Architect operations

An Architect is an employee who holds the Architect badge (150% Readiness) for a specific Responsibility. Like Coach, Architect is a badge level for one Responsibility, not a job title or organizational role.

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What an Architect does

For each Responsibility you hold the Architect badge for, you have three connected duties:

1. Create and maintain the institutional knowledge for the Responsibility
2. Train and certify Coaches, issuing the Coach badge (125%), to increase training and inspection capacity
3. Act as a Coach when needed, to fill inspection capacity directly

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Institutional knowledge

Institutional knowledge is what an employee needs to perform the Responsibility, and what a Coach uses to evaluate that performance. You capture it in two forms:

• Short videos
• Short knowledge articles

Two operational tools come from that knowledge:

• Quizzes: used by the employee to study and self-assess before requesting inspection
• Inspection Protocols: used by the Coach during inspection to evaluate the employee’s knowledge, abilities, and behavior

That’s why the Architect badge represents 150% Readiness: you don’t just do the work, you shape how everyone else learns it and is evaluated on it.

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What “maintain” means

Maintaining institutional knowledge is ongoing, not a one-time task. As an Architect you:

• Write knowledge articles clearly enough that any employee can prepare from them
• Record short videos that show how the work is done well
• Keep Quizzes aligned with the current knowledge
• Keep the Inspection Protocol aligned with the current standard
• Update all of the above when the work, the tools, or the expectations change
• Act on feedback from Coaches and employees about clarity, accuracy, and applicability

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Training and certifying Coaches

When an employee has reached Proficient (100%) for the Responsibility and is ready to learn how to evaluate others, you train them in the institutional knowledge and the Inspection Protocol, then certify them by issuing the Coach badge (125%). Certifying Coaches increases training and inspection capacity. One Architect can support far more employees through a network of Coaches than by inspecting everyone personally.

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Acting as a Coach

The Architect badge sits above the Coach badge on the Badge Ladder, so you also have Coach abilities for the Responsibility. Use them when Certified Coaches can’t keep up with inspection demand: step in and inspect employees directly, following the same process described in Inspecting a Responsibility (as a Coach).

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The dual role at a glance

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Becoming an Architect

Becoming an Architect takes two things:

• Subject matter expertise in the Responsibility
• Willingness to create and maintain the institutional knowledge

The Architect badge is issued by an administrator, not earned through inspection. If you’d like to become an Architect for a Responsibility, talk to your exIQtive administrator. For the first Architect of a Responsibility in a new organization, naming one is often part of the initial rollout, sometimes with outside expertise. See Keys for success.

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The Architect view

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Maintaining institutional knowledge

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Certifying a Coach

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Multiple Architects per Responsibility

An organization can have more than one Architect for a Responsibility. That’s healthy for high-stakes or widely used Responsibilities: it spreads the work of maintaining knowledge and certifying Coaches, and prevents bottlenecks. Multiple Architects usually collaborate on the institutional knowledge, since the Inspection Protocol and Quizzes are the shared definition of what “ready” means.

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If an Architect badge is removed

If an employee loses their Architect badge for a Responsibility:

• They keep their Coach badge (if any), so they can still inspect
• They keep their Proficient badge, so they can still do the work
• They can no longer certify new Coaches for that Responsibility
• Coach badges and other badges they issued stay in place
• An administrator can issue the Architect badge to someone else to maintain the institutional knowledge, if needed

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Rules and constraints

• To act as an Architect for a Responsibility, you must hold the Architect badge (150%) for that Responsibility
• An Architect maintains the institutional knowledge, Quizzes, and Inspection Protocol for the Responsibility
• An Architect cannot certify themselves
• An Architect can issue Apprentice, Proficient, and Coach badges. Architect badges are issued by an administrator, not by another Architect
• Every Architect action is auditable: each knowledge update, Coach certification, and inspection records who did it and when

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Common questions

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