EA and enterprise politics

Much of the EA work is around enterprise politics. Almost every decision that we’ve made in each and every architecture process is some who connected to politics. Many books and articles suggest that most of the enterprise architecture process should be lead by champion from the enterprise but my experience teach me that due to those politics external consultant can help a lot with politics. There is couple of things that could help external consultant t lead such a process;

1)      He isn’t seen by workers as belong to one of the groups inside the enterprise. Every enterprise got it own political parties. If one is belong to one party, usually others from opposed parties won’t be willing to cooperate with him. For “some reasons” external consultant free from such scenarios and can easily reach to a consensus between different parties.

2)      Managers tend to listen more carefully to external consultant then to workers. I don’t have clear explanation for this but I’ve seen it happened more then once. Where employee failed to convince executives, as external consultant I succeed doing it. It’s not that I used other technique or arguments then the employees do, I’ve done exactly what they have told me.

I just want to clarify, I don’t think that external consultant is a replacement to enterprise champion but I think that consultant can be a major force in the EA effort.