
Markus looked at Reinhard for several seconds.
— Fine.
He nodded.
— Then next time I won’t decide anything.
— Excellent.
— Nothing at all.
— Don’t twist my words.
— The customer wants a socket moved — I call you. I can’t reach you — I stop the electrician.
— Markus...
— We’re missing two bags of adhesive — I call you.
— That’s not what I said.
— Then what did you say?
Markus was no longer holding back either.
— Where is the boundary, Reinhard?
— You’ve worked here for twelve years and you know perfectly well where it is!
— Exactly! For twelve years I’ve been making decisions like this every day, and today suddenly it turns out I’m “playing director.”
— Because today we’re talking about eighteen hundred euros!
— So how much am I allowed?
Reinhard fell silent.
— A thousand?
Silence.
— Five hundred?
Markus looked straight at him.
— One hundred?
Reinhard flared up.
— If everyone here starts playing director, I can fire half the company tomorrow!
Markus went pale.
For several seconds, nobody said anything.
Then he nodded.
— Then try going a week without the people you’re planning to fire.
He turned around.
The door slammed so hard that the calendar on the wall shook.
Silence.
Reinhard exhaled heavily.
— He’s completely lost it.
Klaus looked at the door.
— He really went too far.
Michael remained silent.
Reinhard turned to him.
— Don’t start.
— I haven’t said anything.
— But you thought it.
— Of course.
— So?
Michael looked at his watch.
— Nothing right now.
Reinhard gave an irritated smirk.
— Convenient.
— No. You’re angry. Markus is angry. Klaus is angry. If I start explaining business architecture right now, you’ll throw me out too.
Klaus suddenly laughed.
Even Reinhard smiled for a second.
The tension eased slightly.
— Go, — he said. — You have a site to visit.
Michael stood up.
He stopped at the door.
— Just one thing.
Reinhard looked at him.
— Markus really did exceed his authority.
— There.
— But I still haven’t found where that authority ends.
The smile disappeared.
Michael walked out.
The Line on the Field
For the first few minutes, they drove in silence.
Klaus held the steering wheel with both hands.
— Markus has completely lost it, — he finally said.
— Yes.
Klaus turned his head.
— Yes?
— Watch the road.
— No, I just expected a lecture about the system.
— Markus made a financial decision without having confirmed authority to do so. That’s a fact.
— Exactly.
— But there’s a second fact.
— What?
— Nobody could define the boundary of that authority.
Klaus fell silent again.
Michael looked out the window.
— Imagine a football field.
— Okay.
— There’s a touchline. A player crosses it — the referee stops the game.
— Right.
— Now erase the line.
Klaus understood where he was going.
— The players still roughly know where the field ends.
— Roughly.
— They’re not idiots.
— Of course. Now imagine the final. Last minute. A player receives the ball where, in his opinion, the field still continues. The referee thinks otherwise.
Klaus smirked.
— There’ll be a fight.
— And both sides will be convinced they’re right.
— But Markus should have asked.
— Agreed.
— Then what’s the problem?
— Good architecture shouldn’t require telepathy.
Klaus smiled.
— Where did that come from?
— Just made it up.
— Not bad.
Michael continued:
— Authority isn’t a privilege. It’s part of the design. A person needs to understand three
things:
— Our people already know that.
— Today we saw the opposite.
— One case.
— Possibly.
Michael turned toward him.
— That’s why I’m not saying you have a problem. I’m saying a hypothesis has emerged. Now we need to test it.
Klaus nodded.
He already understood that word differently now.
— And what if it turns out everyone else knows?
— Then the problem is local. Markus and Reinhard failed to align the boundaries properly.
— And if nobody knows exactly?
— Then we’re already looking at a property of the system.
For a few seconds, they drove in silence.
— You know what I don’t like about this? — Klaus said.
— What?
— If we write everything down, we’ll end up with bureaucracy.
— Agreed.
Klaus looked surprised again.
— You’re unusually agreeable today.
— Wait.
Klaus laughed.
— I knew it.
— Bureaucracy doesn’t begin when rules exist. It begins when rules exist for the sake of rules and interfere with achieving the result.
— And the boundaries of authority?
— They can actually create freedom.
— How?
— If Markus knows exactly that he can make a decision himself up to a certain amount and under certain conditions, he no longer needs to call you about every little issue.
Klaus thought about it.
— So a rule can do more than restrict. It can also free people.
— Exactly. Good architecture doesn’t take freedom away from a person. It makes clear the space within which they are free.
Klaus tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.
— Now that’s interesting.
— Thank you.
— Not you. The idea.
— I’m not offended.
Thomas’s Island
Thomas’s site was about a twenty-minute drive away.
They were renovating a two-story house.
Three vans stood in the yard, but there was none of the usual sense of bustle.
One tradesman was cutting tiles.
Another was unloading materials.
Two were working inside.
Thomas stood by the wall next to a small board.
Names were written on it.
Next to them — the days of the week.
And several short notes.
— Hi, — he said. — What brings you here?
— Michael is studying why everything is going so badly for us, — Klaus said.
— Then you’ve come to the wrong place.
— That’s what I keep telling him.
Thomas smiled.
— Want some coffee?
— Later.
Michael walked over to the board.
— Is this yours?
— Mine.
— What’s here?
— Who’s doing what.
— And this?
— What’s supposed to arrive.
— The red marks?
— Things without which the next job can’t start.
— And the crosses?
— Customer decisions that haven’t been confirmed yet.
Michael looked at Klaus.
He was already smiling.
— Well?
— What do you mean, “well”?
— Where’s your bad architecture here?
— So far, I don’t see any.
Klaus was clearly enjoying the moment.
— There you go.
Michael turned to Thomas.
— Do you always work like this?
— For the past three years or so.
— Why did you start?
Thomas shrugged.
— I got fed up.
— With what exactly?
— Every morning everyone asks the same things. Who’s going where. What arrived. What didn’t. Then the customer tells one person something, someone else doesn’t know about it. In the end, I spend the whole day answering questions.
— So you made the board?
— At first it was a sheet of paper.
— And then?
— The sheet got lost.
Klaus laughed.
— So, the board.
— So, the board.
Michael continued:
— What happens in the morning?
— At seven we gather here for about ten minutes. We quickly go through the day. Who’s doing what. What has changed. Where the dependencies are.
— Dependencies?
— Sure. For example, if the plumber hasn’t finished, the tiler doesn’t go in there. Or if the material didn’t arrive in the evening, we rearrange the work in the morning.
— Who came up with it?
— I did.
— Does Reinhard know?
Thomas thought about it.
— Probably.
Klaus laughed.
— Excellent.
— What?
— Nothing.
Michael looked at the board again.
— And what if a customer asks to change the work?
— Depends on what it is.
— Let’s say additional work worth a thousand euros.
Thomas looked at him.
— First I call Klaus.
— And if he doesn’t answer?
— Reinhard.
— And if neither answers?
— Depends on the work.
— Do you have a boundary?
Thomas thought.
— Formally?
— Yes.
— No.
— And informally?
— Well, I more or less know.
Klaus looked at Michael.
Michael said nothing.
Thomas continued:
— If the decision is reversible and doesn’t create major costs, I decide. If it would be expensive to redo later, I wait.
Michael nodded.
— That’s already a rule.
— What rule?
— The one you just formulated.
Thomas shrugged.
— Maybe.
They walked through the site.
It was surprisingly calm everywhere.
Not perfect.
One room was missing materials.
Upstairs, the electrician had found a mistake.
The customer had sent a change.
But the problems didn’t create a sense of chaos.
They fell into a clear order.
On the way out, Klaus asked again:
— Well?
Michael looked at the house.
— There’s good architecture here.
Klaus stopped.
— Seriously?
— Yes.
— But Father didn’t create it.
— Exactly.
Klaus stopped smiling.
Michael continued:
— Thomas built a small system of his own inside the larger one.
— And what’s wrong with that?
— So far, nothing.
— Then?
— Imagine an archipelago.
— Islands?
— Yes. One island has good roads. Another has its own laws. On a third, nobody writes anything down at all. Each island may function perfectly well on its own.
— But?
— But if people, materials, information, and money constantly have to move between them, compatibility problems begin.
Klaus looked back at the house.
— Every site manager really does do things a little differently.
— Now that’s interesting.
— Do you want to force everyone to work the same way?
— No.
Michael answered immediately.
— That would be the opposite extreme.
— Then what?
— Find what must be common across the entire system, and leave people freedom where differences are useful.
Klaus thought about it.
— For example?
— The boundaries of authority could be common. The rules for passing on critical information. The key states of a project. But how Thomas runs his ten-minute morning meeting may be entirely up to him.
— So, don’t standardize everything.
— Standardization for the sake of uniformity is stupid. A standard is needed where the absence of a common rule breaks the connections between parts of the system.
Klaus looked at the board again.
— That thing I’d steal from him.
— That, you actually can.
“I Went Too Far”
When they returned, Reinhard’s car was not outside the office.
— Where’s Father? — Klaus asked Anna.
She pointed toward the gate.
— Left about twenty minutes ago.
— Where to?
— To Markus.
Klaus looked at Michael.
Michael shrugged.
They found them at the Kramers’.
Markus was standing next to the open van, sorting through tools.
Reinhard stood beside him.
Michael and Klaus stopped some distance away.
— Markus, — Reinhard said.
— Yes.
— This morning I went too far.
Markus kept putting tools away.
— Fine.
— No.
Reinhard paused.
— Not “fine.” I’m apologizing.
Markus stopped.
He looked at him.
Reinhard continued:
— You still shouldn’t have made an eighteen-hundred-euro decision on your own.
Markus gave a slight smirk.
— I got that.
— But I also shouldn’t have shouted at you in front of everyone and called you an idiot.
Pause.
— Especially after twelve years of working here.
Markus nodded.
— All right.
— And you’re right about the boundaries too.
Now Markus was genuinely surprised.
— What?
— We can’t even say clearly where they are ourselves.
Reinhard looked at him.
— We’ll sort it out.
— Good.
— Just don’t start building your own empire in the meantime.
Markus smirked.
— I’ve already come up with a name for it.
Reinhard laughed.
The tension didn’t disappear completely.
But enough of it did.
Klaus said quietly:
— He rarely apologizes.
Michael looked at him.
— Which is why this means something.
They didn’t go over to them.
The Company That Isn’t on the Chart
That evening, three large sheets were hanging on the wall.
The first — Reinhard’s diagram.
Neat.
Clear.
Almost classic.
The second — Klaus’s diagram.
More complex.
With suppliers, customers, and additional connections.
They had been filling in the third one all day.
It looked the worst of all.
The arrows crossed.
There were question marks beside some of them.
Short notes had appeared next to the names:
- “decides independently”
- “asks Klaus”
- “depends on the amount”
- “rule not documented”
- “own board”
- “through Anna”
- “from memory”
- “since the incident in Gauting”
Reinhard stared at it for a long time.
— This looks terrible.
— Not necessarily, — Michael said.
— Seriously?
— A subway map looks terrible too if you don’t understand what it’s for.
Klaus sat on the edge of the desk.
— But this one is much scarier than the first.
Michael walked to the wall.
— Because the first one shows positions.
He pointed at the third.
— This one is beginning to show the mechanics of the company.
Reinhard looked at it.
— I didn’t design this.
Michael turned to him.
— That may be the most important discovery of the day.
— Then who did?
— Everyone, a little.
He pointed to one part.
— You.
To another.
— Klaus.
Farther down.
— Thomas.
— Markus.
— Helmut.
— Anna.
Then he swept his hand across the entire diagram.
— Customers. Suppliers. Old mistakes. Urgent decisions. People who don’t even work here anymore. Even accidents.
Reinhard was silent.
Michael picked up a marker.
— There’s one thing that’s important to understand.
On an empty part of the board, he wrote:
ARCHITECTURE ALWAYS EMERGES.
— There is no company without architecture.
Klaus looked at the words.
— Even if nobody built it?
— That’s when it becomes especially interesting.
Michael continued:
— If a leader doesn’t consciously design the company, that doesn’t mean the company remains without structure. It simply means circumstances begin designing it instead.
Below that, he wrote:
DECISION → REPETITION → HABIT → RULE
— The warehouse story. A mistake happened once. Reinhard made a decision. The decision kept being repeated. Eventually it became a rule.
— Which I myself had forgotten, — Reinhard said.
— Yes.
The next line:
PROBLEM → LOCAL SOLUTION → LOCAL SYSTEM
— Thomas got tired of the chaos and made a board. Then he added the morning meeting. Then his own rules.
Klaus nodded.
— And the other site managers may have their own.
— Almost certainly.
— Is that bad?
— Not in itself.
Michael put the marker down.
— A living system always adapts. People see a problem and find a solution. That’s normal. More than that, without it, a company couldn’t develop at all.
— Then where’s the problem? — Reinhard asked.
— When local solutions start contradicting one another or the goals of the whole system.
He walked back to the board.
— Imagine an organism.
Klaus smirked.
— Here we go.
— Today, it’s an organism.
Reinhard smiled.
— Go on.
— The heart works in its own way. The liver in its own way. The lungs perform a completely different function. Nobody tries to force them all to do the same thing.
— Makes sense.
— But they are coordinated.
Michael connected several elements on the diagram.
— Blood moves through a common system. Nerve signals travel through a common system. A change in one part is taken into account by the others.
He turned to them.
— A mature company should not consist of identical parts. It should consist of different but coordinated parts.
Reinhard thought about it.
— So Thomas can keep his board.
— If it helps his part of the system perform its function and doesn’t create problems for others — why not?
— And if everyone invents their own?
— Then you need to determine where the freedom of the part ends and the need for alignment with the whole begins.
Klaus looked at Michael.
— Like with Markus’s authority.
— Exactly.
Michael took a fresh sheet.
— And this is where the architectural approach to management appears.
He wrote two words:
MANAGER — DECIDES
Below it:
ARCHITECT — CREATES THE CONDITIONS
Reinhard frowned.
— So a manager shouldn’t make decisions?
— Of course they should. The question is: which decisions?
Michael sat down opposite them.
— If a manager makes dozens of the same day-to-day decisions every day, they may be a very good manager. But the system still remains dependent on them.
Klaus looked at his father.
Reinhard noticed.
— Don’t start.
— I didn’t say anything.
Michael smiled.
— Imagine a well-run city.
— All right.
— The mayor doesn’t stand at every intersection telling every car when to go.
— I hope not.
— But someone designed the roads, signs, traffic lights, traffic rules, and the areas of responsibility of the different services.
Reinhard nodded.
— And if the system is designed well, thousands of people make their own decisions every day without calling the mayor.
— Exactly.
Michael pointed at the company diagram.
— That’s where I’m going with this. The task of a mature leader gradually changes. The bigger the company becomes, the less their main value should lie in personally being able to solve every problem.
— Then where should it lie?
— In the ability to build an environment in which other people can make the right decisions without their constant involvement.
Silence.
Reinhard looked at the third sheet.
— Sounds nice.
— And now for the uncomfortable part.
— I was waiting for it.
— It means that sometimes the best way to assess the quality of management is to see what happens when the manager isn’t there.
Klaus smirked.
— Let’s send him on vacation for a month.
— Very funny.
— I’m serious, — Michael said. — If the system starts grinding to a halt without one particular person, that says more than just how valuable that person is.
He paused.
— It reveals the system’s dependency.
Reinhard stopped smiling.
— And you think everything here depends on me?
— No.
The answer was calm.
— I think today we saw several dependencies like that. But it’s too early to draw conclusions about the entire company.
— Good.
— And we also saw the opposite.
— What?
— Thomas.
Klaus nodded.
— His system works almost without us.
— Exactly.
Michael walked back to the board.
— So architecture is not about trying to centralize everything.
He wrote:
DON’T CONTROL EVERYTHING.
Below it:
DON’T LET EVERYTHING GO.
And between them:
ALIGN THE PARTS.
— In my view, that is one of the main tasks.
Reinhard looked at the three lines for a while.
— So the company has simply outgrown what we built back then?
Michael thought about it.
— I’d put it a little differently.
He looked at the first diagram.
— You built a system that suited a company of a certain size and a certain stage of development.
Then he looked at the third.
— The company changed. More people. More projects. More connections. More decisions. But part of the architecture remained the same.
— Like that road from the village, — Klaus said.
Michael looked at him.
— Exactly.
Reinhard shifted his gaze to his son.
— What road?
— Long story.
— He’s already speaking in analogies himself, — Michael said.
— He caught it.
Klaus smiled.
But Reinhard became serious again.
— All right.
He stood up and walked over to the diagram.
He studied it for a few seconds.
— Let’s say we now understand that this is how the company is actually structured.
He pointed at the third sheet.
— How do we understand what it should look like?
Michael didn’t answer immediately.
But this time the pause wasn’t mysterious.
He was genuinely thinking about the question.
— To do that, we’ll need to take one more step.
— What step?
— Until now, we’ve mostly been looking inside the company.
— And?
— But you can’t design architecture without understanding why the system exists and what it must be able to do.
Reinhard frowned.
— Make money.
— Of course.
— Then what else?
Michael looked at him.
— That’s what we have to find out.
Klaus smirked.
— Again?
— No. I can already give you a dozen attractive goals: profit, quality, speed, customers, employees, resilience.
He shook his head.
— But those would be my answers. Not your company’s answers.
Reinhard thought about it.
Michael continued:
— An architect doesn’t begin designing a house by asking where to put a wall.
He took a blank sheet.
— First, he asks: who will live here, and what is this house for?
He placed the sheet beside the three diagrams.
Completely blank.
— Only then does he decide what walls are needed at all.
Outside, it was slowly getting dark.
Only a few cars remained in the parking lot.
In the corridor, Anna switched off the light.
Reinhard was still looking at the blank sheet.
— So tomorrow we’re going to figure out why my company exists?
Michael smiled.
— I’m afraid the question will be a little more difficult than that.
— What question?
Michael looked at the diagram they had spent the whole day building.
— What must the company become in order to fulfill its purpose without requiring constant heroics from the people inside it?
Reinhard said nothing.
Neither did Klaus.
Three images of the same company hung on the wall in front of them.
The one Reinhard had once built.
The one Klaus saw.
And the one that had emerged on its own.
Next to them lay a fourth sheet.
Blank.
There wasn’t a single line on it yet.
Because for the first time, they were not about to discover the architecture of the past.
They were going to design the architecture of the future.