You know that classic scene in every movie about a brilliant consultant? They sweep into a company, look at a few charts, and within days present a “eureka!” solution that saves the day. It makes for great TV, but in the real world, that approach is a recipe for disaster. This is where the CHANEL story hits home for me as a Business Analyst.
That “CHANEL 90 days of silence for senior leaders” isn’t about being passive; it’s about the most active, intense work a BA can do: the work of understanding.
Think about the last time you were handed a project. The stakeholder has a solution in mind: “We need a new feature that does X.” The old me would have nodded, written down “Build X,” and started mapping requirements. But the David Odepidan who learned the power of listening? I’ve learned that “X” is rarely the real problem. It’s a symptom.
A Business Analyst is the professional listener of the business world. Our primary job isn’t to create requirements documents; it’s to build a bridge of understanding between the problem space and the solution space. And you can’t build a stable bridge without first deeply understanding both banks.
When a leader at Chanel is told to be silent, they are forced to absorb the culture, the unwritten rules, the pain points, and the unspoken celebrations.
This is exactly what a BA must do:
We Learn the Language: Every department has its own dialect. What “efficiency” means to the sales team is different from what it means to the compliance team. By listening first, we learn to translate, preventing catastrophic misunderstandings later.
We Uncover the Why Behind the What: A user says, “I need this report.” If you just build the report, you’ve solved a surface-level need. But if you listen and ask, “What decision will you make with this data?” you might discover they need a real-time dashboard instead. The stated requirement was a report; the actual need was faster decision-making.
We Hear the Silence: The most valuable information is often what isn’t said. The quiet sigh when a process is mentioned, the hesitation in a stakeholder’s voice, the way two teams describe the same problem completely differently. These are the clues that lead us to the root cause, not just the assumed solution.
Early in my career, I met BAs who were so eager to prove their value, and they jumped to solutions. “Oh, that’s a simple automation script!”. But then the solution would fail because they didn’t listen to the fear of the person whose job would change, or the technical debt of the system it needed to plug into, or the hidden business rule everyone “just knew.”
Chanel’s rule forces a mindset shift from “What can I fix?” to “What is truly happening here?”
For a BA, this looks like: Pausing the “Solution Brain”: When a stakeholder proposes an answer, your first response isn’t “yes, and…” or “no, but…”. It’s “Help me understand the problem you’re trying to solve with that.” This simple question has saved me months of wasted effort.
Observing the Gemba: This is a Lean term for “the real place.” The most powerful analysis doesn’t happen in a conference room. It happens by watching a user struggle with the current software, or sitting with the data entry team as they manually reconcile spreadsheets. This is where you see the true pain points that never make it into a formal request.
The ultimate act of listening for a BA is to play back what you’ve heard. “So, if I understand correctly, your goal isn’t to speed up this single task, but to reduce the overall error rate for the entire client onboarding journey, is that right?” This validation ensures you’re building the right bridge, from the right starting point, to the right destination.
When a BA embraces the “listen first” rule, the deliverables change. Your requirements document stops being a list of “The system shall…” and becomes a narrative of the problem, the user’s journey, and the business outcome we’re trying to achieve. It’s a document that reflects a deep understanding, not just a collection of requests.
You stop being seen as a “note-taker” or “document creator” and start being seen as a trusted advisor who truly understands the business. You become the person who can see the whole system, precisely because you took the time to be silent and listen to all its parts.
So, the next time you’re handed a project, grant yourself a “listening period.” Resist the urge to have the answers. Your most valuable tool isn’t your modeling software or your template library but it’s your ability to listen, not just to the words, but to the meaning, the emotion, and the silence behind them.
That’s how you move from just building what was asked for, to delivering what was actually needed.
That 90-day rule taught me a lasting lesson: Silence isn’t an absence. It’s a presence. It’s the foundation of respect and curiosity. It’s how you earn the insight needed to make bold decisions that actually work, because they’re built on a deep understanding of the people they affect.
By choosing to listen first, our department has managed to launch tech upgrades that people actually want to use, create job training programs that match what employers truly need, and slowly but surely, build a culture where everyone feels they have a voice.
So, I’ll leave you with this. As a Business Analyst, what would you suggest for the leader who is attempting to silence themselves, but is being asked for solutions, quick fixes?
Author : David Odepidan
