Great questions/points. To some extent, "you can lead the horse to water but you can't make him drink." In the case if the terrible architect, your big problem

Great questions/points. To some extent, "you can lead the horse to water but you can't make him drink." In the case if the terrible architect, your big problem was that he didn't want to change / had his head up his ass / didn't see the problem. If you are a peer, there's not much you can do in this case. If you're a friend, you can try to persuade him of the negative impact this is having on him: eg "you know how you always struggle to get your ideas implemented? This is because people have a hard time following you, so your good ideas die on the vine. Do you see that and does that bother you?" If you are his manager, then you can make this more of a performance issue "as an architect, you are expected to clearly communicate solutions and you're not doing that." At the end of the day there's a meta question. Does your company value people who are introspective and will want to evolve? If the answer is yes, they will screen for that in interviews and have it be part of the company culture (so the terrible architect would either not pass the interview because he didn't come across as self aware or he's be pressured to evolve by the culture where everyone else is trying to do better.) If your company doesn't value these traits then you'll end up with people who don't think their shit thinks and that's hard!