"You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you."
— Joseph Campbell.
The runway is long, almost too long. At first glance, it looks like a challenge—a stretch of asphalt daring the aircraft to prove it belongs in the sky. The plane waits, quiet and heavy, its wings wide and ready. Then the engines open up. The turbines spin. The metal bird surges forward, thundering against the resistance of wind, weight, and inertia. And just when it seems like it won’t break free, something miraculous happens: it lifts.
There is a reason this happens, and it's not magic. It’s Bernoulli’s principle, a law of fluid dynamics that says as the speed of a fluid increases, its pressure decreases. An airplane wing is shaped in such a way that air travels faster over the top than it does underneath. The faster air on top creates lower pressure. The higher pressure below the wing pushes up. The result? Lift.
This invisible shift—from resistance to rise—is one of the most powerful metaphors for what business analysts (BA) must become in this age of acceleration.
For years, BAs have operated close to the ground. That isn’t criticism. It’s recognition of the role's roots: steady, detailed, necessary. The analyst who captures business needs, writes immaculate documentation, and bridges the dialogue between stakeholders and developers has long been considered an essential part of the enterprise machine.
But the air around us has changed. We are moving faster now. Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools draft emails, answer support queries, analyze trends. Automation handles processes that once required five departments and a project manager. Conversations that used to take weeks now happen in Slack threads powered by bots. And in this reality, the traditional BA toolkit starts to feel... heavy.
Here lies the moment of truth: do you push harder against the ground, or do you reshape your wings?
Bernoulli’s principle reminds us that lift doesn’t come from force alone. It comes from shape—from a form designed to take advantage of speed and pressure differences. The BAs shape, too, must evolve. Not into something entirely new, but into something that responds differently to the pressures and pace of today’s business world.
Imagine a BA named Clara, who once spent her days gathering requirements for Information Technology (IT) systems in a slow-moving government office. Meetings, notes, process flows—it was orderly, expected, grounded. But then came automation pilots, chatbot initiatives, and AI-powered document analysis tools. At first, Clara tried to absorb these changes by writing better documentation, by holding more stakeholder interviews. But she was still on the runway.
Then Clara started experimenting. She trained herself in prompt engineering, asking Large Language Models (LLM) to draft policy summaries, model use cases, and even generate wireframes. She tested no-code tools, built rapid prototypes in hours, and used AI to simulate stakeholder personas. Her job didn’t disappear—it lifted. She was still asking the same fundamental questions: What do users need? What’s the gap? What’s the best way forward? But she was answering them with new tools, at new speeds, in new shapes.
Her colleagues noticed. She wasn’t just a translator between business and tech anymore. She was shaping the very system both would work within.
That is the pivot. The air is moving faster over the top now. The business environment is one of volatility, pressure, and motion. But that very motion, just like the wind over a wing, contains the key to lift.
For analysts who cling to the comfort of checklists and templates, the air feels turbulent. But for those willing to reshape their methods—integrating AI tools, embracing data, developing fluency in system design and digital thinking—the pressure differential starts to build. And the more you lean into that velocity, the more natural the lift becomes.
The plane doesn't hate the ground. It just wasn't built to stay there. And neither were BAs.
At a certain point in every takeoff, there is a quiet moment between wheels on the ground and wings in the sky. It lasts less than a second, but it is unmistakable. That’s the moment the aircraft commits. There is no braking. No turning back. Only flight.
BAs are in that moment now. The air is fast. The ground is behind. The shape of your thinking, not your force, will determine whether you rise.
The sky, after all, is not closed. It is simply reserved for those who know how to lift.
Author: Olam Osah
Olam Osah is a seasoned Project Manager and strategic leader with a strong foundation in business analysis and information systems. He holds a PhD in Information Systems from the University of Cape Town, along with Honours and Masters degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Olam specializes in leading complex projects that bridge technology and business, delivering impactful solutions across public and private sectors. Known for his ability to turn vision into actionable plans, he combines academic depth with real-world execution to drive results. Connect with him at [email protected].