It took Ian Richards and Filip Hendrickx five days and an entire wall of Post-It notes to create the storyline for the business novel Brainy Glue. It then took them three years to write it, around their many commitments. In this BA Brew, Filip and Ian talk about the main themes explored in the novel – business analysis, innovation and change… and how they managed to weave 25 BA techniques into the 52 chapters.

Topics discussed include: Understanding people’s drivers to inform stakeholder engagement; co-creating change; bringing the BA role to life in novel form and more.

Ian Richards is BA Director at Peregrine and a member of the BCS BA Leadership board. Filip Hendrickx is a global speaker, President of the IIBA Brussels chapter and founder of Altershape.

You can read the first sixteen chapters of Brainy Glue for FREE, on www.brainyglue.com and buy the book direct from the website. You can also order the book in paperback or Kindle form on Amazon.

Love to learn? You might enjoy our bitesize learning playlist – short videos explaining key BA tools and techniques.

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This week we welcome two very special guests aboard the good ship BA Brew. 🏴‍☠️Novelist Julie Walker shares the incredible story of notorious female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read while facilitator, speaker and author Alex Barker encourages us to learn from the Be More Pirate’s pirate code (see below). Are you brave enough to find your inner pirate and challenge the status quo?

Topics discussed include: what motivated Ann Bonny and Mary Read to challenge the norms; the freedom and equality of the pirate life; how the Pirate Code and questioning rules applies to innovation and change; the power of collaborative rule setting and collective values; the impact of lockdown on attitudes to leadership and more.

🏴‍☠️ HOW TO BE MORE PIRATE 🏴‍☠️

1. Rebel – but not for the sake of it. 2. Rewrite – bend, break but most importantly, rewrite the rules. 3. Reorganise – collaborate to achieve scale rather than growth…small is beautiful. 4. Redistribute – fight for fairness, share power, and make an enemy of exploitation. 5. Retell – weaponize your story and ‘tell the hell’ out of it.

Further reading:

How To: Be More Pirate: Amazon.co.uk: Conniff, Sam, Barker, Alex: 9781916052345: Books

Bonny & Read: The stunning new feminist historical novel for 2022: Amazon.co.uk: Walker, Julie: 9781529395723: Books