The New Key Players: The Architect
The Connected Generation Podcast: The New Key Players: The Architect, Episode 62 
In our fifth and final segment of our five-part series on the New Key Players, we look at the role of the Architect—the person within the brand that draws the blueprints for relationships and communication. In the wake of Web 2.0 (a term coined by Tim O’Reilly), organizations of every shape and size are in need of an architect that can leverage existing technologies or build an infrastructure that supports the internal and/or external communication and collaboration of a brand community.
The architect’s position within a business is to turn a one-way monologue (talking at consumers or employees) into a two-way conversation by creating architectures where users can communicate, participate and connect with the brand and/or each other.
Excerpt from Mind Your X’s and Y’s:
The Architect
These essential players build structures and environments that encourage participation. Architects make sure that everything is simple, clean, easy, useful and fun. In many cases, architects are brilliant with new media or technology, but they are never mere server room hobbits. They create innovative ways for people to enjoy the new marketplace.
Architects need to work with every team member at some stage in the game. Their guiding purpose is to make sure that things actually function as planned. They suggest adjustments and ways to improve the brand at every juncture. These logical thinkers are specific and highly detail-oriented—nothing is too small or insignificant to tackle.
Rarely do architects crave the spotlight, but they are wonderful at bringing out the best in others and love to teach new skills. They think carefully about what will enable their friends and colleagues to perform with maximum results. Architects are usually not out to change the world (or the brand), but they know how to put the pieces together. For them, it’s all about coordination.
Architects’ core competencies include:
• teaching
• training
• adjusting
• tweaking
• coordinating
• planning
• helping
• developing
• fixing
As children, architects were:
• Behind-the-scenes organizers who figured out how to pull off the Halloween costume dance or make the cafeteria food better.
• Not the public face of get-togethers or projects, but the ones who called everyone, put the teams together and organized the baseball games on Saturday afternoon.
• Created environments that would help people achieve their goals. If four girls arrived at the ball diamond, the architect decided how to involve them and still keep the boys happy.
• Calm realists who showed you how to play tether ball or explained the double Dutch jump rope game.
• Imaginative problem solvers who turned the abandoned lot into a skateboard park.
• Masters of course correction and restructuring, who figured out why the tree house was sagging and mobilized both parents and kids to fix the problem.
Architects three-question toolkit:
• What will make this work even better?
• How can we bridge all these different worlds?
• What will be the best way to help people thrive?
This post was written by Cassie Pruett
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