Tag: Training

Leadership Lessons: Implementing Change – Phase 4 – Create Desire to Change

Written by Peter de Jager on November 10, 2015. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Leadership Lessons: Implementing Change – Phase 4 – Create Desire to Change

Editor’s note: We will be showcasing each phase of Peter de Jager’s methodology in weekly posts. Click here for phase 1, phase 2, and phase 3. Check back every week to read the next phase.

“A body at rest will remain at rest until acted upon by an outside force.”

That’s as much an observation about people as it is about physics. If there are no outside forces, then nothing changes. Sometimes the ‘key’ to change is nothing more than making people aware of the outside forces. One of the downsides of the status quo is that it lulls us into a false sense of security and we need to be shaken awake in order to change.

What Problems exist in Status Quo?

Nothing is ever perfect, that includes the current status quo. The imperfections in the status quo, create points of leverage that can help move a change forward. What is it about the current situation that has been a well known hindrance in the past? How dissatisfied is the target audience with the status quo? What exactly causes that dissatisfaction? If you don’t know the answer, ask the target audience – they do, in great, exacting, painful detail.

What are the alternatives?

What alternatives are there to the current status quo? There is always more than one way to do things. Why did we choose this particular status quo? What other options did we have? What other options can we create? Does it really matter, in the long run, which option we choose? If not, if they are all relatively equal, why can’t the target audience choose which one they should move to?

What are personal Benefits to Changing?

Just as there are always problems with the current status quo, there will also be benefits in any new situation. It’s a useful exercise to help the target audience to list those personal benefits.

What problems would Change Solve?

Will the change being proposed solve existing problems? How? If not, why not? It is a mistake to think everyone involved in the change sees all the benefits of the change. It’s perhaps a tedious task to list the benefits, it’s also very beneficial to those who may not fully understand all the implications of the change. It’s difficult to communicate enough during change; it’s impossible to communicate ‘too much’.

What core values would Change reinforce?

What, out of everything the current status quo provides, will be reinforced by the proposed change? This is another way of communicating what will stay the same, only more so. This is surprisingly, a very powerful bit of information. People need stability, and knowing what won’t change in the coming months will offer more solace in the face of chaos than you might expect.

What opportunities would Change Create?

Change is not just about escaping problems in the existing status quo. It should also be about creating an environment of new opportunities. Do not assume the target audience can see those opportunities without being told, informed, communicated to etc. The primary task of the Change Inflictor is one of a communicator. Informing and re-informing people of what is going on and why.

How to Stop the Long-Winded: With Class

Written by Kupe Kupersmith on October 27, 2015. Posted in Articles.

I was on a call the other day with people from around the world. Usually, these calls are awesome. The fact that I get to work with people from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Italy, and beyond is amazing to me. Life is not always awesome, though.

This last call was not fun. Apparently I was one of those long-winded people. A reaction from the meeting chair ended up hurting my feelings. I felt shut down. I stopped sharing my ideas. Some of you may be saying, “good, you and the other long-winded people need to keep quiet for a while.” Maybe you have a point. The short term goal of shutting me up moved our agenda along. The long-term impact was I stopped providing ideas in the meeting. That is not a good thing.

What happened was we were discussing a topic and asked to provide questions if we had one. I had a question, so I started in. My question was not yet well formed. I started talking trying to formulate the question. I am an extrovert, so I talk to think. At some point during my dissertation, the chair of the meeting piped in “Kupe, Kupe, Kupe!” I don’t know maybe there were 10 Kupes before he got my attention. I was trying to talk fast so I could get to my question. I was not rambling for the sake of rambling, I promise! I finally stopped and he said, “Kupe, you are going on and on, do you have a question? WHAT is your question?” That’s when my feeling got hurt, that’s when I stopped talking out loud and said “whatever” in my internal voice. I think I even threw up the “Whatever” sign. You know, making a “W” with your 2 hands. We didn’t have video, he couldn’t see me. I’m 44, but I can still act like a child! I ended up asking a question. But you could hear a new tone in my voice. I became disengaged. For the rest of the meeting, I shut down.

I know some of you are saying to yourselves, “jeez Kupe, man up. We need to have thicker skin than that.” Believe me, I know. I do have pretty thick skin. My kids say that they love that I don’t care what others think. The context there is I do goofy things trying to embarrass them. Needless to say, I am very comfortable with who I am, my thoughts and beliefs and don’t get my feelings hurt often.

The point is, even people with the thickest skin can get their feelings hurt or get defensive. You need to make sure you are facilitating meetings where people feel they have input. Where they feel comfortable sharing their thoughts. The goal is buy-in. I talk about this more in a post titled “Your goal is not to shut people down just for the sake of sticking to an agenda.”

There is a real problem here. You need to make people feel comfortable sharing their thoughts. You also only have so much time. The long-winded are a challenge. The ones that don’t speak are a challenge too, but they don’t take up any time. What are you to do?

In a face-to-face situation, peer pressure comes into play. When you have a long-winded person going on and on, people start shifting in their chairs, looking at their phones, etc. People start to see their team’s reactions and may adjust. In a remote session that peer pressure is gone. Many people are on mute and you don’t see anyone. It actually makes the long-winded even longer-winded because they are not getting feedback. In my case, I was not sure people on the call were understanding where I was going with my thoughts, so I kept going. That is until the rude “KUPE” to the tenth power came from the chair.

Some would say, it’s all about relationships. If you have a good relationship with the people you work with, then you can be less politically correct. I am a huge believer in relationships and promote it all the time. Even if you have great relationships with others, you need to be careful. I have a great relationship with the chair of this meeting. I have a really good relationship with the others on the call. In my situation, the chair did need to stop me. In hindsight, I was really long-winded. In many of your meetings there may be a person or two that needs to be stopped.

Is there a better way than coming across as abrasive? Is there a way to do this without hurting others feelings? More importantly, is there a way that does not stop engagement from others?

My tip is don’t leave it up to the person running the meeting. That puts all of the pressure on one person to keep a meeting running smoothly. Eventually, that person snaps and comes out with a statement that can shut down the talker. It needs to be clear in the meeting that everyone has the right/ability to get the long-winded to wrap up. Come up with a code word or sound. When that sound is made or word spoken the talker needs to wrap it up. This can be used for face-to-face meetings too, although it is critical for remote meetings. Make sure everyone knows it is not personal. It’s about making meetings more efficient.

Don Palmer from The Dallas Federal Reserve Bank recently told me about an analogy he used to show his executives the effect of showing displeasure when project managers present project status reports that included issues. He refers to it as hitting the goalie. Don explained there is a rule in hockey that prohibits players from hitting the opposing team’s goalie. This originates from not having many people want to play goalie. Kids want to play offensive, goal-scoring positions. So, there were not a lot of goalies out there from which to choose. If a team hit the goalie and the goalie was injured, teams would have to go to a backup goalie. Then if the backup goalie was injured, there was no one else left to play the position. This would completely alter games. In the project status world, Don explained if you badgered the project manager for bringing up issues during status reporting, PMs would begin to present all positive results during the project. Then in the end the projects would fail because they were hiding the truth all along to avoid the public badgering. This behavior did not allow executives to make decisions along the way to get the projects back on track. Don explained that badgering a PM is like hitting the goalie and pushed to have a “no hitting the goalie” rule. Now in status meetings if one executive is badgering a PM, another executive will say, “you are hitting the goalie.” I think this is brilliant. This is now a term that everyone understands and respects. It also results in PMs sharing the information as it is and not sugar coating the status of their projects.

There is no silver bullet. Feelings will get hurt. Your goal as a leader is to work consistently towards obtaining full participation. The outcome you are looking for is buy-in from the group. You gain buy-in by allowing the team to share their thoughts.

To not hitting the goalie,

Kupe

Make Sure Done Means Done

Written by Brad Egeland on October 19, 2015. Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on Make Sure Done Means Done

You’ve come to the end of a long technical project, and you’re rolling out the solution to the customer and their end users. Perhaps it’s a handoff; perhaps it’s a training session or some sort of demo dog and pony show.

But you’re looking for final signoff so that you can proceed with final billing and closure as you switch from delivery to support of the engagement. The last thing you want to do is find out four months from now that you have an open invoice because you failed to finalize a particular project deliverable by not obtaining an approved signoff. For the project manager and business analyst – who often leads the actual development of documents and preparation for things like user acceptance testing (UAT) standpoint – that can be a bit embarrassing.

Anything left unfinished can give the appearance that you are anything but in complete control of your project. That’s bad because any items not complete may give the customer cause to be concerned about thoroughness in other areas of the project. You want this client to be confident that you and your team have done your jobs. You have tested and delivered the solution the client is expecting, and that everything will work when you wave good-bye and flip on the switch. In short, you also want full final payment. I know, I’ve been on one of those issue-filled projects when the client was concerned to call it done because so many issues had come up near the end that they were certain there would be more. Gaining final acceptance and payment was excruciatingly painful.

To ensure the project is done, here is my list of four key areas to cover and actions to take as the project is closing down.

1. Review all invoices for payment in full. The Project Manager likely will need to lead this task – with the help of the Business Analyst. Review all invoices with accounting and ensure that all that were sent to the project customer have been paid in full. If any invoice is left unpaid, check with the customer to see if there was any reason for this. Was there a problem with the deliverable? Was it just an oversight? I had this happen on one project and there were no issues. The project sponsor had just failed to pass an invoice along to his accounting department for payment, and once I contacted him, they promptly paid. On very large projects, this is not all that uncommon to have happen.

2. Review the project schedule to ensure all deliverables show complete. The Project Manager and Business Analyst should carefully review the project schedule to ensure that all tasks have been properly updated and show as completed in full. Review any question marks with the resource or resources assigned to those tasks. The key here is that you want to be sure you can hand over a revised project schedule to the project customer that accurately depicts all tasks as 100% complete and signed off.

3. Contact the client to see if they have any concerns about remaining outstanding issues. The Project Manager and Business Analyst need to conduct a meeting with the client to discuss the project at a high level and find out if the client has any concerns over any outstanding issues or uncompleted work. This meeting is not the same as a lessons learned session – the purpose of this meeting is just to ensure agreement on the completeness and verbal acceptance of the final solution. While verbal acceptance is good and something you want as you’re working on this final check of project done-ness, never overlook that formal final signoff and acceptance by the customer. It could end up being the most critical document on the entire project!

4. Review acceptance test documents. One huge sign of final acceptance is final customer signoff and approval of user acceptance testing. The customer handles test cases and test scenarios. The Business Analyst and other tech staff on the project can help them, as needed. But the Business Analyst can’t do it for them. If the BA did, it could cause a conflict of interest because the delivery organization – as the developers of the solution – may have be biased when it comes testing. The real testers needed are the future end users of the solution. When their testing is complete we’ll know the project is ready to be accepted and signed off (as long as there isn’t a gap between the documented requirements (approved and signed off by the client) and what the end users need). If there is a gap, then you’ll be drawing up a very large change order. The project customer needed to have ensured that their end users were on board with acceptance of the documented requirements and project scope way back at the beginning of the engagement. Any work on that now will be expensive.

Summary / call for input

There’s never a guarantee that you’ve covered everything. I once closed out a year-long agreement with a client and then realized that I had agreed to a two-part billing on a deliverable to give them additional time to pay. Instead, I completely forgot to bill part 2 and collect it – remembering it only when I was ready to invoice new work at the end of that first engagement. The client knew they owed it. However, it was my sloppiness at handling the billing that caused delays. While I did finally get the 2nd portion of the invoice paid, it took awhile because it was not a small amount. At least, in that case, I hadn’t dropped the ball on a deliverable, just an invoice.

What about our readers? Have you had any embarrassing rollouts where you realized – or the customer pointed out to you – that something had been skipped? Possibly a deliverable was never produced, or a document was never revised following feedback and delivered in its final format?

The 7 Wastes in Your Business – Finding Kaizen Opportunities

Written by Richard Lannon on September 21, 2015. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on The 7 Wastes in Your Business – Finding Kaizen Opportunities

As a business, you are either efficient and effective, or you are not. It’s quite likely that there are things in your business environment you’d like to see work more smoothly, more efficiently. There are many reasons for poor processes and less productive business environments ranging from:

Lack of clarity on the part of the business leadership and senior management,
Performance management system structure and the way people are rewarded,
Poorly implemented initiatives, and
Business leaders who micro-manage (not letting people under them do their thing and make decisions).

Any one of these can be affecting your process and productivity. One helpful way of looking at process and productivity is in terms of finding Kaizen opportunities. Kaizen refers to a philosophy or practice that focuses on continuous improvement of working practices, personal efficiency, similar ideas.

When applied to the workplace, Kaizen involves all employees from the CEO to assembly line workers and refers to activities that continually improve all functions. It also applies to processes such as purchasing and logistics, which usually cross organizational boundaries.

Related Article: 7 Candid Questions That Need to be Asked

Generally, Kaizen looks at waste in some key categories with Seven Lean Approaches. These include:

Waste of Motion
Waste of Waiting
Waste in Transportation
Waste in Storage
Waste in Defects
Waste in Processing
Waste in Over Production

There are many examples of where the Kaizen approach can be applied from a staff driven perspective. From the manufacturing line of bottle cap disposal, making toast in the kitchen on a train, the health x-ray requisition approval process, to the location of office supplies storage. All these can be streamlined and standardized.

By improving standardized activities and processes, Kaizen aims to eliminate waste, thereby making your business more productive. And, as the Kaizen approach seeks to improve processes, productivity then is the yardstick by which you can measure your success.

If you can find ways to improve your processes, to become more efficient and effective, you will be more successful in your business.

Question: What work process can you focus on to improve to create better flow and enhance productivity?

8 Tips for the Newbie Business Analyst

Written by Racquel Ellis on September 14, 2015. Posted in Articles.

For many of us, a new experience comes with varying degrees of anxiety and nervousness. This is particularly true if we have lingering doubts as to our ability to do what is being asked of us – even if such doubts have no basis. Moving from a job where you knew what to do like the “back of your hand” to one where the learning curve is steep is one of those nerve-wracking moments that test the mettle of any business analyst. Of course, the extent of your anxiety is minimized given your years of experience and success stories as a business analyst. That said, it is critical that as a business analyst entering a new role or job position you showcase confidence. Let your stakeholders know that you know that you can deliver the results they need even if you do not know their business like the “back of your hand”. Your work will speak for itself! It’s only a matter of time before you too become a domain expert.

I want to give a few suggestions to any business analyt who might find themselves in the “newbie business analyst” position.

1. Come to the job armed with a set of tools and techniques that you can readily transform into something of value to immediately show your stakeholders that they made the right decision when they chose you for the job.

The very first assignment should be done so well that it not only pleases your team leader but demonstrates to stakeholders that you possess the ability to clearly detail the business needs and value-added approaches to deriving a solution.

When I changed my job of over 18 years to take up a job in an institution that I knew little about, one of my first assignments was to assist the insurance arm of the business in implementing an electronic document management system. I started by understanding the process from existing team members, then went on to observe the process to prepare a presentation with best practice information to show team members time and cost savings they would achieve by implementing such a system. I also provided high-level process flows and steps showing the integration of the document management system in the business’s workflow.

I will not tell you that it was smooth sailing, but the quality of my work was apparent, and the stakeholders were able to use the information to present their case to the Board of Directors, who approved of the electronic document management system.

2. Be prepared to go above and beyond the call of duty.

While completing the task of assisting with the online document management system, the business was thinking of having clients complete and submit a form online, which they would use to give the client an estimated insurance quote. So I took the opportunity and did the additional work to show the business how an online insurance quote system would provide clients with even greater value instantaneously while obtaining contact information that the business could use to follow up and sell their services.

3. Be of no reputation.

Do not surrender your dignity but adopt an attitude where you care more about serving your stakeholder than explaining to people why you are a business analyst. Your work will speak for itself. People sometimes do not see the importance of a business analyst until they have a task to accomplish and realize how the work of the business analyst brings structure, organization, as well as diagrams that give a better understanding of the issue. When you hear negative feedback, analyze the truth of it, strip away what you can learn from it, apply the learning and disregard the rest. Every experience will make you a better business analyst and sometimes the feedback, though negative, is true and is an opportunity for you to change something about your attitude or approach. Believe me, I know. During the document management project, I learned that the importance of clear communication and the power of an organization’s culture is not something to be taken lightly.

4. Complete company sponsored courses that will help you to understand more about the business.

You will have a lot of work to do but in the midst of it find the time to complete any company sponsored course or read up on the business to understand how it works.

My new job was with an investment company with a banking and insurance arm. My previous company was quasi-government and dealt with mortgage financing. To say I knew little about the operations of my new job was being generous. However, I jumped at the opportunity to complete a securities course that opened my eyes to the nature of the business. This knowledge served me well in my next assignment that mostly had to do with the core business.

5. Become genuinely interested in team members and their roles at all levels.

Get to know people – from the security officer to the CEO (to the extent that you have the opportunity to) – and understand how their role contributes to the bigger picture of value and profits. People will willingly share their knowledge if they understand that you genuinely care about making their work simpler and easier, and are there to improve the business. The best ideas or feedback come from the people who are engaged in the work on a day-to-day basis. Getting the feedback is so much easier if you form a good relationship with fellow team members and never adopt an “us against them approach”. A business analyst should assist in making it easier to implement change, not turn people off by dictating change.

6. Know when to keep silent and start by asking questions.

Never assume or use preconceived notions as a basis for interacting with your stakeholders. Silence does not mean “dumbness”. When you’re new, you learn a lot more through listening and asking questions than by just talking. Don’t just talk with the intent of letting people know that you know. You’ve already shown your expertise because you’ve been hired. Even if you got the heads up about stakeholders, use that to guide how you present information to them, not to develop a negative attitude towards them.

7. Accept when you’re wrong.

You are a business analyst, not a perfect human being. You won’t get it all at first, and you will make some mistakes along the way. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Don’t explain your error away – even if you have an explanation, accept where you’ve erred, apologize if you need to and move on. In apologizing, state what went wrong and what you have done to not repeat the error. Misunderstandings will occur – we can’t help ourselves. However, a placated stakeholder now can be of great support for future tasks. Leave your stakeholder believing that you are still the right person for the job.

8. Be appropriate, functional and relevant.

Every working environment is different. Yes, you have a plethora of templates, tools, and techniques but they should operate as the universe from which you choose based on your environment. Don’t overwhelm your stakeholders with everything. Tweak your templates so that they address the needs of your current environment.

My previous job was very structured and formal. My current job is less structured with some aspects of informality. Here, stakeholders want to immediately see what you’re talking about, not get lost in concepts, theories, and templates. It was my duty to look at the templates I had and modify them in such a way that made it easier for stakeholders to make decisions. Don’t get boxed into template thinking. Sometimes, all that is required is a simple email! You don’t want to use a sledgehammer to kill an ant!

When I wrote my first requirements document, the IT department was so appreciative of it and the IT business analyst decided to use aspects of its layout in the preparation of her requirements. At another time, in order to get a decision from a stakeholder at a senior level, all I did was sent an email succinctly detailing the issues, pros, and cons. The executive confirmed that the email correctly captured our discussions and used it to communicate a decision.

As I said at the beginning of this article, being a newbie business analyst is temporary. Soon you will become an expert. Just keep doing well what you know and keep reminding your stakeholders why you are the best person for the job. All the best! Looking forward to your comments.