The Better Business Analysis Institute Presence, the Better Business Analysis Podcast with Benjamin Walsh Hi everybody, and welcome back to the Better Business Analysis Podcast with Benjamin Walsh. And today we're going to be covering a topic which applies to BAS, but actually any office
worker. So feel free to send this episode off to your friends and colleagues in your business or organization and they'll get some value from learning about these 10 productivity tips for BAS or office workers. OK, so we're going to go through the top ten. And sometimes I'm really bad at listing these out at the end, so I'm going to list them up front and you can write them down.
And then we're going to go through some specific practical tips that I use and I've got from friends and colleagues, and I've added it to this list. And hopefully this makes you more productive in whatever role you perform in an organization, right? So I'm going to read them out and then we're going to go through them in detail. So number one is managing emails effectively. OK, #2 is limit meetings. #3 is use stand up. #4 is light documentation. #5 is be clear and concise.
I love that one. I always use it. Number six, be agile. Not do agile. Be agile #7 Look at the big picture. Look where your work fits within the big picture #8. Avoid detailed loops. This is a very good one, and we'll go into detail on that #9 use structure, use patterns, Use structure, Use templates. And #10 of course, continuous learning. You these tips change over time and you're embracing new technology like AI and I guess data analysis. And these tips can change,
right? So we can start with #1, which is managing emails effectively. And what I mean by that is kind of using filters and labels, set specific times to check emails instead of consistently monitoring your inbox. I know a lot of people do that. There is the concept of, you know, you get an e-mail and you want to respond to it straight away and it just gets you out of the zone about whatever you're doing. Don't do that. I'm someone that does that. If I get an e-mail and a market
is read, I want to get it done. It's a distraction. That is not an effective way of dealing with it. You want to respond, respond quickly and you want to keep your responses concise. I have a rule and we'll get into the tips now, but I personally have a rule that if the e-mail is longer than say like an A four piece of paper and and and for me it's probably half of that, but a four is the rule. I pick up the phone, I have a meeting.
When is an e-mail really a meeting, a face to face meeting? If anyone's trying to explain everything in an in an e-mail, that's that's not, that's not an effective way of working. As I move over to this tip, I'm just going to tell you about a manager I had at New Zealand Trading Enterprise who Jono, who's also moved on to some greater roles now he we were rolling out Microsoft Teams in order to help with that
adoption. He actually said he's not going to respond to internal emails because it's actually a very ineffective method. So just keep that in the back of your mind. If you can make that happen, make that happen. OK. So I'm going to just delve into 3 tips specifically around managing emails effectively. One is batching. OK, so this is where you sit specific times, two to three times a day, OK? If you're in an office space, you have to do this personal staff, side businesses.
I do this once a day at night basically. But if you're in an office, you know, people expect a response. So I would say as soon as you get in, just before you leave maybe or like 3:00 and then maybe just after lunch or before lunch. So set times, 15 minutes slots during the day to check and respond. Emails, OK, That is, That is managing yourself. That prevents you from consistently checking and refocusing. Put it in your calendar.
OK, people can you know. Obviously that is movable time, flexi time. And if you've got an important meeting you can move that. But it should be a guide for you. Set it, it works OK. The second tip is around filtering and labelling. It's so hard to find emails, man, it's hard to find emails. E-mail search sucks. Outlook interface isn't that great. It's actually really really hard to find emails unless you're a Wiz kid at using it.
But I tell you what makes searching emails much better is if you create filters and sort emails into categories. OK, and it should. It could be, and I I do this urgent things, you need to focus on actions basically, right? And there are tasks in Outlook and Google, but they just haven't come up with a better way, a efficient way of managing this. And AI will help because it will pull out your actions automatically from emails, and
there are tools that do that. But with the base standards you just don't have that. So I'd say things. You need action. So you could do this under your inbox. If you want things, you need actions, you don't need to read it, you just move it forward. You know they usually only send to you, not to a group. There could be project specific, which is always good if you're working across multiple specific projects. Or you could do read later. Or just like general comms you
lose like labels. So use labels as you start to sort your e-mail, as you start to know the organization, and then that prioritizes what you need to focus on, right? So you'll check your urgent ones. You might read your other ones later in the week. I I actually got to a position in an organization where I knew where certain emails were coming through that just weren't
important. And sometimes notifications like changes to Confluence pages and things where I literally did a sort and just moved them all to archived OK, so not not deleted, but archived OK, and so then I could go back and read them. The other tip is about you. So be concise with your communication. Keep your replies short and to the point. Do not write lengthy emails. Briefly address the key points, bullet point, bullet point.
Do bullet points. Perfect decides you time and it encourages clear communication back from others. OK, communicate with others how you want to be communicated with. That's I always do that 123, a summary statement, 123 and a conclusion. And then I say, if you've got any questions, give me a call. Always do that. OK. So that's managing emails effectively, #1 #2 is limiting meetings. This is hard.
This is hard when you first start an organization because you want to be, you know, you want to meet everyone. Your patent should change it over time. And if you're invited to something, you kind of want to go. But for me, this is the number one area where big organizations are the most inefficient, not just because of their sorry, #1 area, #1 area, they can change easily. Usually big organizations have duplication and their processes aren't right.
And I talk about that often, so I'm not going to talk about that again. But in terms of things they could actually do. So limit meetings. So number one is meetings you so you you can do this is you only schedule meetings when they're absolutely necessary. Don't just have a weekly meeting. Why? Why do you have an hour meeting with a team to talk? Stand ups are the effective way of managing, and we'll get on to that. Use stand ups for the short bursts.
Talk about projects if you want social time. There's nothing wrong with it. We're humans, we need to interact. Go see them go. Even schedule a drink once a week. But don't just have a regular project meeting. It's such a waste of time. You talk about what's going on, what you've done on your weekend.
It's such a waste of time that you you're merging work and personal together and you want to keep those separate because actually it is important to have those personal relationships, but not during the productivity meeting. OK, they're two different things. Ask yourself when thinking about a meeting, can this goal be achieved through e-mail or chat? OK, chat is a really good way of getting an e-mail. Sorry.
Getting a response. Usually if someone chats to you people for me feels like a it's more of a priority than an e-mail, right? So I respond to things that are urgent that way or a chat thread that I subscribe to and pin in Teams or whatever Slack. And then you can go back to it and we just say, hey, look, just any updates put in this put in this thread, That's the point of it. It's an update that you can then proactively go look at. It's not a direct message. OK, So that's how we should be
using these tools. The other thing is when you do have meetings, make sure you use like the SMART methodology. Google that if you don't know what it is. Keep meeting short and focused, ideally 30 minutes or less. OK, that's different to a workshop. Workshops should be two hours with a break and another two hour maybe in a day. 2 hours is a good length for a workshop. That's ABA tip, but 30 minutes for meetings, 30 minutes or
less. Have a clear agenda beforehand and stick to it. It can be repetitive. You don't need to come up with an agenda every single time and just say this is the structure of the meeting. Smart is always good for that. When scheduling a meeting, if you can't be bothered filling out the smart items which are being, you know, which, which, sorry, it's smart, which is their own objectives. I actually mean a power start.
Sorry, power start. I'm not going to keep that in the recording because I do make mistakes. Power start, which is really the purpose, you know, outcome of the meeting. What's in it for me? OK, things like that. So that if you can't outline those things, you can't be bothered outlining those, then that meeting's not important. OK, so limit meetings as you can. Focus on yourself.
You won't change behaviour. However, I will say that within Outlook and within Gmail, you can set meetings to end 5 minutes earlier. 55 minute meetings or 25 minute meetings. I would think that's a #1 productivity tip for your organization and it allows you who owns that last who owns 2:30? The meeting beforehand or the meeting that starts at 2:30. OK, so it gives toilet time.
It gives the ability for people to move between meetings and not be late to them, which is a really bad meeting etiquette, which I hate. So there are some technology tips there which we'll go into on another day. OK, #3 you stand ups. We've touched on this daily and brief. They don't actually have to be daily. It depends on the project. But if you want to, daily can be good to keep that face to face
meeting. So instead of having a weekly hour meeting and maybe better to have 15 minutes stand ups, keep them 15 minutes Max. OK, it could be 5 minutes. It is really around progress plans for the day in any roadblocks and it's a much more efficient way than a weekly meeting. OK, so that's be daily and brief problem solved. So it's around quick problem solving during stand ups, it's around the next action.
It's not going, you're going around in detail, take do take it offline is what we say often when you identify roadblock and you want to brainstorm solutions. So you can do that and you stand up. But if it takes a lot of time or there's just a few of you who are involved in that process, if you know about pigs and chickens, that's another thing you can look up. But you should move the meeting offline and maybe those individuals who are involved in that conversation go off just.
And when I say a meeting, it's just work, OK? It's not a meeting. Those people just collaborating, working together, OK, you don't, it's yes, they're meeting with one another. A meeting doesn't. A meeting generally means the structure and an agenda. But if they're just doing analysis of working together, that can be done. You know, in together, sitting together or even through teams or through a call. Make sure when you do your stand up says actionable outcomes.
Each stand up needs to have clear action items at the end of it. If you've got a scrum master, they'll help you facilitate that and ownership to tasks. You should have a task list and that keeps everyone accountable and moving on or otherwise it's just a waste of time. It's just a conversation. So use stand ups. I love using stand ups when I project manager and I'm going to take over a piece of work. Small piece, Well, it's relatively complicated piece of work, but I know it's, it's no
unknowns. So I'm just going to be doing stand ups for it and I might do that every second day. OK, let's just see how things are going. Knowing that people have other work on, it's not their priority, it's not their only their main piece of work. I'll do 15 minutes, Any blockers, any problems, OK And things always come up. I also have a chat for that project which I'm going to be taking over and I've just told people as they do status updates, as they test, as things
you know, work. It's AIT project. As things get set up or if there are any questions or updates just check it in the teams chat. Works really well OK with B as the other one here is around light documentation. OK, so with light documentation you need. We're not. I talk about this often. You need to use visual aids, diagrams, flow charts, bullet points instead of lengthy paragraphs. Visuals are easier to understand and retain information. So visual first, That's what every BA should have.
A bit like web first, but visual 1st. I believe that for anyone, even if you're not ABA, that's what I is. My strength area is using visual tools. Focus on clarity. So concise and clear, explain prices and procedures in a straightforward manner. Do high level process diagrams, not the detail, put those in the appendix. And the other thing is make your documents like in the Better Business Analysis Institute As part of our framework we talk
about Agile Agile BI plan. So you know, the Agile BA plan, which then outlines how you're going to do it, turns into Agile documentation. And that's around just having regular updates to the documentation, all working from the same area, using collaboration tools, using slides, using PowerPoint, writing in the document, getting people to update it. That's like documentation. You need to work that way. OK? It's not do not have a Word document that's on your local
drive that you're just updating. That is not what we do in 2024. OK, the number, the next one is being clear and concise and I need to pull this out. I know it's not, it's more of a mindset, but I think it's really important to one know your audience. Tailor your communication to the audience. Avoid technical jargon if the audience isn't familiar with it. So obviously you know senior managers, users or customers, You should be using a clear and
concise communication. That is the BA, the two face from Batman. One side is the ugly technical side, the other side is the nice looking side and we use the nice looking side for our users and the technical side we use to talk to our technical teams. You need to have those two faces proofread and editing. I am particularly bad with this. I need to get I get someone else to help me.
I use Grammarly as not an advertisement to check my proofreading so it makes sense, but I also use it to make things simpler. Sometimes I use AI tools to say can explain this in an easy to understand way and it rewrites it for me. So you need to do that. You need to proof it. People get caught up. People get caught up on a slide that has a spelling error on it. Everything else doesn't matter now. And I I just, this is probably my most common criticism is in
my documents. People will focus on a grammar era or you know, come in the wrong place and they will. All my hard work and all my ability to make it clear and concise goes out the window because of that. OK, That's what they focus on. They don't. That doesn't really happen in lengthy documentation because they're like, oh, there's a lot of stuff to to come through and I'm not going to prove read it all, but it can annoy them. And people know it's like a book, right, that you've
published. You could just be really, really, really, really careful with that #3 is use active voice. OK, so use active voice. Google lists if you don't know what it is. For more direct and engaging communication style, OK, just be very direct and just have no fluff. No fluff, OK, That's not your job. Your job is not to fluff unless you're told to. OK, the next is be agile and not do agile, but be agile OK, we
are. We're taking some really good things from the agile world and we're applying them and they're standard now. I just call them standard project stuff. Change stuff, but be agile OK? And that is 1. Embrace change. Be adaptive, adaptive and open to changes and project requirements and priorities. They happen. It's the whole point of Agile that your beautiful requirements that you write on day one, which doesn't really happen in one day, but they're going to change.
That's the nature of Agile. It's like you don't lock them down and then work on a project for six months. That's the point of agile. OK, that's it. Embrace change #2, Sprint panel planning, breakdown work, even your own work. Not just the project, the project manager. If your project manager, Scrum master. If you're running in an agile way, it doesn't really matter. You just need to break down your work into smaller manageable sprints to focus for on your
work and faster delivery. So if you're not working in like an agile team or a development team, design team, you can do it. In design you can do it anywhere, right? You can apply it. If you're a leader in the in the team, then suggest that it's perfect for everyone. But let's say people. You just don't have that choice and that can happen. Then just break your work down in two weeks. What? This is what I'm going to do for the next two weeks. Project manager.
This is what my goal is. Focus on that. Focus on what you need to do for the next two weeks. It's a really powerful way of thinking. OK. The other one is continuous improvement in your work, to reflect on your own processes and identify areas for improvement. What didn't work last week? Oh man, I got stuck in too many meetings, didn't get anything done, Any actual real work done. I checked emails. There was something on. Is this a consistent pattern? Was that a one off?
Because if that's if that's not a one off, you're not affected. OK so working ways in terms of asking if you can't go to meetings through the project manager or your your boss around maybe having a day at home where you can do your documentation or write up or analysis, you need time to do that as ABA, even as an office worker you could do days where you're doing your your your your actual job versus meetings, meeting free days, blocking out focus time in your calendar.
OK you really need to use that. You need to take accountability of your own effectiveness. The other one is look at the big picture and this is right from my heart which is why I added it to the list. You really need to know what are the goals of the piece of work you're working on the task with the project. OK what what are you trying to achieve? The why, the what, what are you achieving? And I talk about the what often
what what are you doing? Like not what are you doing is and what are the tasks or how you're doing it? What are you trying to achieve? People lose focus of that all the time. OK, sometimes people like work in an operational role like accounts receivable and they're like, I do it every day, but why do you do it every day? Well, it's a critical process that needs to be done. It's like, cool, but what are your goals to make it more
effective or more efficient? And do you actually have a goal? Not just do your job well, but look at process improvement steps, Look at automation, look at growing out of that role and automating the role under you. The other thing is you need to prioritise your own task based on the goals of the project. The thing that's above you In the ecosystem, there's always something above you. Prioritise your task based on their impact and urgency. OK, your task, you go, oh, I
need to do this. I really need to get this done. It's like, well, is that the most important goal for the team? Yeah, I had this all the time. You know, I work with someone and they're focusing on something like, I need to do these things. They seem like the most important things that I'm going to be working on. I'm like, most important to you or most important to the project because you're holding up three other people. I I mean, I don't say it that way, but that's what I'm thinking.
And then I said, well, well, what I and knew you'd be tactful. And you go, well, I actually think this one might be the most important. Do you think we could focus more time on that? You need to do regular reviews to assess progress and make sure your work is aligning with the with the biggest bigger picture. If the bigger picture changes, your work can change completely. Make sure we're not working on something that's wasteful.
OK, so it's your job to see where you are relative to the big picture that you're working on. I've kept that general. That's a project goal or anything in your organization. I'd just be just people forget to look at the bigger picture. Keep move. I I like step out. I would say step out and look look look at your job from afar. The other one happens all the time, especially in the word of BA and it's around detailed loops. So avoid detailed loops.
People do this all the time. So before diving into analysis or just clearly define why are you doing this? What's the purpose of you going deep on this data mapping exercise or reviewing all SAS reports to see which ones we can consolidate, or doing some computer analysis or reviewing all invoices? So we can, I don't know, standardize them, whatever it is, before diving into the actual, you know, data level, right, and going through massive amounts of instances of that invoices.
Or it could be just rows of transactions. Why are you doing it if you're going to do it? What happens lots of times is that you're actually getting into a bit of a scientific method there. OK? You're doing proper analysis, OK? You've got a premise, you want to get to a conclusion. And as we know the science, a lot of that is a hypothesis that needs to be tested and it can be a waste of time. Now, that's fine. That's why we have science to work out what's not right and
what's right however we can. We need to set time limits if it's not that important in the bigger picture, which is why I've got this afterwards. Then set time frames for your detailed analysis, OK, and you don't need to have the answer, You just need to have the best answer out of some options. OK, out of these three options, this one makes sense. Focus on relevance, prioritize information relevance to the purpose and avoid getting sidetracked.
OK by irrelevant specifics. This happens often. People go down rabbit holes. It's really hard. I I see there are, there are types of BAS and I, I, I do this for some pieces of work, but not often in my daily role. And it's detailed analysis, right? And BAS, sometimes they're technical BAS who are really technically working out what's going on. There's a systems analyst. They're the ones who have to really crunch the numbers and they do some really hard work.
But it is a dangerous place. OK, what one is it takes time to do it, right. If you and it could just be a a matter of just time that's needed, that's that's different to then going, well, let's come up with some options about how we're going to make this happen. You kind of work in the solution space or coming forward and you just go off on a tangent where it actually doesn't matter. You could have just bought a product, OK Or you could have just consulted with an expert.
So just avoid detailed loops, you know if you're in one, everyone knows if they're in one. OK #9, it's a round use structure. Make sure you're using project management tools like GAN charts, camband boards, visualizing whiteboard tools, JIRA. You know, Azure DevOps. To track your work and flip workflow, you need to visualize your work. OK, you need to use these tools. You need to know what your dependencies are, what the sequence is. You should use check checklists.
You should use templates, checklist and templates. BA should be the master at those. If your team doesn't have them, you're probably the best person at at defining them or finding them online. If you don't need to come up with a template these days, you can find one online and change it for your needs. Your job is to define the processes for your own team and for the organization to use structure.
This is what the Certified Better Business and Analysis Level one course is all about by by just putting a structure in terms of how you do your job. Structure applies to the how and this is this is something I'm really hot on. If you have a really lean great framework, you can scale and you can be just more effective. OK, so use structure.
If you don't have a structure as ABA, if you don't have a patent, then you're lost and you need to get some training and then moves me on to #10, which is continuous learning to allocate time yourself to your own. Learning each week to learn the new skills, to learn about structure and templates, learning resources, online courses, publications, attend workshop and share your knowledge. OK, I I share my knowledge with other people. That's what the institute is all about.
The podcast is all about and like we learn better by just coming together and we just don't do this very well. In the BA space, there's Iiba, there's blah, blah, look, that's fine. They're they're they're pillars, but they aren't, you know, they aren't around continuous learning. They aren't about, they're they're a baseline. They aren't around continuous learning resources or sharing knowledge.
So just get on to that as well. So they are the 10 tips for being more productive, managing emails, effectively, limiting meetings, Use stand ups like documentation, Be clear and concise, be agile, look at the big picture of the void, detailed loop, use structure and continuous learning. I hope you've learned something today about being more productive, productive in your role. And I will see you next week where we go into some two-minute tips.