Respect recognizes the value of stakeholders in developing a solution to meet their organization’s needs.

Business analysts respect all stakeholders, independent of their rank or responsibilities in the organization. Often, they earn the stakeholders’ respect by caring about their needs.

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Your Third Deliverable: Respect (Key Story)

Your Third Deliverable: Respect excerpts:

• The senior manager takes Emily and Katherine aside after the meeting. He tells Emily that she took a lot of courage to come in and break the bad news about the project delays. He says all but one of the managers on the team respect her for that. He promises to have a discussion about respect with the manager who pressured Emily in the meeting.
• Emily earned the respect of the team managers by revealing the truth about the project and offering solutions to their challenges. She researched all the delivery scenarios and recommended extending the project deadline, an unpopular choice. The senior manager recognized this and requested an extension. She earned Katherine's respect by maintaining her position when the manager tried to push her back into the "everything's OK" illusion.

Your First Deliverable: Curiosity

Your First Deliverable: Curiosity excerpt:

• Katherine, an Account Executive at a Salesforce Partner, is preparing for a meeting with a prospect. They will use her company's technology in a pilot project. The prospect's engineering team will attend the meeting, asking a lot of technical questions. Katherine is bringing Emily, their Software Development Manager, to answer the questions. She respects Emily's technical talent and wants to make sure that Emily presents herself properly to the prospect. Emily feels nervous. She rarely goes on sales calls and worries about Katherine over-committing her team to get the deal.

Develop Trust While Developing a Solution

Develop Trust While Developing a Solution excerpts:

• Emily, a Software Development Manager, has worked with a customer team to build a prototype that integrates with her company's technology. She struggled with technical problems in the prototype, having to inform the customer of the problems and missing the project deadline to resolve them. Emily earned the team's respect by exposing the problems and offering solid solutions to them. The team delivered a robust working prototype at the extended deadline.
• The senior executive in the meeting congratulates the team on delivering the prototype. She expresses her appreciation for their extra efforts to make it happen, sharing stories of those who went above and beyond what was expected. She turns to Emily and says, "Emily you have gone beyond making the prototype successful. You earned our respect and more importantly, our trust. You always came through for us, even alerting us to problems we didn't want to recognize. In the rare case where you didn't have an answer to our questions, you found the answer and made sure we got it. You were always honest with us. We feel like you're truly part of our team, as committed to our success as those who work here. Thank you so much, Emily!" Emily thanked the executive. She had never felt so appreciated.
• Emily felt overwhelmed. She made a habit of paying attention to people and their needs, but had not received such positive attention until now. She said, "Thank you so much. I loved working with everyone here and learned a lot. I realize that it took longer than expected to deliver the prototype, and appreciate you taking the extra time to make sure that we had a successful outcome." The team stands up and applauds. Emily earned the respect of the team, starting with her curiosity and attentiveness.

Discovery with a C.A.U.S.E.

Discovery with a C.A.U.S.E. excerpt:

• When you complete the follow-up sessions, you edit your documents with changes. You make sure you understand any needs captured in the follow-up sessions. You show these changes in a final summit meeting that includes the client CEO and the departmental managers. They are impressed with how clearly and completely you captured their needs. The CEO likes how you show the data access conflicts between departments, commenting that you made her job a lot easier. She says she’s excited to work with you in the future. You share how much you respect and appreciate her leadership.

Empathy for the Customer

Empathy for the Customer excerpt:

• Lessons Learned
  • The product manager disrespected the customer’s time and attention by leading with features and having an initial reluctance to learn what she needed from a diagramming tool. He didn’t ask the purposeful architect what she needed until she prompted him. Then he squandered more of her time trying to fit her needs into his template. He missed opportunities to follow up with her about what she needed, while making the template and company policy seem more important than her. She tried to help him by suggesting he record the conversation. He should have offered some means to capture her needs without wasting her time.