Boost employee engagement with interactive management systems with Carsten Behrens
#056 Let’s talk about interactive management systems and why it should be given more attention.
In this episode I’m talking to Carsten Behrens about interactive management systems and why they can be a real game changer for employee engagement instead of centralized BPM systems.
We also delve into the world of Q.Wiki and what has happened since the last podcast interview in 2022. The tool has grown and there are some interesting new features – related to AI, of course – so tune in to hear more about that.
Today’s Guests:
Dr. Carsten Behrens
Carsten is CEO of Modell Aachen. Modell Aachen is the maker of the BPM tool Q.Wiki which I already took a closer look at in episode 19. Carsten co-founded Modell Aachen in 2009 and today, they serve more than 1,400 customers worldwide.
Carsten holds a Diploma in mechanical engineering from Ruhr University Bochum and a PhD from RWTH Aachen University.
Besides leading Modell Aachen, he also supports the German Association for Quality in various roles.
Carsten lives in Wuppertal together with his wife and two kids.
You’ll learn:
- What an interactive management system is
- How this helps to boost employee engagement
- What has happend in the Q.wiki world since the first interview in 2022
- What Modell Aachen has on its roadmap for the further development of Q.wiki
- What Carsten has on his radar for the future of BPM
Resources
- Carsten’s LinkedIn Profile
- Episode 19: How Q.wiki supports you to rethink processes with Vincent Fischer
- Stefan Kühl’s LinkedIn Profile
- Website: Modell Aachen
- Episode of Carsten’s Corner
- Article “Golden Circle” of Modell Aachen
Get notified about new episodes:
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 56 of the New Process Podcast. Today, we’re going to explore how interactive management systems can boost employee engagement. Therefore, I’m talking to Carsten Behrens. Carsten is CEO of Model Aachen, and Model Aachen is the maker of the BPM tool, qwiki, which I already had a closer look at in episode 19,. So, around about two years ago, carsten co-founded Modell Aachen in 2009, and today they serve more than 1,400 customers worldwide. Carsten holds a diploma in mechanical engineering from Ruhr University, Bochum, and a PhD from RWTH Aachen University. Besides leading Model Aachen, he’s also supporting the German Association for Quality in Various Roles.
Carsten lives in Wuppertal together with his wife and two kids. For me, this is a very special episode because we recorded it in person at the Model Aachen office. In where else could it be? Aachen, right, quite, nice city, which I’ve never visited before, so if you haven’t been there, you definitely should go. Maybe you can ask Carsten to get a sightseeing trip as well. He’s a really good guide. That was super interesting. So in this episode, you’ll learn what an interactive management system is, how this helps to boost employee engagement. What has happened in the QWiki world since the first interview in 2022,. What Model Aachen has on its roadmap for the future development of QWiki, as well as what Carsten has on his radar for the future of BPM. So enjoy the interview with Carsten Behrens.
Mirko: 2:20
Yeah, welcome to the New Process Podcast Carsten.
Carsten: 2:24
Thank you for your invitation. Thank you very much.
Mirko: 2:27
Actually, thank you for your invitation because you are my guest today. But somehow I’m your guest because we are recording this live at Carsten’s Corner in Aachen in your office at Modell Aachen, so that’s super cool. That’s something special for me. I’ve been here already yesterday, discussed a lot with your team. That was a great discussion. It’s always good to discuss about rethinking processes with people who know how this could look like because they are working with that full time. It was quite a good day yesterday.Carsten: 3:00
Thank you, it was the same experience with us that we got a lot of new inspirations from you and it was a great discussion. I can agree, yes, that’s very good.
Mirko: 3:09
So let’s start with our flight today and let’s check in. So what do you prefer in an aircraft aisle or window seat?
Carsten: 3:18
I love window seats because I love the view onto the earth from above.
Mirko: 3:23
Okay, yeah, that’s pretty good. Love the view onto the earth from above? Okay, yeah, that’s that’s pretty good. Are you a frequent flyer in your job, or?
Carsten: 3:29
I don’t fly that much, because we are mainly in germany, austria and switzerland, and I like to travel by car because then I can telephone all the time, but sometimes I fly to my destinations yeah okay, and what is your favorite airport? I think it’s Dusseldorf, because it’s the closest one to my home city, so it is of great value for me yeah, that’s good.
Mirko: 3:57
So then let’s get closer to the topic of processes, and that’s my favorite question how would you describe your relationship to processes?
Carsten: 4:07
anyway, it’s a good one, but I really love to have a closer look to human interactions and organizations. I really love to analyze this. What’s happening there? At the end, organizations can be divided up into single actions, into projects and processes. I think these are three things where you can divide everything up to. So. Processes are of very big importance for organizations. Yes, for me it’s a kind of language to talk to each other. So when you make processes clear or you talk about others, about processes, you can improve organizations, you can help to make working together easier and with less stress. I think it is a very important way of talking to each other using this language of processes.
Mirko: 5:01
Yeah, I really love this using processes as a language, as a common understanding, a language that people are talking. I really love this Using processes as a language, as a common understanding language that people are talking and all the people in an organization really understand the same language. It doesn’t matter if they are speaking German, english, chinese or whatever, but they have the same language for processes. That’s super important.
Carsten: 5:21
And this is very important for our approach we will talk about afterwards. We say it’s very important to communicate processes in every direction in an organization and with as less effort as possible, but we will talk about that later.
Mirko: 5:35
Yeah, sure, exactly, let’s get closer to that. So on your LinkedIn profile, your headline is you’re an expert for interactive management systems.
Carsten: 5:54
Can you just define what an interactive management system from your perspective is? Every employee has the opportunity and should insert his improvements and his ideas and his experiences directly himself. That’s the first thing, so a lot of collaboration and a decentralized way of defining processes and management systems. And the second aspect is that we combine two disciplines with each other. It’s process management and knowledge management. That means that we enrich the process descriptions with knowledge which is relevant for all day work and by that the management system and all the processes, process descriptions, create much more value for the single person, for the single employee, and by this the probability that he will insert his ideas and his improvements and so on into the management system is increased. And by that we get a kind of flywheel that you increase the value for the single employee, the probability increases that he will participate and by that the value increases of what is inserted in there, and so on.
Carsten: 7:19
In the past we had a we call it a QM vicious cycle and this was just the other way around, because every employee knew that the information is not up to date. Nobody was interested in having a look at management system documentation or the process models. And if you don’t have a look at it. You are not willing to change any content or update it, and then, of course, it is not. There is a big difference between how you really actually work and what is documented, and then the circle is closed. This is what we usually see in companies this vicious cycle and our idea is to flip it around and to create a flywheel out of it.Mirko: 8:04
Yeah, okay, that’s super interesting and in practice, does it really work that the employees bring in their ideas and put in the processes they work in into the system? Because, for sure, you are offering a tool, so you’re documenting the processes there. Maybe you can quickly introduce how this looks like, just for the ones who haven’t listened to the previous episode I recorded about two years ago with your colleague, vincent, where we talked already about QWiki in more detail, but maybe you can just give a short overview on how does it look like and how can employees bring in their ideas.
Carsten: 8:44
At first I think we call it QWiki is our product. So you can see the technology at the end is a wiki technology and the look and feel is quite similar to an enterprise wiki. So the roots are still a wiki, the differences to common enterprise wikis, that you can also model processes with BPMN on each page and so on. And the second thing is that we have got an approval workflow in it, so it’s not a basic democratic principle but it’s still managed, still managed. And the third one is and this is very important from business process management that we have got a very intense metadata concept and that allows you to define roles and to identify in which processes I am involved and so on. That’s very important because many business process managers think that wikis are not capable to manage processes. But from our perspective, these three elements are very important to use wiki technology for business process management in an appropriate way. So this is how it looks like. And of course, you’re not only able to model processes and so on. You can also use it for aud, audit and measures management and for risk management and so on. So also some topics around business process management, what we know from management systems. So this is what it looks, how it looks like. Our goal is that every employee is able to model or insert his ideas and improvements with around about zero to five minutes of explaining. So this is very important, because otherwise it’s not possible to activate that much employees that we need for interactive management systems.
Carsten: 10:39
Maybe I will answer the question the other way around, because I’m very convinced that centralized business process management will not be appropriate for the future anymore and isn’t yet, actually because it’s too stiff. We have got a very dynamic market situation and a very dynamic situation how laws and other norms, for example, are changing. Additionally, we have got a very high degree of specialization in the companies. That means there is nearly only one employee of any yeah, how do you say it of any discipline, so to say who is really expert in what he’s doing. So even his team lead or his head of whatever is able to say whether he does his job really well or not.
Carsten: 11:36
So we come into the situation that it’s very important to use the potential and the knowledge of the single person, of the single employee, to define processes More or less easy to define processes for other disciplines, because the disciplines were not that specialized and not that complex, and now we have the situation that it’s more important than ever to use the knowledge of the single expert to define processes and this, combined with this high dynamics of markets and laws and so on, leads to the situation that it is more or less impossible to be up to date with a centralized process management system.
Carsten: 12:19
So you need a decentralized, a collaborative process management system from our perspective. So if this is the frame, the question is how do we get the employees to the situation that they really want to model and insert their ideas and define their surrounding of what they are doing, find their surrounding of what they are doing? And we usually have the situation that there are some employees that see the personal value, the use for process modeling and that they really profit from it, and there are some that don’t see any use of it and in the beginning of Hotel Aachen we thought we have to convince everybody that this is the only way how it should work.
Carsten: 13:05
And we’re away from that and we start to work with them, that see the potential. We really let them experience the effect of business process management combined with knowledge management, and when they experience it, when they are convinced, it’s very easy to multiply this idea and this concept in the company and this works quite well.
Mirko: 13:35
Okay, that’s interesting. For me it was always a bit abstract what an interactive management system would be. Today I would say it’s human-centric management system.
Carsten: 13:44
Yes, I would say it’s very close to each other Our ideas of human-centric business process management and interactive management systems. It’s really very close to each other.
Mirko: 13:53
Yeah, that’s super interesting, wow, cool. Thanks for explaining this in more detail and, as I already said, I’ve been talking to Vincent about two years ago. We already had a closer look onto QWiki at that time. But what are two years, right? So what happened in between and what is on your roadmap for the upcoming weeks, months, the year? I don’t know how your planning scope looks like, but that would be super interesting to learn more about what is going on, what is changing in the QWiki world.
Carsten: 14:24
Yes, I think the most important thing to understand is what is our goal? In which direction? Do we want to develop interactive management systems or software that supports that? Our main idea is how can we reduce the costs of process communication? And process communication is needed from our point of view, from top level to employee, but also from employee to top level and in a collaborative way, in a vertical way, so to say. And the question is how can we decrease the transactional costs of process communication? And my three topics I love most are generative ai, because you can very easily support process modeling with generative ai. For example, you can in actually now in qwiki, generate process suggestions so you can insert some information you might have about the process, and then QWiki generates a suggestion how the process could look like. Of course, this is not the truth. What?
Carsten: 15:33
comes out, but it’s a very good suggestion with which you can go into a process workshop and you can talk to the others. What’s different in our process than in this suggestion? And man is very easy, very capable to say what is different and is very weak in defining something new, starting with a white sheet. So this is a very powerful functionality from our point of view. And you can think this functionality a bit further on and I name it speech mining. That means you use the transcription functionality, for example, from your mobile device, and you just describe a process by word and then you use the transcription to throw it into the generated.
Carsten: 16:23
AI and it generates a really nice process model out of it. And now it gets much more interesting when you just talk about the process in a group and you have got a microphone in the middle. Take the transcript of this conversation about a process. You take this transcript, put it into the AI and it creates you a nice process model. So what we have then is that process modeling is no effort anymore and that leads to the effect that it makes sense. Or it’s economically that it makes sense, or it’s economic and it’s very sensible to describe processes in a very detailed level because it doesn’t cost anything anymore. That leads to the situation that the management system documentation can be a digital twin of reality, of what we have defined, how we want to work to each other. From my point of view, a very interesting development. And then the other question is when it’s very easy to define content in that way with speech mining, how I call it. The other side is interesting as well.
Carsten: 17:32
How do we consume, how do we get the information out of the system? And in the past it was quite unpleasing because you always had to think about ah, there could be something interesting in the management system documentation, so I should go there, and then you had to search for something and you got a list of hits and then you took one and so on. It took a lot of time to find the correct information that is relevant for you and, even worse, you needed to have the idea that there could be something interesting for you, and this idea most people never have. So the second topic I really love is management system push. So we want to get rid of management system pull, that you had to go to the information in the management system. But the management system information comes to you as employee and we realized it that way that, for example, when you go to barnde from the deutsche bundesbahn and to travel somewhere, automatically the q wiki identifies that you might book something for, as with travel expenses and so on, and shows you relevant information because you are in the context of barn day. So the management system documentation or management system information or process information comes to you into your context. This, from my point of view, is absolutely a game changer and makes it much more interesting to put information into processes, descriptions and so on, because you know that the editor will read it.
Carsten: 19:18
This is the second part, and the third part I really love is an answer machine, an AI-driven answer machine, because we do not want to have any hit lists anymore. We want to get an answer so that you really can ask I would like to buy a pen, may I do it myself, or do I need someone else to prove it, or whatever and the answer of the management system documentation, software or QWiki, whatever is, buy it yourself. You don’t need any approval, and maybe there are one or two pages where you can verify whether it’s correct. This answer, the main answer, is just the answer you need. These are the three parts that really changed management system communication in the last two years and we really inserted it in Qwiki.
Mirko: 20:13
That’s super cool, and we haven’t had AI really on the agenda when we recorded the first edition two years ago.Mirko: 20:20
So that’s super cool to have this update, and I recently discussed it with Martin Holien where we talked about how could AI benefit us as process guys, and I’m quite skeptical with AI-generated processes because you never know where it really comes from and the people cannot perfectly identify with the results because it’s not there, it’s just generated by an AI. But I really love the fact of using AI to find the right answers. So if you put in the process documentation which exists and you ask questions and get answers based on the process in the system, that’s super cool.
Carsten: 21:00
So in the future, the Q Viking is going to be an AI Viking and you can ask the Viking for answers At the moment, we are at that stage that we enable the search engine that doesn’t give you hits, but it also gives you answers, and the next step could be that we combine our QWiking with this idea of answering. We are not sure whether we do this because the use cases, how they are defined now, are a bit different. The Wiking explains you the QWiki at the moment and the other answer engine answers you something about your content, and we don’t know whether it’s easy to understand for the user when this is mixed somehow. Yeah, so we will see, but it would be very nice because it would be emotionalize I don’t know whether this word exists.
Mirko: 21:52
Yeah, the content of QWiki and the QWiki itself yes, yeah, you know I fell in love with QWiking when I saw it for the first time, when I explored the tool two years ago. And for those of you out there who don’t know and who are wondering, what are these guys talking about? It’s a little character which pops up in the tool and explains the tool, as you said, and it also exists in reality as a little character you can put onto into your table and so on. So you definitely have to look up the pictures how the viking looks like, or even look into q wiki to see the q viking in action.
Mirko: 22:30
that’s also yes that’s it yeah, cool, but thanks for for these insights into the q wiki world. But what about beyond model aachen? What do you see when looking into the future? What kind of developments in the BPM world, not just reduced on tools, could be more holistic? Do you see for the future what is coming up there?
Carsten: 22:55
I think these three things I mentioned a few minutes ago are showing us the direction of the future and at the moment, these three parts I mentioned are in children’s shoes. I don’t know whether this exists in English, so I think this will grow in the future. So it will get less and less effort to model processes because we get systems, ai systems or whatever and it will be more integrated into our daily work what is written down in management system documentation and in process models, and it will be much more accessible the information that is inserted in there, for example, by AI search. I don’t see a very big topic coming such as AI, but the next three to five years or two to four years, ai will change the way of working with process management, will change very much of working with process management will change very much, and I think we just see the tip of an iceberg at the moment, but I don’t see many big changes.
Carsten: 24:15
Besides that, the process management process will be much more automated or at least assisted by technology. But this is very important because in the value chain or in the lifecycle of the process management process, there is a lot of costs and only a very bit of value adding and we have to reduce the part of costs in the business process management process so that the value adding part gets much more percentage of the whole number. And therefore it is very important to find ways of automation or assistance of modeling and reading and identifying redundancies and so on in business process management models. And I think this will be the main challenge in the next few years to reduce effort in the business process management process because business process management as process is still too much effort but it already decreases a lot.
Mirko: 25:28
Okay, yeah, that’s something which gives me a lot of food for thought, so I will think about that on my way back to Hamburg in a few hours, and it will take a few hours to get back from. Aachen to Hamburg, as I experienced yesterday on my way to Aachen, but that was a quite good time. And one more thing what I ask all my guests is what are your top three recommendations to get to a more human-centric BPM approach and to inspire people for processes.
Carsten: 25:59
From my point of view, I would say let the people experience the effect of business process management and try to avoid too much strategic thoughts about process management, but start operative and let them feel the effect of process management. It can also be gamified, it can be the pizza game or some other approaches, but they really have to feel the effect of business process management and knowledge management. The second approach is involve the people as much as possible. The best thing is when they define the rules themselves, because then the probability that they will follow the rules is maximized. And the third thing is set up the project in a very appropriate way. So you really need the top management that they support the project or the idea of business process management and you have to convince them. I think these are the three most relevant aspects.
Mirko: 27:02
Okay, that sounds really good. Yeah, thank you for all these insights. We are slowly approaching the final destination, slowly approaching the final destination. But to sum it up, what would be, or what is, your key message to our listeners? To rethink processes. What would you say?
Carsten: 27:22
Maybe one thing in between. Yeah, I think you love to ask your participants what could be a nice idea of how to think new processes in a new way.
Mirko: 27:32
Yeah, exactly.
Carsten: 27:34
I would suggest to take a look at Stefan Kühl Professor Stefan Kühl from the University of Bielefeld, I think, because he has got a very good view on organizations and his research. He does a lot of research on this topic and I think this could be very interesting for your participants or from your listeners here.Carsten: 27:53
Yeah, okay, but to answer your question, yeah, the key message is don’t try to set up a centralized business process management. That will not work in the future anymore. I think this is the main message I have. And then, of course, you get into questions like how do we set up decentralized collaborative process management? Of course, there are a lot of questions how to do that.
Mirko: 28:22
I guess you need a centralized platform to do that you need that.
Carsten: 28:26
of course, you need an approval workflow. It may not be a basic democratic system that doesn’t work at all, but you need a strong participation, collaborative approach and it works. We know it because we’ve done it 1,400 times for 1,500 companies, but I think this is very important for the future. It’s my main message, I think.
Mirko: 28:53
Perfectly supports the human-centric approach, what I’m fighting for with new process. So that’s pretty good. Thank you so much. Where can our listeners learn more about what you are doing? Want to find out. How does the QViking look like? How does Q.Wiki look like? What would you recommend?
Carsten: 29:13
There are a lot of resources actually. Maybe you would like to have a look at our podcast Casten’s Corner, or maybe you want to look at our Modell Aachen Insights on our webpage modellachen.de or com. Whatever you want, we’ve got a lot of content video content, audio content and also written content about our approach, and it’s not only technology and software. We also think a lot about methodology and principles and things around it. I think these are good resources.
Mirko: 29:48
Yeah, okay, I just read this morning an article published by one of your colleagues about the golden circle why, how, what and that was a brilliant one, because it really explained how this could be applied to processes. So you know, I love talking about process purpose and so, for the listeners, just look it up. It’s there, one of the recent articles. That’s super cool, yeah, perfect. So is there anything we have missed? Anything you would like to share with our listeners before we leave this flight today? No, thank, you?
Carsten: 30:21
I don’t think so Okay, then Of course we can tell a lot of hours more about interactive management systems, but I think we gave a brief overview about what our approach is and in which direction it will develop, and I think this is quite a round circle.
Mirko: 30:37
Yeah, that’s super cool. And to end it, how would you describe your flight experience in?
Carsten: 30:43
just three words. It’s always a bit challenging to describe it in English because we are mainly in the German region and it is, in parts, really a complex topic. I love the conversation with you also yesterday, and not only within the podcast, within our flight, but also yesterday and I’m really thrilled about the future and what is happening now, because business process management, from my point of view, is taking off at the moment, because the increasing effort of the process management, from my point of view, is taking off at the moment, because the increasing effort of the process management process helps a lot to make it much more attractive for companies.
Mirko: 31:22
That’s cool. Thank you so much for inviting me to Carsten’s Corner here, and there is already. We, just before we recorded this, we recorded an episode of Carsten’s Corner, which is your format, which I definitely recommend to the people out there listening to, if you’re able to understand German language. Or maybe there’s an AI tool out there which you can use to get that translated.
That was super cool. I really enjoyed it. Being here recording this in person. That’s always something which is special compared to the episodes we are recording online. So, sitting next to each other, that was a cool experience for me and gave me a lot of food for thought for my way back to Hamburg. So thank you so much for having me, for having you. Have a great day Bye-bye.Mirko: 32:22
Oh, yes, I really love recording podcasts in person. Meanwhile I’m back in Hamburg, but I truly enjoyed my trip to Aachen and the podcast recording at Carsten’s Corner. And, as we said, we did not only record this episode for the New Process Podcast, we also used the time to record an episode for Carsten’s Podcast, which is called Carsten’s Corner, in which what else could it be we are talking about human-centric BPM. So if you’re interested in this, just go to newprocesslabcom/C arsten, which is C-A-R-S-T-E-N. newprocesslabcom. So newprocesslabcom/ Carsten. Unfortunately, it’s only available in German, but maybe it’s a good way to practice your German skills a bit. For me, the biggest takeaway of the conversation with Karsten is what Karsten means by an interactive management system is pretty close to what I mean by human-centric BPM, and I also realized that Q. Wiki is quite close to what I’d call a human-centric BPM tool. So if you have not taken a look at Q. Wiki lately, you should definitely give it a try.
In the next episode I’ll talk to Leona Holzbecher. Maybe you know Leona already from episode 48, in which we talked about how to inspire different generations for BPM. Leona has also been a speaker at the New Process Conference and we just had to bring her topic from Seeheim to the world. So in the next episode we’ll bring together psychology and BPM. To be honest, a bit spooky episode. But just wait for it and don’t forget to subscribe to the New Process Podcast to not miss it. But for now, thank you much for listening. Have a fantastic day. Bye-bye and auf Wiedersehen.
Before you leave. I know it is super hard to fight for processes 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 share the new process podcast or just rate the show on your favorite podcast platform, so on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It’s really just a click, which really helps. So, thank you very much, have a fantastic day. Bye-bye.
