The Hot BPM Skills in 2024 with Zbigniew Misiak
#044 Let’s hear what the creator of “BPM Skills – Hot or not” has to say about the outlook for 2024.
In this episode, I’m talking to Zbigniew Misiak about his research work “BPM Skills – Hot or not” – a series he started 8 years ago to collect thoughts on BPM topics from BPM thought leaders, practitioners and people from academia about which BPM topics are currently hot and which are no longer relevant from their individual perspective.
We talk about why and how he started his research, what he has learned about the evolution of BPM topics over the years and – of course – which skills need to be learned and are not relevant for 2024 based on his research.
Today’s Guest:
Zbigniew Misiak
Besides this outstanding research work, Zbigniew is Senior Consultant at BOC Information Technologies Consulting since 2006. BOC Group is the company behind the BPM tool ADONIS.
Zbigniew blogs about BPM at BPMTips.com — A blog he already started in 2008.
He holds a Master’s degree in Business Informatics from SGH Warsaw School of Economics.
Zbigniew lives in Warsaw together with his wife and his daughter. Personally, he likes to sing and read. — And he is a real BPM enthusiast! He even published a BPM course on Udemy and he also published a BPM Book in Polish Language, and he is working on an English book, too.
You’ll learn:
- What the hot bpm skills are which you have to learn for 2024
- Which skills are not relevant anymore
- What his bpm experiences were
- What his recommendations on how to get people excited for processes are
Resources
- Zbigniew Misiak’s LinkedIn Profile
- BPMTips.com
- Course: BPMN for business analysts
- Book: Modelowanie procesów biznesowych. BPMN 2.0 od podstaw
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.
Mirko00:19
Yeah, welcome to episode 44 of the New Process Podcast. Today it’s all about the hard 50m skills in 2024. Therefore, I’m talking to Zbigniew Misiak. Zbigniew is the let’s call him the creator of an impressive research work which is called BPM Skills Hot or Not. As part of his research, he asks BPM thought leaders, practitioners and people from academia which BPM topics are currently hot and which are not relevant anymore from their individual perspective. I’m super honored that he is sharing the results and providing insights onto the BPM Skills 2024 research in the New Process Podcast today. Besides his outstanding research, Zbigniew is senior consultant at BOC Information Technologies Consulting since 2006.
01:14
Boc Group is the company behind the BPM Tool, a donor. You might be aware of. Zbigniew blocks about BPM at BPMTipscom, a block he already started in 2008. He holds a master’s degree in business informatics from SGH Waza School of Economics. Zbigniew lives in Waza together with his wife and his daughter. Personally, he likes to sing and read and he’s a real BPM enthusiast. He even published a BPM course on Udemy and he also published a BPM book in Polish language, and he is working on an English book too. So in this episode, you’ll learn what the hot BPM Skills are, which you have to learn for 2024, which skills are not relevant anymore. And for sure we’ll also talk about his BPM experiences and his recommendations on how to get people excited for processes. So enjoy the interview with Zbigniew. Yeah, welcome to the new process podcast, Zbigniew. It’s so cool to have you here. I feel super honored to be part of your hot BPM Skills 2024 research and even more honored to talk about this today. So welcome to the new process podcast, Zbigniew.
Zbigniew02:41
Thank you very, very much for having me, thanks for the invitation and thanks for participating in my post.
Mirko02:46
Sure, absolutely. But before we talk about these amazing outcomes, results let’s start with a check-in. So what do you prefer in an aircraft aisle or window seat?
Zbigniew02:58
This is a little bit complicated question. This is the question I was afraid, because I don’t fly that much. For me the trainees preferred way of traveling, but both in a plane and in a train I prefer window seats because I enjoy having nice views and for me it is much better time if I can wear the beautiful landscapes from the window seat.
Mirko03:20
Yeah, that’s very good. And what is your favorite airport?
Zbigniew03:24
Well, since I don’t fly a lot, I don’t have experiences like many of your s, so I will only mention the worst-of-shopping airport, because this is the one where I normally leave the Poland and return. So this is pretty nice if I can watch the Warsaw from the plane, especially at night. So it looks beautiful and for me it means that, okay, I’m coming home in a few minutes. Maybe not few minutes, but half an hour or hour I’ll be back home. So this is the airport that I like very much.
Mirko03:58
Okay, and what is your favorite train station then?
Zbigniew04:01
Central Warsaw Station. It is even closer to my home, so when I’m there I know that I’ll be home very, very soon.
Mirko04:09
Yeah, okay, that’s cool. What was the best process you have ever experienced?
Zbigniew04:14
It is complicated. So, generally speaking, there are many, many processes around us. I would say, a little bit jokingly, that there are two kinds of processes that I enjoy very much. First, the process is the process of buying bread in my local bakery. It is not fast, it is not very efficient because it requires effort from my side. I need to take a walk, I need to wait a little bit. The bread is not the cheapest, but the ladies working there know my family very well. They know what we like. So when I’m ordering something, they are wondering hmm, only half of this bread, why not full? We additionally have this and this. Maybe your wife or your daughter will enjoy this. So this is incredible that they really know what we like. They give awesome recommendations. So this is an example of process which is very, very much oriented about personal touch. But the costs efficiency are not topics there.
05:17
So this is one of the processes that I like very much, and other group of processes that are totally fascinating for me are the e-commerce processes. It is incredible how easy convenient is to order something. I can simply use my smartphone, click, order groceries, order some other stuff, and very, very quickly I can get what I wanted. I had a chance to discuss some time ago with one of our clients who are in big logistics company and they said that actually they had to, let’s say, downgrade their capacities because they made a process that was so efficient that customers were ordering and the courier was waiting with the stuff and the people were not ready for it. So they had to add some more space so that people who were ordering were actually ready to pick up the things that they ordered. So for me, those e-commerce processes are amazing because this is super fast, super convenient, so the customer experience is totally awesome.
06:24
And the cool thing about those processes is that for the customer they look so easy. I simply grab the application, I simply click, scroll, pay. Easy peasy, lemon, squeezy, I have it. But on the back end there are lots of things happening. So there are processes for the actual company that does something. There are processes for the company that handles payments, there are processes for the logistics company, because you may have something delivered by the courier, or maybe do you prepare some kind of parcel locker and so on. So it is incredible how easy it seems for the customer, but how complex it is on the back end. And I must ask you again a little bit, joe King, here. Do you know the concept of duck theory? I know it from Steve Towers.
Mirko07:17
Okay, no, no, tell me more.
Zbigniew07:19
Duck theory is very important theory about processes and the customer experience. So the top of the duck looks cute, it flows on the leg so beautifully without any kind of forward, but below the surface you have crazy puddling. So the customer experience part looks super easy, smooth and wonderful. But the processes, internal processes there is a lot of going on and customers are not aware of what is happening there, and this is actually good, because they don’t need to understand what is happening, they are just interested about their Well results. They are not interested how it happens, but they want to have what they ordered quickly and without any problems. So this is an interesting intersection of customer experience, customer journeys and processes and, as you could see, there are places where we really care about speed, efficiency, our customer experience, and places where we don’t care about those things because we care more about relations, about the social aspect of meeting other people, and processes that are not, let’s say, optimal.
Mirko08:37
Yeah, I heard about that DAX theory before when I talked to JM Erdenson in the Ares interview. When we talked about Ares, he described Ares as a DAX, exactly as you did. Okay, let’s talk about Ares here, but I wasn’t aware that there’s a real theory which is called DAX here. Thank you very much.
Zbigniew08:57
It is a joke. I learned about it from Steve Towers. They had in one of his courses, I think, with his colleague James. I think they created this DAX theory Okay, and Steve told me when I mentioned it oh, no, not the DAX theory. I hope that everyone forgot about it, but it was so cute, so great example, so I thought that it is worth preserving, it is worth mentioning.
Mirko09:22
Absolutely, and we can now always refer to this story.
Zbigniew09:26
That’s perfect, it is easy to understand, easy to remember and it has a deep meaning below. So I hope that this concept of DAX theory will help some of the listeners of podcast think about. What do they do and how do they organize their processes so they look wonderful for their customers, but they are aware that inside the company there is a lot of lots of additional things going on. This is a little bit more complicated. So I think it’s the DAX theory is based on old joke. So be like DAX above the surface look composed and unruffled, but below the surface pedal like hell.
Mirko10:14
That’s super cool. This already tells a little bit about your relationship to process, but I have to ask how would you describe your relationship to processes?
Zbigniew10:24
I would say love at first sight. On my fourth year of studies I was participating. I attended I think it was computer class for generally database oriented stuff, and one of the lectures had something to do with processes. For me, processes were not something I knew that many about, and I saw those wonderful boxes, arrows. We had to model the process. We have to simulate it. It was moving. I thought wow. Later on I learned that you can actually do it for a living. My colleagues during studies from big four companies told no, no, this is something only technical guys are doing it. You will never earn a living by doing it if you’re not an IT guy and I’m not IT guy. So I thought maybe, but I tried and luckily it worked. And by helping people work with their arrows, rectangles, I can do lots of cool things. So this is incredible.
11:34
I think some years ago we had an interview with Sandip Jahl. It was also kind of a fun type of interview and we made a joke that I’m abnormally attracted to arrows and rectangles. So this would be somewhere of my relationship with processes.
Mirko11:58
That’s perfect. And now you are still working as senior consultant for BOC group, and you’re doing this since 2006. So, wow, what a huge time frame. And BOC is the maker of Adonis. Actually, I haven’t had an Adonis interview in the past, but I had a closer look on to that when we selected a tool for a customer, so I’m still aware of that, but this is not the topic today. Maybe we can do a separate episode on that. But what was your favorite BPM project in this unbelievable long time span? You are working as a consultant for BPM.
Zbigniew12:33
Good question. I had quite a lot of projects and working at BOC Group is super interesting. So I don’t recall any boring day, any day that I thought, oh no, again the same. So every day is very interesting day because it is wonderful if you can help the customers, if you can help them with modeling, if you can help them with the tool and especially if you can see that when you’re coming into the company they are struggling with something.
12:58
So, for example, people are spending way too much time on simple things, that because their processes are not properly organized. And when you see that those people are overworked, they are tired, they don’t have time for their families because they are staying long hours, they need to work during the weekends because something is wrong, they need to be firefighting. You probably know the joke about the level zero of process maturity, about being firefighters. So it is incredible if, at the end of this project, we can see that those people now see that processes are running smoothly. They simply disappear. And now it is not a big deal to do something. Things are simply happening. You don’t need to be a great hero that stays long hours, that struggles to win finally and deliver the result, but processes that are running smoothly make it look no problem. So this is wonderful if you can see how it helps people.
14:05
And also when we had projects of helping customers with process improvement, with process automation, when we could see what is personally very important for me, obviously for management. Other KPIs are important because the customers and managers see that, okay, we were able to earn more, we could save that amount of money. But for me, it was incredible if you could see that people who had very, very, very difficult job that made them burned out and they had a huge rotation, they got support from IT. But again important thing, those people were not fired because, okay, we have this automated, we don’t need you anymore. But they got additional training, they could be reskilled, they could take new positions in the company that were more interesting but had other requirements. So for me it was awesome that the company had the benefit. But also, people were not fired. They were not removed because we don’t need you anymore, because we have the automation.
15:07
So obviously I cannot tell about details, because I have NDAs for all of the projects that I have, but what I can tell you because this is something that you’re going to find on the internet is that I had a chance to help a little bit the product team that was doing a project with NFZ, so this Polish National Health Fund, and they were creating clinical pathways for various diseases, for example, for conditions like diabetes or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. So it is incredible that when I think that by helping those people model the processes, think about the processes, improve the knowledge transfer and the doctors in various various hospitals may have better knowledge, they may be helping their patients better. So it is incredible to think that we as process practitioners can not only improve the bottom line, save time, save money, do things like this, but we can also help people recover sooner, save lives and do good things like that. So this is, for me, incredible stuff and those are things that I remember with pleasure.
Mirko16:27
Yeah, I fully agree. I’m working with a customer whose purpose is to save people’s lives, and it’s amazing to show how all the employees contribute to this purpose, based on their processes and to do their best to save people’s lives. I just love it. That’s super cool. Thank you for these insights.
Zbigniew16:51
So just to make it clear well, I did not do anything meaningful. I just help those people who are doing actual stuff do their job. So it was like bringing pencils to a painter who does the great things. So I’m bringing pencils. Yeah, that’s understatement, but yeah things, but it is great if I can see that I could help people who are doing awesome stuff. So this is something that I’m very, very happy and very proud of.
Mirko17:18
Yeah, that’s true Cool and I think already in 2008, you founded BPMTipscom. Can you tell us a little bit more about why you did that and how did the BPM world look like back then from your perspective.
Zbigniew17:33
Yeah, it’s quite a long time, yeah, and at that time, how the time passes, it is incredible. So, generally speaking, I must say that I enjoy learning new things a lot and I like sharing the things that I learned with others. So for me it was always fun to share with others and I thought that maybe it would be helpful if I put those things that I had a chance to learn online on my blog. So I put first the blog on wordpresscom when I moved to my own domain. So BPMTips, some practical things. So this is why, thanks BPM tips.
18:11
And back then in Poland it looked like this that the processes were not actually hot. We had situations when we were talking with our customers and we had a meeting for a presentation and they spent 20 minutes. You could see that they are starting to think. And then they said so actually you’re not doing some kind of workflow or document management, you are only modeling box and arrows. So for many companies it was totally crazy just to model processes. Why, if you automate it, it makes sense, but to model processes and think together how to improve them, why would you do such a crazy thing?
19:02
So my idea was back then to ask people from markets where there is better BPM maturity. How does this situation look like? So that people from countries like Poland and others can also benefit from it? And it turned out that, because I decided to make it everything in English, I had readers from nearly all the world. It was incredible to see that those posts were helpful from people from various countries where I could never be, where I could never visit them and I could never help them personally, and this way, they were able to get some cool ideas from kind people that participated in my posts. So this is something incredible. And since 2008, the BPM Tips is developing. Kailhso some time later started publishing courses on process modeling on Udemy platform. So this is another part of what I’m doing.
Mirko20:05
Yeah, okay, we can put the links into the show notes for sure, and in the meantime you pushed it even further. So to provide full transparency to our listeners, we are recording this on the 16th of January. The episode will be published, if everything turns out the way it’s supposed to, on the 24th of January and in the meantime, you’re planning to publish your results of your latest research work. You did that already for the eighth time, if I’m not wrong. It’s about the BPM skills in 2024, hot or not so. Amazing work, amazing people. But how did it all start? How did you come up with the idea of doing this research work and publishing the hot or not so hot topics of the specific year?
Zbigniew20:53
This is a fun story. So everything started because, in 2016, I was teaching students about process modeling during the MBA course at Kosmijski University so one of the best business schools in this part of Europe and it was meant to give them something more than modeling. So I showed them how to modeling BPM and how to use the process architectures. How does the BPM generally look like? And I thought it would be super cool if I could also help them professionally to figure out what to expect, what skills will be beneficial for them, which elements will be hot so this is why we picked the hot or not format and which things are not something that they should be investing very heavily. And I have to tell you that I’m very, very, very weak at predicting the future. So just to mention a few examples when I saw for the first time BPM and I thought, no, this is totally crazy, nobody will use it, this is too technical, the complicated business will never, absolutely never, use it. You were right.
22:03
I would say Well, I would ask, since I had a chance to teach thousands people worldwide BPM and I would say that I was pretty stupid to some extent. So I had the same ideas about RPA. Rpa no way, it will never work. So luckily, very luckily, I decided to follow the known proverb. So plans fail for the lack of counsel, but with many advisors, they succeed. So I thought, ok, let’s do it like this. Let’s ask people who are smarter than you are and who have a better feeling of what the future may hold, and I’m incredibly grateful that so many people decided to answer. So over 10 great BPM experts decided to invest their time to share their ideas, to share their knowledge with my students and also with my blog readers. So I’m very grateful to this day, additionally because many of those participants from this first edition of post are still participating to this day. So this is something really heartwarming and I have to say big thank you to all of them. This was incredible.
23:20
So the idea was to publish something that would help the students and, additionally, I put it online and it turned out that this is something that people find useful and I thought that, OK, maybe let’s do it one more time and then one more time, so it’s grew a little bit. So in years where I have more than, let’s say, 20 or 30 answers, I normally try to split it. So there were some years that I had two editions of this post a year. I think even one case where I had three. Wow, so this is incredible that those people were so kind that they took time to answer the questions. The original questions were what are the skills that the BPM practitioners should add to their toolbox in 2016? Ok, and which skills are no longer relevant or not practically available yet as hype? So this was the hot and not.
Mirko24:21
Yeah, ok.
Zbigniew24:23
So this is what we did originally in the first edition.
Mirko24:28
OK, that’s super cool, and can you be a little more specific? Just in general, who did you invite? What kind of people are sharing their ideas on the relevant topics?
Zbigniew24:38
So, generally speaking, I always try to invite people who have various views. So where will be some BPM practitioners, but also people from academia, people who are not in the BPM area, for example, and BAs, but also people who may have interesting perspectives. For example, in 2018, I invited Anand Sanval from CB Insights, who is totally not involved in any way in business force management, but he’s from the market research company we’re doing, by the way, awesome job. If you’re interested in market research, if you want to learn more about any kind of specific market, cb Insights should be our go to localization. And Anand, in his answer, where he shared his experiences because his company was doing what we are generally doing now with GenaRativeAI, he told how does he see the new ways of supporting organizations with handling lots of data, lots of knowledge available in a digital form. So for me, it is incredible to have participants from various backgrounds so from tool vendors, from consulting companies, from universities that are sharing their perspectives about processes very well, telling how do they see the processes, what problems do they see, what possibilities do they see, which elements do they think will be hot, which elements are, in their perspective, no longer relevant. So I try to make it pretty broad and I think it works pretty nicely.
26:13
So in the first edition I had to create a great list of participants. As I told you, many of them are still participating today. So just if we go by the alphabet, it was Josep Mª Cos, Lloyd Dugan, Ian Gotts, Harald Kühn from Biosy Group. From my company, professor Marcello La Rosa, Alberto Manuel, Nathaniel Palmer, Adrian Reed, who is the BAI business analyst that I mentioned. I enjoy very much answers from Adrian because he gives the BAI perspective, which is super, super valuable. Clay Richardson, Pedro Robledo, Alexander Samarin, Jim Sinur, John Tesmer so incredible group of experts who are so kind to share their knowledge with others.
Mirko27:01
Yeah, that’s super cool. And what were the hot topics back then in 2016?
Zbigniew27:06
Well, here I may say that not all the participants always agree, and this is the part of why this is so super interesting, super valuable. But I would say from their answers, of course, if you want to go read on my website and decide on your own, what do you think will be their takes? What do you think were the most important things for them? For me, I would say that there was Maybe consensus would be too much, but many of them mentioned that customer journeys, customer experience, were the topics that were super hot and super relevant and worth exploring further.
Mirko27:46
Okay, that’s interesting. And how did it develop over time? So how did the topics change? Before we talk about what is hot today? But just to have looked back, how did it?
Zbigniew27:56
develop. It was very interesting. So many topics appeared, many topics were mentioned, so we had RPA. We have lots of mentions of various types of automations, so no code, low code and obviously, process mining, so you could see how topics appear, how they become more visible or they lose a little bit of visibility. So I would say that now we are moving more into the process mining, automation, and, as we’ll move to 2024, additional topic.
Mirko28:33
Okay, yeah, cool. Then let’s talk about 2024. Who participated this year? You don’t have to mention all people, because I guess it’s a quite long list, but just to give some names. Who was there?
Zbigniew28:45
Yeah, so you will have some names that we had in the first edition, so we’ll have maybe. Let me take a look at the original list and I will compare it with participants from this edition. So from participants from the first edition, we’ll have Lloyd Dugan, we’ll have Ian Gotts, Harald Kühn and Jim Sinur, but additionally some other great participants like Professor Michael Rosemann and many, many others. For some of them I’m still waiting for confirmation or for acceptance from their PR team, so I unfortunately cannot mention all the names. But when the podcast is available, when the post is online, you can go and see who will be in the first edition. And additionally, in a few weeks, early February, we’ll have a second edition of the post with additional participants.
Mirko29:43
Wow, I’m super curious to learn more. So what are the hot skills in 2024? Tell us more.
Zbigniew29:51
It may not be a huge surprise for you, but an AI is hot topic and generally AI literacy and being able to work with all the new technologies, all the new solutions, is something very, very hot which is mentioned by many participants. So I would say that here we have general consensus that nearly everyone mentions it as a hot topic and obviously process mining is a hot topic to automation and various types of improving processes.
Mirko30:22
Okay, I’m super curious to read all the feedbacks or the posts of the people there in the future, before we go a little bit deeper. What are the skills we don’t need in 2024 anymore? What do we have to let go? Can we let go?
Zbigniew30:39
This is a complex question because very, very commonly, since many years, I have answers from some of my participants that process modeling or BPMN are no longer relevant. You can forget about them. Well, I’m not that sure. I’m not fully confident that we don’t need to model processes at all, because I think that process modeling makes sense. I would say I think there is a famous quote from one of the, from Eisenhower, that he found that the plans are useless but planning is invaluable.
31:18
So I would say that pretty commonly, the actual models don’t create huge value, but the modeling, the figuring out how does the process look like or how should the process look like, discussing who matters.
31:33
It is something that is very valuable. So I would say that, even though it is super easy to have your process modeled, or even process suggested by AI tool like chat dpt we even had simple well, there are several solutions that can do it right away. We even did prototype for this several months ago for Adonis. So it is very easy to have your process modeled automatically, but it would not give you the insight that you have when you’re meeting with people who are doing it. It would not give you the real value that is when you meet with other people from different teams, from different departments and you’re starting to figure out why does your process look like this, what you can change, how do you create value with this process? So I would say that it may happen that will be PMN or other notations will become irrelevant, but the general idea of communicating with others, sharing knowledge with others, I think that this is something that will stand the test of time.
Mirko32:39
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I would say the process of modeling process is so important to bring the people together to create this common picture of the process.
Zbigniew32:49
The common understanding. This is so important. So how we do it it is not that important. But that we do it, that people are talking to one another, that we are thinking together, that we are creating some common understanding. It is pure gold.
Mirko33:07
Yeah, absolutely. That’s so cool. I love process modeling and that’s awesome, yeah, cool. Let’s put that into relationship to the results of my latest survey I did end of last year. I asked a lot of people out there of the new process community what they have on their list as topic for 2024, and topic number five was named by 15% of the participants and there were about 70 something participants, so all kinds of people being responsible for BPM in an organization, working as internal BPM consultants or external consultants. So it’s a nice sample of people who participated there and 15% of them said that they have no-transcript process mining on the list for 2024. And I was a little bit surprised that only 15% of the people have process mining already on their list they are working on. So that was yes this is very curious.
Zbigniew34:05
It is so interesting topic. So only thing that comes to my mind why so few people mention it is that because they may not have to know it, how to approach it. But there are lots of great courses, lots of great books. Yeah, I’m a professor, of course, as Brian professor of under-alist, so it is really easy to get the knowledge. But maybe they don’t have proper support in their companies, maybe they don’t have the data they could use to fill it into the process mining tools and to have some results. So maybe it is that they don’t have anything to mine.
Mirko34:41
Yeah, maybe that’s absolutely a challenge to get the data for sure, also from my experience. But I also talked about that with Jean-Marc Irieau, who was my , I think, two episodes ago. He is leading the process mining initiative at Mann Hummel and he was also surprised that only so few people are working on process mining or have that on the list for this year, and I think for sure at first you need to establish a process culture, so have a basic understanding, have to enable the people train them for basic PPM topics, but then you should start early with process mining. That was what he also recommended at that time. So that’s interesting. It’s good to hear that’s also on the radar of so many people that participated in your survey. Then, ai has also been in the top topics on my list, so it’s basically part of number two, where 43% of the participants named topics like they want to improve their process, digitize, automate or use AI to optimize processes, but only a smaller number specifically named AI. So that’s definitely a topic you should think about, to learn more about how to apply.
35:56
That For sure. It’s buzzword. There’s a real hype about AI and it takes a step further. You have to really deep dive into it to understand how to apply that to your processes on the business process level as well as onto process management. You already mentioned using chat, gpt to suggest process based on. Just say, describe a process for incoming goods or something like that, and then it types down or even paints a model of a process. But that’s not the common understanding and you missed the process of creating this picture together. That’s why I’m really skeptical. But anyways, we have to discuss that and work with AI to understand it and to be on the same level with the business people to help them improve their processes. That’s super interesting. Automation is also part of improving processes, but on my list, topic number one was the challenge to inspire people for processes. So all this basic work, yes, and I love this.
36:59
Was that also named? Besides my contribution, were there also other participants in your research who talked about these? Establishing a process culture, get people excited about processes, that this is a skill you need in 2024?.
Zbigniew37:15
Well, maybe not directly like this, but many touch the soft topic, soft skills like communication, involvement, change management and I love that you had it very clearly how to inspire people for processes. Some years ago I even had additional roundup posts where I also invited BPM experts and asked them how to do it, how to sell BPM in organization, Because I can see that it is relatively easily to introduce the tool to a company.
37:50
It is relatively easy to train people how to model processes. It is not rocket science to tell them how to improve the process, how to search for ways, how to communicate with others, how to simulate processes, how to compare variants. This is not a big deal. But the real thing is how to make sure that you really have the process management processes, that this is alive, that you don’t have lots of process models that are dead after half a year Because nobody cares about updating them. The life happens and you have models and you have life, and there is a widening gap between two of them. Or how to make sure that the pros owners actually care about their processes.
38:34
What do they think in terms of their processes? Again, one joke. One of my colleagues told that recently, but sometime ago, he had the luckiest day of his life Because he was at his customer side and he noticed that two of the top managers were having argument and they were arguing next to the process architecture and showing the processes and discussing how it should look like. And he said that now I know that I had real impact. I made something that was important enough for them to argue over. They were arguing over processes, exactly, so it shows that they started to think in terms of processes, and it was absolutely amazing.
Mirko39:19
Yeah, that’s so true. I love that example. Having your immense experience and putting that together. What are your top three recommendations to get into a more human-centric BPM approach to get people excited about processes.
Zbigniew39:36
I would say about the two aspects first of all.
39:40
So, first aspect, I would say very commonly, as pros, practitioners, we are thinking about the aspects like cost, time, quality, and obviously we need to think about them, because if we are offering something to our customers, the management wants to see their results, they want to see how this impact the bottom line, what is the return investment. But I would say that it’s also we’re thinking how the changes that we are introducing will impact our customers, our environment, the broad society, so how we can make the life of others better with our processes. Will the process will be good for the company, but will it be good for the customers? Will it be good for others? So I would say that the one thing would be to see something bigger than us, something more important than money, seeing what is the impact of what we are doing on the world outside. And now the second aspect, since we had a look at the outside of the company. Now let’s see how did the process impact the lives of our employees? Do our processes make their lives easier? Is it something that helps them, let’s say, on board faster, make them more motivated? Do those processes help them? I don’t know what is your thing.
41:06
But when I’m meeting with people from my various companies, from my various partners, I see that people, especially after COVID, are working in a slightly different way. They make more errors, they are not that focused. So I would say that important thing is how we can use processes and various tools to help them, to help them create impact, to help them do something good. So not to think, okay, how to replace them with automation, but how to help them with automations, with processes, so that they can do something good, so that they can do something meaningful. And how could the process be organized in such a way that people who are working internally in our company can have maybe it will sound terrible, but how we can organize the processes so that they can have a good life without spending too long hours over time, without spending weekends not with their families, with their loved ones, but by working on the super urgent things that happened because there are some problems with processes.
42:21
So second aspect would be that you can inspire people to think about processes, because this is something that may help them and their colleagues, their peers, to work in a nicer environment, to have a better work life balance, to have better work experience. So this would be it. And the last one, very commonly, especially now, in European companies, we have all the ESG aspects, so we have the environmental aspects. So I would say that, apart from looking at the outside, of the customers, on the inside, about our people, it would be seeing the broader view.
43:00
So how are processes will impact the world, the generations to come? Do we make something that is really beneficial for others? So are we doing something that is, let’s say, profitable in the short term but very, very harmful in the long term? So now, this is a little bit more philosophy and not BPM, but I would say that it really helps if people think of their work, their actions and their processes, by having broader contexts, by thinking about what can we do to eliminate hurry, to eliminate stress, to help people do meaningful things and better for the planet, for our children and for others. So those would be the three things not time, cost and quality, as we would normally say, but people, people and people.
Mirko43:56
Yeah, I love it. It perfectly fits to the new process approach. That’s great. So, to wrap it up, what is your key message to our listeners, not just with regards to new process, just overall, with regards to your work? What is your key message?
Zbigniew44:12
Please try to find people who are smarter than you are and learn from them, because it is great to have various perspectives, to learn from different bubbles, from BPM guys, from BA guys, from AI guys, from people with various perspectives, because this way, you will have better view of what your processes are like, really of what you should be focusing on, and you won’t be pushing your own vision of change by forgetting about different perspectives.
44:46
As I would say, always try to find other people and hear what they have to say, communicate with them.
44:54
I think it was Tom DeMarco that, in his great book Deadline, had something like I’m now translating from Polish to English, so it may not be exact, but he mentioned something that the key to management is like this you need to find the good people, the proper people, and then, even if you have problems, they will save you, they will do the things necessary for you, for you to have the results, for you to have what you want to achieve.
45:27
And all the other aspects are, how he called it, administrative, so small administrative formalities, so small administrative administrative stuff, and I would say that this is really important find the good people, people that you can learn from, people that you’re working with people that you can also help inspire, so you can go. It’s incredible that you’re sharing your knowledge, knowledge of your s, with lots of podcast listeners. This is incredible that you’re helping people worldwide and I would invite all your listeners to think if they can share what they learned with others, because it is great to learn something from others, but it is also awesome to share it to pass it to the future generations to pass it to other people and to enrich others by giving what you got from others and what you learned on your own.
46:25
So this would be my summary.
Mirko46:28
Perfect, thank you so much. And where can the people find you? Where can they learn more about your work? I think the question is simple to answer, but we definitely have to talk about where can the people find you and the results of your work.
Zbigniew46:42
Yeah, generally the best way would be to go to my website, so bpmtipscom and you can also find me on LinkedIn. So on those two places you can find the most relevant updates about what I’m up to, what is happening, for example, with my courses, with other stuff and maybe some other interesting things that are happening.
Mirko47:05
Yeah, perfect, we’re going to put all the links into the show notes so our listeners can easily reach the results and learn more. And now I’m super curious because I’m always asking my s for a recommendation of a tool, a method or an expert which I should have a closer look on to, maybe also invite to the podcast to get new ideas, to rethink processes. So it doesn’t have to be from the bpm space, it could be from everywhere. What is your recommendation there?
Zbigniew47:34
I have so many people in mind, so I would say each and every of my blog post parties spent had so great insights so it would really make a lot of sense to follow them, to learn from them. Luckily, you had a chance to interview quite a few of them, so this is a good one. So probably, if I would suggest someone you should invite, maybe Adrian Reed. He’s not a bpm guy, he’s a business analyst. He’s a great person with lots of wonderful insights, so I always enjoy his perspectives on lives, on processes, on how does the business work, so maybe he would be a good .
Mirko48:25
Yeah that’s a good idea. I’m already following him, but now I’m putting him into my list for podcast interviews. That’s cool. Thank you for this recommendation. That’s great. So before we leave the aircraft I don’t know if you’ve already realized that we smoothly landed this episode is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners?
Zbigniew48:46
Yes, obviously. So what I would like to share with you is that it is always good to learn from others. So I would invite you to listen to the following podcast episodes from Mirko and to find other places where you can learn about new bpm trends and what is happening. So I would again recommend you following all the people who are participating in my posts, because we are doing awesome stuff. We are doing really great work. So if you just find those people on LinkedIn, you will be up to date. You will see what is happening in the bpm area.
Mirko49:25
Perfect. Thank you so much. It was great talking to you. Just one final question how would you describe your flight experience today in just three words? Lots of fun, yeah, perfect, that’s cool. I also enjoyed it and it was super interesting. I just can recommend to other people out there go to bpmtipscom to have a look at the detailed answers of all these cool experts you collected there. Thank you so much for your work. I’m already looking forward to the topics for 2025, but first we have to learn about 2024.
Zbigniew50:06
Thank you so much thank you very much for the interpretation.
Mirko50:19
Wow, that was fun. Hope you enjoyed the interviews same as I did. I think it’s impossible to dive into all the different views of the participants of his research in podcast episode, so you have to visit bpmtipscom to get all the details. But it was interesting to learn that there is a common sense that AI and BPM, process mining and automation are the skills you need to learn this year. This also fits to the results of my recent survey. But I have to point out that only 15% of the survey participants said that they already have process mining on their list. Same applies to AI and BPM. Even if this is part of the huge cluster to improve processes, it seems to be only on the list of smaller percentage of organizations. So make sure you don’t miss this. And what I also have to point out is that you have to implement a process culture first, so learn the basics before you can successfully go into topics such as process mining, automation or AI.
51:33
In the specific call to action, here are my three recommendations to prepare yourself for 2024. First one is get a broader idea of these skills by reading the answers of Etonyev’s research at bpmtips.com. Second, join new Process Pro to join forces with other BPM enthusiasts to learn more about these topics in special interest groups which we are planning for the course of 2024. To do so, just go to newproslabcom. And my third recommendation is to visit the New Process Conference in April, where we have all these topics on the agenda. To get your tickets, just go to newprocesslabcom. So in the next episode we’ll have another expert interview, but I don’t want to reveal too much today. Just make sure to follow the new process podcast to not miss the next episode. For now, thank you very much for listening. Have a great day. Bye, bye and auf Wiedersehen.
Mirko52:53
Before you leave as I mentioned in the episode, we’ll have special interest groups on all these topics, on new process pro in the course of 2024. So let’s join forces and become a new process pro for free by heading to newprosseslab.com Every day. Bye, bye.
