BBC 2017 Speaker Series – Consultant: Jamie Champagne, Senior Business Analysis Professional at Mana’olana International, LLC

In anticipation of her presentation at Building Business Capability in Orlando, Nov. 6-10, 2017, we asked Jamie Champagne, Senior Business Analysis Professional at Mana’olana International, LLC, a few questions about transforming the business. Check out this interview in relation to her BBC presentation entitled, Creative and Practical Approaches to Effective BA Techniques.

Q: In what ways do you help your client organizations handle business transformation?

A: I enjoy working with businesses to not only understand their needs, but communicate and even craft their vision of what the end goal looks like.  A vision statement followed by a mission statement for any change effort helps to visualize the results to drive action.  The commanding vision that can be communicated consistently facilitates the identification of specific requirements that are needed to deliver the end solution.  The absence of vision provides a lack of clarity that is often what results in the need for business analysis assistance that I’m fortunate to work with teams that quickly highlight and address.

Q: Can you describe the challenges you face or have already overcome in establishing more robust business transformation capabilities for your clients?

A: The biggest challenge teams face is often themselves, or more appropriately, their perspective.  Altering your perspective to be open to the new vision, to seeing what’s possible, to viewing opportunities rather than challenges can be difficult for clients as it is harder to articulate the return on investment upfront of changing perspective versus making hard, physical changes.  There is an element of trust that must be conveyed to bring small steps that demonstrate value so that the momentum continues to help make those larger transformations.

Q: What are your top suggestions for companies looking to become more agile?

A: Communication and Culture need to be your friends – deciding how you are going to communicate the change and how to take in your existing culture – the staff, their approaches, perspectives, history, interaction formats, the soft side of your organization – are key to building a successful plan.  Tying back to the vision of where you want to go and WHY it is so important, articulating WHY there is a need to be more agile need to be consistently and clearly communicated and interwoven in daily activities.

Q: What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned in the past year?

A: Commit to your priorities – even if in the moment, commit 110% to that priority.  If you want something to be the center of your life – what are you doing to put it there?  If it’s the most important part of your day, how are you showing that?  Priorities are always going to change so do not wait to commit as action gives you a sense of purpose and fulfillment that will drive results.

Q: What do you see as the most important goal or trend for business analysts and other professionals to keep in mind?

A: No matter what methodology, technology or organizational structure changes occur around you, they are occurring around PEOPLE. We all have long been told that the soft skills are what make you good at your craft in business analysis, but truly understanding where people are coming from, their strengths and weaknesses and seeing these all as opportunities are what delivers the actual results.

Q: What’s the latest method/process/tool you’ve implemented to help your client’s business’s operate more effectively? Have you seen any results yet?

A: We call it operational business process improvement.  This is doing process improvement right on the operational floor – where work is being done.  How are you getting them to make micro-level changes that collectively add up to macro-level results?  Encouraging teams to look at and truly articulate what they have control over (versus IT or facilities or corporate HR) and asking how can I do this faster, better, easier?  But then driving a systematic approach of defining the steps and measuring what you are doing for data-driven decision making as to what to change and then measuring the results.  The results on the financial bottom line are positively staggering within a few weeks, yet it is the cultural changes that continue to drive improvements long after the engagement end that is most incredible in the positive results.

Q: If you could go back 5 years in time and give some professional insight or advice to yourself, what would it be?

A: Hold true to your priorities and dreams.  You can do a lot with whatever you want, but YOU have to decide and consider what you want most.  Drive then your 110% to that goal and live it daily.

Q: What’s one question you wished you were asked in this interview but were not? And how would you answer?

A: What is the biggest positive influence you have had on your career and why?   Those amazing people I meet when getting to speak at conferences.  Taking the courage to share ideas with the community and even world and then once part of an amazing event, taking the time to spend with other speakers, entrepreneurs and super stars and building relationships that I can count on yet bringing ideas to them, pushing and challenging them in the same way they allow me to come to them.

Q: Sneak preview: Please tell us a take-away that you will provide during your talk at the Building Business Capability (BBC) conference this year?

A: Attendees are not only going to be introduced to approaches to techniques but will practice hands-on for how to apply the techniques in both your professional and even personal lives!  My sessions are meant to be fun and engaging and really try to push you to see a new perspective on an existing world.  These are not new ideas, but want you to see them from another angle that are simple in approach yet provide astounding results.  Hope to see you there!

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Don’t miss Jamie’s presentation, Creative and Practical Approaches to Effective BA Techniques, at Building Business Capability on Tuesday, November 7, 2017 from 1:30 to 4:30 pm.  Click here to register for attendance.