The Integrating, Cross-Functional Value Creating Architect (VCA)
A traditional manager might not understand the term Value Creating Architect (VCA). Toyota term Chief Engineer or “Entrepreneur System Designer”, ESD, was first coined by Allen Word to designate the person responsible for value creation throughout the process, who is therefore attached to the product of the process rather than to each stage in the mechanism that creates the activities in the process.
The VCA is a change leader who sets a system encompassing a wide variety of qualities, including initiative, design, architecture and production, in motion. The process of organizational change is intended to disrupt the current order – that is, to change the traditional view of management over a gradual evolutionary process. Thus, the existing standard is necessarily the basis for the construction of the entire process. Leading organizational change can be compared to building a series of stable standards that will serve as steps on the climb up a steep incline; it is a process of designing an up to date view of management mindset that can adapt itself to the changing conditions of the marketplace.
As a change agent. the VCA must have deep familiarity with formal, informal and political organizational systems, as well as high sensitivity and strong communication skills.
The VCA-system is intended to bridge the tension and inherent contradiction between the two qualities that are essential for sustainable business success: increasing specialization, expertise and professionalism, which conflicts with operational and conceptual flexibility and agility, which includes the ability to create a variety of forms of expertise in the process of creating value for the customer.
This poses a challenge: how to stay innovative while continuing to focus on craftsmanship while working across many different functional units, parts distribution centers, and suppliers. For all of these reasons and more, it is difficult for any company to gain a competitive edge. Creating this edge depends on the ability to remain flexible enough to continue to create value for the customer, to truly listen to what people want, and to provide the identity to which they aspire.
It is up to the VCA to bring out the best skills and creativity in others. As Jim Morgan, the author of “Designing the Future,” has put it, “It takes a lot of conflict to make a great product. And [as VCA], your ability to embrace that conflict in a structured and positive way is a part of the key to success.” If the balance between stability and flexibility is what makes a good work process, perhaps it is the right mix of fierce responsibility and genuine openness that makes a good leader.
Are we also ready to join the development and design of the system of the VCA in our organizations, equipped with the tools used to develop an LPPD product in our backpacks?
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