Process Science and Efficiency

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Nord podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well hello and welcome back. We are actually going to continue our interview again. Instead of doing a special topic, we are going to go right into part two with Samuel Draszczak. We are going to talk about processes and the science of process science and really like pick apart one of these things that I think we do almost automatically, maybe far too often. Sort of like trying to figure out how to describe to somebody how you tie your shoe. But I don't want to delay too long, so let's get right back into our conversation with Sam. So it does end up being much like you have with CTOs and CIOs and CFOs and even CEOs that you have like a, it's this fractional type of approach where you come in and they really can't, in some cases can't afford you as an employee, but you're coming in and saying, hey, I will help you out for a bit. And that way they can actually afford it and then sort of work their way up. If they get big enough, they can go hire a full time employee to do it. Yeah, this, let me answer this way, because this is why I went off on my own originally from consulting and I started my own consulting brand because I am, I'm a bad consultant in the sense that I'm always trying to put myself out of a job as soon as I get on site and I try not to touch anything myself because to me and my work philosophy, that's me not doing a good job actually helping companies. So to your point of being fractional, I truly come in as a fractional chief process scientist because I almost want to say COO, but it's really COOs have become so muddy. It's really not even the role right anymore, but like you'll hire me. And what I normally try to do is I try to find all the staff with the right capability and start coaching them and channeling the work through them first. So they're learning, I'm delegating. I'm not actually having you pay me a high hourly rate to get there and write process maps or do documentation or do your business requirements or whatever. And then as we're doing that, I try to make it so that, okay, you, the leader, you don't want to keep me around more than you have to because that's expensive. You've got great people here. Look, they're doing the work now. They're learning. So that's how I try to do it, which is let's get me in here and train your people and train you to understand this work and then get me out of here as fast as possible. What can make selling, it makes my revenue kind of variable sometimes. Like that's what I'm saying. I'm not going to build a good agency like that, but I think that's the way it has to be done if you're doing consulting with integrity. Now, is this something that is scalable on your side from the agency side of it? Is it something that is really scalable? Or is it one of those that you really, the only way you would scale it would be to find like another Sam, is to find another somebody that has your experience in your background? Or is it something that you are able to sort of build up a like more of an agency approach or you kind of like, you know, like a better term, mini-use that can come in and can help a company and be useful enough to them? Yeah, I don't think it's particularly scalable from an agency perspective, which is why I've really, you know, where I've landed now is, you know, my consulting brand has evolved into the software company Truval because that's where I think the true scaling of the skill set is, which is really challenging myself to automate this knowledge and this expertise into tools where people can be self-serve. Because, like you said, I think if I really wanted to go down that route, you could build a good consulting agency and you could hire a bunch of junior people and you could start training, you know, mini-mes essentially. But like every consulting model, I think it gets corrupted by the need to sell more consulting work. And this is sort of that push and pull that, you know, I mentioned just a moment ago, which is I don't think any consulting agency is truly that scalable, because if you're doing a good job as a consultant, you should be trying to help clients and get out of there as soon as you can. If you become a large consulting agency, there's naturally this pressure to pay your own people in a stable manner, especially if you start bringing up junior people, you have to be selling client or consistent client work and lengthening the engagements. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of challenges if we were going to scale a consultancy or a consulting agency with the principles that I espouse. I don't think it's impossible, but I don't have the appetite for it. And I think there's better ways to serve the market. So with your tools, is there a... What is the learning curve like in that? Is there a steep learning curve? Is something where... And I know that you're evolving. So is it... Maybe it's one of those that's... It is a steep, but you see somewhere down the road where it will be more accessible for people to start come in and use those with less training? Or how does that look if somebody was saying, hey, I like this concept, I like the idea of getting these tools and being able to help me help myself. But what kind of an expectation should they set in being able to do that and that actually being useful to them? Right. Well, so our mission is to constantly become more accessible and make things more intuitive and reduce the barrier of entry of learning and working through these types of tools and methods. So ultimately, if we're going to be sustainable as a company, we have to solve for what you're talking about, which is our tools should be intuitive. They should be easy to approach. They should have a low learning curve. And then really, they're designed so that you're building this process mindset or what we call process vision as you start to practice in them. And I'll give an analog in the real world, which is when I train junior people, they pick it up very easily. I mean, I've trained young professionals right out of college to do process mapping. And within like a month or two of practicing with the right methods and the right coaching, they're on client site and doing great quality work. Really young people who don't have a lot of experience. And how is that possible? Well, a lot of it is just I've in my career, I've used these tools, I've refined the methods and I know how to give them to another person so that they can be successful. So part of that story is what we we think is viable to put in the software. You know, if I can put the same structure and guidance and I can put the same kind of checking and giving confidence building mechanisms into the software itself. So people with no knowledge can jump in and say, oh, this is how you map a process. This is how you format a document. This is how you would analyze it. I really do think you can reduce the learning curve and make it accessible enough where most professionals who, again, are saying, I need to do some process work. If they were to find our tool suite, I think they can engage with it pretty easily and build value and build their own knowledge pretty quickly. And is this is this one of those things that they can do that it's as you say, they build their own knowledge, so is this something that they're they are actually able to grow also on their owners or something where they're going to they sort of have to keep come back a little bit and lean on you a little bit to to get through some of that growth or is this one of those that's like once you get going, then you it's going to in a lot of cases, it's going to naturally just sort of grow because now it's like you have that mindset and you you're able to step into it. I'm hoping the latter. I'm hoping that this software doesn't have to be combined with me or anyone doing consultative work at the same time. And that might mean it may initially only work for a smaller scope of use cases. But I think generally, I would love to tell you, yeah, absolutely. You won't need a consultant at all. And let's go with that premise. But we'll see. We're kind of in our phase where we're an early adoption for the first set of tools we're setting out there. And I'll keep you posted on that. So now, since you're in there, is this a in this early adoption period, is it sort of like a is it for lack of a better term, again, like a beta? Where are you getting a lot of feedback and you're really using that to to feed it back into the system and adjust those tools? Or is this something where you've sort of got a road map you're building through it? The customers are coming in and you're you've got a you've got a vision already that you want to you haven't actually gotten to that point yet. So we haven't gotten to that point yet. We're definitely in a beta mode where we're starting to have people use the tool live in the field for consultative applications. And we're getting feedback for what we can do to really get out of beta and do like a wider launch for this first process mapping tool that we're building. And then, like, even though we're going to be very open to feedback and our early tribe kind of helping us build the product, we do have a pretty substantive road map of where we think this needs to go, because it's basically like the scientific method is pretty well established, for example, in the scientific community. You know, you have you build hypotheses and then you go through a series of steps. The process science is not very different, right? The first tool that we're building is really upstream. But even if people are going to give us a ton of feedback that we may not even expect, we have a road map of how do we help people facilitate the entire lifecycle, the entire method so that they can really take this from end to end. So you sort of at that at that capture, sort of that first steps or that data capture phase in your tools, and then you're going to be working from there? Yeah, and the data capture piece is the one that the market's struggling with the most, actually, which is how do you actually effectively capture process data and structure it so that it can be used for analysis and make it comparable? And one of the things that we're hoping to bring to life at Truville is if we can get some a stat like some pretty substantive user base, that data that they're pulling in can be comparable. And really, there's not a lot of other process applications where that's possible today. So there's also sort of an unknown unknown of we're expecting to harvest a lot of new science and a lot of new insight from having comparable data sets across different contexts. And that's what really gets me excited to see what we can do with that. But yeah, I think the whole data capture, building the first microscope for process work, so to speak, is going to really help, I think, move the industry forward. Yeah, I think that's that's been shown in other places. And it is it's always like it's exciting to be in that situation where you go from we don't really know what's going on enough to OK, now we have individual nodes or organizations or people that have something about that and they're capturing some data. And then you get to where like now we can actually have enough data that we can look across multiple instances and look for trends and things like that. And suddenly stuff starts popping out where you go, oh, wow, these 10 people that we thought were completely, you know, completely separate and different. Here's some trend lines here and here's some things that are common across all of them. So here's ways that we can that we can actually take advantage of that and now offer new suggestions and recommendations and things like that. Yeah, that's our dream. I mean, that's where we're headed. And today that doesn't exist. So just to give you a sample of what we're talking about in practice, if you had a true process data database that you could reference and you could do analytics on, it'd be OK, I'm a company, I have access to this software. And I'd say I'm a 50 person company. I'm thinking about moving from, let's say, breezy to workday because I'm like scaling up or whatever in my HR department. What would be a viable process design? And here's my industry or just some basic data. And it could tell you, they could say, well, here's 50 other companies that are similar size with a similar tech stack. Here's their cost structure. Here's their cost of process. And here's some possible designs for that. And that would be something you could pull out of a database that looked like this. And today, there's nothing close to being able to do that kind of work. So is it so is it sort of then are your tools sort of like building a community as well? So there is this sort of essentially this sort of open sharing in a sense of here's the processes that we're doing. Here's here's the steps and some of the things that we're doing so that others can see that and use that to help either build templates or use the the the knowledge of the crowd to basically help them build a better process. That's the hope. As I've gotten older, my ability to be social has actually gone down. I'm more of like a scientist and less of a social networking person. But yes, I mean, I say that kind of ingest, but I am excited to build a community. We hope to build a community. We have to find all the process geeks out there and get us all together. And I think any successful company really in the space right now really has to build that that sort of new power tribe and shared learning platform, because otherwise, I mean, you're just you're left in the dust compared to people who are doing it. Well, but that's the that's the challenge. You get some of these where you've got like processes sometimes are some some organizations are very much like, hey, great. We just we would love to share. And then there's others that that's part of their secret sauce. I was wondering how that how that factors in to gathering this. It's almost like it's almost like health information. It's almost that kind of thing where it's yes, it's genera genera sized and looked at as a whole can provide a lot of insights. But then there's some people are like, yeah, that's great, but not my not my data. Yeah, and there's always going to be an element of, OK, you're going to have to release, especially when you're talking about enterprises releasing their data, you're going to have to release this process data. But I will say the methods and the data capture and the data structures we're using lend themselves very, very well to data like sanitation, like the ability to take out any sort of identifiable company aspects. Right. I mean, a lot of process data. It's so funny how you see it more when you build this process skill set, because I've gone through, you know, I've worked at probably several hundred companies now for various things in my life. And they're all the processes at the level of the processes are all the same. You can slap whatever logo you want on the top, but it's just a combination of people and systems and various standard processes. Like you said, sales, finance, H.R., whatever it is, marketing. But if you if you take off the company brand and the skin, all the nuts and bolts are the same. It's just transaction volumes, costs, materials, systems and that data. You can contribute to the database to help the community. You can decide not to. But I don't think it's going to be a hard sell. There's not going to be a lot of personal or sensitive information that goes with this data set. So it really is more of a you see the data as being more like the steps of the process as opposed to the overall process, which is usually where their secret sauce is. It's more like this step. Everybody has to take this step. Here's the 10 or 100 or 1000 different ways you can do it. And the data around that and related to like cost, effort and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, exactly. And because this is the thing about process data and then we could get into the real nitty gritty anytime we want to, just like talking about the process science. But process data could be at infinite levels of detail. You can have super macro levels of process data. You can have super nuanced click for click. Here's the ingredients we put in the coke secret recipe type of process data. But typically, if you're doing the right level or the level that we've that we've picked an opinion on, like the right level for data structuring, it is fairly generic. So you're not going to lose any trade secrets. It's going to be how many people am I applying to what activities for what portion of their day? What's the actual transaction volume? Like I said, what are the systems in play? Like there's there's so many parts of that that are give you such rich data without having to give away anything proprietary because at the end of the day, whether somebody spends two hours. Applying themselves to a process and what they're costing and what they're burning the materials. That's really what's important for process analysis. We don't care often. What is the 50 page manual? What they're doing in those two hours to make the secret sauce like that doesn't really matter because it's a contiguous activity that a single person is executing for the most part. And that's usually where trade secrets sit. So, yeah, I mean, if you read the hundreds of process maps in our repository right now. They're all you're not going to learn. You're going to learn a lot, but you're not going to learn anything that a company would be remiss that got out of the bag, basically. I have to worry about like a non-disclosure or something like that to be part of it. It's it's not to that level. Typically not. But this is where even if you try to structure it, people can put whatever they want and process maps right. People can put you know, when you start to open the tool up to the market, people can be very protective of this. People can be very generous. I think our goal is to have enough density where we can start building a process brain with all this data more so than anything else. Now, it's something that you sort of touched on. Is there a do you find that there is a standard point where there's like a diminishing value of return to to get to really like if somebody wants to look at a process and really get into the details, there's there tend to be sort of like a a library like, OK, most organizations, this is where you're going to get. If you go beyond that, you're you're probably spending more time than you're going to get out of it. Or is it something that can go in a lot of cases in your experience, you see there's something where they can go very deep and they're going to continue to get value out of that. Yeah, that the answer to that question really depends on the context. So, you know, if you're just trying to pass an audit, if you're trying to integrate a new system, if you're trying to execute an organizational change, they all require different levels of process data. What we always try to say is there's a universal level of detail that I believe helps people understand the process and get started. It's sort of the foundation level of detail. And that's where we facilitate our tools at, which is let's capture and structure that data. And then if you need to go four levels deeper, if you need to go one or two levels up, you know, if you're doing an executive presentation or you're building training manuals to actually train new staff, then you can kind of use that as scaffolding to go in whatever detail level or direction you want. But but yeah, the actual detail level that you get to before there's diminishing returns, it really depends on matching your objective for doing process work with that level of detail for any given situation, because it's going to be different because some necessitate that level of nuance and some don't. I always just tell people, like with everything, don't build documentation for its own sake. Like it always has to be like if you're capturing data, there's always a cost to acquire good data and you want to match it as closely as possible to whatever is going to feed into analysis and whatever is going to give you the best outcome. Now, this may be a little bit of an open ended question, but it's just it's sort of a curiosity as well as whenever there is a I found it whenever there's some there are science things, there is also and a lot of these like this, there's sort of like an art level to it as well. And sometimes it is and sort of, for example, what I think of is like if you're building like just something I think everybody says would be like a web page is that you have the there's code and then there's laying stuff out and then there's that art. There's the user experience of it and there's the the personal experience that gets brought to it is process science, something where you you have to sometimes reel people in that they get they get caught in the art or the personal side or like, you know, it's the equivalent of like arguing grammar over getting your, you know, getting your message versus arguing commas versus period. Is that something that comes in process science or is it something that tends to be more people get it? They realize it's science and they're able to just sort of like focus and do the work that needs to be done for the process's sake, I guess, for lack of a better term. Yeah, so I would say in my experience, most people at the level that we apply our methodology, most people see it as science and there's not a lot of challenge that there's not a lot even when we're in very highly creative spaces, because honestly, a lot of the clients that are such are more desperate need for process work are creative agencies, marketing agencies, companies where they're not actually working with many tangible things that they can see and manage very effectively. Those particular companies, they need a lot of process help. And when we go in and help those types of clients, there's not really any sort of pressure or conflict between process, what process science saying and also stifling their creative process. They usually actually the science enhances their ability to be creative. So I don't really maybe I'm missing some of the heart of the question, but I don't really see them as diametrically opposed in any in any particular way. And I would definitely say. If your if your question is more around, is there some of the art to the science? Let me pause there, because that's a whole different question, and I'm happy to answer that. But and that really is, is this word is that is is there some art to the science and how does that? Because sometimes that is what those do. Sometimes they work in tandem, sometimes they sort of butt heads a little bit because you there you can get lost in the art and then lose the science or get too much in the science and lose the art piece of it. Yeah. So in a process that creates art, like I just said, there's no conflict. Now, if you're talking about people who are arguing about what there's some opinion to say, well, now I'm going to get very philosophical, because in my opinion, science is only science and like everything is art in a way, everything is somebody's opinion or their processing of some subjectively perceived reality, some scope of it. Now, what makes science different from any other creative endeavor or people just having opinions or what have you? A lot of times, science is replicable. So I can make an artistic decision or I can take liberties with the knowledge that I'm calling science. But as long as somebody else can also replicate and take that same liberty and understand the perspective and go through the process and get a similar result. Then it becomes accepted by a community, and in which case it becomes a scientific thing. I mean, that's how science works. There's a lot of there's a lot of art and science. Like, if you actually get behind the hood and watch most labs at work, watch most people who are publishing scientific papers, there's a lot of creative liberty. There's a lot of conjecture. There's a lot of people just trying to get their work published and they don't know if it's solid. But then it goes through peer review and then peer review. And there's politics in that, too. But that all peer review is what makes something science or not. And they decide whether it's replicable or it's credible. So it's a blurry line. And I'll say that I'll say that it's a blurry line between what is science and what is art and what is what is creative and what is just facts. I mean, even if you look at science, just regular science, the body, what you consider science 30 years ago, it was totally different. After what we knew 30 years ago has been disproven. So if you look back and say, well, were they running with the facts or are they just making stuff up and just kind of doing their thing? It's always sort of an interplay between the two. It's the same in business of the process stuff. You want to go and you want to help clients. I want to share my knowledge. I go in very confidently, but I always tell people one of the biggest consulting mantras is, you know, maybe wrong, but never unsure. I mean, that's what you need to do when you run as a consultant, because people don't want to hire a consultant that says, well, I think this is probably going to work for you. I'm not totally sure, but it sounds good. So let's give it a shot. Nobody wants to talk to that consultant. And I think you have to bring a little bit of that into the business world. And there's a little reality to that, right? Which is I run with very strong process principles. Do I know the answer is going to come out right 100% of the time? No, but I'm pretty confident I'm going to get a better outcome than you knowing nothing. So we kind of run that way and then we make the science, the science is expanding as we go. Excellent. That was sort of what I was looking for to see where that, to touch on that, because I do know that that's, you know, that's again, people have different points of view coming into these things. And sometimes they're like, well, okay, how do you turn that into a tool or how do you turn that into something that is replicable if I just see it as, you know, you're just sort of out there sort of guessing your way through it and how to equate those two. So you've got these, you're getting started. You've got some great tools. You've got an organization also that, you know, you've got a company that will help people that need to, whether they want to use your tools or not in a sense, I guess you can help them with their processes. And after everybody's been listening to you now for, you know, this last hour, basically, and are like, man, Sam's got, he knows some stuff. He's helpful. What's the best way for them to get ahold of you? Sure. So the best way to get ahold of me is sam at truval.com. If you want to reach out personally. And, but I'd love for anyone who's interested in getting on the front wave of this new process science tools company I'm in to just sign up for the early release. So we're taking wait lists right now on truval.com. You can go and check out the product. You could sign up for updates. But then otherwise, personally, if you're looking for consulting or coaching, you can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm the only Sam Draw Shack online, basically. So if you just go and link and search my name, I'll pop right up. But, but I like to be very accessible. So really, if you need anything, whether it be consultative, talking about process, looking for tools, it's all something I'd love to talk to you about. And those are the channels to reach me. Excellent. Yeah, we'll have links in the show notes. And just because, just to be clear, truval is T-R-U-V-L-E and it's a dot com. I'm assuming it's the website. So you can go check that out, check out the tools that he has, or just reach out. Because, you know, Sam's a pretty easy name to remember. So you can do that. And then the last name, maybe not so much, but that's okay. That makes you easier to find out there online. I want to thank you so much for your time. This has been great. It's been very, it's been fascinating. And it's just one of those areas. It's like, sometimes it's nice to, you know, like lift that cover and look at some of these things that we, we almost sort of take for granted sometimes, unless it's, you know, unless it's our, our daily bread and butter or something that we're dealing with on a regular time. So thank you so much for your time and hope you have a good rest of your day. Thank you so much. Take care. And that will wrap it up. Hopefully you got some of the, you know, just even half of what I did out of this conversation. There are a lot of great nuggets in there. We will have links in the show notes. So go ahead and check out his site, see where he's going with that. This is one of those that's going to be, I think, sort of fun to watch as they progress through this and really take this science and take it to the next level. They're really just getting started right now, starting to put some of these tools together. And I think we're going to see in one of those, one of those sites will be good to come back and visit on a regular basis as they grow this into something that really becomes a valuable tool to all of us. That being said, we're going to wrap this one up. We will come back next episode with yet another conversation. We're getting close to the end. We are almost the end of season 20, 21. We'll be starting up here in the next few weeks. We're just going to, we're not going to take a break. We're just going to go right from one into the next. So something for you to look forward to. We'll have a little bit more of that in the next upcoming episodes. Talk a little bit about that. But as always, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor Podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Please check out school.developa-noor.com. That is where we are starting to pour a lot of our content. We've taken the lessons, the things that we've learned, all of the things that make you a better developer. And we're putting it there. We have a range of courses from free short courses up to full paid boot camps. All of these include a number of things to help you get better, including templates, quick references, and other things that make us all better developers.