BA Bites - Top 10 ways to become a Strategic BA

The leap from delivery to strategy is the real career game-changer for Business Analysts.

In this episode, Benjamen Walsh's shares his Top 10 ways to become a Strategic BA — from mastering financial acumen and building senior stakeholder trust, to telling stories with data and using enterprise analysis techniques.

We’ll explore real case studies from Netflix, Toyota, Spotify, Amazon, Tesla and more — showing you exactly how BAs move from documenting requirements… to shaping direction.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Now a lot of us start our BA career deep in the detail,
gathering requirements, mapping processes, writing user stories
and all those things matter. But the real leap, the one that
gets you into the room with senior leaders, is when you
shift from being just the delivery BA to becoming a

(00:23):
strategic BAA. Strategic BA don't just write
requirements. They influence direction.
They challenge assumptions. They connect business goals to
delivery. They're not just part of a
project, they help shape the strategy behind it.

(00:44):
So today I want to share my top ten ways to become a strategic
business analyst. The Better Business Analysis
Institute presence, the Better Business Analysis podcast with
Kinder and Walsh. Welcome back, everyone.

(01:05):
That's right. I'm going to be sharing some
tips to move you from a Bea or asenior BA or even a bidder BA to
being a strategic business analyst.
And this is something that I've done on my journey and I would
consider myself a strategic business analyst.
And every role I do now, even ifmy role is senior BA contractor

(01:28):
or consultant, I try and talk about strategy.
And I'm going to show you how you can do it #1 it's around
understanding the business context, not just the project.
And I talk about the so often with the 4P Plus model and all
sorts of other shows that you may have listened to strategic

(01:49):
BA's, see the bigger picture. Now, this is something that you
can learn. So if you're not someone who
feels comfortable with this now,it can take you a while to be
there. I am someone who always talks
about the biggest picture in life to connecting dots.
So it's a little bit easier for me to play this particular role.
However, you can learn this, learn the industry and not just

(02:14):
the systems. And I've seen people who are on
this junior who say to me, I want experience in these
different areas. That's why they join a
consultancy sometimes. Understand what your
organization's value drivers andwhat we mean by that.
It's not their values. Sorry, it's a, a corporate term,
but it's around how do they generate value?

(02:36):
How do they capture value? It's called it's, it's talk
about value delivery. OK.
So instead of say, for example, capturing requirements for ACRM,
you could ask how does the CRM support customer retention?
Now that's a question. A better way of actually getting

(02:57):
to that point is starting with the business capabilities that
you have in an organization and marking off which ones of those
are in scope. But that might be a leap too far
for this lesson, so I will talk about that in the future.
Let's take Netflix, a lot of youhave used it or at least know
what it is. They didn't just build streaming

(03:18):
tech, they analysed industry trends, right?
They knew that DVD was declining.
Actually, they were in their market 1st and they shifted the
whole business model #2 is master the language of strategy.
And this is important, read somebooks.
You need to speak the same language as executives.

(03:40):
You need to use terms like ROI, MPV, market share, customer
lifetime value. You need to link requirements to
those strategic objectives. They may have measures around
them that relate to those points, those acronyms I just
talked about instead of a new feature, right?
You could say that this epic story supports our 15% churn

(04:06):
reduction target. OK, this is what features don't
play well when you link them allthe way back up.
You need to use epochs in here. We all know about Twitter's lean
model approach, which tune into all sorts of lean methodologies
outside of that. But it succeeded because BAS and

(04:30):
analysts could connect operational improvement directly
to strategic goals. It wasn't just about the
continuous improvement side lostin that story #3 build financial
acumen. You do need to understand the
world of economics. In our capitalist world, numbers
get you a seat at the strategic table.

(04:51):
Understand cost benefit analysis.
Learn how to read financial statements.
Being able to say this process saves 250K annually in OpEx.
That's the kind of conversation you have at the exact table.
I can tell you that because I have been an executive Apple,
every product business case thatthey talk about is so tightly

(05:15):
linked to projected margins and revenue growth.
And if you don't understand whata revenue is versus income
versus margin, you need to go and find out.
Number four, you need to shift from requirements gathering to
elicitation and then eventually land on value creator.

(05:38):
Don't just write what people say.
Question why move from elicitation to challenging.
Ask what business value does this deliver?
It's kind of the why statement. A stakeholder might ask for a
new report and instead of documenting it, you explore

(05:59):
which existing dashboard alreadysolves the need to jumping Your
you are you could say you're doing solutionizing, but that's
not quite the story. What you're looking at is you're
you're not jumping at all. You're actually considering a
lot of chess pieces. You're playing out the game as
much as you know to get checkmate.

(06:21):
So for example, you have ascertained that this new report
that the user wants or stakeholder wants is to be a
dashboard style, which shows some statistics which you know
already exist on another dashboard, but they don't know
that. So you listen to them, you
elicitate what they need and what they want.
And maybe they're descriptive about, you know, that they want

(06:41):
it as a report, they want it like this, that and the other.
But if you were to suggest and say, hey, look, I've seen a
dashboard that has some of thoseattributes and we could
collectively save money and add value by reusing that asset,
there might be an opportunity toduplicate it, you know, expand
the report. So that's about challenging.
So it's not saying, no, you're wrong.
I know it's better than you. Or giving them a solution they

(07:03):
don't want. It's about playing that all the
way through all the moves. So don't miss a move.
Kodak, the camera maker, it failed strategically.
It doesn't exist anymore. And we've talked about that
before because analysts focused on delivering more features, not
understanding the shift to digital photography.

(07:24):
And I, and you, you, you hear mea lot moaning about features
because that's what we've lost alittle bit was business analysis
by just focusing on features and, and all the rest of it,
right? And BAS should be working at a
strategic level. And it's more than just features
#5 is to use enterprise analysistechniques, which we talk about

(07:45):
a lot in the course. And the Better Business Analysis
course, that's the certified Better Business Analysis course.
And it's around strategic BAS and how we think beyond single
projects. We do business model canvases,
we do pesto analysis, we do SWOTanalysis.
Before a project starts, you're running business model canvas

(08:06):
workshop maybe to check if the idea aligns with strategic long
term goals. That's really important.
Very hard to to suggest that idea if the project's already
started, however, and that's a challenge.
Airbnb uses business model innovation all the time, sharing
economy, trust platformed, you know all the things they're

(08:30):
after. And they did that to redefine
travel, not just launch an application.
And actually you can see the original pitch pack online, they
shared it so you can have a lookat it.
Number six, which I had to record a few times because
there's some tongue twisters here.
Strengthen relationship with senior stakeholders is number
six and it's about the fact thatinfluence comes from trust and

(08:55):
credibility, not just Friday night drinks.
I can see you thinking about that.
Learn to facilitate board level discussions and maybe you can
get experience by asking if you can present to the board.
Focus on what executives care about, which is risk and cost
and growth and their staff. Sometimes you could when

(09:18):
presenting, you could ditch or the jargon and the require you
know, the the lengthy requirement you've written and
just highlight thus reduces customer tune by 5%.
We've done the stats and stand behind it.
IBM Watson, which was a really kind of first of the AI wave.

(09:38):
They have a healthcare division,and they had a pivot, which
showed that without seeing the stakeholders buy in, even great
technology struggles to scale because it just wasn't quite
pitched in the right way. And that leads me to #7 which
we're going to talk about more in the future.
Become a storyteller, but with data, with real data, not fluff.

(10:04):
Data by itself isn't enough. You need to tell a compelling
story and then ideally, the hero's story.
Use visual narratives, translateinsights into action.
Maybe instead of saying customerchurn is 20%, you could say one
in five customers left us last year.

(10:26):
And here's the cost, right? That's much more catchy and
that's much more storytelling and engaging.
Spotify has a Squad model. I've talked about it before.
I think if I haven't, I should do an episode on it.
It worked because they consistently told stories with
users and and they use product data to justify rapid

(10:49):
experiments. And to be honest, the Spotify
experiment or the company is doing really down well at the
moment, right? It's failed on some features,
but it's working really well. I do like the Spotify models.
Look it up. It's take on agile and how you
can scale. It's much more successful than
maybe just a scrum team #8 is tobridge the gap between strategy

(11:13):
and delivery. This is a bit I enjoy doing
strategic BAS make sure the big ideas actually get delivered.
So it's not just about strategy,it's about turning it into
delivery. You translate the high level
goals into actionable Rd. maps. You connect portfolio management

(11:35):
with Sprint logs, right? So project and agile world, you
link it all together. ABA can ensure a digital first
strategy by translating it into measurable epochs and then
measurable features that show ushow we get to those epic watts,

(11:56):
right. And then of course down into the
backlog. Amazon relentlessly is a
customer first strategy. They, they live by and it's
successful because analysts continually link strategic goals
to operational delivery. And that's something that Amazon
do extremely well #9 is that youneed to develop your leadership

(12:21):
skills, not just your BA skills,which we talk about.
And some of them crossover strategic BAS lead without
necessarily having the title, and actually very rarely having
the title. I don't think I've ever had the
title. I've been an enterprise business
analyst but not a strategic business analyst and I hadn't
seen any roles for it but facilitation, influencing

(12:46):
without authority, and mentoring.
Junior BAS is a start. Maybe you can lead a cross
functional workshop ensuring consensus.
That's an example. Google had a project called
Aristotle, and it was a researchproject and it found that team

(13:06):
success depends less on IQ, moreon soft skills like
psychological safety and facilitation, and more EQ
skills. So that really important EQ is
something that some CEO's actually lack.
But their leadership team, they usually pump them full of people

(13:27):
with really good EQ #10 adopt ascontinuous learning mindset.
I think I've done quite a few ofthese top 10's and that's
usually one of the top tens. Strategy shifts fast.
Stay ahead of the curve. Track industry trends.
I'm hot on AI at the moment in automation.

(13:48):
Learn new frameworks, tools and technologies.
I try and do a decent course every six months.
Do our course. A BA who understands AI early
can now shape AI strategic conversations.
And it's happening so quickly that actually a lot of the
management team haven't caught up.
You're perfect for being the person who can inform.

(14:12):
And Tesla, they stay ahead not because of cars alone, but
because of the analysts and the strategists.
And they're basically just monitoring energy, AI,
automotive, and they're staying ahead of the industry trends.
They're actually sitting the industry trends.
So that's why they're successfuland that's what drives Musk and

(14:35):
and his success. So there you have it, my top ten
ways to become a strategic business analyst.
It's not about writing requirements.
It's about understanding your business, speaking the language
of strategy, telling stories with data, building trust, and
making sure you can connect withsenior stakeholders.

(14:58):
The shift is to stop thinking ofyourself as someone who
documents and start thinking of yourself as someone who shapes
direction. Because the future of business
analysis isn't about being part of projects at all.
I don't believe it. It's about being part of the
strategy that drives them. Thanks for tuning in and I'll

(15:19):
see you next week.