“The interview process never tested for that.”

Mario Michaels said it almost in passing when he joined me on Whatever Next? Unplugged, one of the first guests on the show. Mario runs Synaxia Group and spends his days putting people into transformation programmes, from CIOs and CTOs down to architects and engineers. He was describing something he has watched happen more than once: organisations bringing in technically exceptional architects who failed within a year, “not because they couldn’t do the work”, but because the role needed influence and trust building, and nobody had checked for either.

The meeting where the phones came out

I have worked with architects who were so impressive technically that they couldn’t help but share that technical knowledge with stakeholders. In key meetings they would spend too much time describing the technical integration layer. So detailed and so intense that they hadn’t spotted the audience had started looking at their phones.

You will know that meeting. The explanation is still going, the diagram is still on the screen, and around the table people are becoming more and more disinterested. Nobody says anything. Nobody ever does. It is one of the things nobody says in the steering group: we stopped listening a while ago.

And in that moment the architect has lost the room. With it, they have lost the ability to influence the key decisions, the very decisions they were brought in to shape.

They were right about the integration layer. It mattered. The audience got it five minutes ago. The difference would have been made if they had moved on to the next slide right then, when they got it.

We hire for what it says on the tin

Mario’s point is that most hiring is set up to produce exactly this architect. In public, he said, everyone wants someone who can sit with a CEO and explain a platform decision in 30 seconds, then go back to the engineers and hold the line. Then you look at who actually gets hired, and it is weighted heavily towards technical credentials and delivery track record. In his words, “there’s a gap between what leaders say they want and what the actual hiring process actually rewards.”

He was candid about why. Programmes drift. Boards start asking uncomfortable questions about delivery. Stakeholders lose confidence. The leader under pressure reaches for the fix that is easiest to defend, a hire with the right skills on paper. “So they frame it as a skills problem because that’s the easiest way to describe it.” Like Dulux, as Mario put it, it does what it says on the tin.

The trouble is what sits underneath. Mario sees leaders “trying to solve leadership or an alignment problem with head count.” If the architecture isn’t landing with the business because of governance, competing priorities or no real executive sponsor, another hire just adds to it. And if that hire was chosen for depth rather than influence, they walk into the same meeting, open the same diagram and lose the same room.

AI is pulling the pendulum further towards the technical. Everyone wants AI native design and platform experience, and as I said in the episode, we are all only as experienced in AI as AI is old, not as old as our careers. So I asked Mario whether people turn up with both sides, or turn up technical and, because they were born human, hope the human side is going to be enough. His answer: “more often than not, no.”

Go and do a sales course

Then, just as I was thanking him for being on the show, Mario came back. “Sorry, one thing I did forget actually.” His advice for anyone technical: “go and do a sales course because it is the most underrated skill.”

A sales course isn’t where I would have started. But I see Mario’s point. It’s relationship. It’s listening to what matters. It’s understanding the what’s in it for them. That is exactly what the architect in my meeting was missing. They had the answer. They didn’t have the room. If that is what a sales course would bring, then absolutely.

Mario put it in recruiter’s terms: ask the right questions, build long term relationships, build trust and credibility. And he was clear that this is the part no technology will take off our hands. “No one’s ever going to be able to do that with AI.”

What it costs, and what to do on Monday

The cost is quiet, which is why it is so easy to miss. The business case is approved. The architect is technically right. The decision still goes the other way, or doesn’t get made at all, and the value the architecture was meant to protect slowly leaks out of the programme. Nobody writes it down as a people problem. It gets logged as a delay, a scope change, or a hire that didn’t work out.

So on Monday, watch your next steering group differently. Don’t only watch the slides. Watch the phones. Notice the moment attention goes, and who notices it with you.

If you are hiring, take one of Mario’s questions into the interview. Don’t just ask what they recommended. Ask what they decided against and why, and listen for whether they talk about the people in the room or only the platform.

If you are the architect, watch for the moment the room gets it, and stop there.

They already got it. Move on to the next slide.

Whatever next?

You can hear the full conversation with Mario Michaels on Whatever Next? Unplugged.