Welcome to Business Analysis Live.
I'm your host, Susan Moore, community engagement manager
with the International Institute of Business Analysis.
I explore topics with industry guests about the work of
business analysis professionals and how their work helps
organizations achieve better outcomes.
And Yep, we take your questions too.
Thanks for listening. Let's get started.
I talk a lot, if you've listened, if you've seen this,
this podcast or this live stream, you know that we talked
to a lot of people in the business analysis community.
And you may think that maybe the most influential voices in our
community are the ones who are writing or speaking or doing
training. But I would argue that some of
the most influential voices are you the people that are actually
doing the work. You are the folks who know a lot
and have seen a lot and have a lot to offer.
And as we were taking a look at who else is talking within our
community, we found another podcast and another host who was
doing something similar. So I thought it was a good
opportunity for us to commiserate a little bit and
find out about what are the kinds of conversations that are
helping to shape our community. And our guest today is John
Wisner. John, you are the Coho, You are
the host. There's no Co, you're the host.
There's not, and I'm not recruiting yet either.
That's right. You're a one man show and you
have you've you've you've got a lot of guests.
So you are a one man show who is moderating conversations.
BA Insights is the name of your podcast and you've been doing it
for a couple of seasons now. First, why don't you introduce
yourself? So for folks who may not have
caught you on your podcast, tell us about you.
Tell us about your podcast. OK.
Thanks, Susan. My name is John Wisner.
As you can see, I'm a Principal Management Principal at Capco.
We're a consultancy based in the UK, but globally as well, where
I lead the BA and process capability.
Aside from that, I spend a lot of my day working with different
clients on all things business analysis.
And if that weren't enough, I'm also, as Susan mentioned,
hosting ABA Insights podcast on YouTube and Spotify.
And as Susan said, yeah, it's been a really good way to meet
plenty of people in the BA community, Susan included.
Yeah, that's, yeah, you and I actually, you and I, I mean, I,
I did the podcast, but also you are a voice who participates in
some of our leadership workshops that we have.
And so you've done that a couple of times over the years.
So that's another way that you and I have had an opportunity to
chat. Well, all right, so.
And by the way, love that you've got your BA Insights swag in the
background. See, I've got.
I normally do the other way around, so I've been practicing.
I got to step up my game, John. I need to.
I need to do better. I just have holidays.
Behind that is your prudence season.
You've you you like almost every one of my guests has a more
interesting background than myself.
So I've I've sort of put that in place to to prevent the blank
wall. All right.
Well, good to know. Well, OK, so listen, let's let's
dive into this a little bit, 'cause I'm, I'm, I'm, I've got
an inquiring mind and I need to know some things about your
podcast. So, and by the way, for our
audience today, we are live and we want to take your questions
as well. So make sure that you get those
ready to go. OK.
So first of all, what, what inspired you to start that
podcast? You've got a day job like you're
doing business analysis every day.
Why add this podcast? Well, I, I mean, the, the
entirety of my business analysis has been occurring in financial
services and, and I, I can't recall how many years back, but
let's assume it's about four. It feels like it's probably
longer than that, but there's been a point where I thought, I
wonder if business analysis is much different in other domains.
You know, and of course, you know, I appreciate the Iibas and
other, other bodies. They don't just speak to
financial services, they speak to all domains and all
locations. But I thought, you know, wonder
what it's really like on the ground working in a completely
different domain, you know, so, and, and that was really at the
heart of, of why I set the, the podcast up.
And in fact, it wasn't even a podcast in the first instance.
It was really, you know, I had this this view that I wanted to
go and speak to other BAS didn't think I had any credibility to
necessarily do it because, you know, yeah, like maybe like some
of us, right? It's like, who am I to reach out
to somebody in a completely different domain who I've never
spoken to before and ask them about how they do their and
approach business analysis, right?
And even if they had something amazing to say, why would they
be interested in saying it to me was my perception at the time,
you know, so, so I think it's around 2022.
I was fortunate enough to be nominated for BA of the year and
got to the final. And I thought, actually, this is
probably, you know, there's no better chance of being a little
bit credible to reach out to people.
And maybe they might think actually, yes, John probably has
got something to talk about that I'm interested in, you know, so
that that was the basis of it really.
And then from that, yeah, sorry, speaking to a few people,
actually some of the guests were my fellow finalists, you know,
Helen Holder being an obvious one that, you know, sat next to
in the, in the BA conference was waiting for the the the winner
to be announced and fail as well who went on to win it that year,
Angus, who was another finalist. So I spoke to that.
It was, it was an excellent opportunity as well to have a
longer conversation with the people that I've been sharing
the sort of finance podium with. And the more conversation was
having in which was all generally about how you approach
business analysis. It wasn't a specific topic.
It was obvious that it was quite interesting.
You know, I was really enjoying the conversation and hearing
what people had to say almost every session, probably every
session, I had little notes that I'd take away, taken back to
Capco and say, there's a, there's a few things we can do
here for the community or even just to reinforce the good work
that myself and the team were doing, which is equally
valuable. So I've done a lot of that.
And, and throughout the, the, the, the, you know, the, the
year that I spent having those one once weekly conversations, a
few people said to me, you know, have I thought about making it a
podcast? You know, and Brian, you're one
of my guests. He was one of those that said
that. And I thought, yeah, maybe I
will. And I never really got around to
it for a while. And then I thought, actually, if
I, if in the second season, if I can make it a podcast and I can,
then maybe it, it might be a way to not only maybe appeal to
people that I wouldn't necessarily be able to connect
within the BA community. But also I found that throughout
my 52 conversations, I was almost sharing with every one of
them bits I'd learned and spoken about on other conversations.
So I thought, well, if I, if nothing else, just by putting
the sessions out there, then any of my guests who have been on a
session can listen to how others approach things.
So that was that was it. Yeah, fairly, fairly modest.
Beginnings, you know those initial guests when you reached
out to them and said, hey, I'd like to record this conversation
like, well, clearly they said yes, but what was motivating
them to want to talk about what they did?
I mean, I think, I think one of the, I think there's a few
things, I'm sure I won't hit on everything, but I think, you
know, there's a lot of conversations that we have
sometimes with our stakeholders. And you know, some, many of
those stakeholders are not business analysts.
So therefore, they're not necessarily going to appreciate
what the BA role is all about, you know, how broad it can be
some of the best practices that we can apply.
So therefore, you know, it's for them.
I think it was also another opportunity to maybe maybe get
their message across to some of their stakeholders around what
is business analysis, you know, so maybe that was that was part
of the appeal. These are, you know, two way
conversations. They've become, you know,
conversations with more than two of us.
So I think it's every guest has that opportunity to learn from
each other on the calls as well as from from other sessions that
we have. So hopefully, Susan, that's
yeah, they're, they're some of the reasons why the guests turn
up as well, You know, and of course, I have no problem if any
guest wants to turn up and, and promote what they're doing or
who they're working for within reason, as long as they're not
promoting anything that might be contradictory to my own time.
Obviously I don't want to promote that.
But as long as it's harmonious to the BA community and to what
we're doing during the day, then I'm I'm pretty happy for people
to promote their book or their podcast or whatever else it
might be. Yeah.
I mean, I think the more that we can connect people within our
community to other people in our community to me, the better.
I Have you ever had Stuart Mullinger as one of your guests?
Stu is located there in the UK. If not, he's been on my list for
a while. OK, I'll have to look through,
but I know sure well. He was a guest here, maybe it
was last year and we were talking about community and I'm
not going to get this quote exact, but he said something
like, you know, we can't all be the flowers.
We also some of us need to be the mulch.
And I think that that stuck with me because a lot of the times I
think in our, in our community, if, if we think about talking to
other people about what we do, we think, well, you know, I've
got to let some of these big names talk, you know, they're
the ones that really should be talking, not me.
But he's right. We need to also be talking
amongst ourselves and in these spaces because some of what we
do is misunderstood. Some of what we do is specific
to our domain or the tech stack we work in or the organizations
that we that we're in. And I think the more that we can
just be talking about even the mundane things, I think the more
that that folks who are interested in this or who think
they are alone are not, they find a common, I don't know,
they find kind of a common spirit, a common something that
they're not alone. Yeah, I think so, yeah.
And I, I think that's it. I mean, because I can definitely
appreciate, you know, the, the time when I was a business
analyst for the first time, you know, and as I said, sort of
sort of mentioned, I wasn't an expert on what it is.
It's I definitely didn't go to college or anything to study to
be ABA. It just sort of happened.
And then I was like, you know, I had no idea if there was any BAS
out there. I shouldn't, there was of
course, but certainly wasn't in any connection with them.
So I think, I think I can definitely appreciate that, that
point when you're sitting there doing your work, you think
you're doing OK, but you're not entirely sure because you
haven't really connected with anyone else who's doing
something similar. Yeah, I, I think so many of us
come from other educational backgrounds, professional
backgrounds, or maybe we've done, we've done something else
that's more common, I think. And so, you know, I think that a
lot of people that are interested in business analysis,
they just assume that we all have computer science degrees.
I was a film major with an art history background who, you
know, who worked in a, in a law firm and did a bunch of other
things. And so I, you know, I had a, an
experience that I could bring into this.
And in fact, the topic that that you actually, I think you
allowed me to pick from your list of 52 what I, what, what I
wanted to talk about. And I think the topic that I
ended up joining you for was business analysis is what you
make of it. And we had David Beckham.
Admittedly not that David Beckham, but still, he was a
lovely. Man.
I'd said that to my husband and he was like, wait, who was the
other guest? And I was like it.
It's not, it's not that David Beckham, but we had a great
conversation about it. Business analysis is what you
make of it. And probably I, I think I talked
about, you know, making student films and things like that.
And so when I got into this work, I approached it as another
kind of a creative project. It was just an intellectual
process where we were building something.
And so, you know, I, I think that we don't just have to have
that business analysis knowledge.
You can actually bring this whole other piece with you into
the work that we do. Oh yeah, yeah.
I mean, there's so many people I speak to.
Where, you know, now we're sort of frustrated artists.
I use the word weak. So I feel like I am a little bit
as well like any, any opportunity to to add a little
bit of razzmatazz to a diagram, you know, really.
But I think, you know, as many people like that have got
creative side that they can, you know, be it business analysis
does give you that opportunity to bring that creativity to it.
You don't just have to follow like free techniques every day.
It's like, you know, there's 100 plus techniques probably and you
can refine them as, as you need to for your stakeholder purposes
and you can be creative, you know?
Yeah. I, I think we, we often think,
well there this isn't a very creative business, except I
would argue that it is. I mean, when you are dealing
with people, when you are having to get people to change a
perspective, create, make a decision, you've got to use, I
think a lot of creativity in order to wrangle all of those
folks. And if you've got that arts
background, visualizations to me came very easy because I was
already someone who thought visually and I thought, oh, I'm
just going to draw some pictures.
And that became kind of the, the phrase that I would that I was
most known for in my work. We would have a hard
conversation and I would say, let me draw you a picture.
And so I could, I could bring that.
So it really is, I think this, this can be this, this work that
we do. It can be whatever you want it
to be. But I don't think you recognize
that until you hear other people talking about the work that we
do and the different kinds of experiences that people bring to
the table. Yeah, absolutely right.
Yeah. So I think, you know, I think if
you speak to people that probably haven't done the BA
role or haven't worked too closely with some really good
BAS, you know, you might ask them what what is ABA, you know,
what is a business analyst? And, and you know, if you're
lucky, they might be able to tell you, they create
requirements. You know, they might not tell
you much else than that. You know, So it's sometimes it's
a good opportunity as well to, to explore, you know, what, what
others are doing and, and hear what they've got to say and what
techniques they use and how they get involved in things beyond
requirements. You know, and you know, I think,
I think we can obviously there's many textbooks that are
available that we can read. You know, I've certainly read a
few that tell you about the many things that we can get involved
in as BAS. But I think hearing from other
BAS and hearing what they've been working on, what techniques
they've been using, challenges that they've met and overcome
and how they do it, yeah, it's really, really helpful.
And, and probably the most helpful side of it is just that
reassurance, you know, that you're not doing something
crazy, that you're actually, you know, your techniques, your
approaches, that they they all work incorrectly.
And I think that's, you know, makes me think as well.
You mentioned something else earlier on in terms of, you
know, a lot of BAS, you know, probably not necessarily.
Yeah, I guess to communitive commutative in the wider
community, but maybe that's because we spend a lot of our
time just listening to other stakeholders.
You know, I think like that's almost like the most important
thing that BA does is like listen to people, you know,
because and, and I don't know how much is weighted, but I
would imagine that good percentage of my time is
listening to stakeholders, what their situations are and what
they need. So it's quite it's quite
interesting to to be encouraging BAS to talk about things for
starters. But we're, we're probably, you
know, we can probably think of many perspectives that is worth
listening to and sharing and, and maybe think of a feature
scenarios where it's worth us sharing our insight as well.
Do you feel like doing this podcast has made you a better
interviewer? Had you had you thought about
yourself as a business analysis professional with interviewing
skills before you started? I was definitely aware of it
because I'm, I'm, I'm definitely aware, you know, I've been
fortunate enough to be developing and leading the
training at Capco for business analysis for, yeah, 10 plus
years. So I, I think I did a count the
other day. I think I probably had a
probably 1000 people at different points attend sessions
over them years of BA training. So you get to realise that
you're you're sort of speaking to a lot of people anyway.
So yeah, so, so that's that's sort of part of it is the sort
of share sharing and going beyond.
Sorry, Susan, what was the rest of your question?
Sorry, I drifted away there. Well, no, no.
And. And so my question was first,
did you think of yourself as an interviewer before?
You got. Started and do you do you think
it's improved your interviewing skills as a practitioner?
Yeah. So, so, yeah, it's, it's
interesting because I think before doing this and you know,
in my early days, you know, you'd sort of approach a, an
interview, a stakeholder interview with some trepidation,
you know, because you haven't met a stakeholder before.
You don't know what they're like, you don't know if they're,
you know, how their time is available.
You don't necessarily have to adapt, know how to adapt your
style to suit their situation or to empathise with them or
connect with them in certain ways.
So that all takes a little bit of time to practice and you've
nothing else like hosting a podcast and interviewing people
is more practice with people that you genuinely didn't know
before. You know, So, so now I, there's
no, there's no real fear of, of actually going to meet new brand
new stakeholders in my day job or when I'm speaking to them in
any other BA sense. It's even giving me a little
confidence when I'm sort of, you know, in that conference
situation and you and you don't necessarily know anyone.
You want to walk up to people and introduce yourself.
It's it's helped me, you know, with that side.
I'm a little bit better now than I would have been in the past.
Yeah. So I think, I think just just
that little bit of practice, little bit of reassurance that
the things that we all do as BAS, yeah, is, is something we
can extend outside of our BA role, you know, and I think
there's probably a lot of things we do that we maybe don't
realise that there is a correlation to things we do
outside, you know, and communicating is obviously
something we do all the time. So.
Yeah, I mean, we all have families and we are consumers,
right. And so we have to talk to them
and ask questions and right, those are those are
opportunities for us to practice.
I think you you nailed it. You know, often when I talk with
other business analysis professionals and you know,
their concern is, you know, how am I interacting with
stakeholders? And I say, well, here's here's
the good and the bad news. Like you, you can go learn how
to be a better communicator. You can take a class on it.
However, you are only going to get better if you practice.
And so practice needs to just look like getting out there and
doing it because you'll find that you have your own style.
You will become a better listener and you'll be
practicing how to be more self aware, how to be more
empathetic. And you know, you don't just
practice the same thing over and over.
You then want to get more challenging situations because
you know, in order to be good at things like conflict or
facilitation, you've got to, you've got to find harder
challenges so that you can practice.
That's how you get good. You are just not going to show
up in front of a stakeholder with no experience, no practice,
and it's going to go great and lead into the parts that aren't
great. But I said, yeah, and there's,
you know, it, it just shows there's always opportunity to
practice things that you might not be so good at.
And you don't have to practice them in in a environment that
you might think is not appropriate, you know.
So as an example, you know, maybe there's some projects that
we work on where it's not really appropriate to practice every
little technique that we might want to use.
But I'd argue there's plenty of times when it is appropriate to
even even then do it. But if there, if it isn't
appropriate, sometimes use another take another
opportunity, you know, present to your BA community, you know,
speak to your your project team, you know, show something that
you've been working on. You know, there's, there's many
opportunities to do it. Yeah.
And I think that's that is something that I wish I had done
earlier in my career. I worked in an organization
where he where we had a very enterprising CIO and he wanted
us to do some things differently.
He called it agile, but he said I am not interested in any of
this agile stuff. Like agile means that we are
going to tailor for us the things that we do well and we're
going to improve the things that we don't do well.
We were doing some really novel things and we spent a lot of
time internally talking about those.
I wish I had been confident enough to, to take some of those
conversations and have those outside because I think it would
have given me confidence in a way that I didn't have
confidence as a as a young business analyst.
But also could have been as, as Stuart said, creating some of
that mulch for the community so that we could all grow together.
Because, you know, business analysis and agile is, is is
weird enough, but knowing that there's other people that are
experimenting with different ways of doing it, I think would
have been helpful if I'd felt confident enough to have that I.
Think so. And I think I think, you know,
building on that, I mean, you know, we we often sort of read
textbooks about, you know, BA approaches as an example,
events. We read textbooks about all
sorts of things, not just BA, of course, but if you think about
the BA perspective, you read about techniques, some of them
will just resonate with you straight away.
You don't really need much convincing, but there'll be
other techniques where you think, I'm just not sure that's
works for me. You know, I can't really see
myself using that. And sometimes, you know, if you
read or reread the, the, the section, you still can't be
convinced and it's still, the penny doesn't drop.
And I, and I found, you know, from talking to different people
about techniques that I, I just don't necessarily get on with or
have not been able to adopt. I hear the way they adopt them
and the value they get from it, It does make me think actually,
maybe maybe there's a different angle I can take on this, this
technique, you know? So I think what it demonstrates
therefore, is, you know, connecting with the community
inside and outside your organization for that matter, is
a way to maybe figure out some approaches that you might think
you're familiar with and you might think you've discounted.
But people are using those techniques successfully
somewhere else. So why not learn from how
they're doing it and what they're doing differently to
you? I, I think those are some of the
most interesting conversations that I've had with members of
the community, especially where they've taken a technique which
I think how, how on earth would you use that?
And they have found ways to modify it.
Either they've got a scenario that's really unusual or they've
said, well, we're going to take this thing, but but we're going
to change it a little bit and we're going to do it this way,
which I think a lot of folks in our community don't realize.
You do not have to practice these hundreds of techniques
exactly how they are documented. You can change them.
You can make them work for your scenario.
So experiment. That's it.
Yeah, Yeah, it's not certainly. I think some of the techniques I
I use, I mean it's still fundamentally based on proven
techniques. But you know, the, the
practicalities of being involved in workshops with many multiple
stakeholders or stakeholders that don't know what a process
flow looks like, for example, means that you have to adapt the
technique, you know, and then, and I think it was only only
this week I was talking about, you know, if I'm having a first
conversation with a stakeholder or stakeholders about their
process in a workshop, they don't always want to see me
moving swim lanes backwards and forwards and figuring out where
events are. And we know what, how to draw
that, that perfect BPMN model. So just using some of the key
objects and sort of using some overlays and using some layering
so I can go through that session as seamlessly as possible for
them and but hear what they've got to say and allow them to see
how their conversation inputs evolve in.
That's really, that's really useful, right?
And then I can take that away and turn it into a textbook
process flow as I need to. But you sort of learn, you know,
because I think part of it is you, you've got to adapt the
technique to your style and your situation.
That's right. Into your audience again,
because you're right, sometimes our audiences do not care about
the minutiae that we might get hung up on.
They just want something simple that is going to use their time
wisely that they can participate in and then you can go work your
magic behind the scenes. But making it available to them
so that they can quickly walk away is important.
And, and so I, you know, I like to think that when, you know,
when Scott Bennett and I started this podcast many years ago, one
of the things that we talked about was wanting to make
business analysis more accessible to different kinds of
business analysis professionals who might be at different levels
professionally or, you know, even students.
Because we, we thought one, it was really important for them to
hear these conversations, but we also thought we would, we were
modeling some things that might be important takeaways for them,
like interviewing, because interviews, you know, you and I
were talking today, I kind of came up with some questions, but
you know, we were just going to let this thing kind of go where
it was going to go. I think those are the best kinds
of interviews, not the ones where I say, hello, John, I am
here to ask you some questions. First question.
That's it. Yeah, I totally agree.
I mean, there's a bit as ABA, right?
I don't, I know I could theoretically have a pre
precancer of questions that I ask every stakeholder.
I think personally, if I did that, I would be so bored for
one thing. And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't
get all the insight that I really need from the
stakeholders. So you know, it's better to
know, you know, know the objective of your conversations
and your interviews and your sessions and your analysis.
But you know, we've got to practice being adaptable to the
situation as well. And I think, you know, I think
communicating and connecting with the community, having these
interviews, you know, various other things, there's another
opportunity to practice being a little bit adaptable to the
situation and maybe learning a few techniques to help, you
know, I mean, think, think one thing with that springs to mind
is that there's a great BA technique called observation,
OK. And we use observation a lot of
time to understand how our stakeholders are working or some
of the challenges that they're having or what their processes
are. But you can apply observations
to improve yourself. You know, I, I, I definitely,
I've seen, I won't name him, but there's a, a colleague I've
worked with Capco for a while and he, he has a really great
way of like presenting certain information, right?
And then when he still stands up in front of a room, actually
quite good at commanding the room.
So, you know, when I observed that, I thought, actually,
that's much better than the way I do it.
So I've tried to make it sort of my own own little way.
I won't tell him because he'll only start recognizing that I've
been nicking some of these. But I think since that point,
you know, I think it's, it's something we should all do.
You know, we should recognize that if there's other BAS, other
stakeholders doing things that's slightly better than we are,
that could be more advantageous than what we're using, then it's
OK to to appropriate them. You're probably doing them a
great bit of credit by taking their approaches as well.
It's the highest form of flattery.
And, and again, because I, I think it is very easy to look at
somebody and think, oh, they're doing that really well.
If you think they're doing it well and you think that's that
is something that you could do, practice it, make it your own
because sometimes it might look differently when you do it.
You're right. Observation is key.
I had a guest a couple of weeks ago.
He actually would be great for your podcast too.
By the way, Elias Mockel, he is a trained opera singer, also an
educator. And he, you know, he talks about
the importance of recording yourself and watching yourself
because sometimes it it's you, you really can't see what you
bring to the table unless you watch yourself.
And I know a lot of people say I really don't want to watch
myself, but that's one of the ways that you get you get better
at this is. Just be prepared, you might
sound a little bit different than you think.
That's the old thing, right? Yeah.
Well, so Speaking of questions, you know, one of the things that
that awed me, by the way, when you reached out to invite me to
participate is you had, I think you had like the full list of 52
questions like you were, you were like one a week.
We're going to do one of these a week.
And they were just every every kind of question from I think
you were looking at techniques and the more like tactical side
of business analysis. And then you were looking at
more of the arts side. So I know I picked the business
analysis is what you make of it. I think Scott Bennett, who was a
woodworker, I think he he had maybe he picked the topic that
was, you know, how you bring your arts background or into
that. I'm just curious how, how do you
how do you select your questions, your focus for your?
Few, few different ways, basically, I mean, I, I've
always got this, this ever, ever evolving list of topics and, and
against it is, you know, the, the names of guests are either
I'm thinking they could be good for it, or they've volunteered
or they've, they've, they've, they've actually participated
like so and the, the titles themselves or the topics they
evolve. They come from many directions,
you know, so one of them is maybe a topic.
I think actually be quite interesting to get a perspective
on how people are doing that. Maybe because I'm doing
something similar myself or some of my team and sort of doing
something similar. So one, use the, the the podcast
as an opportunity to see how others do things, right.
So for example, you know, we, we think about the, the trio of
business architecture, business analysis and process a Capco,
right? So, so we have a great idea of
how we do things internally, you know, but by speaking about that
topic, or at least maybe those three separate topics with
people, that's a good way for me to get a bit of insight into,
you know, how the others are approaching it or what they see
valuable in those, those three things.
As an example, it might be that I've watched a podcast or we've
talked in the podcast about a topic.
You know, it might be that I've read a book.
It might be that I've attended a conference and there's an
interesting topic that even sometimes just walking up the
road, I think weirdly, it's just an idea just crops in and then
I'll send this is a technique for everyone.
I, I, if I've got ideas, I've got a terrible memory.
So I will e-mail myself with the idea so that when I come back to
my desk, I will see that e-mail from me.
And I know that I can lift that in and put it somewhere where
I'll remember it, you know, so, so it comes from a variety of
places. And, and actually probably the
last area that I had to think about as well is that some of my
guests, when I, when I reach out to them, you know, I'll say that
they have got a whole bunch of topics in one point.
Feel free to pick those that might be interesting to you, but
there's something else you'd rather talk about then let me
know. And, and so, so there's a lot of
topics that have come the courtesy of, of guests that have
suggested them or in books they're writing as well.
So nothing's particularly off table.
I think we did have a, we had a session on BA and the arts
because there was a few people talking about that correlation.
I thought it was quite interesting.
And I can't remember exactly who was on that call, but I think
Donovan was there. I remember.
And in fact, I think he worked at the an arts college or
university arts or Academy of Arts some some along those
lines. So be quite interesting to hear
how how fitness like if you're working in an artistic
organization, is the is the analysis equally artistic?
You know, unless that's a conversation I also have
sometimes with others in just the conference.
You know, as well. You you speak to people in
different organizations. And I think there was one
recently I bumped in summary was the Royal Opera House in in
London. And I thought, that's amazing,
right? That'd be so interesting to see
what that's like. So I think I had one.
I think I have just found two guests for you, your your
contact at the Opera House and the speaker who is an opera
singer. Wouldn't that be fascinating?
That would be pretty amazing, yeah.
Here we go. I'm gonna.
I'll. I'll reach.
Out I'll make a. Connection so well let's see I I
tell you what we've got a couple of questions or maybe just some
observations here I'm going to pop those in really quickly so
we've got this question tailoring techniques from books
is funnier than adopting as they are yeah is is funnier or is is
it just more fun it might be more fun and I think more
appropriate. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think, you
know, I always like to learn the technique from a textbook
perspective first because I feel like then I'm in a perspective
where I can appreciate the value of it as perhaps the author had
intended or the, you know, person who creates it.
I think then, you know, I think about, does it work for me?
And if not, can I tweak it Sometimes, like that realization
doesn't come for for months or even years in some cases, You
know something you think that's good, but I could just do this a
little bit better for me and you tweak it.
Yeah. And, and sometimes the
inspiration has to hit you or other conversations.
That's why I think conversations within our community is so
important. This is a people business that
we're in. There is not a a direct set of
steps that results in success. It has to be tailored all along
the way. It it is influenced heavily by
the people that we are working with.
So. Yeah, on my point.
I mean, if we if on our day-to-day, you know, our
outputs are influenced by the stakeholders we work with,
sometimes as BAS we can forget to look after ourselves.
So you can actually improve your own practices and your own way
of working by observing others and what others do and what
others produce and making that part of what you're doing as
well. So I think it's pretty helpful
for BAS to be a bit selfish at times and take a little bit to
themselves, but use the techniques they've learned and
turn them on on their self anyway.
I say that all the time, use business analysis in your career
development like that's you've got the skills to know how to
assess your performance, plan your development.
You've got those skills. It's called business analysis.
Just apply it. And in fact, you can use
business analysis for a lot of things outside of work.
All right, so let's see. Kamani has our next comment.
Be adaptable, but the key is to be your authentic self and be
curious. And I think sometimes we forget
that the authentic self is the important part of what makes
these conversations last. I mean, beyond just that moment
that we have the conversation with someone, being authentic,
being, you know, listening and and giving our opinion, I think
is is key to the work that we do.
Yeah, I agree. I mean, people mention like
imposter syndrome as something that relates to when you're in
an environment that you're not familiar with or you think that
you're not good enough to be in that environment.
If you're not being yourself, then you're always suffering
imposter syndrome. Yes.
What a great way to say that, right?
Yeah, what a great way to say that.
All right. And then this, this is just a
shout out to both of us. Business Analysis Live and BA
Insights are the two podcast where I learned what the
community is talking about. Thank you.
I should say Nuno has been a guest a few times.
What a great guest is as you are.
All right, but you did not ask him to say that I.
Didn't ask Nina, but he is that. Yeah.
Thanks, Nina. So, you know, today's topic was
conversations that shape the business analysis community.
But but I wonder if for you, the conversations you're having, do
you feel like they're shaping the community or do you feel
like they're reflecting our community?
I feel like maybe it's a bit of both because I think maybe and
it's I guess what comes first chicken and egg type
conversation. Like some of the conversation we
have, you know, some obvious topics, you know, things like AI
seem to be a conversation that we have quite a lot with the
community. And yeah, AI is shaping the
community, but conversations about AI is shaping the
community as well, of course. And I think conversations about
AI is a good way of shaping what we do as AI, you know, comes in
more and more, you know, I think we can, I've certainly heard
from far better speakers than me on the topic.
But you know, about how how AI is going to, you know, is here,
right? So.
So, you know, we don't want to just be a passive victim of AI,
but rather we can be on the front foot and think about how
we're going to embrace it, how we're going to use it, how we
can do all the good things we do as BAS.
But all went it with AI would be a good example.
It's probably Kitty Hung actually is probably the person
that I'm referring to as I heard that because she I know I listen
to quite a lot that she has to say on the on the topic of AI.
And I think we forget all of these skills and communication
that we have as business analysis professionals in a lot
of ways, I think makes us really unique users of AI because if we
approach AI like we do our stakeholders in the way that we
talk to them and we interview them like we can apply all of
those skills to AI. In fact, I've had another guest
on here and we talked about using those interviewing
techniques as as part of your prompting skills.
I wouldn't just ask you a question and go, OK, thanks for
that answer. Moving on.
Right. I might follow up on your
question. We can use that with AI too.
So it's not as if we have to go learn a different skill set.
We have that skill set. We just have to believe that we
can use it in this context. That's right.
And then I think that the BA techniques that we, we develop,
I think are probably more important when I in the world of
AI because it's, you know, there's so much more
information, you know, some of it not always accurate, you
know, so we've got to find really effective ways to
consume, validate, structure that data, question and
challenge that data, present it back in a way that people can
determine whether it's right or wrong, you know, you know, and,
and also just just trying to leverage it as well as a, you
know, because, you know, if we're fighting against AI and
trying to, trying to take notes quicker than AI can, we're
probably going to fail, right? If we can use the, the, the, the
qualities that AI brings to take away some of the admin that we
have, then it gives us time to focus on the real quality, you
know, which is speaking to stakeholders, really learning
what they've got to, to what their problems are, really
speaking and listening to them. You know, I think that that is
something to consider at least. And, and it's reassuring, you
know, going back to your question, that that as well as
AI, there's a lot of conversation about all those
other things that we do as well. You know, I think even even
things that we can sometimes forget about sometimes as ABA,
because maybe our current project doesn't necessarily
allow us to focus on every technique at a given point.
Because talking to others stakeholders, other BAS, you
realise that they're still using the techniques to great effect.
So you can keep them in your toolkit.
So when you're on a different project, you can refer back to
them again with the the continued confidence that
they're still the right approaches.
Yes, Yep, exactly. All right.
Well, we are almost at the end of our time, but I've got one
more question for you. And this is because I have an
inquiring mind. I've watched a number of your
podcast. I've been on your podcast.
One thing that I noticed is that you never introduce yourself.
Is that by design? It is really I I just assumed
that that after so many. You figure people just know me.
Well, it's not it's less about that.
I think people just get bored of listening to me introduce
myself. So I think that if they were if,
if people, I mean, there's plenty of ways to find who I
have like because my name is there.
I think the there's an intro video as well that people that I
do introduce myself to, I believe.
But no, I guess primarily maybe it's he goes down.
So I'm genuinely more interested in the guests than myself.
So you're just. Moving the conversation on it's
not about me, it's about them. That's it, you know, Although to
think about if I had introduced myself for the like the 150
sessions, I think I'd be amazing.
An elevated pitch in that respect.
You know, I think I'm decent, but I think I'd be amazing.
Something to think about. You could even have like a fun
hook at the beginning. There we go.
Yeah, could do. There's, there's a probably ways
to evolve it anyway and, and maybe steal a couple of your
approaches from this podcast season as well.
Yeah, there you go. I will say you've got a yeah.
Before you know, the light comes on and we go live.
I do think, OK, how am I going to mix it up this time?
Maybe AI could help, who knows? Who knows?
Anyway, All right, well, thank you so much for being my guest
today. Pleasure.
How nice is to not have to prepare questions?
Right, and just show up and chat and that's, you know, that's
really what I enjoy doing. I also enjoy the part before we
turn the cameras on where I get to know a little bit more about
you. Like that also could be that
might be like an after hours kind of a thing.
That was a great conversation. We share some comedy influences.
Yeah. So excited to learn that about
you. All right.
Well, John, thank you again for joining me today.
I look forward to seeing you on your next episode of BA
Insights. Take care.
All right? And that is it for today's
session. Are you thinking about
conversations that maybe you could start having with people
in your network? Maybe you're thinking about even
more broadly? Where are conversations with
other kinds of communities where you can learn and practice?
When I see you in two weeks, we're going to be talking with
someone who makes giving and receiving feedback joyous.
And I can't wait for you to meet him.
So two weeks from today, you will get to meet him too.
We'll see you then. Thanks.
Bye, bye. If you're hearing this, you made
it to the end of the episode. Thanks for listening.
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