Blazing my Salesforce Trail

blog of a 40+ philosophy master's graduate on changing careers

Breaking the 10.000 barrier

22nd of August 2023 by Jasper

Yes, still working steadily on the goal on becoming a Salesforce Admin. Since the next rank is still 8000 points away, I thought it wise to celebrate reaching the 10.000 points.

Making the effort

11th of August 2023 by Jasper

One reason to write this blog is to help me stay on track. Learning new skills, especially in programming as I have learned, will go hand in hand with getting frustrated now and then. And guess what, frustration befell me this morning.

I will spare you the details of my tries to get a dummy out of the system (cache?) after I deleted it on the playground. In the end, I just created a new playground and got the 500 points (I so desperately crave).

What I wanted to share is that it was frustrating for a while, but going over and over all kinds of little steps has made me more familiar with the Salesforce environment. So it was worth more than the 500 points for me.

Enter AppExchange

9th of August 2023 by Jasper

Ok, I'll admit that I am not that tech savvy as I thought I was. It turns out that Salesforce is also a platform on which you can install your own apps, and that there is a whole marketplace of third party apps at your disposal.

On the whole, I must admit I that I underestimated Salesforce. I can find my way around a Wordpress cms, which also has third party plugins (which rarely do exactly what you want), but Salesforce is far more complicated. Which I like, because now there is an even bigger drive to learn. I like a challenge!

Enter Wonder Woman

7th of August 2023 by Jasper

The Salesforce Trailhead gives many resources outside the trailhead. The module on presenting as a business analyst linked to a text by James Clear on building up confidence. It turns out that standing like Wonder Woman for two minutes changes your hormone balance making you feel more confident, and less anxiety.

I came across something similiar during my psychology studies long time ago. It was a study that suggested that if you smile, you would automatically feel better. In other words, if you act the way you want to feel, your feelings will follow. Later, other scientists found it hard to replicate this finding.

Although James Clear refers to a study done at Harvard University, I am not yet convinced the trick will work. Next week I will know more, and share my own findings. Now I just need to find a quiet place to do the experiment.

Exit the Business Analyst

5th of August 2023 by Jasper

The next unit on the Salesforce trail made me doubt whether becoming a Salesforce Business Analyst is really for me. Besides curiosity and eliciting information, a business analyst needs to have great communication skills. Yikes!

I will start with an example. As a volleyball player, a mediocre one at best, I once played a match with my team in which my blocking had an adverse effect. I blocked three times and touched the ball so poorly that it ended up out of reach for my teammates to defend. Three points lost. I decided to stop blocking to see what would happen. Three balls could be saved by my teammates! Two of those rallies ended with a point for us. I called that experiment a success!

My teammates had a different view. With different levels of irritation and anger, they asked me why I had stopped blocking. We always blocked, or at least made the effort, and this little experiment of mine for them was a serious breach of expectations. I had not communicated my experiment with the team beforehand, and after the match it seemed too late to sell it. No one would buy it.

This event reminds me of the two sorts of people: those that are outcome oriented, and those that are process oriented.

It also makes me think about my work at the University of Amsterdam. One of the key elements in its policy for a safe work environment is trust. More specifically, it advocates to always trust that others act with good intentions. Was that trust missing in the volleyball team? Could it have made a difference?

This makes me think of a team building exercise at the Saxion University of Applied Science that was all about trust. We were given a pile of lego blocks and each of us received a unique assignment. Each of us only knew his or her own assignment, and we soon found out that these assignments looked incompatible. Person A would place a red block on the ground floor, and person B would take it away. Things like that happened more than once, and we looked at each other with bewilderment. And yes, there was some frustration.

As the exercise progressed it slowly became clear that the unique assignments were compatible, but we had to figure out how exactly. Person A would place a red block on the ground floor, person B would take it away, but not if Person A placed it on the second floor of the building we were making. Gradually we realised that we were all working on the same building, and that each of us had a different role.

So, why was I startled by the fact that a Business Analyst needs to have good communication skills? I could say that I am not a good communicator, but perhaps there is more to it. When I think of communication, I tend to remember the bad experiences - like the volleyball experiment. And I forget that there is an equal amount of positive experiences. I also forget that bad experiences provide chances to learn if you reflect on them. And I forget that bad experiences might also be not my fault, but signs for me to go elsewhere.

Exit the business analyst? Maybe, but not just yet. The trail is just too much fun to leave right now.

Enter the Business Analyst

4th of August 2023 by Jasper

I have always known I am a unique individual, but finding out what it is exactly that sets me apart from the rest, that turned out to be a lifelong journey. Yes, sure, now I have reached my forties, I know a thing or two about myself. What I still don’t know is where that unique person called me can be of any use on this planet. And then, there it was…

Business analysts possessing intellectual curiosity have voracious appetites for learning. They do not shy away from new or unfamiliar concepts but rather try to incorporate those concepts into their understanding. They tend to be very good listeners who absorb information like sponges. —Steve Blais, PMP

Intellectual curiosity. Not any mundane curiosity, no it says intellectual curiosity. Looking back on the choices I made in studying at the University - of Groningen by the way - I can see now that I was driven by a curiosity to understand the world. What fueled my appetite even more was that for the first time in my life, I was handed perspectives by great thinkers other than those of my mainly Christian and rather narrow minded surroundings.

James T. Webb wrote a marvelous book Searching for Meaning in which he describes a similar transgression. He was lucky to have a guide, a mentor on his path. I had no such luck, and had to find it all out on my own. Well, that’s how it felt.

Looking back, I also had not learned to ask for help. Finding out things on my own is still something I enjoy very much, but asking questions, listening for answers, or listening to the journeys others have made has given me many insights and refreshing perspectives.

So, being in posession of the two things a business analyst needs, I continue my hike on the trail with a new dot on the horizon: becoming a Salesforce Business Analyst.