I'm not in my usual place. That's because this week I'm in
Toronto in Canada and I am at BBC that's building Business
Capability conference, which is in Toronto for the first time
ever. It's you know, it's been a a
while since this conference has been around and it has never
been in Toronto. So I am here.
I've got lots of colleagues in the area.
I've got lots of members, friends, community that are all
here this week. And so we are coming to you live
live from from Toronto. So thanks for joining us today.
We are going to talk about the power of finding your people,
because isn't that what conferences are all about?
And so today's podcast is going to look a little bit different.
So I'm going to show you some scenes from what we're doing
here. And also you're going to get to
meet two different people. Today.
I've got 2 guests on who we're going to talk about what it
means to find your people when you're at places like this, but
bigger picture, what it means for business analysis
professionals when you are thinking about connecting with
others. So let's first start with what's
happening at BBC. This year we're at the Marriott
Eaton Center in downtown Toronto.
We've got our booth there. Our theme this year is Enabling
Confidence. Now on day one.
We had tutorials in the morning and in the afternoon, and then
we headed over to the George Brown University beautiful
downtown waterfront venue for our member reception and we met
lots of new and familiar faces. We had them all in one place,
enjoying the evening. If.
You haven't heard? We liked a Boogie and we had a
pop up professional headshot booth.
BBC here it. Is another year in Canada and
I'm so proud since I'm Canadian OK I've been with BBC since the
very beginning so every year I look forward to this and BBC is
not just a conference it's really an opportunity to meet
people and that's I I think the gem in there is seeing people
the program is so rich that we have hands on stuff and we have
you know a lot of learning opportunity in this and so the
immersive sessions there's so many of them this year I'm just
looking forward to just rolling up my.
Day 2 then started with an inspiring welcome and a keynote
speech, and then we had sessions.
So I am on the Expo. Floor here at.
BBC you can tell we've got lots of people we've got.
Lots of vendors. Too, So we've got training
providers, we've got books coming from different schools
and technology shops. And right now, we're at a break.
And so lots of people are connecting, and that's the
really important part of this conference is moments like this
when you get to talk to each other and also find out that's
new and interesting. Happening in our community.
I want to introduce you to somebody that has been in our
community for quite a while and actually you've seen her here on
Business Analysis Live. She's speaking this week.
I want to welcome Pam Patterson. Pam, welcome to BBC, welcome to
Business Analysis Live. You've been on the podcast
before, but in case people have not.
Met, you tell. Us a little bit about yourself.
Oh, thank you, Susan. It's nice to be here.
So I'm a business systems analyst.
I work in IT and tech and I also am a project manager and a
systems engineer. And I am a long time speaker and
fan of IIBA and all of the great work that IIBA and you do.
Yeah. We were talking about you spend
a lot of time talking in communities all over the world
about business analysis topics. We're talking about the power of
finding your people today. And so you travel in the world
and finding your people is right up our alley.
Tell us a little bit about finding your people, why it's
important to get out of your old behaviors and patterns and, you
know, start connecting in with the community.
Like what does that do for you as a business analysis
professional? When I think about finding your
own people, I, I really think about visibility.
So we're not going to find our own people when we are working
really hard in the closet somewhere.
We, we need to get out, we need to connect, we need to network.
And the importance of doing so was brought to me maybe a few
years ago when I was working for an organization and very closely
working with the CE OS and the VPS.
And so I was physically located close to them.
And there was another individual who was by the way, way smarter
than I was, way more experienced than I was, spent more time in
the organization, worked on more senior projects, just a really
much, much better person in that respect than than I was.
And, and his name was Clint. And, and Clint was located
somewhere the other part of the organization where you couldn't
see him, the CE OS couldn't see him.
And so when I was having a conversation with the senior
vice president one day and I said, you know, Clint is working
on that. And I saw his face kind of
crinkle up. And then I, I say you, you know,
Clint, don't you? And he said, oh, I, I think so.
And the only thing that I could think of is that I had
visibility. I had physical proximity to him
and I had visibility. And now we're in a remote
environment and most of us are working online and but there's
ways to get that visibility online as well.
And then in that kind of remote culture, I mean, are we on the
conference calls? Are we texting?
Are we messaging? Are we?
Are we showing up in our job? And the people know we are
showing up. Yeah, yeah, we do have a camera
on us a lot and it feels like we are probably being seen.
But you're right, there's actually a difference in what it
means to be seen within the community.
So it it doesn't just mean getting your job done, but it
actually means making yourself visible.
So doing things like participating in events and
going to conferences or just speaking up, that that's
actually really important. That's an important part of
finding your people is seeing you.
Well, 100% I, I was actually just having lunch and I said the
job interview question that you are never asked is how do you
show up on Google? And you can be sure that they
are Googling your name and how are you showing up?
And it's never going to be an interview question, but it is.
And so having that visibility, that presence, that online
presence, and you get that from networking and coming
conferences like this and volunteering for your
organization. And you know, pretty soon people
are going to get to know your name and in a very favorable way
because of your volunteering and volunteering.
It shows character and capacity to me.
And because it shows character that you have a good heart, you
want to help others, you want to see other people succeed and,
and capacity, you have personal capacity to do it.
And not everybody does at different times of their life
have capacity, and that's OK. But volunteering and working
with IIBA is a really great way to get visibility.
Yeah, I, I sometimes think that that people think volunteering,
I just, I don't have time for that.
And I, I realized that that is a component of volunteering is
giving up your time. But I also think that you get a
lot back. So clearly you get a lot back
in, in being visible, but you also get a lot back by the kinds
of skills that you get to build and also practice.
Maybe we don't think of it as that.
I I know when I started volunteering a long time ago for
my university's alumni chapter, I was just doing it because I
wanted to make some connections. But what I realized is it was an
opportunity for me to practice a lot of the skills I was using at
work, and I could do it without fear of getting in trouble or
doing it wrong or missing a deadline.
So I think that's important. Oh, 100%.
It's a psychologically Safeway to practice your skills.
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of pressure at work at a new job
and wouldn't you like to test drive all your skills before you
get. There, Yeah, yeah.
Know that they're worth something in the marketplace.
Yeah. So let me ask you because you
brought up interviewing and I think a lot of people often
think of networking as a way to find jobs.
Is that true? Is there other reasons why I
want might want to network beyond just finding a job?
You know, networking, we, we are people, people and networking is
definitely a great way to find a job.
I I think it outperforms every other way, including any kind of
expertise you could have in beating the bots.
I think networking outperforms that as well, and especially
with the hidden job market. But networking is also good just
I think. We really felt it.
And you know, the C word COVID, I think we really felt it during
that time when we were disengaged from people and we
were cut off from people. And I'm an introverts introvert,
but when I came back onto the scene on the speaking scene, I
was able to interact with people again.
I mean, it just got my blood flowing and it, it became the
juice of what I was, you know, my essence, my, my joie de
vivre, you know, like it was just really, really fundamental
to who I was to connect with people.
And I think maybe we only realized that when it's kind of
taken away or we don't have that opportunity to do that.
It's funny that you say that because that is when I kind of
found my voice in, in networking.
I didn't do it before and then I think COVID, it felt like I had
permission to just, you know, ring somebody up on Zoom and
have conversations. And honestly, those
conversations that was just about getting to know people,
develop skills, develop a small network of people and it, it's
been a nice, a nice thing to have.
I mean, that's, you know, kind of how I've, I've connected with
you through all of this as well. So this connection has let me
here. I, you know, when I think of
finding your people, I also think about the mindset of
business analysis professionals. We are interesting.
We have some ways of thinking about things that are a little
bit different in the in the interactions that you've had
here. How do you think our mindset
plays into the, you know, finding your people kind of
question? I, I think we're really lucky.
I think that we're really lucky to have a background in
interacting with stakeholders and getting to know stakeholders
that we've never met before and that we need to form
relationships and connections in order to get our work done
because I think it gives us some, some connection skills,
right? And I think that's so important.
And so when you go to events, you just pull out that part of
your toolkit and start connecting, you know, like who
are you? What do you do?
These kinds of questions that we always have in our back pocket
for our stakeholders, we can bring them into an event like
this. Yeah.
And if you're thinking I don't have their skills, I don't do
that. When I was when I started remote
work, one of the things that I would always do at the beginning
of my meeting, I called it Take 5 to socialize.
Now, maybe they were really annoyed with me.
I have no idea. But it was a couple of minutes
at the top of the meeting where I would just get to know the
people in the room. We wouldn't talk about anything.
And what I learned over time is I was building little
relationships with people. They were getting to see, oh,
you know, Susan's not just here to ask me questions and get down
to business. She actually is interested in
what we do. We had a couple of laughs, which
I think can be important. So that's I think something that
business analysis professionals can add to their repertoire.
Like don't just reserve that for being in an event.
Bring it into your work. Oh, I think so as well.
And in fact, last week, I was under the mistaken impression
from one of my stakeholders that they were really, really busy
and I better get to the, you know, just cut with all this
personal talk and chit chat and all that.
And I just better start the meeting with the work.
And so I did that thinking that I was doing this stakeholder a
favor and that's what they wanted.
But about halfway through the meeting, she said, you know
what? Like, who are you?
Are you a consultant? Are you working here full time?
What is your role? And so she was doing that for
me. And I thought that was very kind
of her because it really broke the ice.
It really got us a chance to kind of talk together more at a
deeper level. And it ended the call really,
really well with her saying, you know, I would be happy to do
this for you. And people are happy to do
things for people they know, right?
It's easier to do something for people that you like and people
that you know. That's an important part of
trust. So I think maybe sometimes
people people forget that those little relationship things that
you do, even if you aren't thinking about it, help you to
build that trust. You know, this is also making me
think you were on gosh, last year we talked about AI and
human skills and human skills as a differentiator in the work
that we do as business analysis professionals and how that's
really going to be essential. I guess I should ask what about
AI and finding your people? Is there, is there something
that we should be thinking about there?
I don't know. You know, AI I've found is great
for having somebody to bounce things off of and listen to me.
I said somebody, you know, like it's a real thing, real person.
And, and I think because it's psychologically safe place and
you can ask AI questions about what you should do or strategies
or that kind of thing, but it has its limitations.
Of course, we all know that. And, and I think that it just
comes back to finding, if you don't have all of your people,
just find one, find one, make those relationships, make those
connections. I was at an event last night
with IIBA and I was talking to somebody and they said, Hey, do
you, do you know Amy and, and drag me over to see Amy.
And I had never met Amy before. And she starts her own
conferences and all that. And that's hard to do online.
That's hard to do in AI. Yes, yeah.
You know what's so funny is that this morning I put in a defect
ticket for for one of our systems.
And at lunch, just before lunch, I saw our IT person out here and
it was like, oh, hey, let's, hey, let's just, I got 5
minutes. Let's talk about that defect.
What other questions do you have for me?
We that we should savor those moments, right?
Because we they really feel so few and far between in this
virtual world. So you're right because I we
have kind of laughed about us both being introverts, but we do
get a little bit jazzed about those human connections in a
weird way, Right? Yeah.
So. Well, let's see what else on
finding your people. How about values you know about?
That. Because we don't want to, we
don't want to find our people who are the wrong people and,
and the wrong people. I mean, it could be people just
a values mismatch. Because sometimes I think that
people are focused on finding, you know, this the celebrity BAS
and making that connection with prominent influencers and that
kind of thing and that, and that's important.
But do they match your values? And I think that's a really
critical piece because I think that in some other, like I spent
a lot of time in PR and communications and so everything
is, is schmooze and connection, whether you had a values match
at all or you know. But I think in business
analysis, because we talked about values so much in the
profession that I think it's so important to connect with people
based on our values. And it's not that somebody
else's values are are wrong or better, but it's just about a
match. And I think from that, that
having that synergy, that flow, I think that other things come
much faster. Yeah.
I also hear you kind of saying authenticity matters as well as
we're thinking about finding our people because I think we have
that we, we sometimes get into I've got to play a role which it
can feel a little bit like that when I sit in front of the
camera all day. But really what resonates when
you're finding your people? They want to feel like you're
really you. You're really Pam, Yes.
Yeah. And that's exhausting, right?
If you're not authentic, it's actually exhausting doing the
acting all the time. Yeah.
Right. Yeah, well Pam, I am glad that
we had a little bit of time to chat here at BBC.
You did a talk earlier. What was your talk on earlier
today? Well, my talk was about a lot of
these same things that we talked about now, as a matter of fact,
and it went very well. We talked about stakeholders.
And I mean, of course, as ABA, we have our questions that we
asked, but what about the wrapper around the questions,
the context, the framing, the order?
Who are you going to ask of the questions?
Who gets a slice of the pie of the questions?
And we talked about all of that and not questions.
So it's interesting. Yeah.
Listen, I think there is nobody better to talk about
interviewing and stakeholder management than you.
So, yeah. So people are looking for
someone to come in and talk about that.
And Anderson, it's you. All right, Thank you.
Thanks for joining me. I have a question for you.
What builds confidence? That is a thing we have in our
booth today. So what builds confidence the
most? Here's the answer.
Is it experience? Is it knowledge?
Is it certification? Is it being part of the
community? Is it volunteering?
We would love to know. We've been asking the folks here
at the conference, so I am going to grab a couple of these.
I'm torn. I think it's part volunteering,
but I think it's part experience.
We want to hear from you. What do you think builds
confidence? Great.
For me, what has impacted me most and giving confidence to me
as APA, one of them would be making interconnections between
different knowledge and subject domains because when I'm working
on one project, I'm able to. Pull.
Information concepts from a different project that I've
worked on for a different domain.
And the second one is talking to different people, talking to
different people from different cultures, people that are junior
to me, people that are more senior to me.
Being able to fully speak to them, talk to them at their
level of comfort, really helps in building your confidence with
the material that you're going to deliver.
So a way to have confidence is to know that your experiences
are different from everyone else's experience.
So you doing something right now for two years, you're going to
have different experiences and, and learn different things than
someone that's been doing it for 10 years, for 15 years.
And so realize that you don't have to be the smartest person
in the room. You just have to know what you
know, be confident with what you know and know that someone else
will have different experiences, have learned something
different. And you can't compliment each
other. You're not trying to outdo each
other. They're not trying to be the end
all. Be all confident what you know
and that you have more to learn. Understand that there's always
something else to learn, but then you can learn off of
someone else and help each other and complement each other, and
that's important. And confidence.
I think evidence is ABA is a lot about asking the questions that
are going through our minds that we might not want to ask, but
finding really appropriate ways to ask them.
It's asking questions that Dr. Clarity and the questions that
maybe everyone else is thinking but no one's willing to voice.
And of course we get better at this through preparation and
training and experience. But think about what's that
nagging question in your mind that gives you more clarity?
It'll for sure give other people clarity, and you'll see
everyone's reactions changed. And when those reactions change,
because clarity happens, you'll get confidence in response to
guarantee it. Now I want to introduce you to
one of my IIBA colleagues. Actually, Toronto is in her
region, so we couldn't have a better representative from IIBA
than the one who takes care of program partners right here on
the East Coast of North America. We don't get to talk a lot about
our program partners, but I think if we're thinking about
finding your people, I think it's interesting to find out how
does finding your people impact programs?
So for this part of the interview, I am joined today by
my colleague Leah Spoeltori. She's a partner manager.
Leah, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Thank you for having me here. First off, I'm just loving the
vibe of the BBC conference that we've got going on.
So about me, so basically I'm based out of Ottawa, Canada and
the areas that I am responsible for as partner manager for the
programs is Eastern Canada, so all along the eastern coast as
well as Northeastern US, OK. And that's basically that's me.
Well, so that's why you're here in Toronto.
You just made the train trip to come see, you know, potential
customers, existing customers. And just reconnecting with,
yeah. Connecting in with the
community, I mean, maybe not a lot of people know, but you, you
spend time with business analysis professionals and
leaders in part of your job, right?
You're not just out there trying to, you know, get organizations
to get a membership. Like you really want to know
what we're doing in this community.
So thanks for coming in. It's my pleasure.
So we're talking about finding your people.
And what does that mean from a program's perspective?
So for me, when I'm thinking about programs, I think future
and not so much about what we've done in the past.
And it might sound a little bit generational, but the thing that
happens I find is that with the times, with the emerging
technologies and things that are changing so rapidly now, so much
more aware of that we have young business analysts coming into
their. Power as.
Young professionals and seasoned professionals as well.
And there's organizations that are trying to navigate the
change between how can we foster the growth of our teams, which
is basically the types of programs that we're offering and
at the same time look future, future forward.
I like to say that, yeah. Yeah.
So it sounds like what the programs, clients, customers,
what they're trying to do is help to build this capability at
scale. So because there's something
there for the next generation, but there's also a lot there for
their existing business analysis practitioners in in those
memberships. Right.
So and the programs that we offer go way beyond just here's
a website, you have tools that you can access, resources that
you have available to you. It goes beyond that because it
really has a lot of focus, like there's community involved,
right? And sometimes when we're looking
at emerging technologies or trying to scale upwards.
We forget about. The fact that communities grow,
what these new emerging technologies are all about.
So it's really bridging that gap between where you are as a
professional organization. How can I help you?
And at the same time, we learn from them because we're talking
to the communities, we're talking to our partner programs,
our academic programs. I, I think right now it is a
tough place for young professionals trying to get in
to this profession. AII think is making
organizations rapidly change. And I think you know that next
generation of young professionals, they've not had
the opportunities to get out. They had the pandemic and now
we've moved into kind of a virtual way of working.
So this, especially opportunities like conferences
or chapter events, gives those professionals, new and old the
opportunity to build those connections, but also practice
what it means to be a business analysis professional. 100% and
I mean it's you have seasoned professionals, but they might
not have had the path set forward for them.
They learned on the fly. There's Caesar.
And at the same time, these young business analysts, they
have their own perspective. It's very unique.
Like you're mentioning about COVID and stuff.
Yeah, we went through that too. And look how it made us have to
adapt so rapidly to change that we just had no choice.
And what the futures saying to us is this wasn't just a fluke
during a pandemic. This is something that's going
to be a trend for life. Yeah, right.
Yeah, it is. It has dramatically reshaped how
we work. Yes.
And I think that those next generation professionals bring a
lot of those skills, but it's hard.
I mean, when you think about the the critical skill for business
analysis professionals is being able to communicate, yes, being
able to be in front of stakeholders, navigating
complexity and ambiguity. So tell me a little bit about,
as you are talking with organizations, academic
institutions, you know how how are you talking to them about
the importance of connection as part of their IIBA relationship?
That's a great question because I said much.
It's just a little bit earlier. It goes beyond the technology
that you can be offered and the tools and resources.
It's having that community, building communities within
communities that you can talk to, right?
Hence the chapters, the actual programs, teams and things like
this we have in the partner program, just to to mention not
we have experts in the field that are contributing to
everything that we're doing. And they're looking at the
future and saying we have to get there.
We're going to partner with IIBA and we're going to do that
together. Yeah.
So I mean, in a nutshell, the the community aspect and just
lending our knowledge, supporting our knowledge,
supporting your knowledge and giving you more because we all
grow together. And I think that an important
lesson in anything that we're going to be doing is you can
have oodles of experience, decades of experience, but
you'll always learn. And something about the
community that I love is the fact that we are always, always
learning. And it's just a passion for
everyone. Yeah.
I, I often say that our community, we are professional
learners. I mean, like that's, that is the
skill that we have to bring into our workplaces because some of
what we do is not, you know, it's, it's not static.
Now you, you didn't come from a business analysis background,
but actually you spend a lot of time talking with business
analysis professionals and more importantly with leaders who are
leading business analysis efforts.
So you actually bring a lot of that back to us.
You know, the things that you're hearing, what are some of the
things that you're hearing from leaders in those organizations
about the importance of business analysis in this new this new
direction that that we're going? So some leaders are not business
analysts per SE, right? So they're wanting to
incorporate what they need as an organization and having that
understanding of business analysis through the
professionals that they engage. A lot of them are changing from
a different title, whatever that would be, into ABA title role,
right? So what does that mean?
What are all the key points here that you have to take into
consideration? So these are the types of things
that we talk about. And at the same time, the goals
of the organization, whatever domain that you're working in,
you're going to have a different experience.
So it's just really talk to me about your teams, tell me about
your challenges. Let me map, but you know what I
mean kind of map, right? We can best support you in that
knowledge transfer and at the same time, we all grow together
and just build that community, yes.
So last night we had another, we had another one of those
opportunities where we could make connections a little more
informally. We had a member reception last
night. You know, what did you, what did
you think about that? Did you meet some new folks?
I mean, it's kind of your opportunity to connect with
professionals in a more informal way.
I did. Any any insights?
Well, you know what I found. It was.
Really, really great to engage with people.
But I just kind of felt like we all had our name tags and it was
just so unique and almost it's, it's endearing.
It brings you together even more because everybody's got their
own personality. I can move my hands around all I
want. It is my personality.
However, you know, when you're in that type of situation, you
want to connect and the desire to connect is stronger than just
sitting in a corner. So what I found was we were all
just young learning together. That's it.
You know, I am, I am always amazed because we think of
ourselves as introverts in this field, but I'm always amazed by
how much easy communication conversations that we have at
those events. Because really I think business
analysis professionals, we we are good at just kind of being
real. Yeah, in a sense.
And so I think you get a feel for that at events like that.
So if people are thinking, I'm not sure that I want to be part
of this network like dig in, that's that's the important part
of being part of this business analysis community is
connecting. Yes.
And there's, there's this thing that I had heard and this is a
big point and it relates to what we're talking about today.
I might not get it 100% of what it is, but it is find what
inspires you. Find that person, find that
thing. Lean into that community, right?
And that's what I'm finding is happening so much now is not
just the status quo desire to just be successful, but at the
end of the day, you're loving what you're doing and you're
contributing to a future that is unclear for everyone.
Isn't real. That's right.
All right.
Well, Leah, it's good to have. Have you here, Have you in
person? Yeah.
Don't get to see you very often. I know once every couple of
years. I know, right?
So thanks. That's what's happening here at
BBC this week. I hope that you've enjoyed a
little taste of what it's like to participate in ABBC and hang
out with other business analysis professionals.
Also, I hope that you're thinking about what it means to
find your people and hope hopefully getting out,
connecting, being, you know, in real life with other business
analysis professionals is what that might mean for you and
where you want to go with your career.
So we will see you in two weeks from today.
Take care. Bye.