5 genius ways to use your Business Analyst experience to move to Change Management

One of the best parts of Organisational Change Management as a profession is the fact that everybody has come to Change Management from somewhere else AND there are so many pathways into Change. You could be coming from a Marketing background (like I did), from Project Management, from Operations, from Human Resources, from Transformation, from Communications, from Training and Learning & Development, from Process - you name it, and you’d have transferable skills into Change. 

One of the feeder roles I don’t talk about as much but is a popular gateway to Change Management is Business Analysis. Often in a project, even if there’s only 1 Change practitioner, there’ll often be a few Business Analysts (BAs) and the ones that are more savvy, success-focused and people-minded will look over the fence at Change Management and see its value and possibility as a career path (particularly when it pays more and is a more female-dominated career than the technical roles like Project Management and Business Analysis).

So if you’re wanting to make the career change to Change Management, here’s 5 genius ways to use your BA experience to make the move.

Genius Way #1: Meet the Change recruiter desk

Many project roles rely on recruiters to support resourcing, but in many bigger or specialised recruitment agencies, there are different desks for Project versus Change. So your current recruiter network may not be best aligned for finding you Change roles. You can find and connect with Change Management-dedicated recruiters, or ask your current Project/BA recruiters to introduce you to their Change desk. Being more connected with Change recruiters will help you come up in job board and LinkedIn search results for Change Management rather than Business Analysis.

Genius Way #2: Position yourself in the market as Change / BA not BA / Change

Often Change practitioners dabble in BA work (especially for under-resourced projects) and Business Analysts dabble in Change Management work, so you’ve likely been doing many Change tasks and responsibilities already in previous projects and have a raft of transferable skills. You might already see yourself as a slashie professional (i.e. role / role), but be sure to put the “Change” part first on LinkedIn, your CV, and the way you talk about your experience and career ambitions. This is important because it starts to make the shifts energetically and starts to change your own perceptions of who you are and what you have to offer.

Genius Way #3: Mark out Change-related tasks you’ve done

A fabulous Change Management recruiter I used in my early Change career recommended that under your Career History roles, you don’t just lump all your responsibilities together but instead split them out as “Change Management responsibilities” in the role and “Other responsibilities” in the role (which would include your BA tasks and responsibilities). This helps to really showcase and shine to recruiters, hiring managers and AI bots the wealth of transferable skills and experience you have specifically in Change and bring it to the light. Just like your slashie-ness, flip it! You've got to take them on their journey with you. Recruiters are amazing, they are my favourite people to work with. I think that they're so good at what they do and we're so lucky in the Project space to have recruiters to go in and bat for us and to advocate for us and to be doing the hard yards sometimes finding us roles that we didn't even apply for. They are absolutely amazing but they’re busy so they also want a quick easy win, right? They want to really have that confidence that the person that they're putting in front of their client is the right person for the role because that's the only way they get paid. Make it really easy for them to go in to bat for you for a Change role. 

Genius Way #4: Be confident in your transferable skills

As you go through my Leading Successful Change program, if there are Business Analysis tasks that are also Change Management tasks, move them out of the Other Responsibilities / Business Analysis area into the Change area because they draw on the same skills. For example, with Business Analysis, it might be that you go and get requirements from business stakeholders. I would just move that into the Change Management space because that's essentially stakeholder engagement and requirements mapping. Do you know what I mean? You're doing the same task, you just call it something that's slightly different and more Change-related. When you are a Business Analyst and you go and sit down with a business team and say, “How do you do your process? What are you going to need in this new future state?” That is literally exactly the same skillset you’ll use with Change, but you are asking the question, “What does your team do? What are the processes that you do? What will your team need from a Change perspective?” It’s the same skillset and process, with often just a word different. So it's you starting to believe yourself and positioning for yourself and building that confidence in yourself of your Change Management expertise.

Genius Way #5: Close any Change Management gaps

And of course, if you aren’t quite sure the breadth and depth of Change Management delivery tasks, skills, tools, templates and techniques and you feel like you have Change Management gaps you’d like to close, come and learn them! Especially if you’ve had time out of the workforce or been getting feedback in your job hunt that you don’t have enough Change experience, there is a level of rebuilding and reboosting your confidence when you do a program like my Leading Successful Change course that'll start to accelerate really quickly for you. It will validate all of the skills and information that you already know and give you that ability to really speak with authority and speak with belief in yourself. When you're talking with recruiters, you are doing them a favour by applying for their role. You are doing them a favour by having a conversation with that recruiter. You are key talent. You have so much experience, you have absolutely been doing Change even if you haven't formally had the title of Change Management. You are a superstar and you are doing them a favour by showing up in their world. Take that belief and energy in with you, into any conversations that you have. And if you don’t feel or believe that in yourself yet, come join my LSC Live training in Sydney next week on 18-19 August because one of the most powerful parts of the program is that we focus deeply on confidence.

Registrations for LSC Live close tomorrow: click here to register ASAP before the deadline

All my belief, 

Lata

P.S. Remember, LSC Live final registrations close tomorrow Wednesday 13 August at 8.00pm AEST (Sydney time) - click here to register ASAP. And if you can’t make it to Sydney to join us, join the online version of the LSC program from anywhere across the globe for instant access to the course, community, and coaching call library.