The Better Business Analysis Institute Presence the Better Business Analysis Podcast with Kenjamin Walsh Hi everybody and welcome back to the Better Business Analysis Podcast with Benjamin Walsh, proudly brought to you by the Better Business Analysis Institute. The number one resource for getting started as ABA. Few weeks ago I took a trip to Bali for 10 days, which was some time out, a trip that was due
before COVID. And we finally got the opportunity to to disappear into Bali and then later into the jungle in in Ubud. And there wasn't much to do there, which was the idea. And so I got to read a book and one of those books that I read on vacation was Atomic Habits by James Clare. Now if you haven't read the book or you haven't heard of it, I'll give you a brief summary. And particularly today, I want to talk about some lessons.
As I was reading the book, I was connecting this, some of the lessons within the book to the world of business analysis. And there are actually some really great synergies there and some lessons. And also as a business analyst, our job is to persuade people and also help them form a new
habits. So I do think it's a great book from a psychology point of view to learn about change management and and what is needed in order for people to change what they do, which is ultimately what BA is all about, Implementing changes. OK, cool. So I'll give you a rundown on the book itself of a very light summary. Summit Habits by James Clear is about habits, and a habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.
OK? And when you think about processes and people and interactions or jobs to be done, a lot of those scenarios which are done often are actually formed as habits. So habits could be good or bad depending on your the context and what you're trying to achieve in your life. The idea of a habit, the process of building a habit. Process of building a habit. So hopefully your BAES have perked up because I've used the word process involves 4 simple steps and this wasn't something
that James came up with. This is. I've read about this many times before, but he he, he uses this and he expands on it and he talks about the four steps inhabit formation which start with a cue. So there is a cue, if you like a trigger, a cue that will make you act. There is a craving, a desire for something, there is a response and then there is a reward. And if you if those four things which cyclic and they can repeat cue craving response and reward 1234 that's the habit loop.
And if the all those things are true to a certain degree, then a new habit can be formed. The full name of the book is Atomic Habits. Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results and that's important. And we'll get to that point. After this next point around tiny Changes and how just doing something is the way you should start. You shouldn't try to eat the elephant all at once.
But number one, and again, I'm going to interweave my BA commentary here, It's around #1 is to shift the focus when you try and achieve something, when you want to achieve something. A lot of the lot of the times we say we want to lose weight, we're going to get fit. You know, they're going to the gym scenario I I literally just re signed up for the gym, you know and you know this is after years of not having a a standardized regular exercise regime in terms of going to the
gym. And of course the goal you could say is to lose weight or you know my case get fit or get fitter. And the we need to shift the focus away from the goal. We need to not focus on the end state and the reason for that and this is your BA, you will be triggered. I will be queuing some of these BA thoughts in your head here. What we talk about here is that if you take two sports team, you take, I don't know, we'll use some American basketball players, basketball team.
So you've got the Chicago Bulls and then let's say they're playing the LA Lakers, right? Basketball teams. And they're playing each other and the competitors. Look, both of their goals. Both teams are at their professional best. And what is the goal of both teams? The goal of both teams is to win the game. OK, so the goal is less it it's there, it is the ultimate goal. But what will get them there and and that's what the book's about. What will get them there is the process the how.
So the book offers this approach. It doesn't we we shouldn't be thinking too much around goals. We or the focus of the system. We should be really focusing on the process to get there. How are we going to get there? And so you need to have a step by step guide in order to achieve a goal. So sometimes we talk about you know in business we want to achieve something and we break that down to tangibles about steps that we want to achieve.
Or if we're helping a customer, they've got some jobs to be done, they want to complete that. But what's important are the steps that they carry out to get there and and how we influence that. So small, this is from James. Small changes often appear to make no difference. Until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed.
You need to be patient. So the focusing on a goal of, I don't know, losing 10 KGS or, you know, pounds or whatever it is in in your country is can be quite off putting if that's just the goal. What you need to do is measure your progress as you go through and actually get some joy out of
the process of getting there. And the idea of compounding process relates to compounding interest Or you know, either for an investment or for a mortgage where every time you do something, it it it it, it can have an, at some point it has an exponential return rate. So you get there. As you as you make small steps, you feel like they're small steps, but they're actually adding up and they're more than just one additional step. And at some point, you'll start
to get closer to your goal. The reason I like that particular lesson in terms of BBA was that success is the product of daily habits, right? The goal is a product of daily habits. Not kind of this once in a lifetime transformation where you just, you know, suddenly lose 10 KGS, you've got to work for it, the second lesson. So I guess, I guess summarize summarizing that point, it was around shifting the focus from the goal to the process to get there. What are your steps to get
there? OK, we're backwards from there. The second point is don't make up mix up motion and action. This is one of the best pieces of advice in the book and it's to distinguish the difference between motion and action, OK. And it's a bit of a brain trap, do you think, because you're and I do this, I do this so often, especially with startup businesses that I have helped create or am involved in.
Is that you think, and I don't do this though in a project which is for a client or as a consultant or even as ABA. Because, you know, this is something I teach juniors not to focus all their time on, which is around the fact that because you're planning and you're thinking, so you're analyzing and you're planning, it feels like action. OK, so you do this for six months, but in reality it's not.
You're not getting any closer to those steps that you need to achieve in order to ultimately get go, but you're actually not moving the doll. So. So action is doing stuff and motion is moving forward. And so you need to, a few managers have said to me over the years that we need to have progress over perfection, OK. And B, as can get trapped into that, trapped into the perfection game. And the other, the other focused area, of course is you want progression.
And the other frustration to B, as is if things aren't moving fast enough, I'm currently working for a large government client in New Zealand on quite a substantial piece of work. And there's ABA who's who's come on board and want to work on a piece of work as part of that program. And this person was getting quite frustrated. Working in this environment and in this environment is frustrating, but you've got to accept that. And sometimes you know, even progress can feel tough.
So you've just got to focus on just doing the next thing and moving closer and closer to that goal. So my advice for BAS is instead of planning and trying to do something perfect, or, you know, keep working on product design, or keep working on the requirements or keep working on a piece of analysis, I think you should just start something. So, so, so, so just just start releasing some of the stuff. Start releasing early. If it's a analysis document, give feedback on it straight away, OK?
And give feedback at the 80% mark. Don't worry about the 20%, just give feedback at the 80% mark before you've finished it. If you if you there's 22 problems with working on something for too long of its presentation. One is that you could just take too long on it. It's not worth it. The value of return on investment for time spent on it, it's just not valuable. That can happen, especially in
the public sector. But secondly, sometimes, and I've seen this in a design era, is that if you've worked on something, you've made it to a point of art almost.
You think it's quite good then if you show someone too late down the when you're at 100%, right Once once you think it's ready to go out and it's it's ready for publishing, it's actually the bad time to send it out because you'll get, you'll get lots of feedback and some managers just love to give feedback for the sake of it. So they feel powerful. But you will might get up quite upset. But if you send it out at the 80% mark, you go, Oh yeah, OK cool, that's fine. Yeah, I knew that.
And those managers who are looking for, you know, dotting IS and crossing the TS or want to just have their say they've got that opportunity in USB, it's like the IT probably won't. If they're just doing it for the sake of giving feedback, then you can say well that's cool. It's not the final document cool. I'll incorporate that feedback.
Thank you very much. And for those who if you are off track and those who are providing great constructive feedback, they'll have their say and you and you, you'll know it's at an 80% mark and you won't be too upset. If you need to change it, you you definitely will be less upset than if you thought it was perfect. So that's a really, really good point. I think BAS are a lot of BAS and we're getting better at it. Agile's probably helped. But yeah, just don't mix up
motion and with action. So action being doing stuff and motion moving forward. So that's really important. There is actually a rule around when we talk about habit forming in in this book there's there's a quote and a rule. So the quote is we're so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking any action.
So that that that that can happen quite a lot, especially in a business case process and the technique when we are trying to do something and we'll bring it back to say losing weight or getting fit at the gym. One technique is the 2 minute rule, so you do something for just two minutes, which is easy. So this could literally be sign up to the gym, go there, get changed into your gym gear, drive to the gym. If it's not far away, go there. Go on the cycle cycle for two
minutes. Start with two minutes. Leave and go home and the gym. You know, people at reception might go, oh, you you're right. You go, Yep, yeah, just sorry, I've got to go home now. You start off with that 2 minutes you've actually gone there so you're not feeling overwhelmed that you're doing half an hour or people going to watch you because you have been in the gym before and you just don't look your best and you don't feel your best. But actually just turning up is step one.
And then next time you go, maybe you just go in there and you just go, you just do it for 5 minutes and then you might double that again and double that again, double that again, like exponentially. And suddenly you're going for an hour and you've gone through the ritual of putting your clothes on, going to the gym. That's actually just as important, just as important than it is, you know, actually getting the exercise that you want because the cue and the
action is actually the hard bit. So. So once you're at the gym and working, you might push yourself. That's fine. Don't. And by the way, don't push yourself. That's a mistake. A lot of people do that. So that's a side note that if you were quite athletic in the past, I played quite a lot of sport when I was younger. I'm not that person anymore.
And so I'm going to push myself to, you know, university grade kind of sports and then I'll, you know, I'll break something because I'm not at that level of fitness anymore. People do that and then you, you know, you start going to the gym again and then after two weeks you've pulled, you've pulled a ligament or something. So just start off small. There's also some really good lessons about triggering.
So I'm I'm not going to steal James's Thunder, and I'm going to recommend you read the book around how you have existing habits. And so if you're introducing a new habit, like going to the gym, you should probably stack that in. It's called habit stacking to to a habit that you're already doing and and so so so the cue to remind you to go to the German to to push you into action can actually be triggered by something else that you do often. So you read the book around that
area. So don't mix up motion and action. So motion would be going to the gym, action would be thinking about it or doing a fitness plan and not actually turning up. Another top tip would be make it obvious and this is less related to be I think are very much important when you are trying to form a new habit. The process of behavior change starts with awareness. So if you're not aware of your own habits, you can't change
them. So this is almost like current state analysis if we do relate it to business analysis. So a lot of people are not aware of what they do on a current on a current basis and and and again of course documenting all that may be less valuable. But from a change management point of view it may actually be important for people to just write down what they do. Very simple, they can do it.
You don't need to make it pretty, but simply getting the intro to list of the steps that they do helps them identify where maybe what their current habits are, but also their activities which might also be habits because I've done them for 50 years or so for example. So you need to raise awareness.
So there's a good example in the book called pointing and calling where if it actually raises your awareness from a non conscious habit to a more conscious habit by verge verbalizing and pointing and actually using your hands. So a great example of that is when people are packing to go
away on vacation or on holiday. Some people go, I've got my toothbrush, I've got my passport, I've got my underwear and they're pointing around and that actually helps your brain remember things much more than you just trying to remember. So by writing it down and calling it out, pointing and calling or even physically pointing actually locks
information into the brain. So, so again if you're doing a requirement session and people are doing things, you could literally get them to verbalize their process and say it out loud because it could trigger something in their brain. The other idea is around habits. Per Southeast is around making the habit, the change in behavior attractive.
So making an attractive, so the more opportunity to make the habit or the behavior change is attractive, there's more chance of it, you're doing it more often and and and cementing into a habit, James says. Interestingly, the reward system that is activated in the brain when you receive a reward or a reward is the same system that is activated when you anticipate a reward. So I'll say that again, the same part of your brain that activates when you actually
receive a reward. So it could be, I don't know, treating yourself to a Starbucks and be like is the same when you when you anticipate that you might get that reward. And the reason why anticipation of an experience can often feel sometimes the anticipation of the change of the Starbucks, feeling like a Starbucks. And I'm. I'm looking at a Starbucks right now that I got about an hour
ago. I really had a craving for it, bought it. And and as James says, the anticipation of the experience can often feel better than actually attainment. So I felt like a Starbucks. I imagined in my head, for whatever reason, something triggered me. And then I went and bought one and I had it and I was actually disappointed. Happens often where kids really, really want something and then you give it to them and then less they're happy about it or
they don't play with the toy. It's more around the anticipation of the toy because it's popular now that can happen in IT all the time. Or business analysis where you talk about a change, you talk about this new system and you know it's hard because they have to learn how to use it and it's different and the anticipation of this cool system actually
fades out. And a lot of times, even when you're successful in a project, the actual new post change is not that exciting and all the benefits you know are seen later or people don't necessarily relate to it. So changing habits is hard. The other lesson, or there's just two more really is One is about making it easy. So if you want to ditch a habit, you should make it harder. There's several methods for doing that.
So again, I guess if we were trying to stop people from doing an old process of following an old using their spreadsheet instead of the system that's just rolled out, make it extremely difficult for them to do that. So it enforces them to change their habits and then make it satisfying. So again, I think there needs to be some a reward for people for taking action. So think about those last two in terms of change management. Making it easy and making it satisfying.
So if you are going to help someone move to a new system, maybe there's a reward system like, I don't know, you get a Prezi card or a coffee voucher. If you have like used the new system every day, you you know it's only one Click to log in. You're not having to remember username and passwords. So all those kind of what you could see is soft requirements and almost nice to have or could haves in Moscow, maybe they're actually really must haves in terms of the change you're
trying to achieve. And maybe you should consider those more UX, customer experience changes and reward experiences that are actually really important if you want people to move to a new system. So there's some, there's some just some really really high level overview book. Atomic Habits by James Clear. I I recommend reading it and just, you know, one from a habit forming scenario in terms of your own habits and then one in terms of how that might relate
to business analysis. And so that, you know, that's my, I guess my review of Atomic Habits and I just thought it would relate to BA. Now before I go today, I just wanted to shout out to all of you. It's quite remarkable how successful this podcast has become just with me talking about my experiences and business analysis and obviously with the help of a lot of luned friends and you know, interviewees that I've had on
the show. And if you want to be on the show, please just let see me LinkedIn, I would love to hear from you. I love to get feedback. So don't, please don't hold back. And if you want to be on the show and talk about anything, it doesn't matter if you're a junior intermediate. You've got experience. Don't. Don't think that people don't want to hear your story.
I'm always fascinated to hear about people who have, you know, recent immigrants and how they're settling in jobs as they're just starting a new job or they're new to business analysis or they're not even in that field. And what made them listen to this podcast and why our business analysis appeals to them? I would love to hear from you. I'd love to interview you and I just again just wanted to shout out there's such a choice on Spotify or Apple podcast or whatever platform you're using
to listen to this podcast. There's so much choice out there when it comes to business and so I really appreciate your time, your 30 minutes to an hour every week where we get to have a bit of a chat, more me talking, less more you listening. But also, I do want to hear from you finally. Happy Thanksgiving to those Americans out there or anyone else around the world who celebrates it.
Great time to give thanks and to think about what you're grateful for before Christmas. And like I said, I am grateful to all of you.