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6 Ways the Business Analyst Is Like a Consultant

On September 12, 2016 / business analysis, consulting, project management, strategy

I make no bones about it. Over 27 years ago, as I prepared to leave university, I wanted a career where I could do the stuff I did in post-secondary school but in the private sector.

Read, research, write, chat with people, create relationships, present and share ideas, improve organizations and occasionally attend beer and pizza events that were an opportunity to network or have fun, if you know what I mean, right.

As I skimmed my career horizon, talked to people, and took the time to work through the book, “What Color is Your Parachute” by Richard N. Bolles (recommend if changing careers), I realized I did not fit the normal get-a-job world. I learned that I needed to feed my entrepreneurial spirit, analytic abilities, training and development and strategic thinking to make business better. Somewhere I learned about, ‘the consultant’ (place dramatic music here, please) and started reading everything I could about the profession.

This week I did a career audit and review – something I recommend everyone should do from time to time. This brought me to 6 Ways in which the Business Analyst is like a Consultant.

It’s a Problem to Solve: Many professionals work their whole lives to become a project manager or an executive. They want to climb the corporate ladder so to speak. Some professionals prefer to skip all that implementation and operational management stuff and get to solving business problems now. As a business analyst or consultant, while helping to expose challenges and opportunities, you get to work with all levels of the organization and develop your executive thinking and strategic abilities. You get to define the problem, ask the important what and why questions to unravel issues and develop solutions.

Do Many Things: This is something I love about the overall consulting and training field, being able to do many things, see many things, and be many things. I was once asked, by a CEO, what would a perfect week look like for me. I laughed and said, on Monday I write, connect with people and prepare, Tuesday, I attend a few meetings, do a breakout session and coach/mentor clients, by Wednesday I am keynoting at an event, updating key stakeholder status and designing a new system, Thursday and Friday are spent training and/or facilitating a session and then back to the office to debrief and prepare for the next week. Best part, many interactions, many cultures, helping many people and doing many things. You can specialize in an industry or a niche, focus on a very specific group or industry or even ride the wave of the next best thing. The business analyst and consultant do this. The choice is yours.

Many Hats to Wear: Recently I experienced the perfect fortuitous juxtaposition of interests. I was invited to a 1920’s themed volunteer appreciation dinner being sponsored and hosted by a client. I ended up sitting next to a University Associate Dean, senior board member, and business person. He asked the magical question, what do you do? Sitting there, in my 1920’s time period attire, wearing my fedora, with my strategic business analyst/consultant’s smile, I delivered my elevator speech. He looked at me and said, you are a man of many hats. I think he is correct, if you get to wear many hats and like it, you may be a professional turning consultant. You get to be many things, play many roles and with many responsibilities.

An Instant Business Network: You may not like to network, I get that. But as a business analyst/consultant just by the nature of the work you do you get to build a vast and valuable network. Just think about it. You get to work with internal and external clients due to the different projects you are engaged in. Your stakeholder list includes all levels in your organization. Externally you make connections with vendors of all sorts.

Recently a business associate of mine lost his job as a strategic business analyst at a major corporation. He was right sized. A week later, a vendor called him and asked if he would join their team. He would be working for a company with an office in Pal-Alto, California. He went from commuting to work every day to working virtually and going to California for meetings during Canada’s winters. The key point, you get to build relationships. That’s important.

You are Seen as an Expert: I learned this when I was with one of the big consulting firms. Consulting firms and the profession is about rapid learning. Even independently, you can focus on a key expertise and grow your abilities. The best part, you get to learn on the job. I have often said the business analyst is paid to learn and develop their expertise. This often happens due to the fast pace of projects and the teams you are working with. If you are with a firm, they will send you to training and develop your expertise for the various engagement/projects you work on. You learn to leverage and build your expertise. That is exciting!

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus. Bruce Lee Share on X

Flexibility is a Survival Tactic: Years ago I worked for a very operational company (for a short bit). It was a good experience as it helped me understand the day-to-day needs of clients. I could plan my day and for the most part, I could do the things that were required.

For the business analysts as a consultant this might be a bit of a challenge. Sometimes your day ‘changes on a dime’. For example, a client calls and says “I have two people flying in today can you meet with them to get the new systems requirements from them? They are available this afternoon.” Your day just changed, and you need to adjust everything fast. The reality is as a professional you may be working on several initiatives (an IT assessment, a policy review, maturity audit, risk assessment or a process model) and you need to manage everything and adjust.

Final Thoughts: As I write this piece I find that I am becoming even more excited about the work a strategic business analyst as the consultant does. I feel as if I want to share all the projects I worked on over 3 decades and the many lessons learned. But I can’t do it all at once.

Recently, during a podcast interview, I hosted (BA Times Podcast airs September 2016), my business colleague and guest, Bob Prentiss (Bob the BA), reminded me that not all business analysts become project managers. There are now many career avenues to pursue.

I am excited for you, the professional business analyst, about the future projects and initiatives you will work on. The ones you can’t even see coming yet. But they are there. Interestingly being a business analyst and consultant (internal or external) provides you a platform on which to develop many skills, to try new things and to boldly go with no-one has gone before. Good luck.

And remember,
Do your best,
Invest in the success of others,
Make your journey count.
Richard

Six Innovative Personality Types to Create Business Success

On September 2, 2016 / human resources, leadership, profiles

There are many types of people that make up an organization and team. Sometimes the type of person needed changes depending on the circumstances within your organization. Innovation or innovative people types has become popular as of late. So I pose the question, when asked to create a list of innovative people, who comes to mind? Maybe Einstein, Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Spielberg or Hanks. Innovators are people with the creative ability to come up with and act on something new. To take an idea, work with it and create. That leads to the question, who are the different kinds of innovators? When it comes to those in charge of businesses and organizations, there are five different types of innovative personalities that tend to end up at the top.

1. The Driver
The driver is a strong personal type that creates hard, disciplined leaders. They aim for targets, are motivated by results and they love rewards. As time moves on, they work hard to retain influence, to create impact and to leave a legacy. They have a unique ability to run with projects and promote their own success as they get things done. They work to the drum beat of “get it done” and their main question for their team members is “is it done yet?” The Driver make up about 33% of senior ranks.

2. The Pathfinder
Pathfinders are risk takers. They are open to fresh ideas and have a knack for choosing the right approach. They drive results through the use of creative engineering. For better or worse, Pathfinders believe that their sheer will to succeed will guide the way. Even though their ideas or initiatives will not always be fully supported, they dedicate themselves to the cause and apply an unparalleled work ethic to move great ideas along. Pathfinders make up about 16% of executives.

3. The Entrepreneur
Usually have excellent analytical abilities and are the great strategic thinker. Normally easy going, objective and seldom critical. They can succeed in any occupation they chose as long as it does not involve routine. They require independence, diversity, plenty of intellectual stimulation and the opportunity to generate ideas. Their work must be challenging to be satisfying. They do tend to be quick, ingenious, inventive, resourceful, social and enjoy complexity. Best to surround them went capable people.

4. The Wizard
Wizards love to learn, volunteer first, get noticed and everything works out for them even when it shouldn’t’t. They can be the organization’s pet, liked by everyone. Wizards have the ability to create relationships with the right people, support/build talent and leverage their skills for success. Wizards make up 24% of the senior team and are often the person in charge.

5. The Conformist
Conformists like to control and their risk tolerance is low. These individuals like clear instructions and authority. They like to be right, tend to be precise, and are highly organized, thorough and conscientious. Policy and procedure are key. Often they are challenged by change and transformation within their environment, especially if they have no say. Conformists are great tactical managers within the mid range of an organization. They make up about 12% of the senior team.

Related Article: 9 Steps to get Teams Going in the Same Direction

6. The Anchor
The Anchor helps hold everything together. They tie down the sails and batten the hatches. They are great at weighing pros and cons and taking one step at a time. They will sound the warning sign if things are not right. Anchors use approaches and methods that they know work. The Anchor will remind the team of their strengths and limitations. They are realists and love structure. Every boat needs an anchor. They make up about 23% of the senior team.

Final Thoughts

Each of these groups has their unique strengths. The Drivers and Pathfinders are enterprising, prone to risk and internally motivated. They are great for younger organizations. The Entrepreneur is great for creative teams solving problems or leverage opportunities. Unfortunately most traditional organizations and human resource professionals shy away from hiring these individuals because they do not understand how to leverage their unique abilities. Established organizations considering a change might need the Wizard to move vision and strategy forward. The Conformist gets people moving to the rhythm of structure and controls as the Anchor ensures that the rate of innovations is in step with the strengths and limitations of the organization.

Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open. T. Dewar Share on X

The Driver and Pathfinder make things happen. The Entrepreneur figures things out quickly and strategically. The Conformist and the Anchor holds everything together.

A Side Note: Disruptions has become the big word in innovation thinking. Along with creative teams innovation drives success. The most innovative teams have a natural tension between risk and reality, and creating a strong mix of the above personality types can help keep a healthy balance. Of course there is always the potential for chaos. But managed chaos often requires the ability to diverge only to converge on new ideas and the different innovative personality types play an important role in making that happen.

Do your best,
Invest in the success of others,
May your journey count.
Richard

Master These 7 Skills To Become An Excellent Interviewer

On August 29, 2016 / business analysis, communications, interview, meeting

It’s time for that one-on-one meeting, the interview. You know the one. It’s the meeting that you need to prepare for to ensure it goes well.

This is one of those topic areas that I am never too sure whether to describe as strategic or tactical. Maybe it is a bit of both from an individual micro-strategy and tactical action perspective. But, it is a skill that the professional needs to master in order to acquire the right information from all levels of stakeholders, from the CEO to the frontline staff.

I have learned from years of working with people and interviewing them that the one-on-one interview requires you to master a number of skills.

Now according to the BABOK, an interview is a “systematic approach to elicit information from a person or group of people in an informal or formal setting by talking to the person – the interviewee, asking relevant questions and documenting the responses.”

7 Skills To Master To Become An Excellent Interviewer

1. Be Really Clear on Your Purpose: This might sound like a no-brainer, but if you are not clear on the interview purpose then you will have a real challenge focusing the session. Create an interview purpose statement. Use the business problem as a starting point but be clear on the outcome. It is all right to say that you are here to discuss a specific topic and what you hope to gain.

2. Be like a Journalist or Salesperson: The best and most successful sales people or journalists know they have to ask the right questions to determine the needs of the stakeholders. They have studied the art of question creation and asking. I know the response I get when I say “sales people.” I am not talking about the stereotypical fast talking oddly dressed car sales person.

What I mean is to develop your abilities to present yourself professionally and know the questions you need to ask to better understand the stakeholder needs.

Being a journalist (in the traditional sense) is about developing the ability to dig deeper, know when to do so and be prepared when you hit the jackpot.

Interesting Read: 5 Questions Business Analysts Should Have In Their Question Inventory

3. Observe Your Favourite Interviewer: This is a tip I picked up in acting and facilitation classes years ago. Identify those interviewers you really respect for their abilities. They could be late night hosts, hard talk professionals or news professionals. Create a character profile of them. Determine what they are known for (style), what is it they do well and where can they improve. Now watch them and observe with the point of learning and then incorporating some of their skills into your own routine.

4. Develop Active Listen Skills: Do you listen well? Now be honest with yourself. Active listening is a skill that anyone can develop. Research suggests that the mind thinks 4 to 7 times faster than we can speak and in general we only speak about 100 words per minute. It is easy to get distracted and think of other things. It has been suggested that with most people (no matter the gender), active listening increases with the greater interest in the topic. So frame or reframe your topic for the optimum personal interest.

When listening, use techniques to show you are actively listening.

5. Be a Chameleon and Adapt: I believe you should profile yourself and the people around you. I know this can be controversial. But when you profile yourself you learn a lot about who you are and how you operate. You can learn what behaviors you engage in under certain circumstances. It also helps you learn to adapt your natural communication style to the person’s needs, not yours. That is one of the keys to being a successful communicator, therefore interviewer.

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can. Nikos Kazantzakis Share on X

6. Preparation is the Key: You have to prepare for an interview. This means doing your research. If you are meeting with someone new, then research who they are and what they are all about, their department, and who works for them. Even check out their social media profile. It all helps. The next part of preparation is to know what you want to ask. The key to doing a great interview is to have great questions. So work with someone and create a list of the questions you need to ask. Make sure your questions directly relate to your purpose and the outcome required. Always create an open and get the most important questions up front.

7. It is All About Timing: Most people miss this important point. They go to an interview session, and they miscalculate their timing and the number of questions they can ask and discuss in any meaningful way. Ask yourself this question. If you were to have a 30-minute interview how many questions could you ask and get answered? Generally, it would be around 5 to 7 questions plus dialogue and add-on questions. In the interview, you need to master the open, connection, questions, linking and close. If you would like a copy of my interviewing meeting timing chart send me an email and I will forward it to you.

Final Thoughts

Interviewing is a significant skill to master as a professional. It requires a balance between art and science. The best thing is that you can study to be an interviewer and practice it with business associates. This skill will be used when working with a variety of stakeholders at different levels in your organization.

Mastering some of the components of interviewing will go a long way towards you getting better business, stakeholder, solution and transformation requirements. Good Luck.

And Remember,
Do your best,
Invest in the success of others,
Make your journey count.

=====================================

Richard Lannon – SET for Success
business strategist, conference speaker, trainer, coach, author, blogger, radio host, podcaster and your business cheerleader
BraveWorld Inc. http://braveworld.ca/

9 Lessons Learned from Facilitating Bottom-Up Solution Sessions – Getting it on the Strategic Agenda

On August 22, 2016 / facilitation, solutions

Taking the time to create lessons learned is a powerful way to improve your facilitation skills and abilities. I have learned this lesson from years of facilitating meetings, workshops and planning sessions across diverse industries needing to apply an approach to solving business issues.

For example, some years ago I was engaged to facilitate several Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) work sessions within the oil and gas and utility industries. The challenge was to get ITSM on the strategic agenda of the organizations (bottom up approach), build consensus through identifying what was important, making recommendations and decisions and establishing a direction that would enable the IT organization to improve processes and services offered to their customers.

The lessons learned here can be applied to any department in your organization. It just happens the business case is ITSM. This blog briefly outlines 9 lessons learned from the ITSM facilitation experience that can be applied to almost any situation.

Bottom-Up Approach: In this case it is important to have an approach and methodology to apply. It helps in getting things on the strategic agenda of the organization. Often these sessions provide blueprint to propel a department services forward with emphasis on business value. The key is understanding the business rule and drivers and focus on business value.

Engagement at All Levels: This is a tough one, since what you are seeking to do has not been approved yet. In the example provided there are three levels of engagement required; the strategic (CIO and Directors to establish strategic intent, vision and enterprise objectives), the tactical (Directors and Managers to establish improvement objectives, priorities and program charter) and the Operational (Managers and Key Stakeholders to establish solutions, roadmaps, business case and project charters). Maybe you have something that you are working on that needs all levels of engagement. Having a strong sponsor and influencer helps. Find that person.

Clear Mind and Thought: The fundamental to any bottom-up approach and facilitated session is to develop a clear problem definition that is approved by management or senior steering committee. Many departments, trying to get heard, fall short of achieving clarity. The lack of a clear problem definition negatively impacts the tactical and operational levels of the organization and limits the ability to move forward. Get clear as you will need to sell the issue and eventual solution to all levels for approval.

Understanding the Working Department: When working with your teams, build an understanding of all the work that is taking place in the department right now and how it fits within the support, process and people delivery relationship models. By engaging people in a defined work exercise, your teams can map out and see how their work aligns within the department and the organization. This is effective in getting a present state, getting teams talking and building buy-in.

Points of Pain and Maturity: Establish a clear understanding of your points of pain (PoPs) and the department’s maturity levels. PoPs can be established through focused brainstorming sessions. Once collected, your PoPs should be looked at from an organizational and process maturity perspective. Align your PoPs with the industry maturity model standards (non-existence, chaos, reactive, proactive, service, value). It is important that the content be translated into a service maturity. You can work on obtaining various teams, customers and business representatives’ perspective on your organizational and process maturity levels. This builds some reality into the PoPs and maturity levels thinking by dislodging you from a position of working in isolation.

Plans that Can Be Activated: Build a business case and program plan that can be activated by your people. At this point you are seeking clear recommendations and improvement objectives (what), benefit realization (why), tactical needs (how) and time frame (when) for which to move your organization forward with your initiative or program. This can be done at a high level of details.

Opportunities don't happen. You create them, Chris Grosser Share on X

Create a Business Case for Change: Building a solid business case is foundational for any program to move forward. You will need a member of the executive team or steering committee assigned to provide clear guidance. When forming and using a steering committee, their mandate must be strategic and clear. Tactical task-based reporting can be left to the project management teams and their need for task-based results and status meetings.

Program Initiative Alignment: From a business perspective, most departments in larger organizations need to stop chasing tool solutions, and “flavor-of-the-month quick fixes.” Ultimately, their solution is a business change program that seeks to align the departments with the business objectives and requirements, improve processes and change culture in an effort to control or decrease costs, increase productivity and contribute to the bottom-line. Make sure you are aligned to the bigger cause.

Dealing with the Big Questions: Work with your teams to have them answer “WIIFM” and “WIIFT” questions (what is in it for me and what is in it for them). Ensure you established the fears, uncertainties and doubts (FUDs). Be prepared to have a long FUDs list. These will need to be acknowledged and managed within the context of the solution program and the change management and communications plans.

Final Thoughts

The information in this article is based on feedback obtained during facilitated ITSM work sessions and the work of dedicated IT professionals. However the lessons learned can be applied to other departments or organizations that are seeking to get solutions on their strategic agenda. One thing I have learned, larger issues and solutions require a team who is willing to get in the boat and row in the same direction. This means building consensus at a number of levels. It can be done. Good luck.

Be the best person you can be,
Invest in the success of others, and
Make your journey count.
Richard

6 Strategic Insight Terms You Should Know to Help You Focus

On August 15, 2016 / business analysis, leadership, strategic planning

Recently I wrote about the importance of communications and having a common stakeholder language.

From a strategy insight perspective this is extremely important. Definitions and a common language help keep people on track so they move things forward. Often I have to tell my stakeholders what the terms mean in the context we are using them in and that they cannot change the definition. This approach helps move stakeholders forward. In the strategic facilitation this is a valuable approach. Even if you are not doing strategic facilitation or planning, as a business leader and professional you need to know the key terms to align your work and project initiatives. That is the implementation of the strategy.

Here are six strategic analysis, planning and implementation terms I often give to clients to ensure that we are all speaking the same language and our work aligns with the over arching business requirements and stakeholders needs.

Strategy Agenda Item is a high level plan of action item designed to achieve a vision. Since strategic planning is a component of the business planning that is to be done before you take tactical action it is imperative that there is a clear understanding of the strategic agenda items as they provide focus. Often rather than focusing on internal operational issues, a strategic focus means addressing and solving business problems through the effective use of existing resources. As strategic initiatives are defined resource usage is analyzed.

Strategic Initiatives should represent the most significant line of business or cross line of business projects that are planned to improve the business in some way with consideration for the four key business impact zones. In this part of strategic planning phase the team is deciding the essential focus and key initiatives that must be met to achieve the strategic agenda items. Depending on the size of your organization these will become enterprise, program or project initiatives. They can be very strategic or tactical based on your organization’s size, structure and present culture. At the initiative level the way you define success in the attainment of our objectives should be clarified, the speed and distance of action determined and the critical success factors defined. This takes a while to do.

Business and Initiative Champions are individuals that go beyond their operative responsibilities. As defined here, they are individuals trying to influence strategic issues larger than their own immediate operational responsibilities. They take the initiative and accept responsibility and accountability for it. The potential ways and objectives of championing cover the whole process of strategy: the formation of the content of strategy as well as the process of implementing strategic contents.

If the focus is more of being an initiative champion then that person should bring discipline and rigour to planning and execution of an initiative ensuring the timing and achievement of milestones and deliverables are agreed upon and managed. They will need to tie investment in strategic items and strategic initiative to specific and measurable outcomes and enable issues to be addressed and resolved proactively, before they jeopardize outcomes.

A champion can be used more specifically to refer to a senior manager who champions the project, ensures that it is properly resourced and uses their influence to overcome barriers for the team.

Measurable Outcomes are the measurable results of the implemented objectives and must be defined in measurable terms. Measurements are essential for understanding what is happening in your business–what gets measured gets done. In a business environment, measurements come in many forms and include hard, soft, lagging and leading indicators.

Lagging indicators are used to measure performance and allow the leadership team to track how things are going. Because output (performance) is always easier to measure by assessing whether your goals were achieved, lagging indicators are backward-focused or “trailing”—they measure performance already captured. Just about anything you wish to monitor will have lagging indicators. Leading indicators are precursors to the direction something is going. Because leading indicators come before a trend, they are considered business drivers. Identifying specific, focused leading indicators should be a part of each business’s strategic planning and decision-making process.

You can pre-determine or reverse engineer measurable outcomes by either using the SMART and/or CAR principle. As part of the measurable outcome determination always consider key stakeholders.

Key Elements are the big things that need to be done in order to be successful. They are the big buckets of work. The key to creating key elements is to understand the scope of work at a high level and to be able to state them clearly. A scope of work sets forth requirements for performance of work to achieve strategic and project objectives. The scope of work must be clear, accurate and complete. It needs to be understood by a wide audience. Defining key elements is part art and science and takes a while to master.

Milestone is one of a series of numbered markers placed along a road. Within the framework of strategic planning, a milestone is a special event that receives special attention. It is often falsely put at the end of a stage to mark the completion of a work package or phase. Milestones should be put before the end of a phase so that corrective actions can be taken. In addition to signalling the completion of a key deliverable, a milestone may also signify an important decision, which outlines or affects the future of an initiative or project. In this sense, a milestone not only signifies distance traveled (key stages in a project) but also indicates direction of travel since key decisions made at milestones may alter the route pre-determine in the various plans (strategic, tactical or operational).

The secret to success is to know something nobody else knows. Aristotle Onassis Share on X

Final Thoughts

Whether you are working on a top-down, bottom-up or mid-level initiatives having clear definition of these terms will help you. It is very difficult to walk into a room and write a list of terms on a white board and ask people to define them. You will spend a lot of time on an activity that should be done prior to meeting. I believe the professional provides the words and defines the terms that will be used. I have provided variations of these terms when working with clients to align their thinking, to build or interpret roadmaps and plans already created and to ensure stakeholders had a common language. I invite you to adapt them for your own use. Good luck.

Always
Do your best,
Invest in the success of others,
Make your journey count.
Richard

Article adapted from SET for Success, Chapter 15, by Richard Lannon

Two Questions to Ask to Go from Task to Activity Based Action and Delegation

On August 8, 2016 / delegation

There are two important questions that business leaders and professionals need to ask at the tactical level in order to get things done. If you follow my writing you know that I define tactical as being about figuring out the how, who and when for anything that you need to accomplish. But often we find ourselves in the situation where we step in and do it ourselves. We believe we can do it better and faster than another person or it will take more time to explain what we need done than to have someone else do it for us. This is a false belief, one which is putting you in a situation where you have more and more to do and less time to do it in.

Related Article: The 12 Rules of Successful Delegation

What if you reframed the situation by simply changing the way you ask the “how” question that you are naturally asking. You go from asking, ‘how am I going to do this’ to ‘how am I going to get this done’. You see there is a subtle difference. The first tactical question is task orientated and the latter question is activity orientated. There is a difference. In process level thinking the words task and activity are defined differently.

An activity is a state of which something is being done. It is like an umbrella that houses many tasks that need to be done or get done.
A task is any piece of work that is expected or needs to be done. It is the pieces that make up the whole of an activity.

Here is a simple case in point. As you know, I publish the SET for Success – Strategy and Leader Insights blog weekly. Usually the blog is published at 5:08 am on Mondays unless there is a stat or summer holidays, then it is moved to Tuesdays. Creating a blog is made up of many tasks which include topic idea, research and writing, proofreading, copy and content editing, imagine selection and titles, posting to blog site, SEO research and selection, email campaign preparation and scheduling, social media campaign development and final completion. This is a larger activity with a lot of tasks that take up to four hours to complete. I suspect you have something that you do weekly that might be similar, maybe a weekly status report, business case update or key performance index reporting.

If you ask the first question, ‘how am I going to do this’ you end up assigning yourself all the tasks. But if you ask the question, ‘ how am I going to get this done’, you end up shifting your tactical thinking away from task to activity and begin to see other ways to do things, maybe asking for help, assigning things to another person or task sourcing through Upworks or Fiverr. My point, it’s a mental shift that forces you to consider activity to task delegation so you are not getting so burnt out trying to do everything yourself.

Once you reframe the situation from task thinking to activity thinking at the tactical level do yourself a favor and create a standard operating procedure (SOP) for the umbrella activity and all the tasks that make up that activity. Call it something using the verb noun naming convention (this is the what). For example, in this business case the SOP is called ‘Publishing Weekly Blog’. Then list all the tasks, identify who could do them and when they are due (how, who, when). Don’t worry if you do not have all the ‘who will do the task’ answered right away. The important thing is to get the activity named and the tasks identified for your SOP.

Now be honest with yourself and select those (and only those) tasks that you must do. I call these high value tasks. In my example I have to research and write the weekly blog but I do not have to review and edit it or post it to the various internet sites it goes on. Someone else can do that for me. Tasks that you can delegate should be time consuming low level tasks that eat up your time but can be someone else’s high level tasks. For example, an assistant. If you don’t have an assistant, don’t fret; try some of the other resources I mentioned above.

Final Thought

This blog is not like a lot of the other blogs I have written. But tactical actions of activities and tasks have come up with the senior leaders and professionals I have worked with in my coaching practice. I have found business leaders and professionals engaged in tasks when they should really be focused on activities and asking the important question on ‘how they are going to get things done’ and not on ‘how they are going to do it’.

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” - Jessica Jackley, businesswoman. Share on X

It really comes down to looking at your regular on-going scheduled work, naming it as an activity, breaking down the tasks and then delegating your low value tasks to someone else. It works great in situations where you have a weekly or monthly operationalized activity and task that takes 2 to 10 hours to do.

If you would like a copy of my simple SOP template, send me an email. I would be glad to send you a copy.

I wish you the best at improving your productivity and making the shift to high value activities and task delegation. It will free up one extremely important limited resource, time.

Do your best,
Invest in the success of others,
Make your journey count.
Richard

Richard Lannon

6 Ways the Business Analyst Is Like a Consultant

Six Innovative Personality Types to Create Business Success

Master These 7 Skills To Become An Excellent Interviewer

7 Skills To Master To Become An Excellent Interviewer

Final Thoughts

9 Lessons Learned from Facilitating Bottom-Up Solution Sessions – Getting it on the Strategic Agenda

6 Strategic Insight Terms You Should Know to Help You Focus

Two Questions to Ask to Go from Task to Activity Based Action and Delegation

Get to Know Richard

S.E.T. for Success by Richard Lannon

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