Navigating Power & Politics in Project Delivery: A Survival Guide for Business Analysts 💼

Let's talk about the thing no one teaches you in Trailhead: office politics.

Your discovery sessions are solid. Requirements documented. But the project's stuck because the senior sales manager keeps ghosting meetings, IT won't share system access, and there's a coalition forming against your solution in Slack channels you're not invited to.

We get hired for technical skills but judged on whether we can navigate the human mess of competing agendas and power plays. Politics isn't about being manipulative - it's understanding that people protect what matters to them, and figuring out how to get everyone to the finish line anyway.

This workshop covers:

• Stakeholder mapping by power and interest

• Nine influence tactics and when to use each one

• Spotting political patterns before they derail your project

• The line between influence and manipulation

Bring your horror stories. 😱

After that....

Happy new year, #BABAs! Hoping the best horror stories will make it into the unrecorded chat after Pei's session.

Also-- we are back from a month off and want to entice everyone back by giving away three Salesforce certification vouchers during the event. We may take a break from duck racing and do this one more "were you listening to the session??" quiz style.

You’ll have to be there to meet the requirements. If you can’t make it live, we post recordings on our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@BadassSFBA

And since she didn't give me a bio... some words about our speaker... 😍

Let me introduce you properly to the force that is Pei Mun Lim.

Pei is empathy personified. She is the kind of person who can dismantle your broken project plan and your emotional blind spots in the same conversation, and you will thank her for it. She has more than 30 years of experience across Microsoft and Salesforce ecosystems, and has worn basically every hat available: Consultant, BA, QA, PM, other abbreviations... She understands delivery from every angle, and more importantly, she understands people.

She runs Zenhao, her Leadership Academy for consulting and project delivery excellence.
Zenhao: http://www.zenhao.co.uk
Zenhao Academy membership: https://zenhaotraining.co.uk/zenhao-academy/

She is also the author of three incredible books:
Salesforce Discovery 101
Salesforce Consulting 101
Successful Salesforce Projects 101

If you have ever wondered why projects go sideways, she has probably written the answer already.

Outside of work, she is a long time listening volunteer for Samaritans in the UK, and genuinely gives her time to people in crisis. Yes. Really. She is that person.

And if you enjoy smart writing with personality and doodles, you can subscribe to her weekly newsletter here:
https://bit.ly/3yUCUQH

She is one of my favorite humans, the best listener I know, and the best co lead an SFBA group could ask for.

Bring your horror stories on Tuesday. She has listened to mine privately, so believe me, she can handle them. 😇

With Love, Her Adoring Fan,
Vanessa Grant