This question came to me from Bala Somasundaram via LinkedIn, and is being reposted with author's permission

Aleks,

Read your blog post on Business Operating Model mismatch during M&A and how EA/Capabilities can help iron out some of the persistent problems.

I wanted to discuss with you on other point. As mentioned in the book EA as Strategy book, some of the models - for e.g. - Diversified - models are able to grow inorganically by making mergers/acquisitions - especially large ones. They are clearly profitable and clearly growing year-on-year. But, they dont necessarily do EA-led planning or treat IT as their competitive advantage. [Am sure many leading businesses/CEOs dont treat IT as their partners, instead a utility].

In the book, authors have mentioned that such companies would rely on their pure 'management' capabilities rather than architecture capabilities.

So, what do you think, from your perspective that would make a case for EA in such operating models?

There are two parts to the answer - first, when we released our Enterprise Architecture Capability Map into the wild, one of the accompanying caveats was that maturity of each capability would be dependent on several factors, including Business Operating Model (both as-is and to-be.) Second part of the answer is done in a roundabout through application of Appropriate Use for Enterprise Architecture - full EA is of limited value in such context, however, parts of what EA should be responsible for can be leveraged for competitive advantage as detailed in my Object Management Group presentation.

AAB