Stepping out of university and into the working world can feel like stepping into fog. The path ahead is unclear, rejections feel personal, the job market seems harsh, and everywhere you turn someone is talking about how AI might replace your skills. If you’re feeling lost, you’re not alone, and more importantly, there is a way forward. As someone with over ten years of experience navigating technology, teams, and the ups and downs of multiple industries, here’s the advice I would give you, my mentee.

The tokenisation of money market funds (MMFs) has shifted from speculative pilots to a strategic transformation led by the world’s largest asset managers. Firms like BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton and others are no longer experimenting; they are actively deploying tokenised fund structures to bring institutional liquidity onto blockchain networks. What once seemed experimental is now becoming an infrastructural layer for global cash management, driven by rising interest rates, improved custody solutions, and a maturing technological stack that blends traditional finance with programmable digital assets.

As enterprise architects, we spend much of our time shaping the future state of an organisation, its business capabilities, its technology landscape, and its operating model. Yet in the rush to design target architectures, many of us forget the most critical blueprint: the one for ourselves. Becoming the architect our organisation truly needs is not about titles, frameworks, or artefacts. It begins with defining, and deliberately inhabiting, our ideal professional self.

As enterprise architects, we often gravitate toward the things we can control, frameworks, technical depth, governance, and execution. These are tangible, measurable, and deeply satisfying to master. But if your “career bank account” is full of expertise and achievements while the relationship column stays empty, you risk becoming an architectural hermit: highly skilled, highly driven, yet disconnected from the very people who determine the success of your work. Our role is inherently connective. We bridge teams, align technology with business intent, and influence direction. Yet the relationship-building aspect of our work is often overlooked or undervalued. We invest heavily in developing skills, but far too little in the human networks that give those skills real impact.

In the world of enterprise architecture, we often speak in terms of systems, integrations, dependencies, and capabilities. Yet the most defining architecture we build throughout our careers is not found in a blueprint or a solution design. It is the architecture of relationships. The modern workplace is volatile. One day you may be leading a major transformation program; the next day, market shifts or organisational restructuring may force you to start again. Global instability, economic uncertainty, and technological disruption all remind us of a timeless truth: your real career capital is who you know, what you can do, how you show up, and how hard you are willing to try.

Achieving strategic goals is often framed as a grand pursuit, a bold vision, a multi-year transformation, a sweeping program to reshape the organization. Yet, in practice, strategy rarely fails because the vision is unclear. It fails because the path between the present and the future is too abstract for people to act on. Leaders speak in outcomes; teams operate in tasks. The gap between the two is where momentum is lost.

The role of the Enterprise Architect (EA) sits at the intersection of business strategy, technology direction, and organizational change. Yet when it comes to defining goals and KPIs, many organizations struggle to articulate what success looks like. Unlike delivery teams where progress is easily measured in terms of completed tasks or shipped features, the EA operates primarily in the domain of outcomes. These outcomes are multi-dimensional, interdependent, and influenced by forces well beyond the architect’s direct span of control. The value of the EA is real, but it is often indirect, systemic, and revealed over time.

Cloud has fundamentally changed how organizations consume technology. In the traditional IT world, engineers would submit infrastructure requests that flowed through long procurement cycles. Capacity was purchased upfront, often with estimates based on peak demand, and the result was frequently over-provisioned resources that sat idle. Cost was predictable, but it was also disconnected from actual usage and the pace of innovation was slowed by waiting for hardware approvals and manual provisioning.

This year, I returned to New Asia College at the Chinese University of Hong Kong as a mentor in the Mentorship Programme. More than a decade has passed since I graduated in 2012, yet walking back onto campus still feels familiar and different at the same time. During my student years, I received support, guidance, and encouragement from professors, seniors, and alumni. Now, it feels meaningful to give back and to walk alongside younger students who may be feeling uncertain about their direction in life, stressed about academic expectations, or anxious about the future.

In many large organizations, it has become almost instinctive to bring in external consulting firms whenever challenges arise. Firms like Accenture, Deloitte, or PwC arrive with polished slide decks, ready-made frameworks, and a promise of quick impact. And indeed, they often deliver rapid results. But the pace at which these “wins” are achieved, and the incentive models that underpin them, can lead to deeper structural issues that only surface after the consultants have already moved on.