Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we sit down for another cup of coffee with Mike, Gillian, and Josh Birk.

 

Join us as we chat about the ever-changing nature of work and preview Skills for Success September.

 

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with the Admin Evangelist Team.

How we work, then and now

Every month, Gillian, Mike, and Developer Evangelist Josh Birk sit down with a cup of coffee and a topic. For August’s Coffee Talk, we’re reflecting on the ever-changing nature of work. How things have changed in our work lives, technology that has changed the way we work, and a look ahead to our Skills for Success series.

 

Join us as we discuss:

• How email has gone from something you’d check every so often to something that’s in your pocket.

• How Slack has helped with email overload.

• Camera on or camera off in videoconferences?

• How perceptions of work-from-home have changed.

• Why changes in our work lives are opportunities and what that has to do with business analysis.

• The Skills for Success series coming to YouTube this September.

• How that’s going to tie in with upcoming episodes on the podcast.

 

Podcast swag

• Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store

Learn more

• Admin Trailblazers Group

• Salesforce Admins on YouTube

• Mexican Street Corn Salad (Esquites) Recipe from Serious Eats

Business Analyst August episodes

• Ko Forte on Being a Business Analyst

• Toni V. Martin on Business Analysis Skills

• Amber Boaz on Slack Best Practices

• Pei Mun Lim on the Skills of a Business Analyst

Social

• Josh: @JoshBirk

• Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns 

• Gillian: @GillianKBruce

• Mike: @MikeGerholdt

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Mike:  To wrap up Business Analyst August, we're chatting about the ever-changing nature of work, so how things have changed in our work lives, maybe notable changes in technology that have changed the way we work, and maybe even discuss some crazy processes that we've had to unwind as admins or being in the tech world. I don't know.
   We'll see where this conversation goes. But I also have Jillian on to give us a preview of the Skills for Success September, which is next month's theme, because we're also launching that as a YouTube series. To help me do all of these fun, conversational things, joining me is fellow podcast host Gillian Bruce and host of the Dev Podcast and evangelist Josh Birk. Hi, everybody.

Josh Birk:   Hey, everybody.

Gillian Bruce: Hello.

Mike:  Let's start with the ever-changing nature of work, which is what business analysts deal with all the time. I'll just throw out there, I was thinking this is probably the lowest of low-hanging fruit, but how email has changed. Because I remember a time, I don't know, many, many years ago, when I used to go to the public library to check out a computer to check my email. I didn't do that every day, and now it's, what, I mean, how many times have you checked your email this hour?

Josh Birk:   I feel like it checks me at this point. It's just watching me. I think it's a bidirectional route now.

Gillian Bruce: Well, I think it's been quite an evolution, right? Because it went from like, oh, there's this new thing called email that you check when you can, to being like, this is the thing that runs your work life. I literally would spend all day just in email answering things, to now I check it once, twice a day maybe, because everything I do now is Slack.

Josh Birk:   That's right. If we're centering an email, we've definitely drifted away there. I remember my first days in the cubicle, the company had a proprietary... It was a proto email kind of thing.

Mike:  Oh, they built their own thing.

Josh Birk:   They built their own thing, and then they got Outlook, but the proto email thing had the ability to cancel an email. If your recipient hadn't opened the email, you could cancel it and they'd never see it. They never knew you wrote it. The entire company went up in arms because they suddenly lost the ability to send their bosses angry email at midnight and delete it at 6:00 AM.

Gillian Bruce: Wow. Because with the unsend now is you have to do it within the first five seconds after you hit the send button or something. Interesting.

Mike:  Ridiculous. I remember pre cubicle land when I was in retail and part of your morning startup besides counting your drawer was checking the company email. You had to sign in. I mean, you never responded because it was basically just one way, like here's the thing from corporate, or here's the stuff that's on sale.

Josh Birk:   Right.

Gillian Bruce: Well, and I also remember, I mean, you used to have to physically be at a computer to read your email. I remember my first few office jobs, I had to wait until I got into the... Commute into the office, fire up the computer, and then log into the email. Whereas I mean, gosh, now it's like I just roll over and look at my phone and I can see the email, to the point where I now have to have a really good boundary about, no, we're not checking work email until it's a very normal hour to do so, because then I'll just start doing things. It's also interesting how that has changed.

Josh Birk:   I will always recommend people to have two phones, which is not a phrase I thought I would say five years ago, but it's like have a work phone, have a life phone. And that way if you want to go walk the dog, just leave the work phone at home, just turn it off for a good couple of hours.

Gillian Bruce: I've had Slack creep in that way.

Mike:  I've always been a two work phone kind of guy. Always two. That way, you go on vacation, my phone can just do whatever.

Gillian Bruce: I used to be very good about turning off the apps or even uninstalling the work apps because I've been a one phone person for the last 14 years. I'm starting to realize, okay, maybe it's getting too complicated to untangle the unification of both personal and work on one device, and maybe I do need to go to two devices at this point.

Josh Birk:   Speaking of that, because I was just realizing my work phone is not really a phone. If you look at the call history, it's all spam and lies and misinformation. Nobody from work calls me on that phone, which is fine because almost nobody from work ever actually calls me anymore. And yet, I remember once again going back to my cubicle days, I remember being told the strategy of when to call somebody when you had to talk to them.
   You don't call at 9:00 because everybody just got in the office. They haven't had their coffee yet. You don't call around noon because they're probably out to lunch. Strategize how you're going to have a phone conversation with people, and now it's just like I don't talk to people. I think there might be a mental emergency if somebody calls you on the phone.

Gillian Bruce: Well, now your phone doesn't even work if you try to call. Half the time I try to make an outgoing call and it fails.

Josh Birk:   Oh, I mean, I just don't even answer. I got a call the other day. I was like, oh, neat. They can leave me a voicemail.

Gillian Bruce: Thank goodness for transcription of voicemails. You don't even have to listen to it. You can just see what's written in the... Gosh, Josh, you're bringing back so many vivid memories of like remember all of the learning how to use the complex phones in the office.

Josh Birk:   Conference calling. Conference calling.

Gillian Bruce: All the headsets everybody would wear and everything was a GoTo Meeting or Cisco. It was a whole other culture and things that we did. I still have a technical landline at Salesforce that I don't know how you would even access. Occasionally I get an email with a voicemail from that line that I never check. That was a whole thing. How do you record the right greeting and how do you know how to dial the extensions?
   I mean, that's a whole nother thing that, I mean, people these days probably have no idea what that even means. If you're starting in your professional first ever office job at this point, the concept of a physical intercom, one of those big phones with all the buttons on it, would just be like, "What is this?"

Mike:  I mean, you remember those UFO looking phones that they had in conference tables with speakers and all the... I remember every Monday we would have a sales call and people from the field, that's what we called it, called in, and we're all sitting around a table and it's like, Bing. John Smith has joined the call." And then it's either they're in their house or they're driving, and that was cellphones mid '90s, which is like a wind turbine. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Go on mute, John.

Josh Birk:   I will confess, one thing I miss about those days is when I was working in a consulting firm, we would have conference calls. If the client was, shall we say, particularly rowdy sometimes, somebody would just put a plastic cup over the speakerphone and all of a sudden they sounded like they're just like [inaudible] Then we just all laugh at them without them knowing. Harder to do that...

Mike:  You do that now, everybody's on camera. It's all Zoom and Google Meets. It's super easy to join. You actually have to say why you're not on camera.

Gillian Bruce: That's the thing. How quickly has that culture shifted? I remember, this was probably three years ago, this was before the pandemic, which I think also drastically changed a lot of culture around this, but I was with a couple of friends and we were together, but we were still working our respective jobs for a few hours until we were doing whatever we were doing.
   I don't know if it was weird. It was like we're doing a wine country thing or something, but we're all in our respective corners doing work and I'm on video calls. One of the people is just on an actual phone call most of the time, and all of us looking, "What are you doing? The expectation is not to have your camera on?" They're like, "No. Nobody does that." We're like, wow, that's different.

Josh Birk:   I mean, I've been remote since well before the pandemic. It used to be you were expected not to be. You were distracting people if you were on camera. And then the pandemic hits and it's like, "How dare you not show your face? You're not being social."

Mike:  That changed. It was also kind of weird too, because when you were... I've been remote, let's see, 10 years now. There was a period of time too where you had to have your camera on because it's like, are you really at your desk slaving away over a keyboard? Because the perception of work was, well, you work from home, you're just out lollygagging, walking around and enjoying the weather, while the rest of us are stuck in cubicles, slaving away over hot keyboards answering emails.

Gillian Bruce: Before those of us who were office based, we're all forced during the pandemic to be home-based. That was absolutely the perception from those of us who had to go to the office every day. Oh, cool. You just woke up and turned your computer on. Congratulations. Yeah, that's working. And now I'm like, actually, I prefer to go office because I don't have to work as hard in the office. I chat with people, and I'm late to meetings, and I have an excuse not to go to a meeting. It's so fascinating how that has shifted for me.

Mike:  Sorry, the elevator, I'm stuck. I can't make it.

Gillian Bruce: Meanwhile, those of you who are back to back meetings at home are like, come on, people. You office slackers.

Mike:  Click, click. Why are you so late? Why are you 10 seconds late?

Gillian Bruce: I was getting coffee and having a chat in the hallway with so-and-so.

Josh Birk:   I had to change rooms, which feels so weird.

Gillian Bruce: I couldn't find a room.

Mike:  When you work from home and people are like, "Well, I had to change rooms," you're like, "Oh, yeah, that's weird."

Josh Birk:   Like what, to the living room? I don't understand.

Mike:  I know. Why? Why did you have to change rooms? I never get kicked out of my house. Well, August was great. Gillian, you said you listened to Amber's podcast. It rounded out the whole Business Analyst stuff.

Gillian Bruce: It did, yeah, because it connected like, hey... I mean, it connected to what we just talked about. Mike's very thematic. There's different moments in time where work cultures shift and how you interact and get work done shifts. Being a good business analyst is all about identifying those opportunities and figuring out how you can make that happen, well, in the Salesforce world with Salesforce technology.
   But I think what I really liked about Amber's podcast is it kind of tied it together because it's like, oh, it's not specifically tied to one specific platform, but the advent of something like Slack really gives you an opportunity to reexamine how your team works together, what is productive, what are the outcomes, how do you maybe take a step back and look at this strategically to find ways to make people more productive and happier. It was good. Good job, Mike. I enjoyed Business Analyst Month.

Mike:  Well, good, because next month is actually a pairing or a cousin to what you're launching on the YouTube channel. Let's talk about the Skills for Success series.

Gillian Bruce: Yes. Well, Mike, you are also a part of this.

Mike:  Very small. Real small.

Gillian Bruce: You know what, small but mighty.

Mike:  Like 30 seconds.

Gillian Bruce: It was a great 30 seconds, I'll tell you. We are launching a five part video series on YouTube all about skills for success. We go through all of the 14 skills that are in the Salesforce Admin Skills Kit. It's not just me talking about them, it's actually experts and industry leaders within the field. We have real life awesome admins, some of whom, Mike, I know you're going to have on the podcast, and we have industry leaders. Mike, I'm sorry, I'm calling you an industry leader because that's what happens when you do this stuff for a long time.

Mike:  Because I answer a lot of emails.

Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Well, yeah, probably more Slack messages now. We have some industry leaders. We also have some people who have expertise in hiring Salesforce administrators to get that employer perspective on why these skills are important, how you develop them, how you represent them to potential employers, what employers are looking for. It's a fun series.
   We had some fun, as we do with our YouTube series, injecting some fun in it, but it's a really great way to hear from different faces and different people and perspectives and hopefully really help you get a more in depth view into how these specific skills can help you be a successful Salesforce administrator.

Mike:  Yeah, it's really cool. As of this recording, I've already spoke with one of the guests, which was Emma Keeling, to talk about project management. I'm trying to delve into some of the people that you had on that video series. What was the things that you wanted to talk about but maybe ran out of time, or what was other things that maybe are left on the cutting room floor but are still really good?
   Emma and I had that chat and I've got a few other guests coming up that will be part of the series. Of course, we can't feature all of them. You have so many people on the videos. Thankfully, there's not that many Thursdays in September.

Gillian Bruce: We got lots of awesome admins out there and lots of experts in these arenas. It was really fun to work with all of them and put this together. I'm happy that you're going to have some of them on the pod to dig a little deeper and get that full picture, that longer soundbite from the 45 seconds or whatever they are. I mean, Mike, you talked about change management, I believe.

Mike:  Yes. I talked about a lot of things.

Gillian Bruce: And Josh, I also know that you were part of the series. I think you had a product management section you talked about?

Josh Birk:   Something along those lines. I think I pretended to be a product management expert. I just talked about a feature for 15 minutes straight I think was the right thing to do, right?

Mike:  Wow, 15 minutes.

Gillian Bruce: Oh, you'll have to tune in to find out how it all turns out.

Mike:  I'll link to those in September too, so that the podcast can share the love with the YouTube series and back and forth.

Gillian Bruce: It's like they're connected or something.

Mike:  Look, let's be honest, as you're listening to this, we're like, what, 10 or 12 days out from Dreamforce too.

Josh Birk:   Don't say that.

Mike:  Because that's going to happen in September, but that doesn't happen to everybody. Now, you have this whole series of videos and podcasts to listen to in September as the leaves fall. I don't know, September is that weird fall month where it's like, is it summer? Is it fall?

Gillian Bruce: Well, in San Francisco it's summer.

Mike:  Heat advises already at the coffee shops.

Josh Birk:   Are you getting any of those heat advisory stuff over in Iowa?

Mike:  Oh yes. It's going to be melt your face hot today. Not going outside. But who knows what winter will be? I don't know. Pick one.

Gillian Bruce: I mean, I'm looking forward to... San Francisco summer is literally beginning right now. It goes from late August until mid-November, and this is the second day in a row where it's gotten above 70 degrees and it's glorious.

Mike:  Wow.

Gillian Bruce: I mean, it's been foggy basically from May until a week ago consistently. It's really nice to see the sun and get some warmth, and I'm soaking it all up.

Josh Birk:   Well, as I look over at my dashboard, it's going to hit 102 here tomorrow.

Gillian Bruce: Oh!

Mike:  Yeah, we're in the same boat, Josh, because it's just really in the heat advisory, because our dew point, I don't know what your dew point is, but they always say in the Midwest, it's not the heat, it's the humidity. Oh, it's both right now.

Josh Birk:   Oh, it's both. Yeah, it's both. I think the weather report today is something like 85, but feels like death.

Gillian Bruce: Wow. Well, you will be here in San Francisco with me soon, and you'll enjoy this beautiful 71 degree weather with a, let's see, I'm looking it up, a 72% humidity or the dew point is 61.

Mike:  Oh, well, that's not too bad.

Gillian Bruce: No. I mean, it's humid for us. It's abnormally humid, but it's beautiful.

Mike:  But Gillian, I bet Josh's dew point is probably the same as mine. We're in the 80s, 80 degrees. I woke up this morning literally all the windows in my house were wet because the dew point and the temperature were like one or two degrees apart.

Josh Birk:   This is the time of year we're reminded that Chicago was built on a swamp for sure.

Mike:  Full of concrete.

Gillian Bruce: Come on out to the dunes of San Francisco. It's glorious.

Mike:  And then when you're not in Chicago, and this is a real thing, you can look it up, I don't know if I'm going to say it right, but it's not evaporation, but it's evapostoration or something. It's literally the fact that Iowa and some neighboring states, but really Iowa has so much corn with so much moisture that it raises the humidity level. Because as it heats up, the corn evaporate. It's all over The Weather Channel, and you can smell it too. When you walk outside, it smells like corn.

Gillian Bruce: In like a good way?

Mike:  Oh, very good way. Very good.

Josh Birk:   I can see that one falling either way.

Mike:  Right. Right. No, this is a very good corn on the cob on the grill. You're like, ooh, let's go get some corn from the farmer's market.

Gillian Bruce: Speaking tangent, because we like talking about food, I made the most epic elote salad a week ago. Elote is that Mexican street corn basically. They grill it and they put a bunch of aioli on it. Deliciousness.

Mike:  I've wanted to do that.

Gillian Bruce: And cotija cheese. I made a grilled corn elote salad that I still think about. I think I might have to make it again tonight. It's basically you grill the corn, you put a bunch of tomatoes and avocado and cheese and deliciousness. You mix it together. Holy moly! I mean, Damon and I ate the entire bowl in one sitting.

Josh Birk:   Nice. Nice.

Mike:  You kind of live like a Mid-Westerner because I will confess that it is sweet corn season right now. It's almost at tail end. I really need to go to the farmer's market. But we've had sweet corn for dinner, same as the elote salad, just on the cob with butter on your cheeks. Look at that. Well, there we go. That's how we're going to end it, butter on our cheeks or mine at least anyway.

Gillian Bruce: Butter makes everything better, right?

Josh Birk:   Yep. Secret ingredient.

Mike:  Real good butter. If by chance, by chance you enjoyed this episode, maybe pick a different one and then share that with one person, because that would be awesome. Here's how you do it. If you're listening on iTunes, all you got to do is just tap the dots. There's three little dots. You choose share episode, and then you can post it to social. You can text it to a friend. Maybe you text an elote corn salad recipe. We'd love that too. There's more recipes.
   There's more resources on our website, which is literally everything admin, admin.salesforce.com, including a transcript of the show. I will bug and see if we can get Gillian's recipe just because that would be fun and it'd be great if it showed up in the show notes. Be sure to join the conversation in the Admin Trailblazer Group in the Trailblazer Community. Don't worry, the link is in the show notes. Because remember, everything is on admin.salesforce.com. With that, I will see you in the cloud.

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Pei Mun Lim, Consulting Coach and Trainer at Zenhao and the author of Salesforce Discovery 101.

Join us as we chat about two critical skills for Business Analysts, emotional intelligence and active listening.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Pei Mun Lim.

Two Business Analyst skills every admin should have

Pei has spent her entire career in consulting, with over a decade of experience in the Salesforce ecosystem in a variety of roles. She helps people use technology to solve real-world problems, and business analysis skills are crucial to help make sure they’re actually addressing the core issues. We brought her on the pod to talk about two skills that are foundational for doing that well: active listening and emotional intelligence.

Pei discovered the power of active listening and emotional intelligence quite accidentally when she started volunteering for a crisis lifeline where she talked to callers in distress. “I noticed that my projects started getting a lot easier,” she says, “and that was because I was listening a lot better and I was able to navigate human communication and relationships in a much better way.”

Emotional intelligence

When someone is asking for a particular functionality, it’s important to realize that human emotions are always at play. Emotional intelligence helps you gently peel back the biases, assumptions, and preconceptions behind a request to get at the real business problem and what you can do about it.

Pei points out that people communicate in several ways beyond the words that they’re saying. Her advice is to be observant of all of the nonverbal cues someone is sending. If that doesn’t match up with the content of what they’re talking about, you need to ask some more questions.

Active listening

The biggest driver behind resistance to change is fear. As Pei puts it, people are concerned with questions like, “What does this mean for my job security?” or, “What does this mean for me as a person?” Showing empathy and that you care about those concerns can go a long way toward helping people to open up. That means having the emotional intelligence to acknowledge their fears and then using active listening to show that you understand.

“Active listening is not a passive action, it is an active posture,” Pei explains, “you’re trying to see the world from the other person’s point of view.” Beyond simply showing that you’re paying attention, you’re actively trying to listen without judgment. And, she notes, that includes showing that you want to understand them better by asking follow-up questions. That’s how you get to the real underlying issues at hand.

Be sure to listen to the full episode for more about how you can practice emotional intelligence and active listening in your day-to-day life, and so much more.

Podcast swag

• Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store

Resources

• Trailhead: Get Started as a Business Analyst

• Day in the Life of a Salesforce Business Analyst (podcast)

• Salesforce Discovery 101 by Pei Mun Lim

• Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Social

• Pei: @OnThePeiroll

• Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns 

• Gillian: @GillianKBruce

• Mike: @MikeGerholdt

 

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Amber Boaz, Slack Community Group Leader, Salesforce MVP, and Principal Salesforce Consultant at Cloud Giants.

 

Join us as we chat about how you can eliminate ineffective meetings using Slack best practices.

 

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Amber Boaz.

Meetings, all the way down

Amber is a self-described “serial user group and community group starter,” including the local Slack community group in Durham, NC. She recently presented at Southeast Dreamin’ on how Slack can help you eliminate ineffective meetings, so we wanted to bring her on the pod to hear all about it.

 

The life of project-involved people—admins, consultants, etc.—is filled with meetings. But meetings are expensive! You need to get everyone in the same room when they could be doing other things, not to mention the time it takes to schedule them in the first place. Luckily, Slack can be an incredibly helpful tool for cutting down on unnecessary meetings while still making sure that everyone is aligned and informed.

Using Slack tools

Amber points out a few different ways Slack can help you. If you have meetings that are just updates about a customer or project, you can probably share all of the information you need in a channel on that topic. Delaying messages can help with folks in different timezones, and Slack Connect can help you make bring external stakeholders into the loop.

 

Amber also wants to point you to Workflows as a way to save on meeting time. You can set it to give someone a message with the five things they need to know about the project whenever they join a channel, for example, so you don’t have to spend as much time onboarding.

 

When you do need to come together to troubleshoot or talk something out, you can often bring people together with the huddle feature without having to go through the rigamarole of scheduling a full-blown meeting. Using short video clips can help you do that asynchronously, or just keep senior leaders in the loop and share your successes.

Not all meetings are ineffective

So even if you know all this, how do you have that hard conversation about whether or not a regularly scheduled meeting is actually productive? One thing that Amber suggests is modeling good behavior by canceling a meeting and giving a status update instead. It’s likely you’re not the only one thinking about it.

 

It’s also important to remember that you can’t and shouldn’t replace every meeting with Slack—building relationships is important! “The purpose, fundamentally, of a meeting is getting together with your colleagues,” Amber points out, “and that, ideally, should be enjoyable.” Slack is for the boring stuff, so your meetings can be about solving a puzzle or making a hard decision together.

 

Be sure to listen to the full episode for more about how to identify unproductive meetings, channel naming conventions, and so much more.

 

Podcast swag

• Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store

•  

Social

• Amber: Linkedin Profile

• Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns 

• Gillian: @GillianKBruce

• Mike: @MikeGerholdt

Full Transcript

Mike:
Slack stands for Searchable Log of All Communications and Knowledge. Let's hear from the Slack Community group leader, Amber Boaz, about how we can replace ineffective meetings with Slack and get some best practices for some Slack change management. Now, before we get into the episode, can you be sure you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts? I'm telling you this because that way you get a new episode every Thursday, boop, right on your phone, it's like magic. So speaking of magic, let's get Amber on the podcast. So Amber, welcome to the podcast.

Amber Boaz:
Thanks, Mike, it's great to be back.

Mike:
I know it's been a while. We should do this every ... Less than five, six years at a time.

Amber Boaz:
That sounds like a great idea. I'll pencil you in for 2028.

Mike:
Right, right. It sounds like run for president, Amber Boaz 2028.

Amber Boaz:
I like it.

Mike:
Amber, since it's been a while, and I feel like you and I are old hats in the community, what have you been up to? What do you do in the Salesforce world?

Amber Boaz:
What have I been up to? So I am back at consulting. For those of you who are not stalking my LinkedIn profile, I moved. I've been vacillating back and forth between being a customer and being a consultant. So I'm back to consulting and loving it. Working for a company called Cloud Giants. Also, for those of you who know me, I'm a serial user group, community group starter, and so I have started the local Slack Community group here in Durham, North Carolina.

Mike:
Nice.

Amber Boaz:
Good stuff.

Mike:
You did a lot with Salesforce Saturday too, right?

Amber Boaz:
I did. I started the local Salesforce Saturday. In fact, last week was our seven-year birthday. We would-

Mike:
Oh wow.

Amber Boaz:
I know. It's amazing, isn't it?

Mike:
Yeah.

Amber Boaz:
I handed that off at the first of the year, I had some personal stuff I needed to handle. The folks who are leading that are amazing and awesome, and I adore them and miss them terribly. That group still meets every single week.

Mike:
Wow. And serial because you handed it off. Also, serial because ... I feel like you were on stage with me way back 100 years ago when they started the MVP thing.

Amber Boaz:
Not the very first class, I was second class.

Mike:
Oh.

Amber Boaz:
I know, I know.

Mike:
Okay.

Amber Boaz:
I'm not quite as cool as you are.

Mike:
Sure. Boarding group two.

Amber Boaz:
Yes, yes. Boarding group two. I'm not part of the first class I'm business class.

Mike:
Business class.

Amber Boaz:
I have extra legroom and bulkhead.

Mike:
Right. I mean, I think it's the same it's just the seats are different but it's okay. Amber, you sent me this really cool deck, that you'd been presenting, of replacing meetings with Slack. I scrolled through it. Can you give us an overview of what that is? Because you presented it what at Southeast Dreamin'?

Amber Boaz:
I did. The gist of the meeting is, here are 10 ways to replace ineffective meetings with Slack. In the deck I talked some about the metrics around effectiveness of getting everybody in a room, having a meeting. I don't know about you, but I have a lot of meetings. My Tuesdays I average 11 meetings every Tuesday. And that's my busy day. Today I only have seven, to give you an idea. That's the life of a consultant, but that's also the life of an admin, and a manager, and a folks ... Project involved people. So talking about ways to replace some of those meetings with asynchronous communication via Slack. So, for example, using channels to replace your meetings. If you're meeting about a customer or about a project, having a channel for that customer or that project so that you can communicate with stakeholders about it in that channel rather than having everybody get together at 3:00 on Wednesdays.
Using something like delaying sending your message. That I use a lot with my colleagues who are in other time zones. I work pretty heavily with folks in Europe and so they aren't on the same time I am. Writing my thoughts out, giving my status, and then delaying the sending of that so that I don't interrupt them and their family time. And then using Slack Connect to include external stakeholders. For example, we have several clients who we are in Slack channels with coordinating on meetings, coordinating on decisions, just coordinating in the Slack channel about the work we're doing together, consultant and client so that's really cool.
Another great way to just get rid of those super ineffective, bringing people on board meetings ... I don't mean hiring because that's a bigger thing. But bringing newcomers up to speed quickly on a project using something like a workflow in Slack where you can ... Whenever somebody joins the channel it gives them, here are the five things you need to know about this project, or here are the 10 things, or here are the seven things, however many things you have to tell them so that they can get up to speed quickly. You can set up a workflow to do that. You set it up once and then anytime anybody joins they get that message immediately. You don't have to remember to do it, you don't have to send it at a given time it just is automatic.

Mike:
And I was just thinking through wow, 11 meetings on a Tuesday that's-

Amber Boaz:
I know.

Mike:
Of course, at Salesforce we're heavy Slack users as well.

Amber Boaz:
Oh, I'm sure.

Mike:
I have used ... The delayed send thing I think is probably the most underutilized feature. And I love using it, especially when our team is in London World Tour because then I can be all snarky and ha-ha send it at 1:30 AM which is right before they're walking in to think, oh wow, Mike's up. No. I'm just-

Amber Boaz:
No, no, he's definitely not.

Mike:
I just know how to schedule a thing, that's all.

Amber Boaz:
I've used it to congratulate folks. I was getting ready to go on vacation, and one of my team members was coming up on their two-year anniversary with the company, and I scheduled it to send while I was on vacation so that it happened on the day of. But then I put a little disclaimer of, I'm sending this from the past to the future so that it didn't look like that I was working on vacation.

Mike:
Right. But then you didn't have to-

Amber Boaz:
Exactly, exactly.

Mike:
I mean, because you didn't have to oh, I got to log ... Oh, I'm two hours late.

Amber Boaz:
Right. Or 10 days late. Because I was going to be gone for a big chunk of time and I didn't want this employee to feel like they were forgotten just because their anniversary landed on my vacation.

Mike:
Right.

Amber Boaz:
Right?

Mike:
Yeah. I've had stuff like that happen too. I love all of the ideas of this. And I think they're all relevant because ... Especially for me. I've done this before where I've canceled meetings and just said, "Just post your updates in a Slack group."

Amber Boaz:
Absolutely.

Mike:
Because then I can read them when I need to. A lot of what you get at in the deck, an underlying theme that you don't really call out, is context switching, right?

Amber Boaz:
Right.

Mike:
So you're able to just focus your time and then oh, okay, so I have 20 minutes in between meetings now, let me catch up on something in Slack in a way that makes sense for me as opposed to dropping everything to have a meeting and then pick back up something. You can have that unbroken mental time to really focus on something.

Amber Boaz:
Right, right.

Mike:
One part I want to dig into ... Any admin or business user that goes through your deck or here's your talk is like, I'm on board. How do we do this? How do we start doing this? You point out the video thing. I think the video, the recording, a two, three minute video thing ... We did that last year for a large part of the team leading up to Dreamforce because we were in different time zones, we were traveling. And me being on central time I was generally ahead of everybody so I could-

Amber Boaz:
You're always ahead of everybody.

Mike:
Get up ... Right. Not East Coast, you guys are up too early. I could get up, record a video, and then boop schedule send that, and then be moving on with my day. I think the part that I want to dive into and help admins ... Where do we have this conversation of talking with people who haven't seen the deck, stakeholders, and saying, "Let's talk about this incredibly wasteful meeting that we have every Tuesday where 20 people sit on a Zoom call and 15 of them clearly aren't paying attention and they're sending emails while two people talk and report something to you?

Amber Boaz:
So I think some of it is just modeling good behavior, right? I can't make the meeting today here's my update. Don't tell the internet this, but I have used the, I'm at a dentist appointment here's my update. And then-

Mike:
You're not at the dentist that often?

Amber Boaz:
I'm not at the dentist that often. My dental hygiene is spectacular, thanks for mentioning it. But modeling that behavior of, hey, we can do this asynchronously, here's a quick update. One of the things that we do in ... For one of our bigger projects is we literally use a Slack workflow to remind everybody to fill in their daily standup. What did you work on today? What did you work on yesterday? What are you working on today? Where are you stuck? It's got emojis in it, and it's animated, and all the things to get people excited about it. Because it's asynchronous, I can go back and go, "What did we do three weeks ago?" I can go search. When was it that Grant said he was working on that ticket? Find that information in the past.
To not answer your question. The value in it is the searchability but also in the asynchronous and synchronicity of it. Getting your stakeholders to understand ... You mentioned the meeting of 15 people where of those 12 are paying attention. I call those book report meetings, right, because it's-

Mike:
Show and tell.

Amber Boaz:
Right, exactly. You give your status and then I give mine. And if, even once, you can turn it into a hey, here's a clip of my status update, and then you don't have to do a meeting. I'm sure there are exceptions to this. In general, folks don't want to be in that meeting. They don't want to have to show up and pretend like they're paying attention, in general. There are some weirdos who sometimes do. So giving people that out of hey, it's the middle of August, folks are on vacation, school's get ready to start, folks are doing their last hurrah to the beach, let's do this. Let's try this. Let's just experiment. Let's try this meeting asynchronously and see how people like it, and then talk about what worked and what didn't. Fundamentally, it's about iterating. Not every single meeting can be replaced with Slack, let's not pretend that's real, but a lot of them can. A lot of them can. You don't want to overclock, if you will, onto replacing ... This is about replacing ineffective meetings with Slack.

Mike:
And good call out because I did skip over that work area effective. Just go for the whole thing.

Amber Boaz:
All meetings. Never have a meeting again.

Mike:
All the meetings, everything. Clear your calendars, folks. You've been a manager. I didn't ask if you're currently a manager-

Amber Boaz:
I am.

Mike:
But I've been a manager. What is something that when you made this transition you had to work through that you weren't used to, right? I come from ... We're of that generation where we've probably worked for a lot of bosses that required us to be at our desk by 8:30 or you weren't working.

Amber Boaz:
Right, right.

Mike:
I know those norms are shifting, but there's still a lot of people, a lot of stakeholders, a lot of executive management that are of that generation that they need to see the people in the room. I've worked in sales where oh, Bob's not on the call. Well, Bob must be running late he's slacking again. And it's like no, Bob's not, maybe Bob has a flat tire on his way to the office.

Amber Boaz:
Maybe Bob's on the phone with a client closing a big deal.

Mike:
Right, right. Yes. But what was something that ... Even with the shift to working from home more, managers have to just be ... Not resigned to the fact but accepting of the fact that okay, so people are going to get their work done and they may not start at 8:31.

Amber Boaz:
Right.

Mike:
Right? And so if we're going to have this meeting, and it's normally a Tuesday at 10:00 AM, as a manager do ... What were things you changed?

Amber Boaz:
So I think there were a couple things. The flexibility of ... Well, let me say this. Because a lot of my colleagues are in Europe, a lot of that you had ... That's the only time they're available to meet. So if you truly do need a meeting it's a morning meeting. If I ran the world I would be able to sleep until 9:00 AM every single day. I don't run the world.

Mike:
Yet.

Amber Boaz:
I mean, the day's young. That presence for those meetings is important to build the relationships. Let me differentiate a little bit between meetings where you're literally just reporting a status and meetings where you're having a discussion or building relationships. And those are two different things. If it's just about the status, I closed eight deals, I created a permission set group, I ... If it's that, you can do that asynchronously with something like Slack. Getting in a room and having that conversation is dumb. If, however, it's "Hey, did you go see that hot new movie this weekend? Did you" ... "How are your kids? Which beach did you go to?" That relationship building I believe still needs to happen. I prefer it via Zoom because I like working from home on my treadmill rather than in the office, but if in the office so be it. Not every meeting has to be boring, and painful, and awful. Because the purpose, fundamentally of a meeting, is getting together with your colleagues. And that ideally should be enjoyable or at least not painful.

Mike:
Right. Right. I think you've given the example ... It seems like a pretty low-hanging fruit example of the book report or the readout for an ineffective meeting. If it's not that apparent, what are some things that you look for, or that admins in working with their business units can say, "Here's five meetings that I think could be Slack channels or hosted there as opposed to time on the calendar?" Is it characteristics?

Amber Boaz:
I think anything where you are just giving a status. Where it's just a status. How are things? Those often are weekly. Sometimes if you're lucky they're monthly or quarterly. Those are low-hanging fruit, right? You can give me the status of the thing in a Slack channel. Where decisions need to be made. We need to get all of the stakeholders together in a room to thunderdome it out on a big new feature. That isn't where you ... You wouldn't do that via Slack. The boring stuff should happen via Slack. And the engaging, interesting, puzzle solving, whiteboarding, those aren't the right place. Slack isn't the right place for that discussion.
You're looking for meetings where it's ... Somebody prepared slides, and they're going to go through the slides with you, and it's the same order of slides that you saw last week and the week before. Or you're the one preparing the slides and it's the same slides it was last week. It's just painful. That's, in my opinion, wasted time and energy where you could just do a quick clip. Here's what we did, and here's what's happening, and here's how it's going. Red, yellow, green trend line up to the right, screenshots if you want because that's easy enough to do, and close it off with an animated GIF. And Bob's your uncle, there's your status meeting.

Mike:
No, I like that, I like that. So if we were to rework this presentation, what are some things that you can add to an effective meeting with Slack?

Amber Boaz:
Add to an effective meeting? Sorry.

Mike:
Because I think we're trying to replace okay, ineffective meetings.

Amber Boaz:
Oh, I see.

Mike:
Let's say we've got good meetings going. Is there also a way that we can carry that into Slack so that we don't lose that momentum between meetings?

Amber Boaz:
Absolutely. I mean, I think sharing anything that was shared in the meeting. Any links, any slides, anything that was created as a function of the meeting. Any documentation. Oh, in this meeting we created eight Jira tickets, and four Asana tasks, and five cases for the various teams in our company, here's the links to all of those. For the record ... I'm using air quotes, you can't see those.

Mike:
I can totally see it on an audio podcast in my head.

Amber Boaz:
In your head you're seeing the air quotes. Good, good, good. Those assets from the meeting, and sharing those so that there's a record of what happened. You asked me about decision criteria for what ... How to look at a meeting. Let's say you go on two weeks vacation, and I hope you do, the meetings that you miss where you literally aren't able to attend, where when you come back, you don't wonder what was covered, those could be replaced with Slack, right? If you're coming back and going, "Oh, darn, I missed that meeting where Amber and I were going to discuss the thing, and she probably made a decision." That's different from Fred and Sally did their slide deck dance again, and Oh darn, I missed that one. Ha ha ha. Maybe that's the decision criteria. If you truly weren't able to be present because you were off gallivanting on a beach someplace, as you do, and would not have missed it, then that is a meeting that is a good candidate for replacing with Slack.

Mike:
What do you give as a suggestion for people who manage channels to ensure that people don't feel overwhelmed or feel, I just can't even keep up with the Slack thread anymore?

Amber Boaz:
Some of that comes down to folks self-identifying that they're overwhelmed. I can't help you if you don't tell me you're overwhelmed which is fair. Talking through how to update your sidebar, how to group things, how to mute channels. Lord knows I'm in plenty of channels that are muted that I check when I have the brain space or the time to check them. And that's okay. That's the whole point of having those features in Slack. And it's okay to leave channels. There are sometimes when you don't need to be there anymore. You're not on that project anymore, you're not working with that team anymore, you can leave that channel no harm no foul. Part of it is owning your own destiny, right? I don't need to be here, this isn't useful information for me anymore. I'm going to mute it, and if I don't miss it for two weeks, two months, whatever I'm going to leave the channel.

Mike:
I couldn't agree more. I feel like the only thing missing is I would just love to see a channels that I own. That would be great. Just let me filter on that somehow.

Amber Boaz:
You could put them in the sidebar in a group.

Mike:
Sometimes you create a lot of channels very quickly. As we tidy things up. Do you enforce or do you have any naming conventions? Because I feel like I've been at companies that had various different ways of messaging each other. With Slack, you can name things anyway. Do you enforce ... Enforce, I'm using air quotes you can totally see them.

Amber Boaz:
I can.

Mike:
Naming conventions or that? Or do you suggest admins do that?

Amber Boaz:
There are suggested ... Slack has, in their training materials, pretty strong opinions about how you should name channels. The way I tend to think about it is ... In the beginning of the Slack name ... And you do want to standardize, right? Let's just agree that they need to be standardized. What your standard is, however, I think is way more up for debate. The way I have seen it done successfully is you start with either ... You start with some sort of prefix. In our company, we start with our company initials. If, however, it includes a client it starts with EXT as an external, then it's the client name, then it's the project name because we also have multiple projects with the same client. So, for example, EXT Acme, as an example. PRM project. EXT Acme service contract. EXT Acme, right? You have those multiple channels ... So you have the context. Because we also have different teams working on those different projects with those different clients. So it just depends on what your business does, and how you're structured, and who is using Slack.
You may have sales and there's one big sales channel, an all sales, and then you may have sales by region, and then by district or whatever your breakdowns are so that you can ... Managers can communicate to their team, or VPs can communicate to their bigger team. It just depends on how you're structured. I think standardization is a hill I'm willing to die on, you should be standardized. But what that standard is is what works for your organization.

Mike:
No, I agree. I believe it was a validation rule that I built in a few Salesforce instances to enforce naming conventions on opportunities.

Amber Boaz:
I love it, I love it.

Mike:
Got to have that stuff.

Amber Boaz:
Absolutely.

Mike:
I do love the ... Especially that you call out when it's an external channel. Important because people can get clicking around in a hurry and you don't want to make a mistake.

Amber Boaz:
Right. Exactly. In the consulting space, the last thing you want to do is ... You have your client channel by name and then external client channel by name, and putting, "Hey, I need help with stakeholder X who's being particularly prickly."

Mike:
And stakeholder X is in that channel.

Amber Boaz:
Exactly. Whoops.

Mike:
Awesome. No, it's good to know I'm being prickly. Completely understand. Fabulous. Well, it was good catching up with you.

Amber Boaz:
Always a pleasure.

Mike:
It's been a while. I didn't know you were a Slack Community group owner. No surprise there because serial community.

Amber Boaz:
My name is Amber and I have a community group starting problem.

Mike:
And I'm sure you use Slack for that.

Amber Boaz:
Oh, absolutely. I absolutely do. I'm not being facetious, I absolutely use Slack for that.

Mike:
No, I feel you have to. That's one of those things I've always said, the CEOs of Holiday Inn have to stay at a Holiday Inn because otherwise, it would just be weird, right?

Amber Boaz:
One would think but I'm quite sure that there's plenty of cross-pollination.

Mike:
I'm sure. Well, that's on them. So it was a fun chat catching up with Amber. In case you don't know I have known her boy, for almost over a decade now. She's been in the community as a serial community group leader and creator as you could say. I want you to do one thing. I need you to share this episode with somebody. I bet you've got somebody that's listening, and friends with, and really wants to know more about Slack or saving them time. And here's how you do it. If you're in iTunes, all you have to do is tap the dots and choose share episode, and you can post it social, you can text your friend, and then they can listen to it right on their phone. I super, super appreciate it. Now, if you're looking for more great resources, don't worry. Everything admin is at admin.salesforce.com including a transcript of the show. Now, be sure to join our conversation, the Admin Trailblazer group, that is over in the Trailblazer Community. Don't worry, all the links are in the show notes to this episode. So until next week, we'll see you in the cloud.

 

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Toni V. Martin, VP of Salesforce Marketing and Communications at Bitwise, Salesforce MVP, and founder of Systems to Success.

Join us as we chat about why you might already be a Business Analyst, the flavors of business analysis, and how to get the experience to take that next step in your career.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Toni V. Martin.

Why you might already be a BA

Toni got her start on marketing automation platforms and then sales enablement on Salesforce. “I was on the admin path, the way everyone starts out,” she says, “but it wasn’t a good fit for me, I was really more interested in improving business processes.” She asked for some advice from Stephanie Foerst, a Salesforce MVP based in Atlanta, who suggested going into business analysis.

But could Toni really just become a Business Analyst? Didn’t she need a bevy of certifications or years of experience? “According to the International Institute for Business Analysis, anyone who performs business analysis tasks is a Business Analyst,” she says, “and that’s probably everyone listening right now.” Today, she trains other people in business analysis and produces events like the Salesforce Business Analysis Virtual Summit through her organization, Systems to Success.

The flavors of business analysis

One thing Toni realized, as she gained more experience in business analysis, is that there are actually many different types of BAs. Toni likes to call them the “flavors” of business analysts, and it helps to understand what makes sense for you.

At SMBs, you’re probably doing business analysis as part of some other responsibilities, like being a Salesforce Admin. At larger organizations, the roles will be split and more specialized so you may only get your hands dirty when you’re prototyping or testing. When you’re looking at BA paths, you need to ask yourself: do you want to be more functional or do you want to be more system agnostic? “You need to know, going in, what flavor you’re looking for,” Toni explains.

Whatever your flavor, Toni reminds us that one of the most useful skills for any Business Analyst is knowing when to say “I don’t know, let me look into it.” Salesforce is a powerful platform that can do just about anything, but sometimes that comes with a ton of added costs or a significant time investment. Give yourself permission to get more information before you commit to something.

The BA fairy

If you want to get into the world of business analysis, you can get started by studying for the Business Analyst Certification. Toni was part of the team that put it together, and she’s been thrilled to hear from everyone using it to take their careers in a new direction.

And while a certification can certainly help you get that next role, Toni reminds us that experience is crucial. “There’s no BA fairy that waves her magic wand and pronounces you a BA,” she says. But if you’re an admin, you’re already doing tasks that require business analysis and you probably just need to find a way to highlight those skills.

Be sure to listen to the full episode for more about getting Business Analyst experience in your current role, how to get started with Trailhead, and the advice Toni got from Mike that transformed her career.

Podcast swag

• Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store

Learn more

• Get Started as a Salesforce Business Analyst

• Certification: Business Analyst

• Ko Forte on Being a Business Analyst

Social

• Toni: @tonivallentine

• Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns 

• Gillian: @GillianKBruce

• Mike: @MikeGerholdt

 

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Ko Forte, Salesforce Business Analyst at RGP. Join us as we chat about business analysis, career transitions, and the BA mindset.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Ko Forte.

August is Business Analyst Month

For August, we’re taking a deep dive into the business analyst skillset. We get started by talking to Ko, a consultant who helps organizations as both a Business Analyst and a Salesforce Admin. She’s recently given a talk at some Salesforce events entitled “BA Where You Are,” so we thought we should bring her on the pod to hear all about it.

Ko’s talk is focused on developing the mindset and habits for a Salesforce Business Analyst role. It’s geared toward people who are admins and want to move into business analysis, as well as folks who might be new to the ecosystem and looking for a potential fit.

The business analyst mindset

For Ko, the key to being an effective business analyst begins with mindset. Before she starts work with a new client, she asks herself:

• Who is this company?

• How are they positioned in the industry?

• Who are their customers?

• What do they do to make money? And therefore, what’s important to them?

Thoroughly understanding these things grounds Ko with a clear understanding of what the company she’s working with needs their technology to do for them.

It’s also important to cultivate a mindset of compassion, both for why business processes are the way they are and for the people who will be affected if you make a change. People do things for a reason, and you need to understand those factors to find something that works.

Transitioning your career

The biggest thing Ko recommends for admins making the transition into business analysis is to not be afraid of asking questions. Someone else may be wondering the same thing and something that seems obvious to an expert might need to be better understood by everyone else on the team.

You should also start making a habit of turning the camera on for meetings. You want to create the impression that you’re reliable, you’re present, and you’re listening. Our brains have evolved to look at faces and, especially in remote work, it helps to show yours to the world. And, again, have compassion for everyone else attending a meeting by clearly communicating what you’re trying to do with an agenda and some goals.

Be sure to listen to the full episode for more about Ko, and why it’s important to take a look at your job description if you’re trying to advance your career.

Podcast swag

• Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store

Learn more

• Get Started as  A Salesforce Business Analyst

Social

• Ko: https://www.salesforce.com/trailblazer/kforte

• Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns 

• Gillian: @GillianKBruce

• Mike: @MikeGerholdt