The Better Business Analysis Institute Presence, the Better
Business Analysis Podcast with Benjamin Walsh Hi everybody, and
welcome back to the Better Business Analysis Podcast with
Benjamin Walsh. And today we're going to be
covering a topic which applies to BAS, but actually any office
worker. So feel free to send this
episode off to your friends and colleagues in your business or
organization and they'll get some value from learning about
these 10 productivity tips for BAS or office workers.
OK, so we're going to go through the top ten.
And sometimes I'm really bad at listing these out at the end, so
I'm going to list them up front and you can write them down.
And then we're going to go through some specific practical
tips that I use and I've got from friends and colleagues, and
I've added it to this list. And hopefully this makes you
more productive in whatever role you perform in an organization,
right? So I'm going to read them out
and then we're going to go through them in detail.
So number one is managing emails effectively.
OK, #2 is limit meetings. #3 is use stand up. #4 is light
documentation. #5 is be clear and concise.
I love that one. I always use it.
Number six, be agile. Not do agile.
Be agile #7 Look at the big picture.
Look where your work fits within the big picture #8.
Avoid detailed loops. This is a very good one, and
we'll go into detail on that #9 use structure, use patterns, Use
structure, Use templates. And #10 of course, continuous
learning. You these tips change over time
and you're embracing new technology like AI and I guess
data analysis. And these tips can change,
right? So we can start with #1, which
is managing emails effectively. And what I mean by that is kind
of using filters and labels, set specific times to check emails
instead of consistently monitoring your inbox.
I know a lot of people do that. There is the concept of, you
know, you get an e-mail and you want to respond to it straight
away and it just gets you out of the zone about whatever you're
doing. Don't do that.
I'm someone that does that. If I get an e-mail and a market
is read, I want to get it done. It's a distraction.
That is not an effective way of dealing with it.
You want to respond, respond quickly and you want to keep
your responses concise. I have a rule and we'll get into
the tips now, but I personally have a rule that if the e-mail
is longer than say like an A four piece of paper and and and
for me it's probably half of that, but a four is the rule.
I pick up the phone, I have a meeting.
When is an e-mail really a meeting, a face to face meeting?
If anyone's trying to explain everything in an in an e-mail,
that's that's not, that's not an effective way of working.
As I move over to this tip, I'm just going to tell you about a
manager I had at New Zealand Trading Enterprise who Jono,
who's also moved on to some greater roles now he we were
rolling out Microsoft Teams in order to help with that
adoption. He actually said he's not going
to respond to internal emails because it's actually a very
ineffective method. So just keep that in the back of
your mind. If you can make that happen,
make that happen. OK.
So I'm going to just delve into 3 tips specifically around
managing emails effectively. One is batching.
OK, so this is where you sit specific times, two to three
times a day, OK? If you're in an office space,
you have to do this personal staff, side businesses.
I do this once a day at night basically.
But if you're in an office, you know, people expect a response.
So I would say as soon as you get in, just before you leave
maybe or like 3:00 and then maybe just after lunch or before
lunch. So set times, 15 minutes slots
during the day to check and respond.
Emails, OK, That is, That is managing yourself.
That prevents you from consistently checking and
refocusing. Put it in your calendar.
OK, people can you know. Obviously that is movable time,
flexi time. And if you've got an important
meeting you can move that. But it should be a guide for
you. Set it, it works OK.
The second tip is around filtering and labelling.
It's so hard to find emails, man, it's hard to find emails.
E-mail search sucks. Outlook interface isn't that
great. It's actually really really hard
to find emails unless you're a Wiz kid at using it.
But I tell you what makes searching emails much better is
if you create filters and sort emails into categories.
OK, and it should. It could be, and I I do this
urgent things, you need to focus on actions basically, right?
And there are tasks in Outlook and Google, but they just
haven't come up with a better way, a efficient way of managing
this. And AI will help because it will
pull out your actions automatically from emails, and
there are tools that do that. But with the base standards you
just don't have that. So I'd say things.
You need action. So you could do this under your
inbox. If you want things, you need
actions, you don't need to read it, you just move it forward.
You know they usually only send to you, not to a group.
There could be project specific, which is always good if you're
working across multiple specific projects.
Or you could do read later. Or just like general comms you
lose like labels. So use labels as you start to
sort your e-mail, as you start to know the organization, and
then that prioritizes what you need to focus on, right?
So you'll check your urgent ones.
You might read your other ones later in the week.
I I actually got to a position in an organization where I knew
where certain emails were coming through that just weren't
important. And sometimes notifications like
changes to Confluence pages and things where I literally did a
sort and just moved them all to archived OK, so not not deleted,
but archived OK, and so then I could go back and read them.
The other tip is about you. So be concise with your
communication. Keep your replies short and to
the point. Do not write lengthy emails.
Briefly address the key points, bullet point, bullet point.
Do bullet points. Perfect decides you time and it
encourages clear communication back from others.
OK, communicate with others how you want to be communicated
with. That's I always do that 123, a
summary statement, 123 and a conclusion.
And then I say, if you've got any questions, give me a call.
Always do that. OK.
So that's managing emails effectively, #1 #2 is limiting
meetings. This is hard.
This is hard when you first start an organization because
you want to be, you know, you want to meet everyone.
Your patent should change it over time.
And if you're invited to something, you kind of want to
go. But for me, this is the number
one area where big organizations are the most inefficient, not
just because of their sorry, #1 area, #1 area, they can change
easily. Usually big organizations have
duplication and their processes aren't right.
And I talk about that often, so I'm not going to talk about that
again. But in terms of things they
could actually do. So limit meetings.
So number one is meetings you so you you can do this is you only
schedule meetings when they're absolutely necessary.
Don't just have a weekly meeting.
Why? Why do you have an hour meeting
with a team to talk? Stand ups are the effective way
of managing, and we'll get on to that.
Use stand ups for the short bursts.
Talk about projects if you want social time.
There's nothing wrong with it. We're humans, we need to
interact. Go see them go.
Even schedule a drink once a week.
But don't just have a regular project meeting.
It's such a waste of time. You talk about what's going on,
what you've done on your weekend.
It's such a waste of time that you you're merging work and
personal together and you want to keep those separate because
actually it is important to have those personal relationships,
but not during the productivity meeting.
OK, they're two different things.
Ask yourself when thinking about a meeting, can this goal be
achieved through e-mail or chat? OK, chat is a really good way of
getting an e-mail. Sorry.
Getting a response. Usually if someone chats to you
people for me feels like a it's more of a priority than an
e-mail, right? So I respond to things that are
urgent that way or a chat thread that I subscribe to and pin in
Teams or whatever Slack. And then you can go back to it
and we just say, hey, look, just any updates put in this put in
this thread, That's the point of it.
It's an update that you can then proactively go look at.
It's not a direct message. OK, So that's how we should be
using these tools. The other thing is when you do
have meetings, make sure you use like the SMART methodology.
Google that if you don't know what it is.
Keep meeting short and focused, ideally 30 minutes or less.
OK, that's different to a workshop.
Workshops should be two hours with a break and another two
hour maybe in a day. 2 hours is a good length for a workshop.
That's ABA tip, but 30 minutes for meetings, 30 minutes or
less. Have a clear agenda beforehand
and stick to it. It can be repetitive.
You don't need to come up with an agenda every single time and
just say this is the structure of the meeting.
Smart is always good for that. When scheduling a meeting, if
you can't be bothered filling out the smart items which are
being, you know, which, which, sorry, it's smart, which is
their own objectives. I actually mean a power start.
Sorry, power start. I'm not going to keep that in
the recording because I do make mistakes.
Power start, which is really the purpose, you know, outcome of
the meeting. What's in it for me?
OK, things like that. So that if you can't outline
those things, you can't be bothered outlining those, then
that meeting's not important. OK, so limit meetings as you
can. Focus on yourself.
You won't change behaviour. However, I will say that within
Outlook and within Gmail, you can set meetings to end 5
minutes earlier. 55 minute meetings or 25 minute meetings.
I would think that's a #1 productivity tip for your
organization and it allows you who owns that last who owns
2:30? The meeting beforehand or the
meeting that starts at 2:30. OK, so it gives toilet time.
It gives the ability for people to move between meetings and not
be late to them, which is a really bad meeting etiquette,
which I hate. So there are some technology
tips there which we'll go into on another day.
OK, #3 you stand ups. We've touched on this daily and
brief. They don't actually have to be
daily. It depends on the project.
But if you want to, daily can be good to keep that face to face
meeting. So instead of having a weekly
hour meeting and maybe better to have 15 minutes stand ups, keep
them 15 minutes Max. OK, it could be 5 minutes.
It is really around progress plans for the day in any
roadblocks and it's a much more efficient way than a weekly
meeting. OK, so that's be daily and brief
problem solved. So it's around quick problem
solving during stand ups, it's around the next action.
It's not going, you're going around in detail, take do take
it offline is what we say often when you identify roadblock and
you want to brainstorm solutions.
So you can do that and you stand up.
But if it takes a lot of time or there's just a few of you who
are involved in that process, if you know about pigs and
chickens, that's another thing you can look up.
But you should move the meeting offline and maybe those
individuals who are involved in that conversation go off just.
And when I say a meeting, it's just work, OK?
It's not a meeting. Those people just collaborating,
working together, OK, you don't, it's yes, they're meeting with
one another. A meeting doesn't.
A meeting generally means the structure and an agenda.
But if they're just doing analysis of working together,
that can be done. You know, in together, sitting
together or even through teams or through a call.
Make sure when you do your stand up says actionable outcomes.
Each stand up needs to have clear action items at the end of
it. If you've got a scrum master,
they'll help you facilitate that and ownership to tasks.
You should have a task list and that keeps everyone accountable
and moving on or otherwise it's just a waste of time.
It's just a conversation. So use stand ups.
I love using stand ups when I project manager and I'm going to
take over a piece of work. Small piece, Well, it's
relatively complicated piece of work, but I know it's, it's no
unknowns. So I'm just going to be doing
stand ups for it and I might do that every second day.
OK, let's just see how things are going.
Knowing that people have other work on, it's not their
priority, it's not their only their main piece of work.
I'll do 15 minutes, Any blockers, any problems, OK And
things always come up. I also have a chat for that
project which I'm going to be taking over and I've just told
people as they do status updates, as they test, as things
you know, work. It's AIT project.
As things get set up or if there are any questions or updates
just check it in the teams chat. Works really well OK with B as
the other one here is around light documentation.
OK, so with light documentation you need.
We're not. I talk about this often.
You need to use visual aids, diagrams, flow charts, bullet
points instead of lengthy paragraphs.
Visuals are easier to understand and retain information.
So visual first, That's what every BA should have.
A bit like web first, but visual 1st.
I believe that for anyone, even if you're not ABA, that's what I
is. My strength area is using visual
tools. Focus on clarity.
So concise and clear, explain prices and procedures in a
straightforward manner. Do high level process diagrams,
not the detail, put those in the appendix.
And the other thing is make your documents like in the Better
Business Analysis Institute As part of our framework we talk
about Agile Agile BI plan. So you know, the Agile BA plan,
which then outlines how you're going to do it, turns into Agile
documentation. And that's around just having
regular updates to the documentation, all working from
the same area, using collaboration tools, using
slides, using PowerPoint, writing in the document, getting
people to update it. That's like documentation.
You need to work that way. OK?
It's not do not have a Word document that's on your local
drive that you're just updating. That is not what we do in 2024.
OK, the number, the next one is being clear and concise and I
need to pull this out. I know it's not, it's more of a
mindset, but I think it's really important to one know your
audience. Tailor your communication to the
audience. Avoid technical jargon if the
audience isn't familiar with it. So obviously you know senior
managers, users or customers, You should be using a clear and
concise communication. That is the BA, the two face
from Batman. One side is the ugly technical
side, the other side is the nice looking side and we use the nice
looking side for our users and the technical side we use to
talk to our technical teams. You need to have those two faces
proofread and editing. I am particularly bad with this.
I need to get I get someone else to help me.
I use Grammarly as not an advertisement to check my
proofreading so it makes sense, but I also use it to make things
simpler. Sometimes I use AI tools to say
can explain this in an easy to understand way and it rewrites
it for me. So you need to do that.
You need to proof it. People get caught up.
People get caught up on a slide that has a spelling error on it.
Everything else doesn't matter now.
And I I just, this is probably my most common criticism is in
my documents. People will focus on a grammar
era or you know, come in the wrong place and they will.
All my hard work and all my ability to make it clear and
concise goes out the window because of that.
OK, That's what they focus on. They don't.
That doesn't really happen in lengthy documentation because
they're like, oh, there's a lot of stuff to to come through and
I'm not going to prove read it all, but it can annoy them.
And people know it's like a book, right, that you've
published. You could just be really,
really, really, really careful with that #3 is use active
voice. OK, so use active voice.
Google lists if you don't know what it is.
For more direct and engaging communication style, OK, just be
very direct and just have no fluff.
No fluff, OK, That's not your job.
Your job is not to fluff unless you're told to.
OK, the next is be agile and not do agile, but be agile OK, we
are. We're taking some really good
things from the agile world and we're applying them and they're
standard now. I just call them standard
project stuff. Change stuff, but be agile OK?
And that is 1. Embrace change.
Be adaptive, adaptive and open to changes and project
requirements and priorities. They happen.
It's the whole point of Agile that your beautiful requirements
that you write on day one, which doesn't really happen in one
day, but they're going to change.
That's the nature of Agile. It's like you don't lock them
down and then work on a project for six months.
That's the point of agile. OK, that's it.
Embrace change #2, Sprint panel planning, breakdown work, even
your own work. Not just the project, the
project manager. If your project manager, Scrum
master. If you're running in an agile
way, it doesn't really matter. You just need to break down your
work into smaller manageable sprints to focus for on your
work and faster delivery. So if you're not working in like
an agile team or a development team, design team, you can do
it. In design you can do it
anywhere, right? You can apply it.
If you're a leader in the in the team, then suggest that it's
perfect for everyone. But let's say people.
You just don't have that choice and that can happen.
Then just break your work down in two weeks.
What? This is what I'm going to do for
the next two weeks. Project manager.
This is what my goal is. Focus on that.
Focus on what you need to do for the next two weeks.
It's a really powerful way of thinking.
OK. The other one is continuous
improvement in your work, to reflect on your own processes
and identify areas for improvement.
What didn't work last week? Oh man, I got stuck in too many
meetings, didn't get anything done, Any actual real work done.
I checked emails. There was something on.
Is this a consistent pattern? Was that a one off?
Because if that's if that's not a one off, you're not affected.
OK so working ways in terms of asking if you can't go to
meetings through the project manager or your your boss around
maybe having a day at home where you can do your documentation or
write up or analysis, you need time to do that as ABA, even as
an office worker you could do days where you're doing your
your your your actual job versus meetings, meeting free days,
blocking out focus time in your calendar.
OK you really need to use that. You need to take accountability
of your own effectiveness. The other one is look at the big
picture and this is right from my heart which is why I added it
to the list. You really need to know what are
the goals of the piece of work you're working on the task with
the project. OK what what are you trying to
achieve? The why, the what, what are you
achieving? And I talk about the what often
what what are you doing? Like not what are you doing is
and what are the tasks or how you're doing it?
What are you trying to achieve? People lose focus of that all
the time. OK, sometimes people like work
in an operational role like accounts receivable and they're
like, I do it every day, but why do you do it every day?
Well, it's a critical process that needs to be done.
It's like, cool, but what are your goals to make it more
effective or more efficient? And do you actually have a goal?
Not just do your job well, but look at process improvement
steps, Look at automation, look at growing out of that role and
automating the role under you. The other thing is you need to
prioritise your own task based on the goals of the project.
The thing that's above you In the ecosystem, there's always
something above you. Prioritise your task based on
their impact and urgency. OK, your task, you go, oh, I
need to do this. I really need to get this done.
It's like, well, is that the most important goal for the
team? Yeah, I had this all the time.
You know, I work with someone and they're focusing on
something like, I need to do these things.
They seem like the most important things that I'm going
to be working on. I'm like, most important to you
or most important to the project because you're holding up three
other people. I I mean, I don't say it that
way, but that's what I'm thinking.
And then I said, well, well, what I and knew you'd be
tactful. And you go, well, I actually
think this one might be the most important.
Do you think we could focus more time on that?
You need to do regular reviews to assess progress and make sure
your work is aligning with the with the biggest bigger picture.
If the bigger picture changes, your work can change completely.
Make sure we're not working on something that's wasteful.
OK, so it's your job to see where you are relative to the
big picture that you're working on.
I've kept that general. That's a project goal or
anything in your organization. I'd just be just people forget
to look at the bigger picture. Keep move.
I I like step out. I would say step out and look
look look at your job from afar. The other one happens all the
time, especially in the word of BA and it's around detailed
loops. So avoid detailed loops.
People do this all the time. So before diving into analysis
or just clearly define why are you doing this?
What's the purpose of you going deep on this data mapping
exercise or reviewing all SAS reports to see which ones we can
consolidate, or doing some computer analysis or reviewing
all invoices? So we can, I don't know,
standardize them, whatever it is, before diving into the
actual, you know, data level, right, and going through massive
amounts of instances of that invoices.
Or it could be just rows of transactions.
Why are you doing it if you're going to do it?
What happens lots of times is that you're actually getting
into a bit of a scientific method there.
OK? You're doing proper analysis,
OK? You've got a premise, you want
to get to a conclusion. And as we know the science, a
lot of that is a hypothesis that needs to be tested and it can be
a waste of time. Now, that's fine.
That's why we have science to work out what's not right and
what's right however we can. We need to set time limits if
it's not that important in the bigger picture, which is why
I've got this afterwards. Then set time frames for your
detailed analysis, OK, and you don't need to have the answer,
You just need to have the best answer out of some options.
OK, out of these three options, this one makes sense.
Focus on relevance, prioritize information relevance to the
purpose and avoid getting sidetracked.
OK by irrelevant specifics. This happens often.
People go down rabbit holes. It's really hard.
I I see there are, there are types of BAS and I, I, I do this
for some pieces of work, but not often in my daily role.
And it's detailed analysis, right?
And BAS, sometimes they're technical BAS who are really
technically working out what's going on.
There's a systems analyst. They're the ones who have to
really crunch the numbers and they do some really hard work.
But it is a dangerous place. OK, what one is it takes time to
do it, right. If you and it could just be a a
matter of just time that's needed, that's that's different
to then going, well, let's come up with some options about how
we're going to make this happen. You kind of work in the solution
space or coming forward and you just go off on a tangent where
it actually doesn't matter. You could have just bought a
product, OK Or you could have just consulted with an expert.
So just avoid detailed loops, you know if you're in one,
everyone knows if they're in one.
OK #9, it's a round use structure.
Make sure you're using project management tools like GAN
charts, camband boards, visualizing whiteboard tools,
JIRA. You know, Azure DevOps.
To track your work and flip workflow, you need to visualize
your work. OK, you need to use these tools.
You need to know what your dependencies are, what the
sequence is. You should use check checklists.
You should use templates, checklist and templates.
BA should be the master at those.
If your team doesn't have them, you're probably the best person
at at defining them or finding them online.
If you don't need to come up with a template these days, you
can find one online and change it for your needs.
Your job is to define the processes for your own team and
for the organization to use structure.
This is what the Certified Better Business and Analysis
Level one course is all about by by just putting a structure in
terms of how you do your job. Structure applies to the how and
this is this is something I'm really hot on.
If you have a really lean great framework, you can scale and you
can be just more effective. OK, so use structure.
If you don't have a structure as ABA, if you don't have a patent,
then you're lost and you need to get some training and then moves
me on to #10, which is continuous learning to allocate
time yourself to your own. Learning each week to learn the
new skills, to learn about structure and templates,
learning resources, online courses, publications, attend
workshop and share your knowledge.
OK, I I share my knowledge with other people.
That's what the institute is all about.
The podcast is all about and like we learn better by just
coming together and we just don't do this very well.
In the BA space, there's Iiba, there's blah, blah, look, that's
fine. They're they're they're pillars,
but they aren't, you know, they aren't around continuous
learning. They aren't about, they're
they're a baseline. They aren't around continuous
learning resources or sharing knowledge.
So just get on to that as well. So they are the 10 tips for
being more productive, managing emails, effectively, limiting
meetings, Use stand ups like documentation, Be clear and
concise, be agile, look at the big picture of the void,
detailed loop, use structure and continuous learning.
I hope you've learned something today about being more
productive, productive in your role.
And I will see you next week where we go into some two-minute
tips.