2 BPM Nerds on Tools, AI & Humans with Martin Holling
#055 Just two BPM nerds talking about nerdy BPM stuff
In this episode, I’m talking to Martin Holling again. We discuss about current BPM topics such as the implementation of AI, what’s happened at KEMNA BAU since our last conversation over a year ago, which tools have made which improvements, which human-centric methods we’ve come across recently, and so on.
Today’s Guests:
Martin Holling
Martin is one of the New Process Podcast listeners who have listened to every single episode and he is a real BPM enthusiast. He has been working for Siemens in various Process Management positions in Siemens’ Energy sector for nearly 20 years. During that time, he developed and implemented a BPM framework that covered a lot of the New Process Principles.
After leaving Siemens, he worked as a Senior BPM Consultant for four years. Today, he is Head of Process Management at KEMNA BAU, one of the largest road construction companies and street infrastructure providers in Germany.
In parallel, he is offering his experience as a self-employed management consultant at living-processes.de.
As much as time besides work and his family – he is married and has 3 daughters – allows, he is singing in a local choir and restoring a classic car together with his brother.
You’ll learn:
- What Martin’s highlights have been since the last recording about a year ago
- What our observations on the latest developments in the BPM tool market are
- What we think about AI and BPM from a human-centric perspective
- What interesting new methods we see to rethink processes
- And a lot of other nerdy BPM stuff
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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: 0:19
Yeah, welcome to episode 55 of the New Process Podcast. Welcome to episode 55 of the New Process Podcast. Today it will be another nerdy episode with Martin Holling on BPM tools, ai and human aspects. You may know Martin already from episode 34, where we reviewed all the tool interviews, as well as from episode 37, where we two BPM nerds talked about feelings, roles and standardization. Martin is not only the guest who has been on the New Process podcast the most, but Martin is one of the New Process podcast listeners who have listened to every single episode, so thank you so much for this. I skipped the rest of his bio here because Martin will introduce himself at the beginning of the interview, so in this episode you’ll learn what Martin’s highlights have been since last recording about a year ago, what our observations on the latest developments in the BPM tool market are, what we think about AI and BPM from a human-centric perspective, what interesting new methods we see to rethink processes and, for sure, a lot of other nerdy BPM stuff. So enjoy the interview with Martin Holling.
Mirko: 1:38
Yeah, welcome to New Process Podcast Martin.
Martin: 1:41
Hi, yeah, welcome back.
Mirko: 1:43
Yeah, exactly, welcome for the third time, so that’s super cool. I’m really looking forward to this update. I already introduced you in the introduction of this podcast episode, but for those who don’t know you maybe there are some people out there who don’t know you- it may be because it happened a lot in the last year.
Martin: 2:02
So our last podcast was close to a year ago when we met last time, and for sure we met outside the podcast several times. Maybe those from the area know that we are running a nice Stammtisch together since the year already Exactly. And, yeah, actually, those who don’t know me, yes, my name is Martin Martin Holling. I’m currently the head of process management of a midsize road construction company in northern Germany, chemnabau. I’m also visible a little bit in LinkedIn and surrounding discussion rounds on process management as well, so you can also find me there and from my background.Martin: 2:50
I have been working in process management, business process management, for the last close to 25 years, since my studies of industrial engineering, where I also did write my diploma thesis on business process management.
Martin: 3:04
It was mainly unknown at that time at the end of the 90s. It was a really, really nerdy, expert-y thing at that time inside the quality management part. Yeah, since then, process management, especially business process management, has come a far way, moved more and more into the IT area, very much to my disgrace, I would say I do not really support the IT side of it. I’m the quality guy, I’m the culture guy. Maybe you can see that and this is why it’s also interesting in being in podcasts like this where a lot of IT nerds are joining and looking on the IT side of BPM, where I’m more looking on the people side, on the quality side, on the cultural side of BPM. I think that’s also the reason why I have chosen to be head of process management for ChemNavVal about one year, eight, nine months ago. So were they looking for a BPM nerd? No, they weren’t. They were looking for somebody who could foster the culture of change and process management and really bring.
Martin: 4:14
They told me when I started. They told me they want to implement the Chemna way of working. So nobody was thinking about we need to have a tool, we need to have something tool, we need to have something robotic and process mining yeah, well, actually it’s a very conservative, uh, more than 160 year old business road constructions, a lot of handwork, crafting. It’s a dirty job right out there and they are not thinking in process as it function, but in process as. How do we work together as people? How can we foster a good culture to work together and to improve? So the continuous improvement of processes is much more important than automating or mining the process, especially when you are doing all this handwork. There is not much data to mine.
Mirko: 5:09
Yeah.
Martin: 5:10
So when we came back from our summer vacation this time I watched out and I saw several Chemna signs yes, autobahn, but there was no process description there at all, so the people were just working Process description is not useful for the drivers for car, for the users of the autobahn, it’s more useful for the people that you hopefully have also seen on the construction sites, because that’s when, when I started in camden, I figured something out.
Martin: 5:40
I’m now looking at road construction sites totally different from what I did in the past, because I always see all the processes behind that and I can directly recognize how good the road construction company has their processes in their hands when I look at their construction sites. So it’s really interesting and there are especially in northern Germany, in Schleswig-Holstein and all Hamburg area and also Lower Saxony just south of Hamburg. Just yesterday I drove through a Chemna construction site on the A7, just south of Hamburg. So there are a lot of construction sites at the main roads in northern Germany right now and we were in television this evening also in the local Schleswig-Holstein television, broadcasting from the road construction in Flensburg-Osttangente, so a big, big city road for the main traffic in Flensburg, for the eastern side, so in the most northern city of Germany, and you could see our equipment and our logo, our company sign, on the equipment in the television broadcasting. So it’s also nice sometimes.
Mirko: 6:53
So next year there will be a camera powered by BPM, something like that right, yeah, maybe Since we talked last year. What happened in between? So what were the highlights that you had?
Martin: 7:06
yeah, actually highlights was, as I just started that job beginning of last year. So the highlights in the year that that that is now passed since our last podcast is that we have implemented the first real process improvements. We’ll be getting visible for all those 75 locations we are having, because that’s exactly one of the problems we are having. We are a mid-sized company, a little bit more than 2,000 people working for Chemna, but we are split up into around 75 locations in all over the northern half of Germany and all over the northern half of Germany, so it’s not so easy to keep them aligned and let them do the same kind of work, the same process. And once you really are implementing a process across the locations and people start to recognize the improvement, that’s a real good thing. So we did do some of the quarterly data reporting processes in a way for sure.
Martin: 8:10
Reporting for so many locations is important to get the business together. So we improved the quarterly data reporting process over the last half year. That was a big success and a huge visible point for process management in the whole company as well as other more administrative processes that we were improving over the time. So process management has become visible in Chemna over the last year. That’s the main the huge highlight, I think, for me, for process management in Chemna that we did in the last year. That’s the main the huge highlight I think for for me, for process management in chem now that we did in the last year and there is some things to come. So we did discuss a lot about bpm tools in your podcast, because that was one of the reasons why we did do the podcast together to evaluate different tools, and chem still doesn’t have a BPM tool implemented, for a good reason.
Martin: 9:08
I’m absolutely confident that this is really good to not think about tools first. That’s always my credo Look at the processes and look at how we are running our processes, how we are improving our processes, how we are documenting them, how we are improving our processes, how we are documenting them, how we are improving them in the documentation. And once we are fine and we have a strategy and a continuous improvement process for our process management in place, then we can think about a tool that will help us. So for the time being, I’m not really speeding this process to select a tool up, despite of the fact and this is why I’m really looking forward for tomorrow’s QWiki Stammtisch here in Hamburg that we are looking for a QMS tool.
Martin: 9:55
Yeah that’s cool and because our QMS is kind of 25 years old and not really suiting the purpose anymore and we need to do something. And sure, I’m involved in although I’m not directly connected to the quality management, but I’m involved in the tool selection and my proposal for sure is okay when we’re doing changing a qms tool for our company, we are selecting one that we can easily upgrade to BPM. So that’s the purpose of me being in that tool selection process and that’s also why I’m really looking forward because, due to our different tool discussions and argumentation we had about what’s the benefits and what’s the upsides and downsides of the different tools that we have seen, I have a pretty good view on what can be a BPS-suitable quality management system.
Mirko: 10:55
Yeah, that’s super cool. I’m a huge fan of integrated, process-oriented management systems.
Martin: 11:01
Actually, right now we do not even have integrated management systems really saying really. We have a health and safety management system, we have an energy management system, we have a compliance management system, we have a quality management system and we have an environmental management system so five. And that’s not the way it works, because the backbone of those management systems is more or less always the same and when you integrate those, you have one system that you can use for five different purposes, and that’s a good thing. And that, for sure, is the idea we are following, together with then using BPM for the combination of the management systems and using a system tool that can also implement BPM.
Mirko: 11:49
Yeah, and for the employees it’s so easy just to look into one system best case processes and just do what is described in the processes, without thinking about all the different disciplines of laws and norm standards which have to be applied.
Martin: 12:06
As me, coming from the employee viewpoint of this, it is most important that I understand how I’m supposed to work and do not have to think about okay, how am I supposed to work in terms of environmental friendly? How am I supposed to work in terms of health and security? How am I supposed to work to save energy or whatsoever? Or how am I supposed to work in terms of health and security? How am I supposed to work to save energy or whatsoever? Or how am I supposed to work? Very important to stay compliant to any rule, regulation, and we are only having the governmental customers so to say so. For us, compliance is one of the most crucial things, because once BlackBerry is somewhere, it will be very hard for us to get any new orders, so we have to be very careful on compliance issues.
Mirko: 12:49
Yeah, absolutely, and it’s really surprising that in the QMS world, where vendors are producing quality management software to manage quality in an organization, this is often not process-oriented up to now, that’s surprising right?
Martin: 13:08
Yes, actually I have been in contact before I came to Chemnup, so years before, in my times as a consultant, I have been in contact with several QMS tool vendors and asked them about how they integrate the processes, and they were not able to tell me they were only document focused and I said, okay, that’s only half of the life, not even it’s only the backbone of having something to survive an audit and to achieve a certification. That’s not helping you in the day-to-day work. So what are you doing with the day-to-day work? So what am I, are you doing with the day-to-day processes? And just blank, scary looks and nobody really could give me an answer.
Martin: 13:51
Really good, uh, caq or other now computer added quality or other quality management tools that that were really sophisticated, highly sophisticated, but were not really able to integrate processes. So then I went that was when we met and got into contact I went to look for BPM tools that could implement quality management system, and even there it’s rarely always there. So some are really integrating it, but a lot of them are more focused on process automation, on process mining, on all these IT stuff, and for them quality management is always hindering them in their freedom of work and, that’s for sure, also the other side that is not helping the business, because the business has to somehow integrate both.
Mirko: 14:44
Absolutely, and there is a lot going on on the tool market right now. So end of last year, I think in November, celonis bought Symbio.
Martin: 14:53
Yeah, Fun fact I have been working as a consultant for a company that had both Symbio and Celonis implemented and we were really really struggling in the interface between Celonis and Symbio and Solonis implemented and we were really really struggling in the interface between Solonis and Symbio. So we had Solonis process mining documents, process mining processes, so that we were not able to directly integrate into Symbio and Solonis was not able to just read out the process description out of Symbio to adapt it with the process description out of Symbio to adapt it with the process mining results. So they were working on that interface and maybe due to the fact that they had to work so hard on that interface, in the end they said OK, why not join forces?
Mirko: 15:37
Yeah, exactly, and I think they are going to fix this and I also heard some other things about that, what they are working on and, as I already said in the past, so the symbiote front end looks pretty good.
Martin: 15:51
The new one yeah, actually I was not really fond of the old one, but the new one looks good, that’s right yeah, exactly so, but I heard they’re working on that, so that that’s good news.
Martin: 16:02
I yeah actually I like it when they join forces, when they start to think about how can we integrate different topics like mining, automation, modeling, whatsoever but please don’t forget the quality part, the cultural part, the people part, in there. They are always looking too much into the IT side of it, so I know it’s much more tricky and it’s fuzzy and it’s not so easy to program all this kind of stuff, but still it’s, I would say, at least half of the business. Yeah, More things were happening, very, very nice path, but they need funds to grow because it’s really great. But I think they are right now on the border of not small business anymore. But really, if you really want to do something, you need to put money into that business. And I think they’re on the right path because they are looking in how the people are really working and then bringing this into a process model and then thinking about whatever automation mining whatever.
Martin: 17:29
So they’re coming from the right side. They’re coming from the real world and not from the IT world.
Mirko: 17:36
Yeah, so true. And lately I read that ShiftX, who has been on the podcast beginning of this year, also announced that they are going to join. I never heard about that company, Adoc. Yes, I read about that. I was in contact with ShiftX as well, but I also don’t know the other one. Yeah, so they are enterprise architecture platform and they are joining forces, which for sure also makes sense. So there is a lot moving right now there is a lot of movement.
Martin: 18:08
Yeah, actually, also, what I what I really, uh, found very interesting and was the development of iGraphics, because from my past I know iGraphics is more or less was a little bit, a little bit more sophisticated than visio. So it was a graphic program, a drawing program, and right now, with the I graphics 360, they are really going into all directions with mining, with ai, all this kind of stuff. So it’s also a big progress out there and I think it’s it’s the interesting thing in the industry me being so long in this business and seeing all this, looking at the old days where process tools were only used to draw a process, to create a workflow diagram, and nothing else Also one of the reasons why BPM was so uninteresting in the 2010 years, so to say, and just now, with all the process mining, robotic process automation and AI, all this kind of developments on the technology side, on the IT side, really boosted the idea of BPM again, and that’s nice. So I’m not condemning them and saying I don’t need it. It’s really good because this brings BPM on the table again, where it was kind of forgotten before. It stepped up and technology really gave us possibilities that were not there in the 90s and 2000s years and at that time time we would have loved to do this.
Martin: 19:43
I know that in 2008, 2009, that a company came around the corner it’s not existing anymore and wanted to present me a process simulation. They said, oh yeah, it would be great, but nobody was was on the on the idea yet that a digital twin is the perfect idea of simulating a process. So they were not going into the direction of AI and digital twin and all this kind of stuff, but they kind of tried to simulate with a I don’t really know anymore, with a kind of software, a process that you give to them, and the idea was not bad, but at that time the technological solution was not capable of doing this. So to simulate a very simple process that you could easily describe and document and model within half an hour, it took you two days and that was, for sure, not at all competitive. They were lacking the technology at that time. Now the technology is there.
Martin: 20:51
Everybody’s talking about the digital twins and this is really great. In my mind, I’m looking into the direction of maybe one day with virtual reality, I just walk into my process, into the digital twin of my process, and do all my work, all my actual work, with that I can do digitally, I do inside my process, by being in the process itself in the virtual reality, because that would really help me. It it’s like all this and the possibilities are kind of on the horizon. I would say All the technology is already there, it’s just the fact of combining it and we need to wait two or three more cycles of speed doubling in the IT to really have the process power, the processor power for really running the virtual reality in a way that you can just go in there.
Mirko: 21:47
Yeah.
Martin: 21:48
I think that’s something that comes and there are a lot of developments going there, like people doing process mining by just throwing a bunch of documents into a computer and the it itself comes up with a complete care management system with all documentation in there and that’s all in the direction of that. Or just going there and asking the virtual reality, asking the artificial intelligence on um. Describe my process.
Mirko: 22:21
This is what I do, just, uh, integrate it into the overall um process landscape of my company, which is this will be done yeah, a lot of vendors are investing into ai features at the moment, so what do you think about this, especially what they are doing right now? Like like using AI to create processes, but just giving a headline or a name of a process and then the AI generates process models.
Martin: 22:50
Yeah, actually, technology has to develop a little bit in that direction. No-transcript. But we have to be careful because the artificial intelligence I was discussing this with a friend of mine just yesterday still is not intelligent. Still is not intelligent. It’s just a huge, massive amount of data combined in the right way. There’s nothing new coming out of it. They are just only combining all the data they have.
Martin: 23:52
Looking at statistics of what really is very simple, they are statistically evaluating which is the next letter to put into this word. Yeah, that’s the basic idea, or the basic structure of how the large language models the artificial intelligence everybody’s talking about, like, like in chat, gpt or else is working and the result is a lot of hallucination. Wow. But when you look at things, you ask artificial intelligence to create a process for you and that’s great. They are hallucinating and up to the fact that they tell you that 2 and 2 plus 2 is 5, everything is possible, and you have to really, really take or be careful and take a good portion of work to evaluate the outcome. We are not yet there where we can say, okay, I just give a task to the AI and it comes back with a perfect solution. No, it will not work. There will be a lot of fascination and also something that, on my own, just tested a little bit. Just a little test.
Martin: 25:04
I was just saying, okay, there’s a lot of information about lean management in our world. There is even more information about business process management in our world. If you look at a good combination lean business process management it gets very, very thin. What you can seeGPT giving them the prompt input from my web page, where I have put lean management information and process management information, saying, okay, can you create a good article for me that combines lean management and process management into a lean business process management approach? How would that work? Plus, give me some source information. Where did you find this information? It was a nice article. Yeah, I could have read it my own without any research.
Martin: 26:15
For sure, because it was the basic ideas of lean, put in the same sentence with the basic ideas of BPM. Okay, yeah, but actually it was nothing really new and the sources that JetDVD put on top of that one was a pure hallucination. So names that didn’t exist, articles or books that didn’t exist, even like universities as kind of source that didn’t exist. And I was just very simple. You could just go into Google and put in the name and what comes out and there comes no information out of that one, or even maybe something that is not at all related to the topic that you were looking for and I was discussing with ChatGPT quite a bit was getting pretty angry until ChatGPT committed against me, saying okay, yeah, sure, yeah. Actually, this was only an example of how a source information could look like and you have to find your own sources yeah okay, so no, no scientific use for evaluating information, scientific information, scientific articles or or whatever is out there to combine them right.
Martin: 27:36
I was not looking for for an article of the business process management, because I know there are not so many articles out there combining it. I was looking of okay, I have combined these lean management sources and these BPM sources into some new information that works together. Maybe as a approach for lean process management didn’t work. So artificial intelligence today is nothing more but a huge amount of data that you cannot evaluate on your own and you need technology help to get the overview and to put things together. The only thing that can be useful for artificial intelligence is like if you are in a secure, close environment and you give all the information you have into this artificial intelligence, into this AI bot, and say, okay, put me all the information together in this structure that I want to have, Like, for example, this is all my documentation in our cloud. Create a document system management system for it. Create a quality management system out of it Whatsoever. Create all the process. Build me a process landscape of all this information I have in a closed environment just only for your company, right, Because the information that’s out there on the internet is too basic, too much into too many different directions.
Martin: 29:11
But if you are limiting the information to a pile of information, that still is huge, because we are talking about thousands of terabytes of data on even more just for our small company, Put all this in there. Nobody in our company has an overview of all the information we have in our company. Just think about a bigger corporation. I worked in much bigger corporations. We always saying, if our company only knew what our company knows. That’s the normal saying in big corporations and that’s where artificial intelligence can be helped to put all the information that is inside one company into a secure, closed environment and let AI sort it. Close environment and let AI sort it find all what is in there. Put it into a structural environment that you wanted to create whatsoever. That’s from my point of view. Today, with the technology we have today for artificial intelligence, that’s the basic, most interesting and best use case, I would say, for AI.
Mirko: 30:23
But even taking this as an example, you could use a process management system of one organization as a data source for AI, so that you can ask the AI how do I have to process I don’t know incoming goods, for example. And then hopefully it knows the process and summarizes or points you to the process.
Martin: 30:48
Yeah, actually you can do this. Today we’re asking chat, gpt, how would I best do? Goods received? Yeah, for sure, you get a process that is wonderful, wonderful, best described. All the documents you might need, all the forms you might need, even code for your, for your erp system you have to integrate or you would get that.
Mirko: 31:10
But it is just a random process, yeah, random yeah, exactly, I think it’s good for inspiration, but I would doubt that you could really rely. So one is you cannot really rely on that information, especially in an environment where you need certifications by an authority, like in aviation or energy or medical and so on. No chance. And then you just yeah, I worked according to what the AI said. No, no, no, this is not possible. That’s the one thing, and the other thing is this is not possible. That’s the one thing, and the other thing is, as you just said, it’s not my process.
Martin: 31:45
No, it’s a random process.
Mirko: 31:46
Yeah, exactly that’s what I’m really missing, because for me it’s so important to have this process of creating a process where people are sitting together and they are painting their picture of a process or typing a description of how it looks like.
Martin: 32:02
That’s exactly where the people and the culture comes into play. You will never find it, even if you only limit it to all the documentation you have in your own company. You will not find all the cultural topics. You will not find the people minds in there, so it is always missing something. Yeah, you can have as a even better example of how a process would look like instead of having a random process coming from the internet, you can put all your for example, you put all your data, all your documentation around procurement into the box and say no, please create me a goods received process out of that. All the how we are actually working, all the receipts you have, all the back and forth of whatsoever discussions you have. You can put that in there and you will get a little bit better random process that describes how goods received could work in your environment using the data that you have created in the past.
Martin: 33:07
It’s like process mining. You can always only look what you did in the past and then process mining says okay for the future. It tries to predict what is the best that you did in the past and that should be your future process. Um, yeah, still, still dismissing all the intelligence of okay, what is really better for us in our cultural situation, in specific ideas and as as I experienced sometimes, it’s very, very important to have the freedom of variance and process mining is always trying to aim for as little variance as possible. That will kill quality and culture in your business and it will for sure, reduce your standalone value to the economy, to the business and maybe even endanger your business success. Because your standalone what does your company make better than the competition is your standalone position in the business is your standalone position in the business, and this might be because you don’t have the random standard process running but you have your own culture inside your own process. You will never get that from artificial intelligence.
Mirko: 34:34
Yeah so, true, so that’s why it’s important to have a look onto the people. And you already mentioned all the change aspects, true, so that’s why it’s so important to have a look onto the people, right, and you already mentioned all the change aspects. In the latest episode, the episode before, we were talking about makers’ methodologies, yeah, and I know you also joined the deep dive session which we had live on New Process Pro with Martin and Tobias, with martin and tobias, and there we talked about building a physical artifact to experience a process, to walk through the process, for example, or to build an artifact which you can take into your hands and talk about, like this is the process we are talking about, also for administrative processes. So that would be super interesting to explore that more.
Mirko: 35:21
And and what do you think about this or what else came your way with regards to methods to get to more human centric bpm approach there during the last?
Martin: 35:32
year. Yeah, actually I experienced that people are very haptic yeah, uh, individuals. So, whatever you can, what you can touch, what you can grab, what you can feel with your hands, burns into your mind. Yeah, you will forget everything that somebody said to you if you’re not able to touch what you have experienced, and this is why I think the Makers, the, the makers lab, what they did was a real, real good approach and it reminded me of a lot of, especially, leadership workshops and leadership trainings that I did in my past careers, where we really were encouraged and and also forced you to, due to those leadership trainings, to do work on something, really create something with our hands and experience processes through creating something with our hands, and this is something that really helps bringing in new ideas, because there is the German word for learning called begreifen, to grab something, to understand it.
Martin: 36:46
Actually, this is missing in all the IT environment. Even in virtual reality or my ideas, you will never really be able to touch physically what you’re doing and what is the result of your work, and this will always be needed to complete the cultural aspect, the people aspect, in a process. So it’s really really important to combine IT automation, data mining, process mining and physical experience into a process workshop or whatsoever, to really come to an improvement and to really come to something that the people will, in the end, understand, implement, live and defend against whatever, because it’s their process. Yeah, and that’s when you have one, when you, when you achieve that, then then you’re done, then then everything is fine, because it starts also to be to get self-propelled yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.
Mirko: 37:56
Yeah, I’m still thinking if it would be possible to use, make a method like we talked about already in the process purpose phase. So when we’re talking about process purpose, but latest in the design phase, when you are developing the process and you’re trying to build it, you’re not just going to put post-its on the wall to map the process or put it into a system and model it in whatever notation, but really build something physical to make the process experienceable just imagine when you’re thinking about a strategy, when you’re thinking about a purpose and you try to walk along your process and you’re starting all over the sudden you’re stuttering or you’re kicking against something or you’re ending up at the wall or whatsoever.
Martin: 38:46
Just imagine the learning, the understanding that you get out of that one and the input it would give to the purpose. I think really having something physical will work in every stage of process management.
Mirko: 39:02
Yeah, so I discussed it with both already. We are planning to set up a workshop in Linz, so I’m going to visit them to find out what we can do to more bring their ideas to processes.
Martin: 39:17
Great. Never been to Linz, although my grandmother was born there.
Mirko: 39:22
Oh, okay, yeah, so we have another workshop participant Probably. That’s good to know. So if there’s more people out there who would like to join, just send me an email. Let’s see how this will end up. That’s another thing I would love to explore, just to rethink processes, and that’s that’s what I really like about what I’m doing to, yeah, find ideas from other disciplines and try to combine those processes yeah, this is also why, why I got in touch with you and how, why we were connected so much.
Martin: 39:58
because the new process lab and the and the and the rethink of processes and the people and culture approach of your ideas was the missing link that I was feeling in the past years of losing the people when I go further in that direction without really having an idea of how to integrate culture, how to integrate people, how to integrate all the physical part of a process before I start to digitalize it, before I start to digitalize it. Actually, digitization was the main focus of my consultancy work and I was always missing the people part in it.
Mirko: 40:53
Yeah, absolutely, but I’m really wondering. My highlight this year was New Process Conference, which you unfortunately missed.
Mirko: 41:01
Yeah, I’m super sorry for this, but um maybe in 2026 there might be the next chance to join a new process conference, or maybe then it’s called new process experience because that was the target to really experience how to rethink process and so on. But what I’m observing there is it’s really hard to find people who already understand what we just talked about. There are a lot of people out there working on processes, but only a core group of the new process community, the ones who are following what we are doing here, the ones who joined New Process Pro, the ones who have been at the conference, taking two days out of their calendar to fly to Seeheim to go to a conference and to talk about topics even beyond classical BPM. So that’s just a small group of innovators out there. I would say it’s still hard. It’s not for everyone out there right now. That’s what I’m observing. That makes me a bit sad that it’s still a hurdle for the people to focus on the people.
Martin: 42:14
Yeah, the problem is that you cannot grab the people. They are too fuzzy, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is a lot of zeros and ones and that’s very, very simple. It’s linear, so, yeah, but people are, uh, a fuzz, they are kind of a cloud of smoke and you can’t grab them. That’s the problem. And then people tend to just leave, lean back and say, okay, it’s too hard, I can’t really get there, I can’t grab them, so I just leave it by it and focus on the things that are easy to achieve, and that’s looking at a lot of data, looking at a robot, looking at a digital process or whatsoever.
Martin: 42:57
And the problem is and that’s what I’m experiencing, absolutely because our business is truly not digital though we’re having a wonderful digital process in place for our road construction, for really making sure that we always have enough material at the same, if the right place at the right place in the right time, and whatsoever. There is a really nice digitalized process there. But our work is so less digital, so much people-focused, that we cannot just rely on digital processes. Robots, process, mining data. We are creating a lot of data. That is not because it’s physical data that we are not able to create a process out of that one, because just thinking about a five-kilometer-long road you want to build and thinking about what happened, for example, on the A20 in northeast Germany, they built a road, they built an autobahn wonderful and even before they started putting traffic on it, part of it just collapsed into the ground. Because on a kilometer long stretch, you cannot directly look into each square foot of ground deep enough to understand how the ground would react when you put something on it. When you build a building, you have 2,000 square meters, 4,000 square meters of ground, and you can look into each square foot of this one and really really create a clear view up to 10 meters, 20 meters deep, how the ground is built and you can really think about well, look at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Leaning Tower of Pisa was, at that time, for sure. They were not able to really go deep into the ground, but actually that is also clearly a problem, that you were not able to put all information you needed into the process. But in the end, the result is what you wanted to have. They were not thinking let’s build a tower that leans five degrees to the right. They were thinking about I want to have a tower that is straight up and all the circumstances around it were not helping them in that idea.
Martin: 45:27
So, no matter how much data you have, no matter how good you are able to work with your data, to combine your data, to create a process out of your data for doing your real work, you will end up in one or the other area with things that you were not able to foresee. That will kind of endanger the results of your process. You were not able to not get this unwanted result For sure. The idea of artificial intelligence, the idea of process mining and of looking at all the data is the more data you look at, the less risky is that you step into this.
Martin: 46:15
1 per mil, 2 per mil of bad result For sure, yeah, but you will never be at 100 100. This is the idea of the continuous improvement of the quality management. You will never be at 100. So process is fine when you’ve reached 85 90 of quality, of perfect result of whatever you want to do, and you can use your continuous improvement process to step by step improve your process, but you will never get to 100%. No chance. And that’s culture. That’s culture, that’s people. That’s something that the people have to understand and the more you are able to integrate this into your process work, into the BPM work, the better it is for your company, especially when you are not in a digital business right, yeah absolutely Online sales or whatsoever, retail business whatsoever.
Martin: 47:17
There’s a lot of possibilities and even there companies go bankrupt because they will never be able to completely overlook all the possibilities that are in the process, and some will not be good. But when you are in a very, very craftsman-specific, handcrafted process, so to say, like us, creating a road is really moving tons and tons and tons of materials over a great distance. Creating a system, a result that in the end is as big as it can probably be seen from outer space, that will never be. You will never have enough data to completely have it done yeah.
Martin: 48:07
There will always be the risk of failure in that.
Mirko: 48:10
Yeah, yeah, that’s interesting. I’m really looking forward to the next episode we’re planning to record with Leona on psychological aspects. Yeah, to look deeper into these human aspects there, you know that you always will have at least one listener yeah, that’s, that’s very good, that’s good to hear and that’s good to know. Thanks for that. And um, what else there?
Martin: 48:32
there are some, some interesting things on the list I’m working on, like the pizza game, for example actually, when you talk about the pizza game and you did it as a process management experience, for sure you never really created a pizza out of it, but it was all kind of, I would say, in paper, in thoughts, yeah, exactly, use the pizza game to really feed. I don’t know. Actually, I just saw a documentary that was in Naples. There is a prison island in the Naples Bay where especially young male prisoners are incarcerated and then, for re-socialization, they are put into a program. There is a pizzeria in Naples where they are learning to become pizza bakers, okay, and to run their own pizzeria one day.
Mirko: 49:41
Okay, to run their own pizzeria one day. Okay, okay.
Martin: 49:42
So not only baking pizza, but also buying goods, creating the recipe, creating a menu, selling it, serving the people really running a restaurant and all this kind of stuff. So they are learning this as a resocialization program and they are really baking pizza, and I don’t know, once a week, or though. They are feeding all the poor people of Naples, all the people in need, as a social act. They are feeding them with wonderful homemade pizza. They are baking as part of their education. Homemade pizza, homemade pizza. They’re making as part of their education. So why not use the pizza game to whatever when we are in Seeheim to feed the Frankfurt train station people, to feed the homeless people in Frankfurt for an evening with pizza, with the lots of pizza that we created during the pizza game. For sure, this needs some investment, but it’s a nice idea really, because then you are again doing something with your hand.
Mirko: 50:47
Yeah, I never thought about doing that with real dough and cheese and so on. We always used paper and scissors and bread adding to put the tomato sauce onto the pizza paper. But that’s a nice idea.
Martin: 51:04
Yeah, because it’s again a physical experience.
Mirko: 51:09
Yeah, that helps to learn yeah, so that would be the add-on for a pizza game in real life.
Martin: 51:18
Yeah, Normally we just play the game and at lunchtime we order pizza next time you build the pizza itself, and if you’re doing more than you can eat, then invite the homeless people to have it that’s a good approach, you will always find homeless people around the area when you are somewhere bigger, I guess. So yeah, unfortunately yeah, but actually this is creating something with, uh, added value in the end yeah yeah that was a lot of food for thought.
Mirko: 51:53
Wow, looking at the time, I I think we have to come to an end to give an outlook from your side. What is on your agenda for the next weeks and months? What can we measure when we meet next time?
Martin: 52:07
if it was fulfilled or not actually, as I already said, I hope that we will be able to, over the next half year, to to come up with a solution for having a qms tool for our integrated management system that also integrates the idea of BPM already as a basics that we can build upon.
Martin: 52:27
That’s my own goal and then, for sure, also have have the goal of maybe even using using one of our good running processes to really spread the word, spread the news in our business and really bring all the locations onto one page one day for one process that we really can think about. My ideas for saying, okay, the good thing is, with a lot of the locations doing the same process, maybe in a different way, is that we have a lot of material for internal benchmark. And I would really start thinking about, okay, looking at some processes that we’re doing in kind of all our road construction locations or all our material production locations or whatsoever, and see which location does it the best and then look why it’s better than the others and does it work for the others to copy that process. Then look at the results. This is something that I have in mind to look at in the next year as well oh that that’s super cool.
Mirko: 53:38
I really like this approach of doing benchmarking and bringing the good local ideas to a global level.
Martin: 53:45
We are such a spread company, also brought together from different companies over the years, and with so long and huge history, that we should really be able to benefit from all the knowledge, all the experience we have in all the different areas.
Mirko: 54:05
Yeah, yeah, wow, love it. I could continue for hours. Maybe we need part two or, in this case, part four, because this is already episode three with you as my guest. Before I ask you about your flight experience, is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners today that we missed?
Martin: 54:24
No, I think it’s just good to stay open-minded, to always look beyond the horizon and not focus only on your best experience or on your own knowledge, but always keep an open mind for others also outside the own area of expertise, Like saying, okay, it’s really great to look at process management, but you should also look at cultural management, at change management, at psychological development, at IT development beyond this, at artificial intelligence. So keeping an open mind and trying to integrate all this kind of stuff is, I think, key to future continual improvement of BPM. And let’s take the best out of the nice help we got from all those technology developments of the last decade for bringing BPM to a new level, Because that’s what they did with the technology. But not forget the people. Not only technology, but always take the people with you. And this is something that I experience right now in a lot of discussions. And this is something that I experience right now in a lot of discussions that the people they’re looking at technology, at IT, at automation, at digital, whatever, but they forget that there are people behind it and that change and culture is daily business for any company that involves people.
Martin: 56:02
And I just heard the Christoph Pacher’s last episode of podcast today about the AI strategy with the guy that is also teaching at the Munich University. Really interesting. I don’t remember his name. The topic is more interesting than knives for me and they were really thinking telling about. Actually, it is not helping to just focus on AI. Nevertheless, also the founder of OpenAI, the CEO of OpenAI they told he has a running bet right now when the first billion-dollar company run by only one guy, one people, based on AI will be on the market. So, nevertheless, the technology is going into the direction that we will not need people anymore in a company to be successful.
Martin: 57:10
I doubt that, but not for the time that I will live, I would say. But, however, this will be a company without a soul. This will be just a digital, whatever pile of data. There will not be a culture, there will not be a soul in the company. And well, maybe one day we don’t need that. We will just be consuming data instead of psychology, philosophy, all this kind of science that creates mankind and that keeps mankind being unique. Yeah, but that’s only for the basic needs, right? So that will feed us, that will probably help us survive, but for what price? I would not like to live in such a world.
Mirko: 58:03
Yeah, me neither. Actually, I just looked up the State of Process Automation podcast episode.
Martin: 58:09
It’s 180.
Mirko: 58:10
Tristan Post 80,. Wow, that’s a number.
Martin: 58:14
I have to admit I try to listen to those that are interesting, but I never managed to listen to all 182. I really like that podcast, but I never managed to listen to all 182. I really like that podcast, but I never managed to listen to all of them. I really did this with your skill, but 81 is quite good.
Mirko: 58:31
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Martin: 58:34
Also the Process Pioneers. They stopped in December last year, however, that was already 300 episodes or something. Wow. I was not able to listen to all of them. No, no, that’s true, yeah, great.
Mirko: 58:51
Oh Martin, what a nerdy episode again. So how would you describe your flight experience today in just three words?
Martin: 58:57
Well, actually you already used one of the nerd words yeah, nerd word For sure. It was great fun because I really like it, and one day I told you that be careful when you just shoot me a word, I can talk for hours. But I like that we always come to a kind of a red line and see a clear path for it, that we always come to a kind of a red line and see a clear path for it, and so for me it was fun and interesting because of the fact that during the discussion I can develop ideas that will probably be able to follow up one day, not tomorrow, but maybe in a year or two. I would pick up one of those ideas that we developed in those discussions. Fun and nerd, yeah perfect.
Mirko: 59:50
Let’s see when we meet again for the next nerd episode. I’m really looking forward to meeting you tomorrow at the round table or Stammtisch in Hamburg, having a beer together and, for sure, going deeper into that discussion. So for the ones who actually will not be able to join that Stammtisch because it was already in the past when we were going to publish this episode have a look at New Process Pro for upcoming Stammtisch sessions in Hamburg, but maybe also somewhere else. So let’s see how this will develop. Martin, thank you so much for being my guest today.
Martin: 1:00:28
I thank you and it’s always a pleasure to discuss with you.
Mirko: 1:00:31
Bye-bye.
Mirko: 1:00:40
Oh yeah, what a nerdy episode. I would rather not bother you with recap today, so just a brief reminder to join forces with fellow BPM innovators to rethink process together, as we talked about. It is really challenging to fight for processes, especially when taking all the human aspects into account, so let’s join forces on New Process Pro. To do so, just go to newprocesslabcom slash pro. For the next episode, I’m planning to have another deep dive session into a method topic, but due to the fact that I’m producing just in time, I cannot confirm which topic it’s going to be. So stay curious. But for now, thank you much for listening. Have a fantastic day. Bye, bye Und auf Wiedersehen.
Mirko: 1:01:48
and we just have to reach out to more people to join forces. One way to do this is to make the new process podcast visible to more people. To achieve this, it would be super cool if you rate the show on your favorite podcast platform, so, for example, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It’s just a click, so, which really helps would be so cool. Thank you very much. Have a fantastic day. Bye-bye.
