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.

Innovation - Don't Undermine the Change!

A co-worker shared a great article from Harvard Business Revenue on the ways large corporations can undermine the innovation efforts. It definitely represents key things to consider as you work towards innovating within and through an organization, especially from an organization rooted in risk aversion and stability.

1. How you measure success – while a challenge for anyone venturing into new territory (I experienced it on asking others to even articulate what innovation means), defining something to represent a change in behavior, resources, priorities, etc. is a great way to see if there’s forward progress. Start small can be the simplest and easiest thing to do. We setup an area for employees to submit ideas and while there was argument whether we’ve had any successes today (only a few have been implemented); the fact that people were willing to voluntarily share their own ideas represents a success! Not to mention we have over 275 a year later! I would highlight the positive when there was doubt if we’d even get 3 ideas in the first month!

2. Return on Investment – are hard challenge in an expense-reduction environment, but again, start small. Can you test or prototype a piece of the idea and get immediate feedback? Doing something in a 1-3 month window for quick response, versus spending 12 months gathering data that may or may not come true, utilizes the capital in an efficient manner and easier to gain buy-in.

3. And yes – while I love the title of a Chief Innovation Officer – innovation should come from throughout the organization at all levels. Everyone innovating where they can with what they have leads up to larger, bigger changes.

4. “Radical Collaboration” - Working with LOTS of different people from different areas. Even if the idea is tailored to a specific work function, ask someone who is NOT part of that team for their thoughts. Not only will you might learn something new, but it also gives you practice on sharing your idea and why it is so important.

5. Physical space to see the evolution – innovation spaces and physical, tangible things that show not only innovations that produce results, but that say “See, we tried something and not sure what the result may be” are great at building support as they challenge existing practices in a solid manner. Anyone can argue with you about a good idea, but it becomes a whole lot harder of a rock to move if it’s been physically built.

6. Support – everyone looks to the boss to see if they agree. If they don’t, everyone is just paddling in their own direction. You need to see the support not just steering the boat with a given direction, but once it’s on course, getting in the back and helping to paddle just as hard if not harder as everyone else. Seeing this action will motivate everyone else even more than simply saying “you have my support” and residing in a penthouse office.

Some people say change is hard, but then I read a thought that change isn’t hard – we make a hundred changes every day: change your mind on what to wear today, change which direction you take to work due to traffic, change your mind and buy your lunch after you brought to the office, etc. It’s accepting the value of the change that can be the barrier, but without addressing all the above elements, little forward motion will occur. Thoughts and insights?

Measuring Success

I had the pleasure to share how "Barriers to Innovation" is actually a list of key items that Project Managers should consider as they move through their projects.  PMI Honolulu Chapter invited me to speak on what I'm seeing and learning in my role as Innovation Manager at Bank of Hawaii.  While many people gave me positive feedback on the presentation, my favorite was hearing that it forced them to not only think about their projects and the respective stakeholders, but to look at themselves and how they are conducting.  Nice to hear that you can share something worthwhile; however, good project managers they are, asked me a number of questions around metrics.  I know this is something both my team and myself struggle in the effort to report in a financial world that is rooted in metrics and numbers and it made me think about how we do quantify success.

One of the things I experienced in my course work in Organizational Change at HPU was that change is measured by the shift in priorities, resources and time. Changes that are to have a wider impact, enterprise effects and social and culture shifts are hard to articulate in the near term. However, if you measure where people spend their time before, during, and after changes made (and then continue to monitor even after projects have completed), do you notice differences? An idea that we need to innovate so that we do not become obsolete in an ever-changing world is easily understood by our organization. But those innovations may be little things that have long term impacts. My example would be 'willing to try' with not only the understanding but the acceptance that not all new ideas ventured will necessarily return positive benefits, but that's okay as long as we learn, adapt and move forward. As we cocmmunicate this mindset, we're not expecting all employees to suddenly start proposing million dollar projects from day one. However, to have the team mention one project that they tried but failed fast and failed hard at a team meeting is a first step. 6 months later, the attitudes are a little lighter as the team begins to each individually mention a small project from their respective areas that they struggled with and changed course based on the results. Then I hear at a different team meeting, outside my innovation space, the small discussion of not repeating an effort they tried last year due to poor results. I'm seeing that people have spent resources on items that may not have been the most successful. They're talking and spending time with projects that didn't succeed on the first shot. Now I'm measuring my culture shifts by these variances in the priorities, discussion and resources spent on projects compared to prior there was no time spent discussing 'failed' efforts, only the positive ones.

I thought this might be a good topic to share for feedback as it's not just innovation measures, but really, how do you create measures for any new process or product, that you have no baseline or even no benchmark to compare to, but at the same time you're in a business and expected to produce?