sullivus's picture Submitted by sullivus on
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Career Management

Hi Everyone,

BLUF:  So how would you go about quickly learning enough about a new field to become the company expert?

 

Some background....

I've just been tapped to become the company expert on business analysis / business intelligence, etc..  This is an area I don't know much about, I've been given this job because in the past I've been good at analyzing trends and data for some of our products as well as developing accurate and well thought out budgets.

We're a small, non-profit trade association with about 50 employees, so I'm keeping about half of my current job responsibilities the rest will be related to analyzing and reporting on our data.  I know my boss thinks that this is a great area for me to grow into and believes that within a few years I could become an AVP or VP in this area.

I don't think anyone has any concrete ideas of what they want me to do, there's just a general consensus that our company needs help in this area.

 

The Question...

So how would you go about quickly learning enough about a new field to become the company expert?

General advice or recommendations on business analysis / business intelligence are all welcome

 

So far I have a reading list of about 20 books and am trying to find an association or something similar to join.  Unfortunately because we're a non-profit I'll have very little financial resources to help me in this process.

 

Thank you in advance!

 

 

 

 

scm2423's picture
Submitted by scm2423 on Wednesday December 7th, 2011 7:37 pm

To start,  do you have to become the expert or do you have to become the person who knows were to get the answers.  Can you develop and use your network to find the answers the to the questions that are being raised.  From my standpoint, it doesn't matter to me if my direct knows the answer or knows where to find it.

 

s

TomW's picture
Training Badge
Submitted by TomW on Thursday December 8th, 2011 7:57 am

Step 1: Find good resources on the topic

Step 2: Read up on it

Step 3: Do it.

Step 4. Make mistakes

Step 5: Learn from Mistakes

Step 6: Repeat.

Note: Some people start on Step 3 and make out just fine.

Note 2: If you do too much of Step 2 with little or no Step 3. you will probably confused yourself since you lack the context to understand what you are reading. 20 books is probabaly more than you can absorb. One or two GREAT ones on any single topic is all it takes to improve.

jrosenau's picture
Submitted by jrosenau on Thursday December 8th, 2011 9:16 am

IIBA is the organization devoted to standards for business analysis:

http://www.iiba.org/imis15/IIBA/Home/IIBA_Website/home.aspx 

They have a lot of helpful resources.
 

Also, BrightTalk does free webinars with registration and they have some focused on business analysis:

http://www.brighttalk.com (search business analysis)

John

sullivus's picture
Submitted by sullivus on Thursday December 8th, 2011 11:54 am

Thanks for the suggestions and comments everyone!

 

Mr. Happy, that is definitely something to think about.  I think it will be a little bit of each.

 

TomW, you have a good point.  As a High C, I definitely like to figure things out before acting :)

 

John - thanks a lot for the resources!  I'll be sure to check those out.

 

If anyone else has other ideas I would love to hear them.

 

douglase's picture
Submitted by douglase on Thursday December 8th, 2011 10:23 pm

Document it.

Personally I don't mind a good expert, but that information is in their head.

What I find truly valuable is somebody who finds out stuff, and then writes it down with enough context that anybody can use it.

For example, when I find out how to do something that I know other people are going to ask about, I write up the a procedure/work instruction on how to do it and store it in a shared knowledge repository.  Plus it also means I don't have to remember how I did it, just where I wrote it down.

GlennR's picture
Submitted by GlennR on Friday December 9th, 2011 9:25 am

My two cents:

First penny: Carve out time to learn. You've got twenty books to read. When will you do them? Do not be afraid to read at work. When I was new to CRM, I devoted several hours a week to closing my door and reading books, trade publications, blogs, etc.  Speaking of which, get on Twitter and use keyword searches to zero in on conversations around business intelligence. You'll quickly find others with the same interests. Read their blogs. Expect many of them to try to sell you something. But that's okay. Ask them questions. I would recommend a desktop application like Tweetdeck so that you can easily track multiple keywords. I was able to avoid a disastrous mistake when creating my first QA process because I found someone on Twitter (in Europe, I'm in the US) who was willing to send me three long and detailed emails about what to focus on and what not to focus on.
 

Second penny, And this speaks to Douglas above, Create Measurable Results! There will be doubters, perhaps some of the senior leaders in your organization who will question the ROI of having you devote so much time to this. Take the theory you're learning and figure out how to turn it into actionable results that will help your organization meet its business goals.

Avoid the learning trap, that is, for some it's fun just to keep learning and never apply the knowledge. Don't fall into that!

I'm responsible for CRM in my organization. Feel free to reach out to me privately. I'm still very much the learner when it comes to BI (I focus mainly on customer engagement) but perhaps we can network.

Good luck!

Glenn