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You Help Companies Change! |
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Written by Jeff Martin, Founder of Collective Genius
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 It's Friday night and your spouse has organized a dinner out with some new friends. You arrive at the restaurant, greet your new friends and sit down. After the small talk subsides and your spouse gets engrossed in a conversation with her/his friend, your new friend looks across the table and asks “So, what do you do?” You pause and think “What explanation do I provide this time? They look smart; they have glasses on, no pencil protector - hmmm.” You choose among your 80 possible explanations from “I work with computers” to the classic novel “Well, I work on the business side of a managed care organization as part SME and part BA, and act as a liaison between multiple business units and the BI IT group providing requirements documentation and analysis on processes and new technology applications to ensure we build the right solutions internally within our organization allowing management the right reporting visibility." Typically your new friend will smile and say "So you work on computers, huh?" My former response was… “I am a Gladiator”, get a laugh then give the midsized explanation leaving them clueless and getting a similar response "Oh, your company works on computers?" So answer the question already. What do you do?
If you are practicing activities that fall within the BABOK, then what you do is very simple and only takes three words! You “HELP COMPANIES CHANGE.” In our practice, we help leaders that drive change in organizations to implement that change. Not specifically the practice of change management, the much larger picture of driving change towards specific executive level direction and vision. The activities of business analysis are specifically to implement change. We change processes, products and technologies to continually move organizations forward and to make them better. We are the people on the front lines implementing change in organizations and changing the way people do business. We support the leaders who define change and the leaders that drive the change. We are the people that are tasked with the successful implementation of change. All projects are based in change, otherwise it would be just the normal day to day business of performing the same task day in and day out. As people who practice business analysis, we work among project teams, teams driving change. You are not just a practitioner of business analysis, you help companies change - you help them evolve, you help them grow, you help your organizations to lead their market.
So the next time you are asked ‘what do you do?' Be proud and tell them ‘I help companies change!’ In doing this, you advocate what we do as business analysts and hopefully you will stop being asked to fix computers. Jeff Martin is the founder of Collective Genius a company that believes they can CHANGE the WORLD by helping good companies and organizations CHANGE! Follow Jeff Martin on twitter t@: http://twitter.com/lead_by_change |
