There are leaders who manage transformation programs. And then there are leaders who understand transformation from the inside out, across industries and decades.

Briana Ertanin belongs firmly in the second category.

Her career spans law and management consulting in Bulgaria, hospitality leadership in New Zealand, and a move into Business Analysis, through a combination of preparation and serendipity, which led her to leading some of the most respected teams and capabilities across diverse industries.

She also serves as Treasurer and Company Secretary of the Institute of Management Consultants Australia. Abbie Goodison, Senior Consultant at Allura Partners, sat down with Briana to discuss her unconventional career, the realities of leadership, and why the future of Business Analysis belongs to those willing to keep evolving.

Q. Your career path into Business Analysis wasn’t exactly conventional. How did it unfold?

In a different century, on a different continent, I had a completely different professional life: a law degree, then what would now be called management consulting, advising foreign investors, preparing feasibility reports, building distribution networks. When I found my way into Business Analysis, I realised those competencies were highly transferable. I wasn’t born a business analyst. But once I entered the profession, I thought: I’m here now, I better get very good at this. So I invested heavily: a master’s in business information systems, professional benchmarking, and the IIBA community. I never really left.

Q. What did the shift from Senior BA to Practice Lead actually involve?

The biggest challenge is recognising that you can’t sustainably continue doing what you did as a senior BA while taking on proper leadership. The role changes fundamentally: less about solving every problem yourself and more about building an environment where your team can succeed. Many high-performing practitioners struggle enormously with that, because they’ve built their identity around being the person across every detail. Leadership also requires genuinely new skills: organising a team, managing resources, and matching people to initiatives. These aren’t automatic extensions of BA expertise. And then there’s imposter syndrome, which even the most capable people experience when stepping into leadership. For me, confidence comes from competence, and that’s what drives the constant learning.

Q. How do you think about staying hands-on versus trusting the team?

It’s not about being across every detail. It’s about having a wide breadth of understanding and the ability to go deep quickly when something is wrong. When there are ripples in the water, I can usually see them early, and I know exactly who is best placed to investigate. My goal, every time I build a function, is to reach genuine trust as quickly as possible: understand who people are, address development gaps, give people the tools they need, and then actually trust them. Not following every step. Trusting. That’s the only way to create real capacity in a team.

Q. What separates a good BA from a truly great one?

The first gap is people who haven’t kept pace with the profession’s rapid evolution, which is quite ironic, because BAs work in delivering change. We, of all people, should naturally be adaptable. Read the market and don’t operate on two-year-old assumptions. But the differentiator I return to most often is the one that surprises people when I say it: the great candidates are usually nice people. I don’t believe in brilliant jerks. People who consistently perform well connect genuinely with others, build real relationships, and over time that creates a network that carries them. That network is often what opens the next door.

Q. Where do organisations struggle to connect strategy to execution?

The most consistent challenge is maintaining alignment between executive intent and operational delivery as programs grow in complexity. Communication gaps compound quickly if there isn’t someone holding the thread, and that’s where strong Business Analysis becomes genuinely strategic: it creates shared understanding and keeps organisations aligned throughout transformation.

My role as Practice Lead is to bridge business strategy to technology outcomes across the full cycle. The conversation now starts at the board level, not the requirements level.

Q. How do you see AI affecting Business Analysis?

There’s a line from a keynote that has stayed with me: you are never going to lose your job because you know too much about AI. That sums it up for me.

There is no blueprint, because the context shifts faster than any blueprint can track, but if you follow that mantra you will always be ahead. Stay curious, keep learning, and don’t wait for someone to hand you a structured curriculum, because if you’re a BA, your entire job is to synthesise information and arrive at your own conclusions. Apply that to your own development. And, as I always say, you can never be overdressed or over-educated. BAs are well-positioned for the AI era, because our role has always been about synthesising complexity and translating it into clarity. Those skills become more important, not less.

Q. How would you define the role of a modern BA?

Years ago, I used to say: the custodians of common sense. There is, of course, a formal definition, all about delivering change and critical analytical thinking. But if you want to describe the role to someone thinking about entering the profession, it is still that. A custodian of common sense. Someone who synthesises complexity, asks the questions no one else is asking, and translates it all into something an organisation can actually act on.

Q. What advice do you have for BAs stepping into their first leadership role?

Invest in yourself continuously, not just when you feel behind, but as a permanent professional discipline. Get connected, because community involvement, professional networks and mentoring relationships are not nice-to-haves. And understand what leadership actually requires before you step into it. It is not a more senior version of your current role; it is a different orientation entirely.

You are no longer measured on what you deliver personally; you are measured on what your team delivers. That shift takes time and a genuine willingness to let go of the things that made you successful as an individual contributor. Leadership is not a part-time job. The accountability for people and culture exists continuously.

Q. Looking back, what do you make of how it all fits together?

The random skills and experiences I picked up along the way, the ones that felt disconnected at the time, turned out to be valuable in the most unexpected moments. Hospitality taught me more about stakeholder management under pressure than any framework I’ve encountered since. Management consulting gave me a way of reading businesses that most BAs never develop. The Law degree equipped me with invaluable skills for the compliance and regulatory landscape. The IIBA gave me a global perspective and a professional home.

Careers don’t need to be perfectly linear to be successful. Who I am today is a product of this meandering journey, and I can’t say I’d change it. The landscape of transformation keeps evolving, the profession keeps evolving, and I’ve never once found myself thinking: that’s it, I’ve learned everything there is to learn here. That sense of ongoing discovery is what keeps me going. I hope it always does.