In anticipation of his pre-conference tutorial at Building Business Capability in Vegas, Oct 31, – Nov. 4, 2016, we asked Sandeep Johal, Vice President Operations at Leonardo Consulting USA Inc., few questions about pursuing business excellence. Check out his interview in relation to his BBC tutorial entitled, Never Look at Process Models the Same Again.

Q: In what ways do you see your group helping your organization pursue business excellence?

A: My group provides expert process visualization techniques, methods and governance. The consumption of the content we produce promotes accurate and rapid decision making.

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

A: In my experience it is the organization mindset which presents the biggest hurdle in establishing robust capabilities. We’ve thrived on many decades on ‘traditional’ tiered and siloed organization structures, that changing to a process mindset will take a lot of unlearning.

Q: What are your short-term goals for becoming more agile?

A: Stretch more… 🙂 But seriously, stretch the abilities of the small team to adapt to disruption. We all know it could happen at any time.

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

A: Believe your own message. If you don’t, no one else will.

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

A: While it is great to have great analysis, results will always speak louder. Apply the analysis and bring about value – preferably significant value.

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

A: Implemented a robust process model governance process. This brought about much needed conversations between the SME and Analysts. Additionally (and more importantly), it created reliable process models ready for business consumption.

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

A: Brush up on soft skills like presenting, facilitating, conflict resolution etc. These can make or break your message or initiative.

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

A: ‘Why would anyone want to attend your workshop?’ The answer: Because it’ll be fun and you’re bound to learn something you can use right away!

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: Create a model once, it’s useful. Use it again, it’s valuable. Only reliable models are used again. Only quality models are reliable. See you at the workshop!!!

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Don’t miss Sandeep’s pre-conference tutorial, Never Look at Process Models the Same Again, at Building Business Capability on Monday, October 31, 2016 from 1:30 to 4:30 pm. Click here to register for attendance.