I n this episode of Strategy eXecution Unlocked, host Ben Chamberlain interviews Vernon Smith, a veteran Business and Enterprise Architecture leader, former global bank architecture head, and founder of Gartner-recognized EA tool vendor FIOS Insight.

Vernon traces his decades-long journey from early data and information roles in oil & gas and defense, through pioneering large-scale operating model and transformation programs, to building commercial EA tooling that bridged the gap between Business Architecture and traditional IT-centric Enterprise Architecture.

Key themes and takeaways:

• Business Architecture and Enterprise Architecture are two sides of the same coin: both describe the current and target state of the organization, but from different starting points (capability/value-stream vs. application/technology).

• In an ideal world, Business Architecture should lead Enterprise Architecture because capabilities, processes, and people drive technology requirements. In reality, many organizations (especially tech-heavy ones like banks) still start with an IT-first lens.

• Architecture (Business + Enterprise) provides the essential “bookends” for Strategy Execution: a clear current-state baseline and a well-defined target operating model. Without these, execution lacks direction and measurable impact.

• True mastery of Strategy Execution requires deep integration across multiple disciplines: Business/Enterprise Architecture, Strategic Portfolio Management, Project/Program Execution, and Change Management. These functions currently operate too independently, causing value leakage and duplicated effort.

• Executives often don’t yet feel the pain of poor Strategy Execution or even recognize it as a distinct, optimizable enterprise capability — it is still seen as “something that happens on the side” rather than part of the core production line.

• The future: Architecture must become more process-centric, tightly coupled with portfolio and execution tools, and capable of automatically generating actionable initiatives from architectural decisions. Only when architecture, planning, and execution are symbiotic will organizations stop treating these functions as overhead and start seeing them as direct value drivers.

Vernon and Ben agree: Strategy Execution is not the domain of any single discipline. Business and Enterprise Architecture are foundational — they define “what” the organization is and “what” it needs to become — but their full power is only unlocked when they are seamlessly integrated with the other critical processes that actually move the organization from current to target state.

A compelling call for architects, PMO leaders, portfolio managers, and change professionals to stop working in silos and start building the unified, enterprise-wide Strategy Execution engine that most organizations still lack.