BBC 2017 Speaker Series – Consultants: Paula Bell, CEO at Paula A Bell Consulting, LLC

Regarding her presentation at Building Business Capability in Orlando, Nov. 6-10, 2017, we asked Paula Bell, CEO at Paula A Bell Consulting, LLC, a few questions about transforming the business. Check out this interview in relation to her BBC presentation entitled, Political Martial Arts.

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

A: I help my clients handle business transformations through first taking time to identify their strengths and how they can add value to the organization with their skill sets.  From there I guide them on how to achieve business transformations from capturing business needs, organizing them to be easily digested by any audiences, working with technical teams to ensure the needs are being built and validating that the solution is meeting the needs of business effectively and efficiently.

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

A: One of the main challenges I, and my clients, face is changing the culture.  Getting individuals to get away from doing functions the way they have always been done.  More thinking outside of the box and challenging the status quo.  With this comes quite a bit of politics that have to be effectively navigated.  It takes a lot of patience, perseverance and dedication to help in changing cultural norms and the way people think.

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

A: Understand agile, the concepts and why it’s leveraged.  Then understand your organization to determine if you organization is ready to implement agile.  If the organization agrees that agile is the right way to go then they have to ensure Sr. Leaders in the organization are willing to put forth the investment to truly implement agile.  Not just concepts of agile but “true” agile.  Finally, find someone who can help the organization implement agile and have done it successfully in the past.

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

A: Regardless of challenges/obstacles, staying dedicated, committed and focus can render phenomenal for not only business transformations but personal transformations.

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

A: Continue to develop and keep up with industry trends.

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: iGrafx and yes I’ve seen great results.  So great that the repository I led to create expanded to other parts of the organization and now this repository is the base repository for the entire enterprise.

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

A: Don’t get caught up in distractions. Acknowledge it’s a distraction and quickly shifting your focus and energy.

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

A: Why do you have a passion to speak?  I have a passion to speak because I love sharing my knowledge with others.  I have 20 years of career experience in many different industries.  I have had the opportunity to partake in many different roles over these 20 years and I love sharing my knowledge to help others avoid some of the challenges/obstacles I have encountered.  As well as share some best practices.

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

A: One takeaway is to take time to observe and form alliances to help navigate the political waters.

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Paula’s presentation, Political Martial Arts, at Building Business Capability was presented on Wednesday, November 8, 2017.