Tag Archives: Consulting

Coaching, Strategy

Batting Practice for Contractors

If you’re a contractor working in an environment where you aren’t 100% busy all the time, but still requires you to meet billable hour contractual requirements, I suggest you take some batting practice. Having been in these situations before I’ve seen how leveraging the work you are doing as an opportunity to refine and hone your skills can make all the difference in your personal satisfaction as well as your client satisfaction.
Years ago I was embedded as an on-site trainer for a large pharmaceutical company. The purpose of the engagement was to act as an on-demand resource: running training classes and individual sessions at the request of the company staff. In principle the concept was sound and interesting.  In execution, the client staff had rare need for my services due to the work they were doing. Literally I would spend weeks with no direct engagements with the staff.  It was time for batting practice.

Turn work into professional development

Since the amount of idle time was excessive I reassessed the value I was delivering to the client. When I came on-site the first day I, to quote Liam Neeson, “had a particular set of skills.” Since those skills weren’t being leveraged I decided to expand on the ones relevant to the client. One of their primary needs was around the Lotus application suite (told you it was years ago) so I started deep diving into the capabilities of the tools far beyond what the normal users would ask for.  Why? Because by taking “batting practice” I was able to not only grow and deepen my skill set, but I was able to remain engaged and enthused about the possibilities at the client.

Make sure you’re staying relevant

It’s important to make sure the “batting practice” is relevant to what the client needs and wants. To continue the analogy, if I’m a designated hitter for a baseball team and the manager finds me out shooting baskets rather than swinging a bat, there’s going to be questions.  However if the manager finds me trying different bats, working on my stance and swing, and reviewing game footage of opposing pitchers, then there’s no question I’m contributing to the long term goals of the club. For myself, I’m building my skills and value so if I do get traded, I’m worth more to the next team I’m on.

Your engagement is your responsibility more than others

Being in a situation where so long as you are fulfilling the base requirements of a contract you are termed “successful” remaining engaged can become a difficult challenge. You need to take personal ownership and remember no company or organization can force you to be engaged. No number of perks, no matter how great, can buy that level of mental commitment. You must be committed and engaged to yourself first. Once that stands on it’s own can you then focus your attention on your client and your company. Operating every day with the expectation the company will keep you engaged is setting yourself up for failure, because it’s a rare company indeed that doesn’t struggle mightily with employee engagement, much less contractors.

Work on developing your skills within the context of your contractual obligations, but do that for yourself first, client second. Swing that bat, but do it to become a better batter, not just because someone said you should be doing it to look like you’re contributing to the team.

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Dealing with Resistance to Sharing Information

Whether you are a consultant, business analyst, project manager, or just a professional tasked with gathering information from other people, you will at some point run into people who are resistant to sharing what they know. In this article we will take a closer look at some of the causes of this behavior and ways you can get around the roadblocks to the information you need.
The business analyst often runs into a difficult situation caused by the unwillingness or inability of the stakeholders to share information about their requirements in the process of capturing business requirements for many projects. This can also be seen in instances when business team members need to share information about how or why business processes function the ways they do. There are a variety of reasons why team members can be resistant to sharing information, especially with an outside consultant, so I’m going to focus on five of the most common areas: 
  • Maintaining Value 
  • The Oral History 
  • Revisionist History 
  • The Outsider
  • Mysteries of the Universe 


Maintaining Value 
Many of us have either experienced this situation directly or have heard the story about the person who wouldn’t share. These are often the team member or members who ascribe to the adage that knowledge is power and retention of that knowledge is control. The intensity of this can vary from organization to organization, department to department, even individual to individual. In cases where it is an individual resistant to sharing information to maintain their own value to the organization, you have the option to involve others in the conversations to get the flow of information moving. In situations where the restriction of information is at a departmental level, such as I.T. not sharing information about reason and rationale with business units or vice versa, executive involvement may be necessary to remove roadblocks.  
The most important thing to keep in mind and to share with the parties involved is the importance of the information to the overall engagement. If the person feels the information they place such high value on will be trivialized then they will be far more reluctant to put it on the table. Take opportunities to separate hesitant people from the main group and interview / interact with them directly. While this is more labor intensive, it can be reassuring to those who feel their information and role in the engagement are not being given the perceived level of importance. 
Juxtaposed to this is the person who feels their control of information gives them power over a situation, often at a station beyond the norm for their role. While less common, this roadblock can be more difficult to overcome because the person withholding the information has determined, wrongfully so in the majority of cases, that hoarding the information is in their best interest. Sometimes this happens infrequently as a form of personal rebellion rather than a conscious effort to maintain informational isolation. 
The Oral History 
In many organizations, no matter how much stress is placed on documenting functionality and processes, there are a number of things that are kept to those “in the know”. This information is shared not through procedures but through informal conversations; you can recognize these often by their preface with “You should remember this…” or “By the way…” 
It’s this informal oral history that accompanies existing processes, especially long term legacy processes, that can challenge the gathering of details which can have a substantial impact on the success of the engagement as a whole. How do you gather the undocumented steps on a process? 
Often we rely on users to supply us with written documentation for review and building business requirements but there is no replacement for the visual demonstration of processes in action. Being able to observe and discuss how a process is executed, identifying edge cases and stray steps not captured in formal documentation, is an excellent tool for a business analyst to use in cases where they sense there may be more to the story than what is being shared. 
Revisionist History 
Just as treacherous as a lack of information for requirements is misinformation. It is unfortunately not uncommon to have business requirements shared that are not an accurate representation of the system as it exists but rather are how the business users think the system should work. For example, when reviewing requirements for a form design the conversation consistently turns to “It would be much better if…” or “It really should do…”. If you are in the stage of capturing what is desired this information is valuable, but if you are trying to identify current state, it can be a waste of time. 
Watch for key phrases and inconsistencies in how people describe the functioning of system vs how they have been documented. Often those inconsistencies come from the same people over and over again, possibly revealing a personal agenda overshadowing the fact finding you are performing. 
The Outsider 
Often a consultant runs into a situation where information is not shared due to the very nature of the client / consultant relationship. Clients can be resistant when they feel, unduly, their work and knowledge is going to be usurped by the consultant. This can also happen in environments where the operational stability is in flux for the individual or team.  
In these circumstances it is critical to focus on relationship building with members of the team until such time as both sides feel comfortable information can be shared to a mutual benefit. Getting clients to recognize the consultant is more than just a “hired gun” can be the difference between open discourse and a strained situation. 
Mysteries of the Universe 
There are cases where hindrances to sharing information come from not a willing resistance but from a lack of information itself. It is not uncommon to find business users executing processes as they were trained, doing the job well, but with no real idea as to why the process needs to be done. Pressing a business user on the why can sometimes shut down the communications channel about the how if they become uncomfortable with their awareness of their lack of knowledge around a process or procedure. In these situations, you need to identify if the information is necessary for the effective execution of their role (apparently not) and where else could that information come from without placing undue stress or unwanted attention on the business user. If you are able to locate the “why” from another source, find out if there is any issue with sharing the “why” with the business users who did not know the answers. In many situations, if there are no managerial restrictions, the sharing of information can open doors with business users to either provide additional details or at a minimum build bridges between the users and the consultant. 
Keep the Information Flowing 
These five areas only scratch the surface of roadblocks you can encounter when gathering information from business users. As you complete each engagement, make part of the post-mortem a review of how the process of information gathering went, what could be improved, and what were the warning signs for future engagements. Business analysis lives and dies based on information and keeping that information flowing is a key to success for many parts of an engagement, not just the requirements stage. 
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Sway presentation – https://sway.com/EaaqnI4TND9A43Kp