In every organization, there are individuals whose expertise, drive, and creativity make them stand out – true superheroes in their domains. But even the most powerful heroes need a leader, a mission, and a shared purpose. When one leads of a team of high-performing solution architects, for example, it isn’t enough to just manage talent – one must orchestrate it.

And in this session, I’ll walk you through how we do this for our Architecture team at Swisscard. Here are 3 intended key-takeaways from the talk:

🧠1. Structured Debate Fuels Innovation

“Even superheroes need a sparring ring.”

Every week, we have our Architecture Arena (although I would have preferred Fight Club) and this is more than a meeting—it’s a ritual of intellectual rigor. It creates a safe space for challenging ideas, refining solutions, and sharpening strategic alignment. This cultivates a culture where debate is not dissent, but a driver of excellence. Here, we challenge ideas, not individuals, and coach each other to always return to shared principles, like enterprise architecture and IT Strategy.

🧭 2. Decisions Are Anchored in Governance

“Power without protocol is chaos.”

The outcomes of our Arena facilitate course correction and then it all comes together in our Technology Board – which formalizes decision-making, ensuring that outcomes are traceable, justified, and aligned with enterprise architecture. This governance model empowers autonomy while maintaining architectural integrity. Formal decision protocols protect innovation from becoming fragmentation. Here, governance is not overdone and is a framework that encourages freedom, not a constraint.

🗣️ 3. One Voice, Many Minds

“We debate in the arena, but we speak as one.”

Our team’s unity in external communication is a hallmark of mature leadership. It builds trust across the organization and reinforces our credibility. Our team showcases how internal diversity of thought can coexist with external unity of message. We align before we amplify.

And these aspects that I’ve highlighted above enable Architecture to have a high impact across value-streams and to be far more integrated than ever before into our Agile processes. This enables us to scale our intelligent enterprise with efficiency and sustainability, as we sprint towards the battles, uncertainties and challenges that lie ahead.