Elicitation...and Conflict!

I had the pleasure to present and share with a host of other industry leaders and flat out fantastic and enthusiastic individuals some thoughts on Real World Elicitation this month in Orlando at the Project Summit*Business Analysis World conference.  Talking about elicitation, I shared thoughts on how facilitation focuses on making it easier for others, helping someone else get to a place of adding value.  One of the things that often comes up is conflict.  A dirty word to some and a treasure box to others!!

Are you a person who runs and hides from conflict?  Or scared to call that meeting because of that over powering stakeholder who does not get the idea of 'consensus'?  Conflict lets you know that you've found the right mark as if people get challenging, then that means they care.  You have found something they are passionate enough to get motivated on - so you should PURSUE it!  No hiding here for fearless BA super heroes!

One of the best things you can do with conflict is to turn it from a "me versus you" scenario to an "us versus it" scenario.  Take the conflict and throw it on the wall (yes the topic here, it's not a person!) - white board works great!  I love to take an idea, concept or discussion point and write it on the wall big so that we - the whole team, those in the room, online and in email - have something to now attack with that same passion that got us worked up in the first place.  You and I now sit and TOGETHER talk about how you and I will overcome the obstacle.  Now it is you and me figuring out a solution together that brings the business value we are seeking.  Now the true passion brings out energy and a fire that helps us all be super heroes to overcome the challenge!

Love to hear further ideas on dealing with conflict!  Check me out on Twitter @jamie_champagne to see all my conference highlights as well as other's thoughts!

Interested in learning more about business analysis, the value it brings and the techniques to be successful?  Join me in one of the upcoming classes - sign up here!

Building Leadership Skills on Project Teams

I recently had the pleasure of sharing this as a presentation at PMI HNL Professional Development Day 2015 and enjoyed the feedback that I've incorporated into this posting to continue to share and build on thoughts that makes us successful when working with people!

If you want a different outcome, ask yourself what are you doing differently to achieve this outcome.

Requirements

Understand that project teams are made up with people of diverse experience & expertise; while valuable to the team, realize that they each take a different view of the challenge at hand

Physically displaying items – whether in pictures of end result or large words posted on the wall – help clarify and ensure everyone is literally on the same page.

Consider “Draw the Pig” icebreaker – instructions available at:  http://www.whiteman.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-130408-056.pdf  

Risk

Draw out the potential outcomes (comic strips are great for actions) – how likely are they to occur?  Are they worth prioritizing? 

Getting Feedback

Post ideas on a large easel sheet of paper (one idea per page) and post in a common area.  Leave markers and encourage people to comment over a few days.  Great for identifying what’s in and out of scope!

Listening

Listening is about asking the right QUESTIONS (not the right answers – if you knew the answer, why are you asking the question?)

Listen to all the information the person shares versus focusing on just what you want to hear – you may miss out on valuable information!

Get a scribe – someone NOT a stakeholder to take notes so that you may engage with your stakeholders.  Then review afterwards with the scribe and highlight key insights from your listening.

Process Definition

How a process works is sometimes better to see in person.  If you can’t physically see the action then act it out (think charades!). 

Brainstorming

Use the “Red Cup” or other object – one idea per person, must say an idea before passing, can only say one idea and continue for a short amount of time with a hard time limit (push people to go faster!) – focus is on QUANTITY not quality.  It removes the “analysis paralysis” by focusing on the object while getting equal participation by all, regardless of position or expertise.  There are no right or wrong answers, just ideas to grow on.

     Question from presentation: Brainstorming in this way could still allow influence on others - YES!  Participants, even though the focus is on equal pariticipation by all, could still be influencing others; however, the goal of brainstorming is quantity.  If you're more focused on not influencing, then anonymous techniques (via email and a facilitator) or non-verbal techniques (using post-its on a wall) may be preferred.  Adjust to your situation!

Prototyping

Build something a user can interact with – SHOW what the envisioned end result is, do not tell them.  Give them something to interact with.

Prioritizing

Write out each item on a post-it, one per post-it.  Then provide stakeholders with poker chips (or other voting item) and have them vote.  They can place as many as they want on each, but no “buying” more.                                                     

Just TRY it!  And build on Lessons Learned!

Finding Inspiration in Speech

I took a moment the other day to attend the Bankcorp Toastmasters meeting on my lunch hour.  I was fortunate enough to be a member during my employment at Bank of Hawaii and felt excited and almost a little nervous to attend.

Nervous you say?  Things always change and think that there's a little uncertainty that always questions whether the good things are still there, those aspects you enjoyed, made you excited to be part of something bigger than your own self.

An hour later, with many smiles shared and even a few good laughs, I slowly made my way back to work with a hightened sense of energy pulsing through me. What I couldn't help feeling as I left the building on the beautiful afternoon was summed up in one word:

My hour was spent surrounded by a group of individuals who remain motivated to build something bigger and better out of not only themselves but also each other.  The passion they conducted their roles with overflowed to each and every audience member.  They share personal insights that speaks to the volume of trust within the small room.

And on top of that, their topics included ways of building the membership, the club, the business and even their own personal and family lives.  It's amazing how small activities that force you to reflect, challenge and push yourself to explore new horizons actually fosters this grass roots effort to boost the entire organization to a higher platform!

Often in my speeches I refer to an element of PASSION - everyone has some, the trick is to understand your passion and find an outlet where you can share it.  When you speak from the heart, you share your passion with others in a way that connects emotionally, not just mentally.  From here you have built the foundation for a great relationship with those other people.  Imagine if you infuse this into your daily activities, particularly the work place.  The BA that is passionate about helping others, understanding issues and overcoming obstacles, can be so positively energetic that business owners clamor for the BA's assistance.

How are you sharing your passion and building positive connections with others?

Spheres of Control, Influence and Control

Working on a team that includes Business Analysts, Project Managers and Software Developers, the sphere of responsibility can quickly grow out of control.  Like any team or organization, prioritization always represents a challenge and a great manager made an interesting thought when some discussion was being made:

"Consider your sphere of control, your sphere of influence and sphere of concern."

I loved this visual concept when thinking about priorities.   I found it a great way to reset myself. 

Think about the things you CAN do (whether you should or not is another thing to think about later) - these are things in your control.  If you can't change how the other team will react, what their priorities are, etc., then stop trying to control it.  Control what you can and prioritize that accordingly.  Then those things you're worrying about - consider what you can influence.  And then only focus on those items.  If you think you have no effect on the outcome, then save your time.  And then concern - what do you need to know so that you can best plan your actions for the future.  These thoughts are great when considering which meetings to attend.  Setup a meeting when you need action - control what you can and influence others to attend and contribute so that you can move on with your deliverables.  When responding to a meeting invite as what your level is for that meeting - control, influence, concern. 

And this can go both ways, especially when considering organizational structures.  A manager that chooses to attend a meeting may positively or negatively influence those attending. 

Everyone is given 24 hours in a day - it is up to you how you spend it, so prioritization gets to be a key component in your daily actions.  So remember what you can control, influence and are concerned about and see if this approach helps you streamline your day for more attention to higher priorities (like surfing! :) ).

What are your thoughts?

More Thoughts on BA's and Change

 
  As in prior posts of Words of Wisdom for BA's, I had summarized some further thoughts on leadership and managing change in the Business Analysis profession.  I figured this was a good "Monday morning food for thought" type of post such to charge you up ready for another week in the challenging world of business.

Comments and thoughts are welcomed and continue to lead change from wherever you find yourself!

More Words of Wisdom for BA's (Part 2 of 2)

Continuing on my last post regarding the amazing discussions taking place at Building Business Capability (BBC) Conference 2013, sponsored by the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), business analysts and other professionals continued to garner insights from discussions around change – incremental versus transformational.  Do you know the expected type of change demanded of the organization before you begin an engagement?  What are their expectations around timeframes, costs and impact?  Small scopes might imply incremental change, leaving harder challenges for later as showing any progress would be more meaningful than exists today.  Larger scopes coming from the top down around new visions and transformations refer to transformational changes that are more permanent.  These will take more time and cost, but go back to the objectives – what is the overall goal of the engagement and get the owners to understand that their objectives and expectations are going to need to match up to the time and resources required to get them there.  An interesting thought for those who love to capture processes – if the new process is so different from the current, only spend limited time documenting the current one as it will have little matter once the new process is in place.  Utilize your resources carefully such that they spend their time on the most valued activities on the critical path to success. 

Back to innovation, a great thought was shared that smart leadership should only create the container, the space for the activities to occur.  Limited boundaries keep things focused, but then allow all creativity to exist within that space HOW they go about implementing the process.  As long as objectives are met (the box you’ve given) the details should be trivial on the execution.  Knowledge workers will look to simplify their own lives and streamline operations into efficiency without being scripted by those unfamiliar with the process.  One can destroy innovation if they put too much pressure on the process versus delighting the customer, internal or external in the end solution.

And finally, consider your own role as a BA and what leadership skills you are sharing with your teams.  To help differentiate between a project manager and BA, often a whole debate in itself, consider how you present the value of your role outside the project.  Rather than focusing on scope, highlight how determining which projects should be undertaken is inherently more valuable to the organization.  Move from software to systems and how individual pieces and projects work together to support the overall business objectives.  The shift should be from requirements focus to becoming a visionary, innovator, strategist and leader.  These roles are so needed and ask any PM – I bet you often they have little time nor authority to consider the solution being put into place and are so driven by deadlines and narrow objectives that having a BA around to see before and after the project would be greatly welcomed!  A great thought I heard was make sure that a project isn’t just being done to satisfy a debate between two competing technologies.  Ask if the technology itself is even needed – that will solve the debate quickly!  But too often this occurs where two options are considered without holding true business value in the forefront, regardless of technology solution.

I love the closing thoughts that to improve your own BA skills, elicit requirements from those you work with on what they require from you.  We spend so much time on requirements definition we often forget ourselves.  Ask your stakeholders and use some of that input as guidelines or benchmarks and then seek opportunities to improve these skills.  Better execution of the old models is not enough, but encourage yourself to innovation and reinvent your approaches!  Know your own strengths and surround yourself with others with different strengths so that you become more diverse.  Remember, trust, an important part of relationships, is a two-way streak.  Ask yourself if you are worthy of the other person’s trust.  And a final note – people follow people who get things done.  Keep your word and use your energy and many others will follow willing to help!

Business Analysts Words of Wisdom (part 1 of 2)

    Last November, I had the exciting opportunity to not only attend, but even share my own experiences at the Building Business Capability (BBC) Conference 2013, sponsored by the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA).  There were so many wonderful sessions and engaging speakers, it was so hard trying to select which to attend!  In my own experience, certain key areas stood out to me: fostering innovation, facilitating change, leadership skills and collaboration and teamwork approaches.

     Keynote Marty Clarke gave an incredible presentation about “Avoiding Leadership Landmines” to kick off the conference.  He shared great lessons learned we could all benefit by heeding, such as avoiding managing the exception.  Ask yourself if you change a decision, reconsider an approach or completely redirect your strategy for the majority – the most probable outcomes – or are simply letting a one-in-a-million chance derail your hard work.  As he talked about meetings, being a leader – being the one to make a decision and say what everyone is thinking anyways – is not only what is needed, but also remains your job if you are the true leader.  And about these meetings…have as many as necessary and as few as required.  Too much is going on every day that communication at any level can not succumb to outside pressure.  While it may occur faster than ever, the nuances of proper grammar and respect cannot go out the window just because the method is faster.  The message in fact should be shorter and twice the clarity as before.  Consider your voicemails – avoid the endless message.  And emails need to be proofread before sending.  Spell check is NOT proofreading!!

    Focusing on Innovation, I really enjoyed the thoughts that asked us if we felt we do it on a regular basis or its just something that you set an hour of your time aside to do and then go back to your old habits.  Something that I’ve already applied in my work today was how to not only get new ideas but also eliminate the meeting multitasking.  Doing things differently will get you different results and if you want people to not be looking at their phones, get them involved with an activity.  Words and talking do not foster creativity and so facilitate a meeting differently if you want different outcomes.   When someone shares an idea, there are no “no’s” or “but’s” there’s only “and.”  Try next time, when someone proposes an idea, saying “Yes, and…” to get them to think through the idea rather than instantly pointing out the negative.  Give the idea a chance to marinate a little and the true seed of creativity may emerge!

(Part 1 of 2 - more to come next week...)

Levers of Innovation

I was SO incredibly fortunate to be able to share some thoughts for spirited discussion around change and organization development with the International Society of Organization Development.  Practitioners, professionals, students, researchers, educators, and excited minds interested in change all came together to share thoughts and build our awareness of the OD world and the passionate people who support and engage in the efforts!

When talking about change, working with organizations, what better place to start than what I find myself doing working with Innovation at Bank of Hawaii?!  Too often people hear 'innovation' in the financial industry and they remain stuck around the idea of technology - the mobile and online evolutions many of us use today.

But these very "innovations" are what's pushing the industry to look at things differently, asking 'How Might We' consider another way.  And with the ever-changing environment - regulations, economy and interest rates - coupled with competing against a 150-year old legacy of risk-adversion and security,  the  challenge quickly increases to avoid "becoming irrelevant." But how does one innovate if the competition hasn't created the product yet?  How can you be at the top of your market if the market isn't even existing?

I started considering that my role is not to create that 'end product' that's innovative, but rather my goal became to facilitate others to work, improve, change and consider new approaches such that when we look back, we would say "yeah, we're an innovative organization!"  So if this is my true role, then I began to look what 'levers' were out there that gets you do to something.  What makes you act?  What stops the person who does the same exercise everyday and simply reflect (assess)?  Then, what gets you over the barrier to try something?  And based on that attempt, not only take the feedback and modify, but then repeat the cycle?  These are how I defined levers.   

Too often we react to items - this is how we often see the action to try something new.  I love the example that you would not call budget analysts "innovative" in general, nor tell them to go "innovate the budget."  They're good analysts, they like the numbers black and white.  But what happens if you tell them to cut the budget by 20% across the organization?  Now you might get some innovative solutions as they talk to each other and consider options on how to remove that 20%!

While we can identify those things we react to, my goal would rather be prepared and act before we are forced to!  Avoid irrelevancy, we're proactively leading our charge into a successful future.  But this is going to take some re-assessing our current situation and approaching from a more holistic endeavor.  We need to expose our team to possibilities, get them trying new tools and being more customer focused than product/profit focused.  Consider how you can leverage the social rewards of employees thanking each other in ad hoc ways (vice the formal structure of management rewards).  Let's build an open and creative environment where we keep the boundaries of the business, but the team is free to try ideas and experiment with processes within the flexible arena of the organization.

There's something to understanding these levers and working with them so that you not only slowly move the entire culture, but you begin to make tracks in showing the complete turnaround into an innovative organizations.  And what's best is YOU didn't do it - you get the organization to change their ways!

Encourage Problem Sharing...but Always Bring Ideas with You

I love this article’s thoughts around ‘problem’ – “can bring any problem, as long as bring at least three ideas for a solution.” Encouraging sharing of challenges AND the ideas that surround them. And the ideas don’t have to be the best solution, just something to plant the seed. Many times these issues arise from those most involved with the work performed, yet they are so removed from the end source that it is hard for them to see a true solution. However, when you encourage them to share their ideas, you are getting end user feedback and insights that a ‘back office’ would never be appreciative of.

You ask someone why they perform a task the way they do and you get the answer “because I was told to” (often by a managing or senior person). This is NOT a bad answer, but perhaps the wrong question. Consider then if you asked the person next “if they could change anything about the process, what would it be an why.” If you’ve established some trust with this person, I’m sure they’ve envisioned many ideas on how to improve the process, create better quality while freeing up more of their time to innovate further.

How are you encouraging others to not just uncover areas of improvement but to encourage the generation of impactful ideas?
Read Adam Bryant's Interview with Jennifer Dulski, COO of Change.org, here.

It's Not What You Do, it's HOW You Do It

Attitude is everything!

In a few days, I've heard people tell me that they love my attitude, even one person "admired my positive attitude and upbeat optimism."  That only puts more spring into my step!  When you enjoy what you do it makes it easy to move forward, to press on in the face of opposition and overcome those barriers, innate or forced.

I just finished Tim Brown's Change by Design and how they use Design Thinking to change organization's approaches to create truly successful products, marketing campaigns, business strategies and even the organization themselves.  Have an open mind to consider What's Possible...being interested to TRY...being EXCITED to be part of a new idea - these ideas seemed to resonate as you read the stories of how IDEO looked at 'problems' and turned them into 'opportunities.'  After reading it, I considered my attitude and what are those elements that are critical to successful organizational change.

1. Understanding: With the Bank, we're focused on bottom lines, on the numbers, the revenue, the customer profitability - but what about the WHY?  There are people here for 30+ years - what makes their work so fascinating that they want to continue to do it day after day?  Listen to their stories - get their empathy and understand what appeals to them.  Find that idea and share it with them.

2. Motivate: Now you know their secrets - get them EXCITED!  They already like the concept, so continue to do anything that makes it seems exciting!  Take operations - day-to-day job, and now you're going to improve a process by making small changes.  The person still does the same job everyday, same results, but now they save themselves 10 minutes a day.  When you share this is 50 minutes a week, over 3 hours a month and then almost a full WEEK of work by the end of the first year - think how much other stuff you can do!  Now their skills are excited and ready and willing to be applied to the project.

3. Continue to Drive: We've all seen the exciting presentation, everyone all 'amped up' afterwards, but then not even a week later, things are back to how they were, no changes.  Your job as lead cheerleader is also to continue to drive to completion.  Don't let it languish, highlight those milestones and keep everyone moving!  And the biggest thing - don't be afraid to get your hands dirty!  Ask what you can do to help!  This only motivates others when they see you, busy as you are, wanting to help them!

4. Celebrate: Everything can be celebrated!  But it's that coming back and touching those points that people remember.  And celebrate in front of others!  You should always praise in public (remember the introverts and not over do it!), but more importantly do it often!  Not just when the project finishes but throughout the process.  Using people's names and celebrating their efforts is what's remembered that you'll have a loyal following for your next innovative effort!

Do you have other ways you keep that positive attitude and drive forward changes in your innovations?  Would love to hear the stories!