Process Science and Automation

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 continuing our season and we are into a new interview. In this episode we're going to speak with Samuel Draszczak and we are going to talk about processes. Not only that, we're going to talk about the science of processes. This is going to be one of those episodes where we're going to get a little deeper into how we actually go through some of the things that we do, some of the processes that we follow, and some of the data that we can get out of that, some of the metrics that we can have, and some of the ways that we can do them better. He's got a couple of really cool things that we're going to talk about, so I don't want to steal his thunder. Let's get right into our conversation with Sam. Well hello, welcome back. We have somebody new we're talking to today. We're speaking with Sam Draszczak and this is an area that we usually are sort of like the, not necessarily the beneficiaries, we tend to get right in the middle of it, but this is somebody that really understands business process and the science of processes. Which is one of those things that I think is underestimated way too often, so I'm really looking forward to our conversation with Sam. Thank you so much for your time and for joining us. And if you can give us a little bit of your background and where you come from. Sure, absolutely. Thanks for having me. So my background is in the sciences academically, so biology, chemistry. And then after that, I've basically been doing process work in one way, shape or form for my entire career. So that was internal process engineering. When I was doing water treatment work, I ended up moving into consulting for digital services just in house. And then I took a tour with Accenture and did external consulting. And then eventually I started my own consulting brand and I did the same kind of process engineering and process work through that. And now I've finally landed in my own company called Truvil where we're actually taking that process science knowledge and putting it into software tools and scalable solutions So that consulting rigor and that process science, which is a really interesting and evolving discipline, it becomes more accessible to everybody. Now, how do you, I guess I'll start with that. So how do you take this, because it really does feel like it's such a, like you need that human touch, that it's a consulting kind of business. How do you take that into these tools and then take this thing that is, it feels so customized per organization or per line of business. How do you take this and turn this into some tools to help people improve their processes? Sure. So when I talk about process science, and I'm going to give a little bit more to answer the question because I think it's important to how do you do this on your own? Well, if you think of something, let's just take biology, which I think people can imagine a little more carefully. If you had a biologist before the microscope was created, before some of the analytical tools that you use in the lab were created, it would have been very difficult to explain or to help somebody master on their own because you would have needed a tremendous amount of knowledge, technique, what have you. And if you were a biology based company, you might hire a biologist or an outside consultant or a scientist. And because when you're hiring consultants, you're paying for knowledge that you don't have or knowledge that would be too costly to acquire. I mean, that's really all it is. And sometimes knowledge can come in the form of research. But often when we think about consultants, we're buying that knowledge in the form of somebody who has the knowledge or the experience. And then we bring them on site and they then use the tools. They know how to use the microscope. They know how to use all the advanced stuff so that you can get the data you want. You can get that knowledge in that application. So if you can follow that analogy, process science is no different. And you say, well, how do these consultants like if you have to be a very advanced consultant and you come into my business, how do you do that? The first thing is building the right tools that are more intuitive and that people can learn how to use more easily. So if I build the tools first, then it's really about being able to teach the methods. The reason that most consultants remain consultants is because they don't really do a lot of true knowledge sharing or capability building when they go on site. There's no incentive to. So if I hire somebody who's a process specialist, they come into my business, they do a lot of this really great process work, but they're not interested in leaving their tools behind or saying, hey, you could use this in any business or in any context because that hurts the consulting sale. It hurts the consulting lifecycle. So to summarize the answer to your question is, I do believe that this can be democratized. I believe it can be more accessible. And that starts with building more intuitive tools with better instructions, sharing the methods and also doing it in a scientific way so that the methods can be applied to every business and every vertical and every scale. So it doesn't have to be so bespoke. And I know that was a lot, so I'm happy to touch on any or all parts of that in more detail. Oh, yeah. We'll end up touching on all of those. So, wow, there's a lot of places. Let's start with at the beginning, in a sense, is how do you, is there like a minimum level of entry that a company needs to be at? Because I think this is one of the things in particular I find is that you have these, you have like a startup or you have a solopreneur or you have something that's like a small organization. And that seems like that's very common. The challenge is they don't really, they either don't have the process or they don't really know what their processes are. So there's definitely no science around it. It's very throw it at the wall. So what is, is there sort of like a minimum level of entry that you look for, for the tools or for your customers? Yeah. It's very low and it's basically awareness that process is something that you process skills is something you need. And that may seem very low, but like you said, most of the time there's no awareness. People know they have problems in businesses or they know they have goals and they have things that they want achieved in their business. But if you have the wherewithal to say this is a process problem, even if that's pretty abstract, but you just know from talking to people or you just realize intuitively that how we're operating is not very effective and it has a lot of waste in it. Once you've crossed that threshold of having the awareness that it's a process related issue and you want to tackle it from that angle, that's it. After that, I do believe people can start doing it themselves. They can hire people at that point that can help them. Like you asked for me as a consultant, if somebody comes to me and says, hey, Sam, I need process mapping, I need process optimization, I need process consultation. That's it. As long as they bring those words to me, I know that they're on the right track, because ultimately everyone. Well, this is where maybe I'm going beyond your question, but everything is a process. You said it before. They don't have process. They don't know what they are. You always have process. Everything that you're doing in your business is a process. You just don't know what they are. And that's usually the problem that people have. But the good news is you've been working with your processes all along, just maybe unknowingly, and you just need a little bit of structure to move forward in a more rigorous way. And is that usually where you where you start and where you get those, I guess, aha moments with your customers is that they you say, hey, this is a process. Here's the steps. And then you actually analyze that and find a way to do it better or faster or more efficiently in some way. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. It's really just documenting it first and having people be able to look at their process and understand what it is, because most of the time that the challenge is not, oh, we don't have a good process in place. It's I don't understand my current state process. And if you don't know where you are or what you're consuming or what you're producing, you're not going to be able to go in any direction because you can't iterate from something you don't have control of. So most of the time now, especially in digital services, this has become so much more of a hot button in the last even just two decades, really, is all we're talking about, which is that people don't especially don't know what their processes are when they're virtual, geographically dispersed across global teams. They don't go into the office or your hybrid now. And in those senses, you lose your ability to actually see or touch or feel what a process is. And that's where people have no idea. So always step one is what is the process? How do we document it in a way that makes sense for you and the stakeholders that need to understand that data? Yeah, at the risk of going down a little bit of a rabbit hole with that, is that one of the things that I have run into a couple of companies myself within a few now where they are big enough, they are virtual enough that they have processes, but there is literally nobody that actually knows the entire process. Is that something you've you've run in because you touched on, especially geographically diverse and all these things where you don't have you know, you don't have people all together in the same room doing stuff anymore. And so is that becoming more of an issue, particularly if you look in the last 10, 20 years you've been doing this, is it something where it's now become more of an issue than you maybe saw back when you were you were starting out? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, the digitization makes this more of an exponential problem, because like you said, we've just lose the ability to engage our common sense through our tactile senses. And in that, people always usually know their own process. But when you only know and only understand what you're doing at your desk, then it's usually optimizing for that suboptimized as a whole. And that's like a major problem in a lot of business, especially digital businesses, where you can't you feel like, oh, I can't possibly know what my colleagues in India are doing right now, or I can't possibly know what my colleagues on the other side of the country are doing right now. And then you just work at what you have at your desk instead of having a more holistic view of the company or the operating model. And that that causes a lot of problems. Does that part of one of the things that your tools bring is a for lack of a better like in a very generic sense or communication, but really just sort of like a way to gather metrics to start pulling those pieces together and actually have a have essentially a view into what the actual process is. Yes, that's the intention for our larger road map. Currently, we're pretty early stage and we're just helping build tools that are helping facilitating better capture process data. But ultimately, what we do generally is if you can get if you can reduce the cost and the time to get process data, then you can get more process data quicker and then you can start doing the things you're talking about, which is, well, how do I analyze larger process data sets? How do I get more comprehensive and accurate process data sets? And once I have them that describe my entire business, let's say, and it didn't take me 10 months to build it, then I can actually start making better business decisions. I can actually start instituting measures that are meaningful. All the things that people want, which are sort of elusive right now, that's the tools that we're trying to build. Does that sort of and it sounds like it does the way you describe it, just sort of Is that sort of become like a snowball effect for them because they they get they capture some data and they realize that, oh, hey, maybe I can capture some more data and hey, now if I use this, I can I can make even bigger and better improvements. Yeah, I would say so, for sure. I mean, especially once you especially at the enterprise level for like even medium to large companies, when you start investing, which can be very daunting at first and process capability either through consultants or process people that you hire internally, you start to say, wow, I just spent a few weeks building a process map and now all of a sudden and I have this insight and I have this this capability that I never had before to actually talk about the process, to explain it to stakeholders, to coordinate project work around it, to analyze it, to make meaningful decisions. Once you do that one time, most of the time when I've worked at companies over the last year, my career, they want more. They want it. They need it. Once they have a good set of process maps or process data and executives are used to seeing it that way, they get spoiled. They don't want to have somebody come in a room and just tell them what's happening or, you know, flash a PowerPoint that's supposed to explain how this process or this part of the opera model is working. It just won't do anymore because if you have effective process work, it just makes everything so much more efficient. You touched on that. Just said a word that got me thinking about it. So does this typically start as this typically sort of a ground up kind of approach or a top down as far as the somebody comes to you and says, hey, we need to take a look at this. Where does that usually begin? Particularly, I was thinking, you know, mid to higher, upper, larger enterprises. Sometimes the people at the top don't realize what's what's down there, what's going on and that the process and then vice versa. Sometimes you're too low to see it. Yeah. So the vast majority of the time process work is initiated top down. By the time that it gets to be a problem enough where somebody's had to rack their head enough to understand that this is a process problem that we need to solve. There's somebody pretty high up saying we need a consultant. We need to hire a process engineer. We need to actually take the time to analyze this the right way. Now, that being said, process work is always bottoms up when it's done correctly. And that's a professional opinion. So there's no way to do process work unless you're talking to the people on the ground. You're actually understanding the process data from the people who are executing. And even in digital world, it's kind of referring to the proverbial gumbel walk from lean where you have to be in the actual place where the thing is happening, where people are clicking on their keyboards, where the actual process is occurring. And you always want to capture data that layer. But then if you're doing the work correctly, that should just distill up and up and up into more and more usable information packets for executives or whoever is your project sponsor. And so whenever you hit that, the grassroots version of any kind of process and companies, it seems like there's a project or anything you want to do, there's that the C word of change that comes in. So how is that? How is that typically met and accepted by those, you know, the people on the ground floor that are having to do all that? They're changing some stuff up. Do they see those the value in that? Or is it something where you tend to have to sort of push through a little bit and say, hey, you don't know. Maybe it's a little bit more on you, but it does help the big picture. Yeah. So I'll go at it from my methodology. Right. And like we just described, if you're doing it correctly, it should. Always be bottoms up. And like the people who are doing the process should be contributing the process data layer. And when you go in and you think about it that way, there's not as much resistance because it's not some top down initiative where I'm going down and saying, here's what execs have decided to change in your unit. Tell me how we can make it happen. The conversation always starts with I'm here to help. I need you to tell me your expertise and tell me what you're doing. Tell me your pain and what you're seeing on the ground. And at that point, that's there's not much resistance there. Because even if they don't know what's going to happen with that conversation, it gives people who are actually doing the work a chance to express themselves, to be heard, to kind of talk about, oh, how they're doing, what they're doing, what their perspective is on what's painful and what could be improved. And that's really just information collection. And when you skip that step, that's when you have a lot of change management issues down the road, because then no one was really consulted properly and they don't feel like you actually understand what they're doing before you try to make changes. But if you always start your project there, what we're talking about, which is, hey, let's have a conversation. Let me elicit your process information from the source. Usually you don't have a problem at that point. And unless people are worried, you're about to fire them or replace them with robots or something. And that's just something you have to be sensitive about. But mostly, I don't really in 95 percent of the time, I have no pushback for those initial discovery meetings. And if you're handling it that way, then they're already sort of bought in and know that there's project happening. And then you just have to continue to do good change management to work work through that momentum. Oh, good. So the people that are the that are the frontline workers see that as being sort of like problem solving for them as well as it's it's hey, sort of bleed on me a little bit. Tell me what you're suffering. Where are your pain points? And you're coming to them even to say, hey, yeah, we're we're doing this big picture improvement. But the key to this is that we need to improve your job and what you're doing so that it bubbles up into the the overall process improvement. Yeah, for sure. I mean, generally the whole office space, you know, Bob and Bob coming in and laying off half half of the company or you hear about you think about process consulting and think about these match massive rifts or reduction in force or layoffs. It's honestly not usually the common use case. I would say that's a very marginal edge case. Most of the time, if you think about it, it's actually way more expensive to separate a bunch of talent, especially talent that's been around the company for a long time. Typically, when you go in and do process work, it's exactly as described, which is how can I make your job more effective? How can I elevate you? How can I scale what you're doing? How can I make your process more efficient or remove any barriers to you getting your job done more effectively? And those kind of conversations are not they're not frightening when people get into them. I mean, I can count the times on my hand in my whole life where somebody has said, hey, I need you to come in here and know that we're going to cut this whole team and how are we going to see the process back together? I mean, that that very rarely happens. Yeah, that tends to be that that's another world. Little rabbit trail. I've seen a lot of that as well, where people get worried about it, but it really is. It's nine times out of 10, 99 times out of 100. It's really more about, hey, we're getting bogged down in these things that we can elevate people out of. And then now instead of us spending, you know, ungodly amounts of hours doing stuff that isn't as productive, we can now actually have our people be more productive and actually contribute to the business and things of that nature. Now, in this, one of the things is, does this tend to be a, we'll call it like a one and done versus an ongoing kind of approach? Do you have a lot of situations where you come in, and I guess it's both with or without your tools, where you come in, you do some process engineering, you help them figure things out, put some, you know, put some metrics in place and they can sort of go with it? Or is it something where you're like, oh, I'm going to do this, or is it something where they can with your tools because you've come in and you've trained them, you've shown them some tools and now they can go with it? Or is it something where you find a lot of times it's sort of like a periodic check-in or something where maybe they grow to, they come in, you assess something, you can fix it. But then once that burns in a little bit, now there's like a new layer of process improvement that they need or assessment that they need to do. Yeah. It's honestly sort of a mix of everything you just said, like sort of hybridize together because I mean, process work is truly continuous. It's continuous improvement. That's a very common term in the industry and you really can't ever do a one and done. Now, but that being said, most of the time I'm hired specifically, or people are engaging with somebody at my level, it's because there's a pretty massive change that needs to go successfully, or the company may be in trouble, or they may not be able to hit their scaling targets or objectives. A lot of the time, the hybrid I'm referring to is I will come in and I will help facilitate a pretty major transformation. That could be like a whole operating model change. It could be a complete staff reorg, whatever it is. Getting them over the hump, once they get into the new process and people are in their new seats, that thing's done. Now, if we're doing our job right as process people, we need to be giving them capability and teaching them how that was done along the way, because inevitably in six months, they're going to have to do it again. It's not really sustainable to hire me or hire people who are doing what I'm doing every six months or every year to go through these changes. I'd like to say, if you're being successful in this work, there are some massive projects that you can get them over and that can really leave a pretty lasting value imprint in the company, but you also have to be conferring capability so that they can manage the changes, they can understand when their measures are getting stale, they can understand what they need to do in another project. I think if you're doing it well, it all has to be in harmony. So do you end up a lot of times then your presentations are almost like an educational presentation or a tutorial most of your, you're sort of saying, hey, here's what we did, here's our findings, and this is how you, you know, in detail, like this is how we go into it. This is how you do these things. This is how you take this information and process it so that it's a, as much training as it is presentation. For me, it is, and maybe annoyingly so for my clients, maybe they don't want that quite that much education or coaching, but I can't in good conscious try to do the work without doing it because like you said, I mean, they need to understand, and that's part of the science of it, right? Which is to say, this is not some one and done thing or some unique scenario that I'm uncovering a unique solution for. It's, this is the method that we're applying here. Here's what the findings are telling us. And this is something you can use over and over and over. And I think it would be in your benefit to do so. So I do infuse a lot of education, a lot of coaching. I tend to offer coaching after my engagements. If I'm doing consulting, especially if executives want to understand how to do better leadership, via process, you know, like be good process leaders. I think it's definitely something that needs to be endorsed at the top. And you have to learn what you're doing in order to make sure that you can be sustainable over time, especially in this market. And I say this market, it's becoming increasingly digital and an increasingly complex process and technology scene. I mean, if you can't have some of these basic tools, if you can't learn them or invest the time in learning them, every time you'd be getting a new SaaS product, every time you want to hire, you know, an outsourced person, I mean, you're just going to, you're just going to be your constant, your life will be a constant challenge, a process challenge ultimately. Well, and that actually, that was, goes into another nice little areas. Do you, do you have situations where you come in for, let's say for a specific, a niche or a project, and you help the, you know, help an organization and particularly once you get to middle or larger size enterprises and that, do you have situations you sort of come in in one area and help them with a process and get them going? And then they come back later and say, Hey, we have this other area that we really need you to take a look at, particularly because you have a, you know, in your background, you've got a very broad experience of processes. So everything from, you know, scientific method type stuff into the business side, which to me would mean that, cause there is no way there's, there's HR processes, there's finance processes, there's a kind of, there's all of these, do you end up sort of like almost going from silo to silo sometimes within an organization? Yes. Yeah. That happens quite often, especially if they're working with me directly and the outcome is good, they usually will, once they understand what this kind of work is, there's no limit. Like you said, we can start in HR, we can do a great process there, then move to finance, then move to the floor and help their core operation. I mean, there's really no barrier to where you can apply good process technique. And you also mentioned coaching. Do you find that, are there, because sometimes you get into, there's consulting things where you, there's just that knowledge that a consultant needs. Are you able to, in some of these cases, help them find, help an organization find people either internally that, or to go add internally so they can sort of take the place of you as you move on? Or is it something where a lot of times it really is, they just need to come back and periodically do a coaching session or something like that, sort of touch base and have you assess it again? Yeah, that's a bit of a mixed bag. I mean, especially for small and medium companies, they're usually not, they don't have the appetite to, after I leave, hire, let's say a full-time process person or a full-time business analyst or what have you. But I've been, I've worked at massive, Fortune 100 enterprises where I will say, I've really helped you kind of structure a path here, but you really need to hire these capabilities if you want this to be sustained or otherwise it's going to fall to nothing. So I think it just depends on the context, but there's really no situation where coaching for executives is warranted in terms of how to better their understanding of their own personal and professional processes so they can be better leaders, but also they can maintain a better operating model for their business. And that, that, a lot of it is the same principles apply. So executives typically who are interested in process work, they are, they would benefit greatly from that kind of coaching at whatever level. And we can take a breath and pause. This is a little heavier sometimes than some of the other topics we've covered. I think we get a little deeper into some things. So this is one of those, I really appreciate us being able to split this up, sort of take it, digest it, give yourself a break, come back around next episode and we'll continue right into it. We'll just jump back into our conversation with Sam and see how it goes from there. You're going to realize that there's a lot of cool ideas there, a lot of concepts that maybe you haven't really thought through because this is one of those things that we just do and we don't often analyze it. And I think you'll find that this was a, this would be one of those things. It's a great way for us to step back a little bit and analyze what we do, assess it and find some ways to do it better. But that being said, it's time for us to take a break. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Please check out school.developineur.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.