Vicki James, PMP, CBAP, PMI-PBA, CSM

Below is a copy of a rather lengthy comment I made in response to, Getting Started with Enterprise Analysis. Please check out that great article by Jonathon Nituch post on thebacoach.com.

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What a great article on Enterprise Analysis that hits the nail on the head for why I have chosen the route I have for my independent consulting business. In addition to speaking and writing, I seek projects close to home that I can be involved in to help the community (and my ability to keep food on the table). I have focused my local marketing on small business instead of pursuing government or big business contacts. This angle will not be lucrative, but I will get more job satisfaction. I want to help small business find and implement solutions that will bring greater value to their business. Seeing even small changes with big benefits is what I call a great day at work.

In regards to pursing opportunities for Enterprise Analysis, I would add make your own. You need a good business case with compelling data and an advocate with influence over the right people. Look for opportunities to start small and build up to farther reaching success. Find a quick win in your work unit, promote the success as yours (don’t be shy), and then look for opportunities with more impact throughout the organization. Eventually executives will come asking for your help in finding solutions to specific areas of concern.

One skill that a great EA needs is the ability to market and sell a solution. It is often not enough to offer that a solution is correct. The decision makers need to feel passion to take the effort to carry out changes. Think about the advertising pitches you have seen in movies or on TV where a team works day and night coming up with creative ways to sell their advertising idea. They give a powerful presentation doing whatever it takes to land the sale (even singing poorly). We need this energy and dedication with our improvement solutions. Storyboard the “to be”, arrange a demo, anything to go beyond words and invoke emotion.

The story of John Stegner’s Glove Shrine in Switch (Heath and Heath) is an excellent example of this.  “What they say was a large expensive table, normally clean or with a few papers, now stacked high with gloves. Each of our executives stared at this display for a minutes. Then each said something like ‘we really buy all these different kinds of gloves?’ …They looked at two gloves that seemed exactly alike, yet one was marked $3.22 and the other $10.55.”

Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. Switch: how to change things when change is hard. 1st. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2010.