How to apply “storylistening” to rethink processes with Astrid Kirchhoff from hummingbirds
#023: Astrid and I discuss the importance of incorporating positive emotions, attentive listening, and emotional data in process modeling for creating human-centric processes.
In this episode, I’m speaking with Astrid Kirchhoff from Hummingbirds about how to apply storylistening to open up our perspectives to a new way of rethinking processes.
Astrid provides a broad explanation of how using the art of careful listening and the power of many authentic narrated experiences to better understand values, attitudes, and motivations.
We’ll get a deeper understanding of how humans are storytelling animals, mixed in with a three-step approach of storylistening, story collection, and understanding the story, can help you engage and understand your client’s goals and target as an expert, at a more in-depth level and execute their ideas, goals and true intentions, purposefully and effectively.
Today’s Guest
Astrid Kirchhoff
Astrid is a Narrative Facilitator at Hummingbird’s . She studied systemic organizational development at the Center for Systemic Research and Consulting in Heidelberg, as well as organizational development at Stuttgart Media University. Before specializing in this area, Astrid worked as an Account Executive for several companies in the marketing sector and has run her own advertising company for 10 years.
Astrid is here to tell you more about what storylistening really is, and how we can apply this to processes, to rethink processes, to cultivate a more human-centric, process management approach.
Hummingbirds is a company built by experienced entrepreneurs, creative people, strategists, scientists, and thinkers. They take big stories and provide meaningful data that can help management, entrepreneurs, and businesses improve their strategies through effective communication and help to better understand complex systems, team relations, and their market, story by story.
You’ll learn
- What storylistening is
- How the typical process of storylistening looks like
- How storylistening can be applied to rethink process modeling
- What the secret ingredients of a storylistening project are
- What Astrid’s top recommendations to rethink processes are
Resources
- Astrid Kirchhoff on LinkedIn
- hummingbirds website
- Otto Scharmer’s 4 Levels of Listening: Be a Better Listener
- Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling by Edgar H. Schein
- Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust by Edgar H. Schein
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Transcript
Please note that the transcript was generated automatically and only slightly adjusted. It does not claim to be a perfect transcription.
Mirko:
Yeah. Welcome to episode 23 of The New Process Podcast. Today we’re going to explore how to apply storylistening to rethink processes. Therefore, I’m going to talk to Astrid Kirchhoff. Astrid is a Narrator facilitator at Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds use the art of careful listening and the power of many authentic narrated experiences to better understand values, attitudes, and motivations. What that exactly is, we’ll find out in a moment. In the interview, Astrid studied systemic organizational development at the Center for Systemic Research and Consulting in Heidelberg, as well as narrative organizational development at Stuttgart Media University. Before specializing in this area, Astrid worked as Account Executive for several companies in the marketing sector and has run her own advertising company for 10 years. As a fun fact, Astrid and I met last week after she listened to my guest appearance in the Systemisch Agil podcast, which is a German podcast.
And already while listening to the show, she wrote to me a message on LinkedIn and we spontaneously decided to exchange our experiences. And at the end of that conversation, I thought that I have to share this with the community here in the podcast. So we made it. And today she is here to tell you more about what storylistening really is, and especially in the recap, I’m going to talk about how to apply this to processes, to rethink processes and to even more specifically to rethink process modeling sessions itself. Yeah. To get to more feelings, to more human-centric process management approach. So super interesting. Enjoy the interview with Astrid!
And now let’s start to rethink processes. Yeah. Welcome to the new Process podcast. Astrid, it’s great to have you here today.
Astrid:
Thanks for inviting me.
Mirko:
Yeah, sure. Thanks for accepting the invitation and I’m really, really curious to learn more about storylistening, what that really is. As I already said, we met spontaneously last week because you listened to an episode where I was guest and you said, let’s talk and we talked then we said, oh, okay. That’s super interesting and I think I have to share that with the community. But before we dive into the content, let’s start with a check-in and there, my first question as always is what do you prefer in an aircraft aisle or a window seat?
Astrid:
Okay, let’s think about that. What do I prefer in an aircraft? It’s the window seat. Yes, it’s the window seat, definitely. And you asked me why, well, I love to see how my change of perspective gives me a new world. Walls seen from the above are no longer walls and mountains seen from the above seems less steep. I often get goosebumps when I see how the world seems to change before my eyes. Also for me, window seats opens up new horizons.
Mirko:
That sounds really really good. I fully agree to that and already experience the same when flying, I would say. And that’s, that’s cool. And what is your favorite airport and why?
Astrid:
This is the Paris Orly
Mirko:
Okay.
Astrid:
It’s yeah, it’s a very timeless one I think. And it’s a timeless interior and as I know it is maybe 100 years old, the building. And it reminds me of the architecture of the Bauhause movement. I don’t know if you heard about that
Mirko:
I heard about that, but I haven’t heard about the, airport. I’ve been to Charles-de-Gaulle once , but that’s another one, right?
Astrid:
Yeah. And it’s so funny that it’s, yeah, it’s a surprising feeling of arriving but arriving in the past just after moving quickly forward by flying. And of course it’s very good to know that friends are waiting for me there.
Mirko:
Yeah, that’s always good to be welcomed. Oh, that’s, that’s cool. So I have to check out that airport as well in the future. That’s cool. Yeah. Let’s continue with the check-in. What was the best process you have ever experienced?
Astrid:
If I think back, the best process I have ever experienced was, it’s really a long time ago, but it is still up to date. That was a project for the Handelsblatt And this is a German economy newspaper at that time that was around the millennia, the logo, the claim, the editorial design and the structure of the business paper were newly developed. And this in a very short time, we had to be successful with six special agencies and the many people who worked for the project in different places. Okay, now you may think, well, that’s not much specialists. That’s true. But the problem was that we worked exclusively with creative minds with designers who usually tend to compete with each other. What made this project successful was the design of our process. Essentially it was about the understanding of the people who worked in this sub-task.
The challenge was to ensure that all those involved could contribute their specialist knowledge and their individual creative ideas. And that in the end, a product had to emerge that felt to the customer as if it had been created from a single source. And that means the process had to allow each individualist to be heard and to communicate the meaning he or she gave to their designs. Everyone had to talk to each other, understanding each other’s point of view and negotiate a common outcome. Yes, the project was really a long time ago, but it shows that we are in the same place today. Only that many things had just become much more complex.
Mirko:
Okay, great. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Let’s get a little bit closer to the topic of processes and how would you describe your relationship to processes?
Astrid:
I mean, in the end, our whole life is a process, right?
Mirko:
Absolutely, yeah.
Astrid:
But the fact is that processes are as much a part of human life as, I mean, breathing, every thinking is a process and every action at least is a process. So for me, we produce processes ourselves or become participants in existing ones. And here we are already at the point, the starting point is us, the human being and make with you as the founder of newprocesslab.com, you pursue a human-centric BPM approach together with your clients and the teams you support, which means your attitude is to put people in the foreground of process management, right?
Mirko
Absolutely, yeah.
Astrid:
And this is what I directly thought here, we meet in our way of thinking processes in teams or organizations with the human beings in focus. I myself work intensively on how people and organizations can better understand their complex environment and put it simply. At hummingbirds, we develop processes that help people and teams and organizations to create new spaces for thinking, new spaces for dialogue to better understand these complex systems and this story by story.
Mirko
Okay, that sounds interesting and I’d love to learn more about that. So you are working as a so-called narrator facilitator. Can you please explain what a narrator facilitator really is?
Astrid:
Yes. I like to start with another point. Once we become aware that we humans are storytelling animals, our approach is obvious. Narrative facilitators use the power of many authentic narrated human experiences or so-called stories to better understand values, attitudes and motivations. And hummingbirds, this is the company I work in. We are also trained as story listeners, and this is a special art of attentive listening. As process facilitators, our approach is focused on narrative systemic and participative. And basically our clients perceive us as companions. What makes our methods special is that we work with experiential knowledge or to say it in other words, with the wisdom of humans.
Mirko:
Okay, that sounds interesting and maybe you can give an example. So what was your favorite project you have ever been working on?
Astrid:
This is really a recent one. Very recent!
Mirko:
Okay.
Astrid:
Our client actually is the university hospital in Dusseldorf and what we do is to support the intensive care team and they’re working about 30 nurses. And our objective is to find out how we can support the team to become aware of itself or team effectiveness. And this is a very, very special situation of the last, yeah, we can say three years. The pandemic rises the Corona virus. So the situation is too many patients, too few nurses, too many rings under their eyes, too little time to talk to each other. <Laugh> constant stress, I think every one of our, everyone can imagine. So we were allowed to accompany the team for three months and give them space for exchange and space for conversation. And we created a place that only belonged to them, to this team of nurses. A place where they could take a deep breath or become aware of their self and team effectiveness because that had completely fallen by the wayside that had only functioned together over years now, but no longer felt like a team. And every conversation, every narrative has brought the team closer together. Again, participation was higher than in any other project and one said to the other, come on, join two, it’s really good. The work manager was amazed. And the nursing director put it this way, I want the hummingbird’s method, no other one. And so therefore we continue the work.
Mirko:
Okay. Yeah. Let’s have a closer look onto this method. So how does the typical process of storylistening look like?
Astrid:
Let me go into the three essential steps of this process. The first step is storylistening, the second story collection, and the third is the story. Sharing a few words to storylistening together with the client. We look for an answer to the question, what do you really want to know and understand better? We start a project by developing this question and we defined who do we need to ask for this? As soon as we have clarified this story, collectors, fan out and listen attentively when everyday experiences and adventures are told to us in the selected tajed group, this is the first step. Second is story collection. In the classic narrative interview, mostly a few macro narratives are collected, audio transcribed, and then analyzed or interpreted by experts. And now this is a big shift. We at hummingbirds, on the other hand, collect a multitude of experiences, the micro narratives, supplementary meaning questions enable the narrators themselves to interpret what they have experienced. And in this way we generate meaningful data that remain connected to the narratives. And now I close with the third step, the story sharing. In co-creation with our clients, we explore emergent patterns through data correlations and analyzes of related narratives. We learn to understand behavior, motivations well use and emotions in relation to our thematic search question from step one. And then together with those participants and the clients, we learn which of the stories are so positive and so significant that we want to bring these more and more as results and experiences into the world.
Mirko:
Okay, great. We already talked upfront about what I’m doing right now that I’m thinking about rethinking process modeling. So that is the part where an expert sits together with the people working in the process and asks a lot of questions and tries to find out what the people are doing to put that into a picture. So that’s part of process modeling. So often I’m sitting in sessions and asking questions all the time to find out what the people are really doing. So maybe that’s somehow comparable to what you just described, what you are doing there, but in the case of process modeling, we try to put that into a process model in the end. So what would you recommend to rethink this activity when doing this process, modeling session and asking all the questions, what would you recommend to the process modeler to get more emotions, more insights from the people and better experience in this? Yeah. Art of process modeling process.
Astrid:
I think it’s the art of designing a really good question that inspires people to tell about their experiences. And I think it’s not about the quantity of questions.
It’s more about the quality as you know, in your work also. And working with people’s experiential knowledge is appreciative and empowers everyone. And finding meaning together creates trust in the other person and at least trust in the process. Actions that follow from this are accepted by the people. So if you have one or two or three really good questions, very open, you get experiences, so-called stories in my business.
There you can find all the answers.
Mirko:
What would be a, a typical question you ask a person to understand what he or she is doing. So that would be for me the basis for process modeling session. So explain to me, how’s the process going? What are you doing? What kind of question would you ask to get the person to tell about what he or she is doing?
Astrid:
Yes. One of my favorite questions is a very easy one. It’s like to invite the people to go back in their memory and to describe one special moment with a very good or very bad experience that describes their emotions and feelings to a special topic. And then I ask them to describe the situation very concrete so that I like in the radio session, can feel and see it in my mind and can can taste and smell and so on and forth really to get a picture from what this situation means or meant for the person who experienced it.
Mirko:
Okay. That’s super interesting. And how do you get to these emotional answers then? How to get a feeling about how it smelled in that situation or what they felt? What are the questions there?
Astrid:
Yeah, I think the first thing is to learn to wait.
Mirko:
Okay.
Astrid:
Just to have one question and then wait and see what happens. And some people do need more time. They just say maybe a few words and then you have really to wait and to give in your whole body language that they do understand you are waiting, you are, they are allowed to tell more and more and more. And yes, you can also work with question technique, but I think the attitude at least is to wait and to give the other one a feeling of being welcomed with all, with all what will come
Mirko:
Okay. Cool. I am just wondering if I should ask you how you perceive the situation right now? of being a guest in this podcast because I’m asking all the time some questions.
Astrid:
That’s okay.
Mirko:
Just waiting for the answers.
Astrid:
Yeah. But really, really interesting because what we do experience in our project is these, what are those magical moments when you feel how the person felt in the situation.He describes okay, and all of a sudden you suffer with them or you rejoice with them. And I think this is very unique to us as human’s empathy. And this is the bond of trust that delicately weaves itself between us.
Mirko:
Okay. And I’d love to try that out in the next process modeling session. I’m already thinking about how to integrate that even more, but what are the secret ingredients for a successful storylistening project?
Astrid:
One of the most powerful ingredients is the wonderful thing about this approach, that transformation is directly experienced by people. And it is experienced, it happens with positive emotions, with every small intervention, like one really good question, we change things with the people. We create a process that does not only have an effect at the end, but already in every single step. And back to the emotions, since this is perceived as positive and easy by the participants, we reach many employees and companies who like to participate and we also build trust for future transformations.
Mirko:
Okay, cool. Thank you for these insights. Transferring your overall experience to processes, what would you say, what are your top three recommendations to rethink processes? To get to a more human-centric PPM approach and to inspire people for processes, that’s always a big problem to get the people excited.
Astrid:
Yeah. I think first listen attentively instead of questioning, too many questioning, one good question is enough. The narrators, not the experts, have the authority to interpret this, this is really, really amazing and important. And the third is to give inspiring data with emotions, at least the same importance as pure facts and figures.
Mirko:
Okay. So let’s pick that up again. So listening that’s always a big problem, I would say, but that’s one of the core skills of a process modeler, ask questions and then just listen. Okay, I I understand that. And as a second one, and this is, for me, really interesting to make that more present in mind when doing process modeling sessions to not interpret what the experts are telling and do the other way around, let them really explain how they are doing something. This is often something I see in process modeling sessions that the process modelers interpret what they hear, and put that into a process. And they already type in what they think the person is doing instead of waiting and asking and listening and typing in what the person is really doing, instead of imagining that on their own and putting that into the system. Again, I have to ask, how do you get these emotions out of the people? How do you get to more , yeah, emotionalized description of what they are doing and not just a pure explanation of the process. What would you recommend there?
Astrid:
It’s because they tell us their stories, their experiences in that moment, people speak out loud what their values are. They don’t say, ” My value is, la la la” but the story tells us about the values and emotion of the person, who told us this story. I don’t know if I can explain it. Sometimes I am more in a meta, metaverse.
Mirko:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. On a meta level.
Astrid:
I think at least we know if we speak out loud things, there is a chronological way of things we do describe, but we also have an intention. And this intention is based on our inner well use and the kind of speech or the kind of words we use are a hint to our emotions. And so if you learn to listen to what the other really is talking about, you can detect a lot of things or find out a lot of things. Yeah. This is the special training to listen, to really listen generously, to listen attentively. So we are all trained in this, we as hummingbird.
Mirko:
Then again, how do you document these findings? Then when you sit together with the people, you just record that or write it down or how do you do that?
Astrid:
Different ways. If the group is a small one and the whole process is a small one and the company is a small one, we really prefer to do it in the company with the people, and not remote. Really being there and working together at a place, same time, same room. And because of the participative approach in it, we always work with more than one, in other words, two, four, eight, twelve, til forty people. On the other way, if you have a very big company and many, many, many employees, we go remote and then we have developed our own tool, it’s a data tool and we catch all the stories. So after having the story, we just ask five to seven sense making questions. And these questions were designed in a workshop with participants and the client itself. These five to seven questions, gives all storytellers, as all the people, we ask for their special experience, it gives them the opportunity to make more sense in it. And in our database, we collect all the stories word by word, and we collect the seven sense making questions. Then we do have narrative cluster. We can visualize it and at the end, if you want to know why some of the visualized points are here or there or wherever, you can go back to the story to the words, the person used, and to the experience he had experienced.
Mirko:
Okay, that’s super interesting. And I think..
Astrid:
It’s more easy, if I have the opportunity to show it, with some,
Mirko:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah!
Astrid:
Some visuals, you know?
Mirko:
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. But that’s hard in a podcast.
Astrid:
Oh yes. It is, it is.
Mirko:
Yeah. But maybe we can put a link into the show notes afterwards where the people can look it up. How example results look like. To understand better how you document the results. Okay, but I’m still fascinated of this question, asking approach and then listen and try to get more emotions out of the people. I was wondering when you said you do that in, in groups of people. So it’s not that you interview just one person, one by one. It’s always that there are more people in the room and then they are still open to tell their stories with all the emotional aspects there. That’s no problem for me as an introverted guy, it’s really hard to talk about emotions. That’s why I’m asking.
Astrid:
Yeah. You may think it’s complicated, but it isn’t. And I worked four years with a software company in the field of telecommunication, it’s called Sipgate. And I did a very big project with this kind of working and this kind of process, the narrative one, the participative one and the systemic one. We use it to find the right people as new employees for this company. And all the participants were so-called nerds, but yeah, but at the end they were very open. It was a great work, it was a great success, really. And they love, they love the results and they, they are working with these results till now. And it’s now three years ago I did it.
Mirko:
Okay. Yeah. I think it’s always good to give the people a chance to open up and to talk about emotions, but it takes a little bit of time often to get to that point or?
Astrid:
It takes a little bit of time, yes. It’s also the attitude behind, because you really have to, it’s all about human-centered at least, you know what I mean?
Mirko:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Astrid:
If you respect the people, they feel it. And if you are sensitive or you know, you have some, as a person, the skills that someone could open himself in a group, so it works.
Mirko:
Okay. Yeah. That’s very important. I think it’s also an important message to process modelers out there, to not only ask these technical questions, but to give space for emotions.
Astrid:
Yeah. And there is a point of psychological safety we have to respect and we do. And everyone can tell what he wants and he can not tell. Or that he can..
Mirko:
Be quiet. Yeah, be quiet.
Astrid:
Be quiet.
Mirko:
He or she wants to, yeah. Yeah, true. Okay, cool. So wrapping that up, what would be your key message to our listeners to rethink process, to get to a more human-centric process management approach?
Astrid:
Yeah. I am very, very clear, like advertisers are, stop telling, start listening.
Mirko:
Yeah.
Astrid:
It’s easy to remember.
Mirko:
Absolutely. Yeah. That’s so true. And that’s a core skill of a process modeler. Start listening and then, just paint the picture based on what the people are telling. Cool. Yeah. So where can our listeners learn more about your activities, about what hummingbirds are doing, about storylistening and so on?
Astrid:
I think the best is to receive a video call and to just have a first conversation, first dialogue. And yeah, in my opinion, this is the best way to make the initial contact. And the other thing is we invite to Apples, don’t know if you know this Apple culture in Italy and France
Mirko:
And a beer, beer guy. So..
Astrid:
Yes, yes. Come together at five and have some nibbles and sparkling wine and talk about what you are searching for. I think everyone has a question and that will be answered. And let’s talk about that or like this.
Mirko:
Okay, so that’s a regular session you are offering or?
Astrid:
Yeah, we talk about that or we invite through LinkedIn. So this is our communication channel. It’s more vivid than our website.
Mirko:
Okay.
Astrid:
So come to LinkedIn. My name is Astrid Kirchhoff.
Mirko:
Very good. I’ll put the links into the show notes. Definitely. Very good. And can I also join having a beer or do I have to drink wine?
Astrid:
No, you can al also join having a beer. Absolutely.
Mirko:
Okay. Absolutely. That’s, that’s, that’s very good. Yeah. Okay, cool. So let’s see when the next event takes place. And finally, which topic or method or tool or expert would you recommend to having a closer look at to get ideas to rethink processes?
Astrid:
There are many, but there are some who are really good and who are really, I think, in must-reads maybe or mustsee some videos from them or whatever. I would like to talk about Otto Scharmer, and here we go to the four levels of listening, or the four levels of generous listening. You will find a masterclass online at YouTube. You can find books from Otto Scharmer. And the second is at Edgar Schein Humble Inquiry. And it’s not only humble inquiry, it’s a book he published. A second one, Humble Leadership. That’s also very interesting because I think this listening approach or humble inquiry, in other words listening is very important for, as a future skill for the new leader in companies.
Mirko:
That’s, that’s very good. Okay. I’ll look that up and put links into the show notes as well to make it easier to find the guys and what they have published. Okay. That’s, that’s cool. That’s super interesting to get these links to experts there. Perfect! So to finalize what we talked about, is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners that we haven’t talked about yet?
Astrid:
Many things, but I go with a quote, I go with a quote from Rachel Naomi Remen, she’s working in San Francisco at a medical center of health. And she said the most basic and powerful way to connect with another person is to listen, just listening. Perhaps the most important thing we can give each other is our attention.
Mirko:
That sounds like a perfect advice for introverted people like me. So just listen, I have to tell that to my wife. Yeah. She’s always arguing. You are so quiet. No, I’m just listening and thinking about what you’re saying, but okay, that’s true. So as said, thank you for taking this adventure with me going on this flight. Before we leave the aircraft, how would you describe our flight with just three words?
Astrid:
Three words? Oh, three words. Oh, oh, oh, oh. I felt welcome. These are three words, but I do have many others. Am I allowed to say ?
Mirko:
Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.
Astrid:
Okay. Many, many thanks Mirko for allowing me to tell you, in this pleasant atmosphere, how I accompany teams and organizations and I’m looking forward to taking off again.
Mirko:
Yeah, that’s cool. So let’s meet for another flight later on. So thank you very much for providing all these super interesting insights and it really gives me a lot of food for thought to rethink process modeling and listening as well. So thank you so much. Have a great day and bye-bye!
Mirko:
Let’s recap today’s new process. Inspiration. Inspiration.
Wow. A lot of food for thought and, to be honest, I had to re-listen to the interview twice and I also had a follow up conversation with Astrid because I really wanted to understand this approach in more detail and how to apply that to processes. And now I’m going to share these in the recap with you. So first, again, the target of the storylistening approach is to answer a specific question. Yeah. Therefore, it’s always important to define this research question upfront. What do I really wanna learn? Like I wanna learn more about this or that specific business process here because we want to change it, we wanna find ideas for improvement, and then we wanna support the transformation afterwards. So in the first step, you would ask the employees working in that process about their stories and their experiences within this process. This is what Astrid called micro-narratives.
So creating these mini stories of the people and then use specific follow up questions to understand the meaning of the stories and experiences. So this is what she called meaning questions. And I’ll give you an example of these questions in a minute. So, and then based on the learnings of the stories and the answers to the meaning questions, you can transfer these into data, like the values, the attitudes or motivations of the people. And these then can be analyzed, you can identify patterns and yeah, for example, understand dependencies between different aspects in the process. And based on this, you can then define measures like publishing the results, go deeper into it, create recommendations, and so on. And with regards to processes for sure, you can recommend process improvements, use that for trainings and so on. So these are the different steps I would say of the storylistening approach to get more emotional ideas on, on a process, for example.
And I would like to give you more examples on what these follow up questions or meaning questions are. So basically they try to, yeah, identify, understand the feelings of the people in that situation. So for example, if they tell you about the process and their experiences, you can specifically ask them, how did you feel in this situation? And then you can write down their answers and interpret that data like, I felt inspired, I was happy, I was angry, I feel appreciated, I was frustrated, whatever. So if you ask more and more people, you understand how they feel right now in that process. You could also use other questions like which aspects had the biggest impact to that feeling in that situation? And what are the consequences based on that feeling for the future? Do they influence your further behavior or not? Like just asking that on a scale from no to very high, for example, whatever the, the research question is in detail you would like to know there.
And she gave some cool examples and I tried to put that into an article as well later on to give you more ideas on how that approach, and especially these meaning questions work. So maybe that helps to understand how to get to more emotions there. And now my question was how can I apply this to processes? And there I would recommend, for example, in a process modeling session, or when you try to understand in a design workshop how a process looks like to ask the employees for their stories and experiences. So to really understand not only the technical flow of the process, but also which kind of stories the people had and what they experienced there. And then use these meaning questions such as how did you feel in that situation to learn more about the emotions. And then these results, I would say could be used to identify ideas to improve the process.
The results could be used for the communication. So you could basically use the stories of the people for the communication, for the change story, for example, or put that into trainings as well. And also use the the learnings on the different feelings and so on to prepare trainings and communication which really fits to the needs of the employees. And yeah, just to support this transformational, this change process to get more meaningful, more human-centric processes in the end. So that’s why I find it really interesting what you told us about this storylistening approach. And maybe it’s a way to rethink process modeling as well, to get even more value, to get to more emotions and so on. And this finally leads to her three recommendations, which I would like to pick up to close the recap today. So her first recommendation was to listen attentively instead of questioning.
And I would say that is one of the most important advices to process modelers, to really listen to what the people are saying. Sure, ask the right questions, but then listen, just listen to what the people are saying. And then in a second step or her second advice was to understand that the narrators, the experts, or I would say the the process modeling session participants, only them have the authority to interpre. And this is what I often experience myself, that when I’m in the process modeling session, for example, interpret what the participants are saying and try to put that into words already or into pictures to make a proposal. That often helps to speed up the modeling process. But I would say to get to more authentic, more emotional process is just be quiet and just ask the question, what’s next activity? How do I do that?
Can you please put that into words? Can you describe how to execute this or that activity? Instead of just typing that in what you think is the way of how it should be done. So only the narrators, the employees, the experts have the authority to interpret was very inspiring for me. And finally, what I also think is very important, especially in this new process world, to give inspiring data with emotions, at least the same importance as pure facts and figures. And this is what I personally often miss in process modeling sessions. I’m very focused on the technical details of the process and there I often miss the emotions. So that’s why I try to ask more questions in the future, like, how did you feel in that situation? Just to understand how the people perceive executing specific processes. That’s super cool. So that’s it for the recap today, just to give you an outlook, right now, I’m more or less producing the episodes just in time. There are more tool interviews coming up. So this series is still not coming to an end. And I love to have some other interesting tools. There are bigger and smaller ones as well. So there are interviews coming and also some very interesting experts are on my guest list for the next episodes. So stay tuned! Thank you much for listening today. Have a great day. Bye-Bye. And auf Wiedersehen!
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Okay. Before you leave, if you found this episode inspiring, it would be super cool if you just share it with one of your fellow process modelers. So maybe they can also benefit from the inspirations from this episode. Thank you very much. Bye-Bye.
