State of New Process 2024
#052 Let’s recap New Process after 2 years and give an outlook on the upcoming episodes.
In this solo episode, I’m reflecting on the current State of New Process in 2024 after two years of the New Process Podcast. So much has happened in that time, and there have been fascinating episodes that have made the New Process Lifecycle more complete.
Let’s take a more comprehensive look at the lifecycle with all its phases and the New Process principles. And at the end, I will give you a preview of what will change in the future.
THANK YOU guys for listening to the podcast!
You’ll learn:
- Why New Process
- What the core of New Process is
- How to get New Process to life
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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.
Yeah, welcome to episode 52 of the New Process Podcast. Yeah, welcome to episode 52 of the New Process podcast. Today we are celebrating the second birthday of the podcast and I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on the current state of New Process in 2024 and to give you an outlook into the future of human-centric BPM. But first, as we are celebrating our second birthday, I also want to say thank you to all of you.
Without you, the listeners, the new process community, everything would be completely meaningless. So thank you so much for being part of this journey. If you are already a frequent listener, this episode will help you to bring all puzzle pieces together, and if you are new to the new process podcast, you can easily learn what new process is all about. In both cases, since you are listening to this episode, you must be super serious about BPM and you definitely belong to the forefront of the BPM development. So stay here to rethink processes. In this episode, basically, you’ll learn how to get people excited about processes, why new process, how to get people excited about processes, why new process, what the core of new process is, and how to get new process to life.
Yeah, it all starts with the answer to the question why? Why new process? You might know I love to talk about purpose. I talked about this in one of the first episodes exactly two years ago, together with Benjamin Rolf, and recently in the episodes with Julia von Winterfeld and Michael Burgler, and actually I just had a meeting where one of the participants asked Mirko, why are you doing all this?
Well, there are many layers to the answer. The first one, I would say, is my individual purpose. This is what I discovered, thanks to Julia von Winterfeld about three or four years ago and, to make a long story short, my individual purpose is creating inspiring experiences. So I really love bringing people together and create experiences that inspire the people. The second layer, then, is the purpose of newprocesslabcom. I just took my individual purpose creating inspiring experiences and combined this with my professional know-how, which I had. That’s how I created newprocesslabcom, and there the purpose is to inspire people to rethink processes.
For sure, there is also a process within newprocesslabcom. That’s the new process lifecycle, my process of process management, more or less the core of new process approach, and we’re going to talk about the process in the details in this episode. And there I developed a process purpose statement for my process of process management, and this process purpose statement is we empower people for the best individual contribution, to create human-centric processes that transform the organization’s purpose into reality. And I truly believe in this, in this transforming an organizational’s purpose into reality. So for me, a human-centric BPM framework is the perfect tool to do exactly this to transform an organization’s purpose into reality.
Yeah.Mirko: 3:59
I know purpose can be spooky and I already realized that not everyone is open to this rather emotional topic. But even every old school manager out there should be interested in making a strategy a reality. So if you don’t want to talk about purpose, I fully accept this. But let’s talk about strategy. That’s a necessity. No process without process strategy. So if you want to make a strategy become reality, then it’s super easy to use processes as a structured method to get there, to change the reality, to get this transformation to life. And what better way exists for a transformation like this, like having a structured approach that turns a strategy into reality, and this in a way that will get people excited, that will get people involved and that will people even make it their baby what they are working on. So that’s why I’m fighting for a human-centric BPM approach, and this is called new process. But what does this new process approach really look like? So the core of the approach are the new process principles. Actually, there is a whole new process podcast episodes on the principles. So if you are interested to learn more, just listen to episode two of the new process podcast by going to newprocesslabcom slash episode two. You know that’s super easy. There you can really deep dive into the new process principles. For today, just a brief recap of what the principles are. So there are eight in total. The first one is to inspire people for processes. So whatever we are doing as the ones who are working on processes or providing processes to an organization, we have to act as role models and we have to inspire the people for processes. That’s so important. Then, second one is to involve the people who are working in the processes into the work on the process. Third one is to trust the people who are working in the process and then to enable the people as fourth principle. Fifth is to meet people’s needs. So to really have a look onto what do the people need, for example, with regards to space tools, communication and so on. And sixth new process principle is to encourage diversity. I really love to talk about diversity. I really love to talk about diversity. Instead of seeing diversity as a hurdle for standardization, you have to see it as a benefit to have all the different cultures, different types of people in a process and push process diversity ahead.
Yeah, seven’s new process principle is to disrupt established processes, to really question established patterns and think about how to do it in a different way, and this is something you have to tell the people, that they are allowed to break patterns. And finally, the eighth principle is to give meaning to processes, to work out what the why of a process is. Why do we have this process and how does this process contribute to the overall purpose of the organization? So these are basically the eight principles. And now the question is how can we bring these principles to life? And the answer is so super simple it’s just by making it a process right. So that’s why I invented the new process lifecycle, which is my process of process management, and this process consists of seven phases. You can look it up on newprocesslabcom, you will find it there in the toolbox, or you can also find it on New Process Pro in the community. But just to give you a rough idea, basically it’s a lifecycle consisting of these seven phases.
The first phase is to define the process purpose. So think about what is the purpose of this specific business process, and the business process itself could also be the process of process management for your organization. So you can apply it to all kinds of processes, even for the process management process. So first think about the process purpose and I’ll walk you through these phases afterwards, but just as an overview. After defining the process purpose, the second phase is to develop the process strategy. So how can we as a process contribute to the overall organizational strategy and what does this specifically mean for this business process? How should our process strategy look like?
And then, third phase is to design the process. Now that’s the creative part, where you can innovate, where you can really rethink your existing process. That’s why you can use post-its on the wall. Just be as creative as necessary, because then in phase four, we’re going to model the process. Bring it into the notation Everybody knows in your organization, so which is easy to understand. Put it into the tool, make sure that the process owner approves the process, check for conformity. And then in phase five, we’re going to implement the process. So we’re going to create all the prerequisites to execute the process in the reality, for example, train the people, create the necessary infrastructure or build up the organization which is necessary to run the process afterwards. So that’s the implementation phase and it’s not just sending out an email, please.
Then we reach phase six, which is steer process execution. That’s where you’re using indicators which were hopefully already defined within strategy and design phase to control your process, to steer the execution at the different locations, for example, your process to steer the execution at the different locations, for example. And then we go back to first phase and recheck the process purpose. And within this lifecycle consisting of the six phases, there is one smaller integrated lifecycle in the execution phase. So there is a seventh phase to improve process execution at the different locations, for example, and this is more or less Lean Kaizen, six Sigma there to make sure that a process, a given process design, is executed in the best way at a specific location. And then all the cool ideas flow back into the overall lifecycle. So that’s why it’s an integrated lifecycle flow back into the overall life cycle. So that’s why it’s an integrated life cycle.
And, as I said, just go to newproslabcom, go to the toolbox and have a look at the picture I’m talking about. But now I’m going to walk you through all these seven phases Just quickly, don’t be afraid. I try to keep it as practical as possible. The first phase is to define process purpose and, as I said, I talk a lot about purpose. For me, defining process purpose is more or less a super weapon to inspire people for a specific business process or a BPM in general. So giving meaning to processes provides guidance through the whole BPM life cycle. If you know the purpose of a process in the beginning, you can always refer to it. So knowing the purpose of a process creates a sense of unity in the process community and even the procedure to define a process purpose is real experience for all the participants involved.
So, to define a process purpose, we look at the outside and the inside of a process. There is a template which you can use process purpose canvas, but I just try to summarize it Looking at a process from these two different perspectives. So, from an outside perspective, you’ll have to best case, together with the people, just a representative sample of the people working in and on your process and workshop, you have to talk about what is the organization’s purpose, what is the purpose of the organization we are working in? That’s the first thing. Often, organizational purpose is not defined, but what I can recommend to you is to discuss this question with the people. What could be our organizational purpose on an emotional level, yeah. And then the second part is to talk about the organizational strategy. What is the strategy of our company, for example, or of the area of our company we are working in? And then, finally, the third part you have to talk about regarding the outside perspective is what are the stakeholders and their needs? So, starting for sure with the customers of the process, what do they need? But you can also think about management, the employees working of the process, what do they need? But you can also think about management, the employees working in the process, suppliers or even society. So if you are working in a process which is visible to the outside world as well, you can also think about what are the needs of the society. You put all this together on the wall, on small post-its, just to get an overview. It’s like a big puzzle. That’s the outside perspective. To learn more about your process, your process community, and then we are looking into your process, into your process community, and there first we talk about what are the values and behaviors of the process community, and there first we talk about what are the values and behaviors of the process community, of the people in the workshop, of the people who are working in and on your process. So it’s super interesting to talk about what are our values, how do we behave, what are the rules that we already have, and so on, to get a better understanding of how does the process community look like from a more emotional based perspective. Then second is to talk about what is our superpower. So that’s more the technical view on what you are doing as a process community. What is your superpower? And then, finally, what do we want to give back to our stakeholders, want to give back to the world? So, best case, this matches the needs of the stakeholders we talked about in the outside perspective and, as I said, normally this is done in a workshop format with a representative sample of people from your process community and, after talking about these six areas, you can start to develop an emotional process purpose statement, and it’s just a sentence that brings all these puzzle pieces together, like how do you contribute to the purpose, to the strategy of the organization to serve the customer needs, taking account your values and behaviors, your superpower and what you want to give back to the world? So sounds spooky. For sure it is weird to talk about process purpose if you’re coming from a more technical world, but just give it a try and if you’re interested in learning more, I’ll tell you later in this episode what to do Then.
Second phase is to develop process strategy. So, as I learned in the podcast with Lars Linekogel, strategy is just a plan to get from A to B. So to get from where you are to where you want to be, and from a human-centric perspective, it is so important to inspire your people about B. So where do you want to go to, and I could talk about technical aspects of developing a process strategy which contributes to the process purpose as well as to the organizational strategy, but this is not what I would like to do today. For me, from a human-centric perspective, it’s super important that you create this common understanding of your target picture. So there, one of the recommendations of Lars was to paint this picture really in a drawing how does the future look like in about five to ten years? So, in your strategy horizon, how does this picture look like? Or another option would be to tell a story, how the future would look like. So use this to inspire the people for B, so for your future state, where you want to go to, and then, based on this, you can design the process in the next phase.
But if you want to learn more about how to develop a process strategy and how to take all these human-centric aspects into account, I can recommend you to listen to episode 20 of the New Process Podcast with Lars Linde Kogel, a real strategy expert. If you want to go there, just go to newprocesslabcom, slash episode 20. Then, after developing the process strategy, you can start to design your process. So, simply said, you’re going to design a process to get from A to B? Yeah, a process that contributes to your strategy.
As I said, this is the creative part.
Here you can innovate, you can disrupt established patterns and, from a human-centric perspective, it is important to design processes that guarantee the freedom to make independent decisions to the people.
So there you know. You maybe know, my favorite example is a classical SAP purchasing process. So, looking back into my own experiences, whenever I wanted to purchase something, I had to get the approval first by my line manager and then in the second step, by the purchasing, and in the third step, I need to get the approval by the controlling to finally just purchase I don’t know material which was necessary for an event we were planning. Something like that, and what I recommend here is to think about how to take out these control steps of the processes, just by providing the necessary information to the people to create transparency so that they are in a situation where each and every employee can make an independent decision, because the person is informed about the situation, knows about the budget, about the financial situation and so on. So that’s something I recommend for designing processes to design processes that guarantee the freedom to make independent decisions. Finally, we’re going to model the process in the next step.
Mirko: 20:00
I really love process modeling. I could talk about that for hours. For me, modeling is more like an art. You know, the people who model their process are creating real artwork. They’re a masterpiece.Mirko: 20:15
And it’s so important to have this common picture of a process, the common understanding of a process. If you create a process model which is easy to understand, it’s so powerful to have this tool. Suddenly, a vague process gets visible and you can use this picture to discuss the process with the people, with other people, and that’s why it’s so essential to me to map a process, not for the sake of mapping processes, no, to create a common picture, a common understanding, for sure in a simple language, a language, a notation that is easily understood by all employees. And you know that’s the reason why I’m not a fan of complex BPM tools for experts and not a fan of complex BPM and 2.0 models. To develop and share this common picture, this common understanding, you need an easy to use tool with a super simple notation everybody understands intuitively. Finally, there are a few BPM tool vendors out there who start to understand this approach and there are some promising features out there, but the human-centric BPM tool, I’m sorry, is still missing. So I’m still challenging the BPM vendors to think about that, to get more to a human-centric perspective, to really focus on the end user, not on the experts. So for the moment, we have to simplify what we have and push vendors even more into that direction. Let’s see where this will really lead us to. Yeah, that’s about model process, and then we can implement the process in the next phase, and there it’s not just sending out an email or even just a system message about a new process.
Think about formats to inspire and enable your people for your process, for a specific business process or just for processes in general. So my favorite approach here to inspire people and enable people for processes is to gamify your process, and my favorite example is the pizza game. Yeah, I’m not sure if we’re going to create a real product out of that which you can buy and play on your own in your organization, but I played that a lot with my customers and to give you an idea of how the pizza game looks like, what we are doing in this simulation is we just hand out a process model on how to make pizza to the participants. You play it with eight people minimum, so they get a process description in a simple notation including detailed descriptions of the activities, and then you give the people some minutes to make themselves familiar with the process. You also hand out the material like post-its, pens, scissors and so on, and then they get some minutes to organize themselves around the table and then the customer orders and the game starts. As soon as the time is over, the indicators will be measured and you can immediately see if you were successful or not. So in the smallest version, the participants play three rounds. In the first round, they learn how to work according process documentation. Second is they learn how to improve process execution, and in the third round how to improve process design, and they also learn about process management roles and so on. But most important is they have fun and they really experience how processes can help them. And playing this game is a lot of fun and creates a perfect basis for a process journey of an organization. So think about ways to gamify your process to inspire and enable the people To learn more.
I can recommend you to listen to episode 16 with Jasmine Caritas on how to gamify your process. To do this, just go to newprocesslabcom, slash episode 16. And then we can go to steer process execution phase and then we can go to steer process execution phase, and there the standard is just using indicators to steer your process. Indicators are already defined in the strategy or design phase and then just have a look onto these and evaluate and so on. But that’s just one option. What I would recommend to you is to bring your people together to really experience the community and that’s what I really like and to do this. Yeah, when you bring the people together, you can share, for example, the process purpose. In this meeting, you can explain process changes, you can ask the people to get feedback on your process, your process design, you can talk about process performance for sure, you can identify best practices and you can develop the process improvements together. So that’s just an idea on how to steer process execution. Bring the people together at a physical location or even an online session on a regular basis. I would always recommend to have a two-days event to spend some more social time together. So that’s, from a human centric perspective, my recommendation to steer process execution.
And then, as I told you, there is this integrated life cycle phase to improve process execution. That’s where typically lean kaizen, six sigma methods are used. From a human-centric perspective, you should aim for improving the cooperation of the people working in your process. So, and this in three areas. First, with regards to space, so looking at a specific process, just an example when are the roles located executing this process? So the roles working closely together should also sit together with regards to space, so maybe just in one office. So have a look at where are the people working and ask them for their needs and try to find ways to improve cooperation. Second would be tools. Look at the tools they are using to work in a process. How could you improve this working in a process with the tools they are using? Or infrastructure also could be something you could optimize. And finally, the third dimension is communication. How do the people communicate working in a process? Do they have specific meetings, regular meetings to exchange about the process, and so on? So think about how to improve the cooperation of the people working in your process, and that’s a real game changer, taking people’s needs into account.
And then repeat, just begin again with the lifecycle from time to time to check process purpose, check process strategy and so on. Yeah, to bring this to life. For sure, there are BPM roles in the new process lifecycle, like the process owner, the process architect. So these are the people you have to inspire and enable to get this new process lifecycle to life. There are also communication flows defined between these roles to make sure that decisions are made on specific levels, and so on.Mirko: 28:37
If you want to learn more about this, I just talked to a process architect, lars Müller, in the last episode. So just go one episode back to get a more practical example of how the life of a process architect looks like. Yeah, but if you are interested in learning more about these roles, you can also go to newprocesslabcom and have a look into the toolbox. There is a nice description of the roles and how they interact with each other. So now you know about new process principles, new process lifecycle. You know about the roles, but how can you start? And there the answer is super simple Just check where you are.
So is the purpose of your process defined? And when I talk about process, it can be just a specific business process or even the process of process management you’re providing to the whole organization. Is the purpose of your process defined? Is the process strategy defined? Does the process design support your process strategy? Is your process modeled? Is the process properly implemented? Do you have a process steering in place and has the process execution already been improved?
These are the questions you have to ask, and then start with the first one. So maybe start with thinking about process purpose or defining a process strategy. And now the question is what is your next action? Just take a few seconds to think about this, and now it is time to create accountability. So, therefore, I’m offering you something really special. I’m offering you to send you a reminder straight to your inbox and I’m even offering you to follow up with you to make sure that you really take action. So, what is your next action to push your process to the next level? If you like to just go to newprocesslabcom slash next action and make your choice, then we’re going to create real accountability. You can think about what is your next action and I’ll send you an email and I’ll follow up. So just go to newprocessabcom slash next action.
Yeah, whatever your next action is, you have to make sure to do the following yeah, you have to make sure to become visible visible to your organization. That’s super important. Then you have to make sure to create transparency about what you are going to do. So you have to tell the people. We are now going to think about our process strategy and you have to invite your process community to participate. It’s important, for sure, you cannot invite a thousand people, but there are ways to find a good sample you can offer them instead of just being online or on site. In a workshop, the people can have a look at the results and can comment on the results to contribute their ideas, or they can just follow on the results to contribute their ideas, or they can just follow. So there are different ways to make sure to take all perspectives into account and also use the diversity of your process community. So, when creating the sample, just make sure that all the different locations are represented, the different roles, different cultures and so on. And, most important, share your own excitement. Why are you working on this? And try to create inspiring experiences for the people being part of your next action the workshop to develop process purpose strategy, map, process, whatever this is. So that’s super important. So if you want to go this journey together with me, start it. Just go to newprocesslabcom.
Slash next action yeah, if you want to learn more about how to get people excited about processes, I can also recommend a super interesting podcast episode to you with Caroline Junge on how to use branding and storytelling to inspire people for processes. That’s episode 43. So you can go to newfrazzellabcom slash episode 43 to listen to the interview with Caroline Junge and to get more ideas on how to share your own excitement and how to create inspiring experiences for the people. Yeah, that is the state of new process in 2024. For me, the best tool for transformation ever. So it’s a structured approach to bring a strategy or even a purpose to life, to create a common understanding and to get people excited. Actually, it was super helpful for me to create the script of this episode, to sort out my thoughts and to get a clear vision for the next steps. To sort out my thoughts and to get a clear vision for the next steps.
That is why you will notice some changes in new process podcast in the future. So there might be changes in the types of the interviews as well as in the flight plan of the episodes. So if you have ideas for improving the new process Podcast, I’d like to get your feedback. Therefore, I prepared a short survey. You can reach there by going to newprocesslabcom feedback, and I’m also not going to stick to the biweekly schedule anymore, just for the sake of sticking to a biweekly schedule.
Yeah, consistency is important of sticking to a bi-weekly schedule. Yeah, consistency is important. But if a new episode is released every second week, there is not really enough time to prepare all the learnings in an appropriate way. So in the future there might be fewer episodes, but I will publish at least one real deep dive episode every month. Could be more, but at least one episode per month.
And this episode will not just be an episode of the New Process Podcast. It will be accompanied by other formats, such as think tanks, online sessions where we can meet and talk about the topic, and even live sessions with the respective guests on New Process Pro. So if you are not yet a member of New Process Pro, you just have to. New Process Pro is my community for BPM enthusiasts like you and me, and at New Process Pro you will meet other BPM enthusiasts. You can get access to tools, methods, best practices. I’m still working on that. I’m going to add more and more tools along the new process lifecycle to New ProcessPro, and you can participate in online offline workshops and deep dive sessions.
So let’s get people excited about processes together. I’m really serious about getting people excited about processes. So I even founded a corporation to set the right frame for the future. It is called MKBurg Process Experiences, with a mission to inspire people for processes. The idea is to support process owners and architects to get people excited about their specific business process and to push it to the next level. Or to support people being accountable for the operation of a BPM system in an organization to implement a human-centric BPM framework that inspires and enables their organization for process. And even I’m going to support tool vendors to get to a more human-centric BPM tool. So if you think I can help, you feel free to reach out to me. In the next episode we’ll deep dive into the topic of BPM culture. Actually, I nearly died when this topic was born, but I’ll tell you more about this in the next episode. For now, thank you much for listening. Have a great day. Bye-bye and auf Wiedersehen.
As I said, what is your next action? So what are you going as a next step to push your process to the next level? If you want to be part of this journey, then just go to newproslabcom slash next action and let’s do this journey together. I’ll follow up, definitely take you accountable on your next step. So just go to newproslabcom slash nextaction. Have a great day, bye-bye.
