Transcript
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Speaker: Welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abbasida and people who think outside the box. about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
Speaker: I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abusida. In this episode of The Independent Minds, I am talking to Michael Shank, the creator of the Process Inventory Framework and author of Digital Transformation Success.
Speaker: Michael is both the Founder and Managing Director at Process Inventory Advisors, a consulting firm specializing in digital transformation and process management.
Speaker: Michael is based in North Carolina, is not one of the states that I have ever visited. But if I ever get the opportunity to go to North Carolina, I will use my membership of the Ultimate Travel Club to access trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays, and all sorts of other travel-related purchases.
Speaker: I have added a link with a built-in discount to the description so that you can become a member of the Ultimate Travel Club as well and travel at trade prices. Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading, and subscribing to.
Speaker: Probably good enough to share with your friends, family, and work colleagues as well. As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we will not be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Speaker: Hello, Michael. Hi, Michael. Thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure to be here with you. It's a pleasure to have you. Please, could we start by you giving us a little bit of your career history and how you ended up doing what you're doing today? Yeah. So I i spent my pretty much my entire career in consulting with a few stops at large financial services organizations. So my frame of reference in this whole organizational construct is really just technology. My purview was, was the code delivered on time? Was it defect-free when it was deployed to production? Was it stable for the customers, et cetera? So I knew nothing about really what the business did. That was 13 years at Accenture. Then I spent a couple of years at Bank of America in a technologist role. Then i moved to Ernst & Young. At that point, they did not have a large technology practice. So I kind of started moving into some other business type consulting. work. And one of my first engagements was with a large bank and they wanted us to create ah a business capability model. And for those that aren't familiar, a business capability model is essentially ah putting everything that the organization has the ability to do on one page, which you could go a couple levels deep.
Speaker: ah To me, that was an epiphany moment because, as I stated, i I knew nothing really about what the business did. And it gave me a pur it gave me a a vantage point of everything that they did in one model that went a couple levels deep. So, wow, this just seems so powerful in terms of getting different types of practitioners in an organization into alignment. um So I dedicated the rest of my my career to that.
Speaker: ah started working with various clients and realized that you know business capability is not really the right connection point, that you really need to understand all the individual processes that an organization performs ah to to get very specific in terms of what has to change if you're driving transformation or trying to become a lot more efficient. The rest of my time EY, I built a playbook and I started selling this to various customers, depending on what they were trying to accomplish. And I worked in a whole bunch of ranges from developing strategy, setting up transformation programs, driving change projects, looking for efficiencies, designing their IT architecture, and even risk and compliance. And every time I i applied this framework, it always brought alignment. It it made things run smoother. it mitigated risks of timeline and budget, overshoots, et cetera.
Speaker: I felt really proud that this was something that needed to to go out to the market. I then went to Citibank for a bit under two years and and they're they were running a control transformation program. And this was a response to a consent order handed down to them by the regulators.
Speaker: um So I left there and I felt like it was time to to write the book, just venture out on my own and and do this independently. And now I'm actually pursuing building a digital twin and of an organization platform, which takes this framework and the associated data and leverages it for AI insights.
Speaker: It's all the very exciting times. I know, but listening to you describe it there, it sounds like, yeah, this man is describing common sense, really, isn't it? That's what it is. Exactly right. yeah Then I was thinking about all of the problems that you're actually resolving. And the big question then came in like, why hasn't it been done before?
Speaker: Oh, that's a, that's a good question. There's a lot of standards organizations out there like TOGAF and Business Architecture Guild, et cetera, that give guidance on how to do this. But I think they're flawed in a few ways. But one of them is, especially those that adopt kind of the business architecture mindset is all about, they put the center of the universe's business capabilities. But ah a business capability, if you're not familiar with it it's a very abstract concept. So it's the ability for your organization to do something, but it's it's by definition, it's not attached to the organizational structure. For instance, when I'm at one of these large banks, somebody could say, we need to invest in our account management capability.
Speaker: That's fine. But, you know, some of these big banks, like you can open an account in the retail bank. You can open a wealth account. You can open a credit card account. You can open a mortgage account, et cetera, et cetera. And these all have different people, different technology, different processes, different resources. So you have to get more specific and different funding sources, which means you have to build business cases to different leaders who are going to fund this. You you got to be a lot more specific in what you're talking about. And i think the guidance from these communities hasn't really been spot on. And that's why I think people struggle with this is they just don't know how to do it.
Speaker: Organizations are just so complex, especially when you get to the medium or large, large size organizations. They're so complex and they're so fractured in terms of different practitioner types that view the world in terms of their, their own silos. That was that key word there, wasn't it? Silos. Silos, exactly. And how organizations, it seems, when you have a challenge, you think about the hierarchy of the organization as a way to solve that problem. yeah But what you're saying is that the capability of the organization traverses all of the different silos and the hierarchy yeah of the organization. You have to come to understand the organization,
Speaker: a A series of processes rather than a series of reporting lines. That's right. Right. Yeah. And if you think about something like a transformation project and all the different types of practitioners that have to come together, there's got to be someone in the strategy group that's deciding what the organization is going to do to meet their strategy. But then the business has to detail what they want. They have to communicate to technology, who has to build communicate it to infrastructure, to build all the the tech systems. There's data components. So you've got to bring all of these different diverse people together. And everyone has their own purview and their own language. If you've ever seen it, but there's the the Tree Swing cartoon.
Speaker: It really illustrates how this lack of communication at a small scale can really amplify it to to create such large problems. And something is is at scale as a transformation program is that in this cartoon, the customer asks for a tree swing. Well, the the product owner designs it one way, the technologist builds it another way, and you've all these series of pictures. And I think that just really speaks to what the core issue is. Yeah, I can see what you mean. And i really like this idea of organizations being a collection of different types of processes that all have to work. Well, together is one way to describe it, but I think that all integrate in order to achieve the objective is perhaps a better way of describing integration rather than together. Because together can mean that they're operating separately, but coming together at some point. with the end But I think with the digital transformation and the potential that that offers, then you've got you've really got to integrate your processes in order to make sure that the organization operates at its most effective. and To do that, you need a a common language. So so when you you when you say something like, we got to change account opening, everyone knows exactly what that is, what resources are used, how it works, the ownership to to really mitigate some of those lost in translation type scenarios. yeah
Speaker: Do the types of processes within an organization fit into categories? yeah Can we group different processes together there Yeah. ah when i When I create a process inventory, I follow the organizational hierarchy because i' very focused on getting a comprehensive representation of everything that than an organization does. And I know some other like process management experts would say, you know focus on the core processes, like the the ones that deliver value to the directly to the customer and supporting or whatever. But in my view, every process contributes to to enterprise performance or else why would you do it? I want to make sure that i that I capture every single process and really just the name of the process. To me, it's a data semantic structure for aligning all kinds of data. But but if I go down the organizational chart and I just ask people, what is it you do? um And they lay out
Speaker: And I start top down. So they'll lay out you know the the four whatever number of areas that they manage. And then I go to those leaders and ask them what they do. And I go to the next level and i ask them what they do. And I keep walking it down until I capture every single process.
Speaker: Now, when you when you have that, now you could attach what I call metadata, but really bringing all the different aspects of the the program together to this common language of process. So I could now say for, if i if I pick one process, I could say what people play a role in performing activities in those processes.
Speaker: I could say if what products this supports, either directly or indirectly, um what technology systems are used, what risks and and controls, especially compliance needs. if I can map out what third-party vendors play a role. So it's really a a data integration exercise to get to something that that I talk about a lot, which is systems. Understanding how all the different aspects of your organization come together and the relationships between those different aspects to drive the performance of your your organization.
Speaker: It's not a small task then. It's not, no. How long does it normally take for like a medium-sized organization to can create a process map of the organization?
Speaker: it Well, it depends on the size of the organization. how you know i do When i estimate this out, I look at the org chart and how many people are in there because it really yeah it really dictates how many interview sessions I have to do.
Speaker: but But I'll say this is a broad statement. It's it's a lot less... work than you would think because I'm just, I'm really looking at this point at what's the names of the processes in the current state. I'm not creating detailed maps of those processes, which, which is a, a much longer effort, a much more high intense effort. But usually if I'm meeting with any particular stakeholder, I usually could do it in two half hour to an hour sessions and I have my teams do homework on it. So give me all the materials about your organizational unit, org charts, procedure documents, whatever it is. And then from that, especially with the aid of ai i could put that into AI or I could have my teams um really study it and then create a initial draft of that inventory. And then when I go to the stakeholders, I'm not coming with a blank sheet of paper, but rather well-thought-out starting point. And then they could say, oh, you're missing this over here, or or that's not correct, et cetera. Make those updates real-time. Then go away, attach all the the resources or metadata that I mentioned, and then come back and then get their final validation. And then I'll ask for a formal sign-off so that they're on record saying that this is accurate and complete. Yeah. So there's an element of the work that you're doing on identifying these process inventories where yeahp you are recording simply what happens within the organization now.
Speaker: And then there's another element, which is where you've done your homework. on what the process should be yeah for that particular type of organization, that particular type of objective, and identifying where the gaps are in what they currently do as well.
Speaker: Exactly. Yeah. So once I have this this inventory of processes, I could take a step step back with leadership or an architect of the organization and and you could find things like, no, this this process doesn't really look like it adds a lot of value. Or there's three organizations to do the the same exact thing, et cetera. You know, Michael, this is this all sounds really fascinating. And i'm just thinking back over my career, the number of times that I've worked in organizations that probably didn't have anything that would come anywhere close to a process framework.
Speaker: What type of organizations so make the call and what type of circumstances are they in that prompts them to make that call to you?
Speaker: Yeah, ah really any type of organization. i I look at this as really industry agnostic. I grew up in financial services. So, you know, i know obviously, a lot about this, but i that this could really be applied to to any organization. And the They typically have to have some sort of burning platform or obviously a reason why. And that could be, you know, they have to go undergo a a transformation which is daunting. um So they they need some guidance on how to do it. um You know, these things can be expensive. They could bust through timelines. They could... misfunctionality. So it's really important that they they plan ahead. But there's other scenarios where they just don't, they they recognize that they have efficiency issues, which is impacting their their cost profile, and they want to get more efficient to become more competitive. they have Maybe they have customer issues that they need to solve or risk and compliance challenges designed in their technology environments. there's a There's a bunch of different entry points, and that's why i always start any effort with this with a a decent amount of grounding in their why. So what is the strategy of the organization and how does this effort support it? Because...
Speaker: Answering that question will mean different things in terms of what this framework exactly looks like and what data I'm collecting as part of it. So it's it's very important to be connected to that larger purpose and and what this effort is going to deliver for the enterprise.
Speaker: Yeah, but it's nobody does this as a nice to do thing. There's always a very strong business case to make it most effective.
Speaker: Yep. And it doesn't have to be an entire enterprise. you know and And this is this is um very useful for very large organizations to medium size. But they could just do one business unit or one organizational unit that has a challenge. And if they deliver results on it, and I always believe in the show don't tell kind of philosophy. So do it in one organization, get the benefits, kind of socialize internally and then have it grow ae ah girl from there.
Speaker: but But make sure you're you're focused on on addressing the the burning platform need that they have and then move on from there. So it's identifying the need for creating it, having a business case that supports the fulfillment of that need, and then sort of go through it and deliver the yeah the process inventory.
Speaker: I'm also wondering, though, because I can be rather pessimistic at times or just play the devil's advocate a little bit, what type of um challenges do people, do organizations face in actually implementing the process inventory that you've created, especially, I suppose, when it's identified that they're not actually doing the sorts of things that they need to do? I think the big thing is the knowledge gap in how to do this. And that's that's what I specialize in is is educating them on first, what is what is a process inventory? What does it entail?
Speaker: How do you do this? You need a ah rigorous methodology. So i as part of my consulting, I i um guide users through this. but But I think the other thing too is And I look at process inventory. It's not just a list of processes, but ultimately if you do it right, it's a it's a repository of knowledge about everything your organization does. And you're going tonna have to care and feed for this thing because organizations change all the time. They they they change through projects, they have reorgs, you name it. So you're going to have to staff a dedicated team that that cares and feeds for this information so that it's always reflecting reality. And that's ah that's a new concept for for some organizations. I think organizations do have process centers of excellence or business architecture teams, et cetera. But they're not really focused in in what I've seen in working with various companies in delivering this comprehensive framework that that helps helps them get into alignment and deliver on deliver on their their are transformation needs.
Speaker: you're saying that I worked in the 1990s in an organization that had a a team of people that with a quality control department whose main job seemed to be to help people to create the processes, document the processes, And then when we were going for an ISO standard renewal of our certification would come around and help people create the documentation to demonstrate that they'd been following the process, regardless of what it was they'd actually been doing in their job. Which makes me think about the question of like, how do you get the processes of like off the paper,
Speaker: off the screen and into the unconscious activities of the individuals. yeah Because if there is a separate department, a separate team that has got to nurture this, it there is a risk that the process will become something that is done to people rather than something which is helps which helps them do their jobs better.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, I look at it as, and I always stress this whenever I'm i'm doing a project like this, that the centralized team is really just the facilitator. They own the standards, they own the repository, they own the methodology for collecting, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: But the ownership of the process is with the business itself. And it's with the, and whenever I create a process inventory, since I follow the organizational hierarchy, I could put names of who the owners are at each level.
Speaker: And and i always stress, like, you are the owner of the process. The process centralized process team is just a facilitator. They're just a documenter. They're just maintaining this repository. But at the end of the day, they need to own the processes. And I think it it speaks a little bit to a cultural shift that has to happen, which is,
Speaker: If you really put this process thing at the center of how you manage the organization, how you drive change, how you look for efficiency, then it should be the center of everything that you do, from ah documenting your strategy to detailing out roles and responsibilities for different people, for managing performance across everything. You name it. You start putting this at the center of things and it becomes the language that everyone speaks naturally on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker: Yeah. The language that everyone speaks naturally on a day-to-day basis, I think is a very powerful aspect of of what it is that you're talking about. You also made me think about that old saying, you know, if you want to know how to do something, ask the person who's actually doing it, yeah not the manager of the person who's doing it. Yeah. The people who are on the shop floor.
Speaker: And I think we naturally speak in this anyways. Like if you meet somebody at a local neighborhood barbecue that you don't know, one of your first questions is is going to be, what is it you do? And, you know, and they'll they'll kind of speak their process inventory. Like I'm an accountant, which means I check the books and I create reports and I forecast and whatever. They're kind of saying their process inventory in a very informal way. And really what I'm advocating is kind of do that in a rigorous methodology so that you could capture that formally and then use that to to get really tight alignment from what the senior leadership sees as their strategy to what what practitioners are doing on the ground so that everything's connected.
Speaker: Yes, think there's an aspect of when someone says i am a and gives you a job title, that's almost how they fit into the hierarchy of an organization. and Whereas what you're talking about with this process inventory is, i suppose it opens up the doors for people to be a little bit more imaginative about describing what it is that they do because they'll understand much more about their work and how their work fits in with the work of other people. So they can talk much more in terms of verbs yeah rather than nouns. And when you ask them, what is it that you do? They could answer with verbs rather than a noun.
Speaker: Exactly. Yep. And know and that's, I, I've adopted the standard, like every process needs to have ah a verb plus a noun as the naming standard. So I open accounts, i pay customers or or pay vendors, whatever it is, it's, everything's got to start with a verb.
Speaker: Yeah. You've already mentioned that you're using AI as part of the implementation of the framework, but I'm wondering, yeah what does the future of process management look like when you're talking about a world that is increasingly using technology to do work? What's what's the future going to look like?
Speaker: Well, there's two aspects of it. There's um the aspect of you could take all the information in your environment and create this process inventory. I still think you need to talk to people because if you're going ask somebody to be an owner, I think they need to to weigh in on on its accuracy. And I believe in humans in the loop but it as we enter the AI age. But I think the the thing that's most exciting with AI is...
Speaker: um I saw a stat that something like 92% of global organizations are investing in AI. And I think everyone's struggling with, how do i translate this AI thing and deliver value for my organization?
Speaker: And to me, it really comes down to data. And if you really read anything about AI, it's all about data. And the the big challenge is how do you customize this LLM with your proprietary data in a way that it makes that it makes sense and and AI can decipher what's actually going on. Because if most organizations just just did a knowledge dump and in into an AI repository,
Speaker: AI wouldn't be able to figure out if you call a process by three different names that you're talking about the same thing. so So you have to put the the hard work together to detail what your organization does. But once you have that and you have all the the resources and other metadata aligned to it, you could take that data and vectorize it so that the LLMs could read it. But now you can do things like real-time monitoring. You could do predict predictive analytics. You could do... You could generate content. Like if I'm if I'm doing a project, I can generate a project charter or requirements document, etc.
Speaker: um Which I don't believe is, you know, even with AI would be 100% correct. um Because even if I have AI write an email, I'm always tweaking it. But if it if it gets you 80% of the way there, that represents a significant amount of productivity, say, for organizations. So I think the the future, as as as I see it, and I hope it comes to to manifestation, is that people understand that they need to they need to organize their internal operating data and process is the only vehicle to do that.
Speaker: um But then once you have it, you could get all the benefits of of how you operate leveraging AI as an assistant. Yeah. like exciting times are ahead of us.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, and it's been really interesting to hear more about process management and the process management framework and and your book, Digital Transformation Success. I really do appreciate your time today. It's been really interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that the future process, um I think, in ah is of as i as I tell people, like if if you ask 10 process management experts how you should document your environment, you'll probably get 15 different answers.
Speaker: and and And that is, i think, the challenge of our of the process management community is we really haven't settled on the answer of, And we're very clear with BPMN 2.0 of how you document a single process, although there's various standards that you could apply to it.
Speaker: but But no one's ever looked at it and said, a process doesn't sit in isolation. it lives in a community of processes that has connections. So you need a way to organize that data and pull it all together. And I think that's where I hope process inventory plays a role in the future of process management. But organizations need to embrace this as ah as a core concept for how they they manage their their enterprise.
Speaker: Brilliant. Thank you very much, Michael. Really interesting episode of The Independent Minds. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me, Michael. It's a great discussion. Thank you.
Speaker: I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Michael Shank, the creator of the Process Inventory Framework and author of Digital Transformation Success.
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Speaker: I am sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Michael and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
Speaker: And also, please share the link with your family, friends and work colleagues. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abusida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.
