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Hello and welcome to Process Transformers, the podcast that talks about business
transformation and the intersection of processes and AI.
Thanks for tuning in.
My name is Lukas Egger and I'm the head of innovation at SAP Signavio.
I'll be your host for today's episode titled "Change Changes, but not
everything changes".
And we have picked this topic today because change feels like such a force that
you have to abide by.
You have to change.
But I think it's really important to also talk about what doesn't change.
In order to know where to invest your focus and how to deal with it.
Also, because I think it's a question that normally is not really talked about.
We are so focused on the new that we kind of forget what we can safely put
aside and feel good that it has changed before.
And to help me with this conversation, I have Steffen Meyer today, which is a
big honor to have on the show.
Steffen is the managing director of Custom Lightning, is an innovation
consultant with focus on leadership, and he has covered more than a dozen
industries in ten years, multiple years, multiple companies, and tons of
successes. And so with that said, I want to segue into the first question,
namely, change changes, but not everything changes.
And Steffen, what is your perspective on the things that you feel like haven't
changed as much or you wouldn't want to change as much?
So yeah, I would be very curious to hear your take on it.
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For sure. Thanks for having me, Lukas.
Really excited to be here with everybody else and with you.
It's always really fun.
So thank you.
What changes? What doesn't change?
The funniest thing.
And you sort of stepped all the way right up to it in my experience, has been
that change. People want change.
They especially want change from all the things around them.
But then when the change shows up, it makes us uncomfortable.
More uncomfortable if we ourselves have to change and more uncomfortable if it
actually is a lot of change, if it's a lot of progress potentially, that also
ends up scaring us. And of course, you know the Neuropsychologists and will
tell us all of the psychology behind it, the neuroscience behind it, the
history. But it's just funny when, you know, I'm an innovation consultant, my
whole job, my whole career is all innovation, innovation, change.
And then people hire me for it and then it's stressful for people.
And then I turn right around and say, you know what?
I'm no better. I'm no different.
I am the same thing happen to me.
When AI first showed up at Generative AI, that is in my sort of awareness.
It boggled my mind.
I thought I was living in the future and some of it was fun.
Some of it seemed kind of scary and some of it I could hardly believe.
So. I'm no better either.
It just seems to be a human thing that we want change and we want everything
around us just not too much and just not to us.
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It's super fascinating.
It reminds me when you ask people about what they wish for.
It feels like everyone knows that they might want the bigger car or the bigger
apartment or the promotion, but we all know that there is hedonistic
adaptation, right? That we always resisted to mean them and a couple of months
later we want the next bigger job, the next bigger car, whatever it might be.
So it feels like people have a hard time wanting something abstract, like
growth or like positive progression.
So I'm like, that's a little bit of a curveball.
What what do you think is behind the wish for innovation?
Because it feels great, but the implementation is painful.
So what is the wish behind the wish that makes us long for it?
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Yeah, I find that too.
Somebody mentioned that same principle as calling it the hedonic treadmill.
It's we're running so fast, and and yet we stand still.
But what's behind it?
To me, it comes down often to the purpose.
Why are you changing?
And I would actually argue that not everything should change.
Right. So I work with startups.
I'm CEO of a startup myself.
And so everything there is about change.
Well, once you do a startup or once you do anything in life and you achieve it,
you worked so hard and so long to try to make it happen.
Wouldn't you want to have it?
Yes. You want to have that thing make it better.
You see ideas, you know, whether that's in personal life, your home could be
better. Your family is evolving what you're learning.
You can learn more in the same thing at work.
You know, we have a process.
It's established finally.
Now we want to optimize.
It doesn't want to change.
So the question becomes and I use this principle quite a bit in my work
actually. Do you have a must do purpose for your change.
And it seems almost inevitably in the real world, whenever there isn't a must
do purpose that everybody understands and everybody sort of agrees, at least
kind of the change will fail.
And so what's behind it then?
Why is that?
It's not a must do change to people.
And I'll give you an example of how that plays out.
Is it unavoidable?
Right. So I look when I sit in a meeting, when I hear people talk, do they even
squirm? Oh, I don't want this to change.
But guess we have to.
You see this in media articles.
They were forced to. It's unavoidable.
The second thing ends up being, is it urgent?
There's another conversation that happens a lot where it's like, yeah, we
should definitely change once we've done all this other stuff that's actually
urgent. And so then that becomes not urgent.
At some point we should change maybe.
Right. That's not unavoidable.
That's not a must do.
And third last thing would be that there's one that the intellectual people,
the rigorous, logical people sometimes don't acknowledge is is it set up for
success? For example, if your change is going to cut your boss's boss's bonus
in half, it's just not set up for success, no matter how logical and how proper
it is. So it seems like the why is is there a must do purpose.
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I'm very drawn to a question that maybe is a bit odd because innovation to me
and the imperative of change feels like it comes out of a quite logical kind of
reasoning. You know, the destructive power of change.
You have to be set up.
It's like always have to evolve.
It's like a very enlightened, very rational kind of reasoning.
At least it feels that way to me.
But you now, said, when we go with the rational stuff, in your experience, it
seems to be prone to failure.
Whereas when you go with the it feels like the right thing to change, like a
very esthetic, very like personal kind of feeling, right?
That those are the boundary conditions for a successful change process.
And I think that's a very unintuitive but fascinating thing you said.
So would you say like change is non-rational at some point or like how how do
you feel about this difference?
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Ooh feeling. Here we are, all intellectual and logical.
Talking about feelings.
I would agree it's the boundary conditions are the feeling.
It probably has to be both rational and feeling.
You want to make sure that it is not just rational.
Maybe it's not that it's not rational, but not just rational.
Just like psychologists have taught us over the decades now how we think we
make sense, but we really don't.
Recently there were some research, really fascinating stuff that the more
rational we think we are, the less rationally we will actually act, because
we're actually the same as other people.
We just have made it part of our self to need to be rational as part of our
self-identity. And so we push away anything that's different.
And all that means is we have more blind spots.
And so people who insist on being ultra rational sometimes are actually less
so. So and I'll get in trouble with this of course.
But it was fascinating.
But so it's not that you shouldn't make sense, it's that you shouldn't trust
just your own rationality.
Make sure you know, in human centered design, we say, get out of the building.
Get an outside in perspective because your rationality isn't everything.
And then even when something is rational, it's not enough.
There's a lot of rational priorities that you could rationally pursue.
It also has to be unavoidable.
It has to be a must do.
And even if you're uncomfortable, if you have an uncomfortable human feeling,
it just has to happen.
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In terms of when you say it has to happen.
When we think about risks, we often try to put the risk categories into
different buckets. We talk about desirability, feasibility, viability,
agreeability so will our customers like it?
Can we make money?
Can we technologically like complete the project?
And can we?
Does it align with our values in.
How can we translate that to what you just said?
I'm curious because the question about the imperative of change and all of
that, where does the Unavoidability come from?
Does it come from any one of those categories or something else?
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I think it can absolutely come from any of those categories.
And it differs a little bit by discipline that you work in.
So in my world, you know, I've been an operational consultant strategy
innovation. And the focus differs a little bit.
But the bottom line is it can come from anything where I'm now in innovation,
there's a love almost an obsession with the product or the service, the
solution. Right.
And yet that is absolutely not where the innovation is scoped to where it's
limited. It can really go across, just like you said.
And I'll give you an example.
Back when I was still at target.
There was a few this feels like long ago, but it's still current.
Hurricane Katrina bears down on the US, right?
And Louisiana is going to be in trouble.
And Hurricane Katrina washes over.
The city of New Orleans powers out.
No money, no roads flooding, and people are still there and they need to get
back into life.
Well, at target up here in Minneapolis, there was a small team that got cobbled
together and there was a must do problem.
We got to get our part of New Orleans working again.
We got to help those people and you got to figure out how you have no power, no
cash, no roads, you know, go.
And within a couple days, those people managed to bring refrigerated cold water
and functioning safe stores up and running again in a city that barely even was
just getting off its feet onto its feet.
And that is absolutely innovative.
Well, was there any one designer involved or an engineer who could write
amazing code? Maybe.
Maybe not. It was human innovation nonetheless.
Right. And so it's a matter of going with where the problems are or your vision
is, frankly, and going after those issues.
And it can absolutely be in finance.
It could be in supply chain, it could be in operations.
The team doesn't matter.
Actually, I'll go one level further.
Even if it gets me in trouble, I would say the problems that actually matter.
Yeah, they are usually cross-functional because they don't care that some
professional sitting in some tower working for some company have some certain
org structure or preference on their software or scope engines.
No, the problems don't care and so they can absolutely come from anywhere.
And second, they cut across the functions.
If it's a clean, functionally orderly problem, maybe either you haven't fully
understood it or maybe it's not as pressing as you think it is.
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It was fascinating because I think you're tapping into something really
interesting there in terms of we focus so much on technological innovation, it
seems to be the most beguiling, the most like fascinating.
Oh, wow. We can harness the power of fire or whatever, right?
We're like yet another technological advance we master.
But I think it's a reoccurring motif that people say the hardest problems are
the ones where people and processes get involved, and not just the technology.
And just coming back one more time to those categories.
And if you talk about the cross, the nature of problems that are cross and from
your perspective or in your experience, which one are the hardest problems, the
ones that are more on the human side?
They are more on the I don't know, you broke it down into various categories,
right? Like which problem would you be most intimidated let's say?
Is it those cross functional problems?
Or what kind of intuition have you built up in your career?
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Ooh. In my experience.
And debate me on this.
If you've experienced it differently because I'm only one is there's almost an
illusion of them being separate.
Oh, man, that sounds existential.
It's really going to be very practical.
We say, you know what? What should be automated, what should stay human, and
which are the human problems, which are the practical, the automatic or
technological problems.
They end up being the same.
And I'll give you an example to two principles that really show up.
One is, for example, an AI, and then before other technology, computer
technology, there's this idea of human in the loop.
And it's not one or the other, it's both.
You have the technology and then you have the human in the loop.
And I love that you just had fire as your technological advance, which at one
point it was right.
And the idea there is that we as humans, we only remember two levels of
automation. We remember the level of automation that we just had.
And you're either happy about that or you're annoyed at that, or we or and we
know the technology and the automation that's coming ahead.
Right. And either we are afraid of it or we're looking for it and yearning for
it. But all the things that came before all the way back to fire, if you want,
that's just normal.
That's not automation.
Even though if you put yourself back a couple hundred years, it would have been
massively automated.
Right? So.
We have all this automation, and yet there have been more humans, and yet we're
not all unemployed or sitting at the beach drinking, you know, drinks with
little umbrellas in them.
So there's always going to be a human in the loop.
And anybody who sells you a new technological solution and promises you full
automation, hands off.
Either they're selling you a story or they haven't understood it themselves.
So human in the loop, I think, is one case where it's not one or the other.
It's an illusion. And then have this other thing that I got really passionate
about over time.
I wish I knew who I learned it from, but there's this idea of humanize what's
human and automate the rest.
Humanize what's human, automate the rest.
And it sounds really esoteric, but it becomes really practical because what it
tells you is that what really matters in those differences is do you care?
Automation or human is not about the technology, it's about whether you care.
On the one hand, there's, you know, the light switch in this room.
Have I thought about this other than just making up this goofy example?
No, don't think about light switch.
And yet there's all this technology, industrial production, standard parts,
electricity, internal wiring, homes, all these technologies.
On the other hand, us talking, right.
A couple hundred years ago, I would have taken a horse.
I would have ridden to you.
We would have sat in a room if we wanted to recording, there would have been
another person madly writing away with quill and parchment.
And if we want that replicated, other people have to copy it.
It's not human or technology.
It's it's both.
And what matters is okay here.
We care. We are hopefully having a human conversation.
And all this technology is just in the backdrop.
It's a background thing.
And so what you can do practically then is think about where do I care what
steps. So you map a process, map you map a user journey.
Don't just map where the waste is.
Don't just map where in human centered design would say where the pain points.
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When you say, where do I care?
Do you mean where do I care as a company?
Where? Where those care happen with with my customers?
Like, who cares about what would you say?
It's the purview of the CEO or the innovation office or the consultant.
Like how whose care are we talking about?
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Ooh! That is probably the heart of the matter.
And I would argue when you don't answer that question well is when you get into
what people would describe, you know, soulless processes or feeling not
appreciated, not valued all those things.
So you have to get that right.
So there's probably three levels.
You have the person who is doing the work.
Maybe think of it as three circles rather than levels, three circles that
overlap the person who is doing the work.
So there's a project team or a person in charge.
It doesn't matter, but there's people working on it and they have really
functional worries.
Then there are the stakeholders.
So that could be the CEO and your example.
And that person is not directly involved and also is not zoomed in to that one
topic. They are zoomed out and care about many topics.
And this thing is just one piece of a puzzle that's a different and bigger
puzzle that they focus on.
And then there are the people affected by it, right?
So the users, the employees who have to execute a process once it's created, it
really doesn't matter. But so the people doing it, the people who sort of
commissioned it and the people who are affected by it, if you want to have
those three circles.
And so if you keep only focusing on one, it just won't work.
Think you can probably get by with only worrying about two of the three, but
you will pay for it later.
Like I said, if you only care about the doers and the deciders, the
stakeholders, and ignore the users, it will feel soulless.
If you don't care about the stakeholders, you might just get rejected and not
get approval in your various things.
And if the bosses want something and they hear from their customer, you know,
we're very customer focused or, you know, user centric, and they don't care
about what can happen in the real world and they just make promises that will
never happen. So you end up having to do all three if you want things actually
to work. And the best teams I find manage to strike that balance, even if it
seems hard.
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Makes perfect sense, even if it raises the stakes.
I love that we gravitated towards the humanity and talking about that.
That being said, I know that you have a background in Six Sigma, right?
Which to me always struck me as a very methodologically straightforward process
which tries to not bring in the humanity too much.
Right? We think about statistics, about all these kinds of things when we talk
about like total quality.
So I'm curious, could you make the case for that approach as well, or what do
you think were the parts of that that inspired your position today?
Is it something you did?
And just like a ladder, you stepped it up and then didn't need it anymore?
Or is it something that gave you the tools to then focus on, let's say, the
other parts that you so eloquently pointed out just now?
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Oh, man, I'm gonna get in trouble for this, but I'll just step right into it.
I appreciate it and think you're right.
There is definitely a tension there.
So it deserves attacking directly.
So my take is actually that Six Sigma and Operational improvement lean all of
those things. And innovation actually are not all that different.
You should be equally rigorous in both.
And good innovation work is just as rigorous.
In fact, I would say there's there's one sort of the godfather of modern
innovation theory and processes is somebody named Steve Blank, and he served
the person who who is at least credited with a lot of the current ways that
startups work and corporate innovation works.
And back in 2015, in a blog post, he coined this term that had people really
kind of worked up and think it was because it was a little bit too close for
comfort. And he talked about innovation theater, innovation theater.
And what that meant was that there's sticky notes and shiny modern rooms and
enthusiastic people coming up with ideas, and somehow nothing ever came of it.
And it kind of was a little bit of an awkward thing.
On the other hand, he argued, you can be absolutely rigorous on innovation,
work and so on the one side, there is rigor there.
So I would argue, on the other hand, I would actually say when I learned my Six
Sigma work, humanity was just part of that.
There were sort of three levels of care for it that don't get talked about a
lot. And and they matter a lot to me.
One is you have to care for humans.
And we learned formally there's a tool that Six Sigma people use, but other
people have since used it and adopted it.
So it might be familiar to many people.
It's called the Five Whys.
And it says basically to get to root causes, you can't just ask people about
why something is wrong.
You have to ask them several times.
And we would ask our coaches, so how do you know when you're done?
Is it five, is it six times?
How do you know. And our coaches would tell us, look, what you want to get to
is the point where you get away from process problems and you get to the human
problems that are under them all.
You know, you've hit the root cause when you figured out what the human cause
is below the process.
So I would actually then disagree, even with the statement of Six Sigma is all
about statistics and so forth.
It is also about that.
But if you want to solve issues, you have to understand why.
And that's going to be a human thing.
So care for problems.
And that's actually very similar in innovation work where you say, look, we
need to have empathy for our users and understand the deep whys.
It's the same idea.
And that is just one of the places where you really need them in both.
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I find it fascinating, and I really want to specifically talk about one thing
you just mentioned when you talked about Steve Blank and his Innovation
Theater, right?
We all know those dog and pony shows, like the things where it's about
performance and less about the content.
Let's say if you're a consultant and we're talking about these topics because
we really want to get closer to, how can we help everybody have a conversation
about how to do change, right?
So I will ask for some secrets of the trade when you come in as a consultant.
How would you gauge whether it's a performance or whether a team is on the
right path, so to speak?
What are the telltale signs or listeners that people should watch out for where
you go, like, ooh, we might have left the actual change field and we have
entered, not the circus.
Don't want to be mean, but, you know, we have veered off the idea that we were
going for.
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Oh yes, there are two themes, right?
The one is think this humanity side humanizing this.
Right. And we've already talked about that a little bit.
The other one is about it feeling like work, feeling like rigor feeling tied.
So and sometimes people will say innovation work is 1% inspiration and 99%
perspiration. Meaning there's the stuff that's cool, that's sexy, the stuff
that, you know, you're all worked up about.
And then there's the work that you say, you know what?
I'm at work, I'm getting paid.
I'm proud for it, for my, you know, doing a good day's work.
But it definitely is work and I'm glad they pay me for it.
And so those are really the two things that I look for.
Are people clear on the human dimensions of this?
Because it's not just the rigor, not just the process, but also the human
things. Secondly, are they treating this just like work in a good way, being
sort of being proud of your craft?
I'm a professional in a space.
I'm doing work that is solid and that I can stand behind and sign my name to,
but not in a way that is mostly glamorous.
The glamor is the part that we get to do when when things go well once in a
while and in between, we're proud of doing good work, right?
And then, of course, the last part is, are we clear on the problem solving
problems we're solving?
So maybe it's three things rather than than two the rigor, the humanity and
problems we're solving.
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Not only do I agree, I find it really an important point, a question that I
definitely want to ask because of your background, I know that you have lived
in multiple places, right, in Europe.
You're currently in the US.
You also lived in India.
What is your experience with the, let's say, cultural backdrop or how those
perceptions change of the place?
Right. Because there is like, I'm not I'm not sure we should call it a myth,
but there is a perception that here in the US, innovation is done best in a
certain sense. Right.
So what are your experiences about different places and how they go about with
change management, with innovation and applying the principles that you just
talked about?
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Right. And it definitely is a myth.
People in China and India, in African countries, in Europe, all around the
world would massively disagree with that idea, and they would all have a really
good case for it.
And look, I mean, this would deserve its whole conversation of its own,
probably, and to some degree would really veer even out of my competence.
But so maybe a couple of things.
One, really quick, just for anybody who hasn't experienced those specific
things, sometimes there is sort of an on average difference in that you
experience in different cultures and you will have, you know, you have the ones
that you've immersed yourself in have mine and others have different ones.
In the US, on average, there tends to be more of a focus on the upside of
change. And how can we bring that about?
In Europe. Sometimes it can be a little bit more about how do we avoid the
downside of change and make sure that it doesn't cause the unintended
consequences. India is a fascinating, multifaceted country.
I don't even know that I could put it into one box.
I think you'd have to talk about it in different ways.
So there are definitely differences.
And, you know, whenever we learn about living in other countries, we learn
about sort of those averages.
But look, even that is not all the same.
So it's a myth even here.
So, you know, I work in a startup and here in Minneapolis, our little Silicon
Prairie startups feel very different than in Boston or in Boulder or in Silicon
Valley. Different people, different attitudes.
Right? It's not the same.
And then when I've done my consulting work across different companies, that
people have been kind enough to invite me into, their cultures are massively
different. Even when they're in the same city.
You can feel each team, each group of humans has their own group.
And so it's actually, to me, much less about my experience or your experience
or those specific places.
It comes down more to.
Are you willing to put yourself out there and react to it?
There's let's see, I think three main points.
The one part is you will definitely have places where you fit right.
Fit is a thing and you will find where it is.
And the important thing there seems to be less about, hey, I want to become
somebody who fits in here, who belongs here, and more finding the places where
you're already accepted for who you are today.
But the second thing even bigger is.
People talk about valuing differences, but the people who are doing it are
finding it's actually really hard on the ground, because all those differences
mean people who value different things, do things in a different order, act
differently while they're doing it, express it differently.
That's hard work. And under pressure from timelines and deadlines and things
that have never been done, that's hard.
So being willing to do the hard work of valuing differences, that stands out to
me. And that's something that I've learned.
Luckily, I have an expert in my own family.
My wife is quite expert at navigating big transitions, but even then, it's
still hard when can rely on an expert and ask her, hey, how do we deal with
that? So the last thing actually is the biggest part.
Then you have to stop caring about your own perspective as the one that
matters. There's 8 billion people.
They all think that their perspective is important.
And if we stick to that, nothing much happens.
We just butt heads, you know, so they're after you value the differences.
There's still the part of saying, you know what, I have a way of doing this,
and I have a way that could be right, but other people do, too.
What if I was okay with assuming that the others also have goodwill and
competence and went with their way?
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I think it's a beautiful way of putting it.
I think another idea that's currently very pervasive is that everything, once
again, will change because of generative AI.
And so we're all looking at the processes and how generative AI might affect
those. What is your take on how AI will level the playing field or making an
incumbents game?
Or currently when you work with other companies and people have questions about
whoa, there's another big change coming at all around generative AI or AI in
general. Like, what's your take on it?
Do you think it will be like a radical challenge to the change processes and
all of that? Or do you think with the same tools we can solve the problems of
tomorrow?
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Right. Look, Lukas, that's where you and Signavio might be more experts than I
am. But I'll take an outsider's perspective for what it's worth, based on my
experience. Right.
And there'll be sort of two aspects.
The second one will be quite the thing in this.
So starting with the simpler first one, I think AI will infuse everything, but
not always. Obviously it might be in the backdrop, right?
And obviously it's hard to really understand it and map it and describe it
neatly while we're in the sort of the beginning Fiori of it and everything is
exploding like plants after a Minnesota winter.
But I'll take an analog, right?
So if you look at even something fairly similar, like desktop computers and see
where they've taken us, since I don't know windows 3.1, early 1990s, whatever.
Something in that range. Right.
There's been a ton of change just there.
Having a computer on every desk, laptops, mobile, everything that has come
since. And yet do we say everything we do is about computers?
No, it's just infused into everything, sometimes very obvious, but sometimes
it's it's just sitting in the background.
And that'll be the same thing for AI, I think, over our time in general, of
course, it's a little bit different.
I tend to think of AI as all human intellectual work in your pocket.
So anything that's intellectual work you can now have, so the topics will be
different, but it'll infuse everything sometimes in the background.
That's cute.
But there's a big second sort of.
But that comes with it and that is implementation or adoption.
And I'll tell you a story about it, maybe again from a technological wave
before there used to be digital transformations, even before AI and companies
would have them. And I was involved with a company that said, haha, we have a
very analog process.
It involves some desktop computers and then a bunch of printed pieces of paper
and handwritten stuff. We will digitize it, and it involved a whole floor of
people in one of the big office buildings and one of our big cities.
And so they brought in the software that they chose, and they implemented it,
and they trained it, and they installed it and configured it and all those
things. And yet it failed and the company ended up pulling out the software.
It was not SAP and they went back to this quasi analog process.
And how come?
What they had missed was the human side that we already talked about the
humans, that the floor of professionals working there had to do the entire job
differently before they would make their thinking work a little bit at a time,
think a little, do a little, think a doodle, do a little, adjust.
And throughout their whole work process, they would do that in this new world.
They had to do all their thinking up front, declare all the rules, all the ways
that things should do, tell it to the computer and the computer would do it.
And they had to change everything about how they did their entire thinking.
And that was squishy and human and, you know, shouldn't it be obvious?
And isn't there so much value?
And it got undervalued.
And yeah, there was training and change management, but sort of acknowledging
that dozens of people had to do things completely differently.
That was overlooked.
And so the same thing would say applies here with AI, right?
Yeah. There's going to be transformation and it's going be automation and all
these things. Where we need to consider is what are the human aspects, what do
we care about and how do we help the humans come along with it.
And again, it's not going to be where everything's going to be automated.
The humans don't matter anymore.
The humans will still matter.
Just like we don't have 99% unemployment right now.
There's a quantitative futurist, Amy Webb professors super, super amazing.
She just had an article out not that long ago about how interacting in an AI
world will look, and she talks about working with CEOs and executives who say,
"ha-ha" Now we will just have all these cost savings, everything simple,
everything automated. And she's like, no, you will have floors of people
working with the AI.
0
We talked a lot about future change and change itself.
I want to put you on the spot right now, here today.
If you had the power to instantly transform one single process, what would you
change and why?
0
Man. Oh, I'm going to still get in trouble here.
All right. Okay, I got one.
Yeah, I actually believe this one.
It's not just one I come up with.
So this one I actually believe in.
I would love to transform any process that boils down to this.
Any process that boils down to let's get people to agree.
And that's like: "Steffen, what do you mean by that?
We give it fancy names, right?" Process governance, milestone meetings, stage
gates, cross-functional alignment, project kickoffs, all these fancy names.
Right. And what we've really done, I think is we've created these elaborate
rituals. They're almost religious, right?
They have ceremonies and they have symbols and structure and all the things,
but they kind of don't always work.
And the people who are not in the midst of it see it and cringe and roll their
eyes sometimes.
And so it seems to me, what would be really awesome is a process for healthily
agreeing, because what's missing in the current way is we sort of gotten the
humanity totally out, right?
There is power, there is conflicts.
There's the neuropsychology, group, psychology incentives, what we know about
efficient meetings and good meetings and all of those things kind of get
ignored a lot of the time.
Not always, but a lot of the time.
No wonder it doesn't work.
And then you have between these decision points, you have very logical, very
sort of factual processes, whether it's Six Sigma, whether it's lean startup,
human centered design, strategy based problem solving doesn't matter what.
But then all these teams that do the work are stuck very efficiently doing work
for a purpose. That doesn't mean anything, because either people didn't agree
in the first place or they couldn't agree on what success looks like.
So they agreed in the front. But they won't agree the next time that you bring
them the work, or they never defined what they're focused on anyway, and the
work will sort of distribute and not really focus.
No wonder. So you're very efficiently sort of do the wrong thing.
And sometimes people will offer silver bullet solutions.
So if you know, if you just do this one thing, your process will be fine.
Click bait for companies.
Right. And there are some solutions that I've seen that actually work but are
sort of specialized. The design sprint process by Google Ventures comes to
mind. Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky third author, works very well, considers the
true human factors.
It's just meant for a special purpose.
I would love a general purpose automated process for healthy agreement.
And disagreement and disagreement, in fact.
So that's an old thing.
Even we should know better.
Who is at Sloan?
The CEO of General Motors in the 50s, he said.
So I won't get the quote exactly right.
But he said something to the effect to his executive team.
Have we figured out what this agreement this meeting is all about?
If not, let's adjourn until we know what the disagreement is that this meeting
is all about. So we should be able to figure it out.
And yet we haven't.
There's a fragility, a worry about all the things that really that feed into
it. But I would love if we could come up with a healthy way of reaching the
agreement.
0
That's beautiful. And thank you so much for sharing so many insights and a
wealth of experience about change, about the things that don't change and how
we can take better advantage of it.
And with that, thanks for listening to another episode of Process Transformers.
If you have questions or comments, email us at Processtransformers@sap.com.
Until next time for another transformative conversation.
Hello and welcome to Process Transformers, the podcast that talks about business
transformation and the intersection of processes and AI.
Thanks for tuning in.
My name is Lukas Egger and I'm the head of innovation at SAP Signavio.
I'll be your host for today's episode titled "Change Changes, but not
everything changes".
And we have picked this topic today because change feels like such a force that
you have to abide by.
You have to change.
But I think it's really important to also talk about what doesn't change.
In order to know where to invest your focus and how to deal with it.
Also, because I think it's a question that normally is not really talked about.
We are so focused on the new that we kind of forget what we can safely put
aside and feel good that it has changed before.
And to help me with this conversation, I have Steffen Meyer today, which is a
big honor to have on the show.
Steffen is the managing director of Custom Lightning, is an innovation
consultant with focus on leadership, and he has covered more than a dozen
industries in ten years, multiple years, multiple companies, and tons of
successes. And so with that said, I want to segue into the first question,
namely, change changes, but not everything changes.
And Steffen, what is your perspective on the things that you feel like haven't
changed as much or you wouldn't want to change as much?
So yeah, I would be very curious to hear your take on it.
0
For sure. Thanks for having me, Lukas.
Really excited to be here with everybody else and with you.
It's always really fun.
So thank you.
What changes? What doesn't change?
The funniest thing.
And you sort of stepped all the way right up to it in my experience, has been
that change. People want change.
They especially want change from all the things around them.
But then when the change shows up, it makes us uncomfortable.
More uncomfortable if we ourselves have to change and more uncomfortable if it
actually is a lot of change, if it's a lot of progress potentially, that also
ends up scaring us. And of course, you know the Neuropsychologists and will
tell us all of the psychology behind it, the neuroscience behind it, the
history. But it's just funny when, you know, I'm an innovation consultant, my
whole job, my whole career is all innovation, innovation, change.
And then people hire me for it and then it's stressful for people.
And then I turn right around and say, you know what?
I'm no better. I'm no different.
I am the same thing happen to me.
When AI first showed up at Generative AI, that is in my sort of awareness.
It boggled my mind.
I thought I was living in the future and some of it was fun.
Some of it seemed kind of scary and some of it I could hardly believe.
So. I'm no better either.
It just seems to be a human thing that we want change and we want everything
around us just not too much and just not to us.
0
It's super fascinating.
It reminds me when you ask people about what they wish for.
It feels like everyone knows that they might want the bigger car or the bigger
apartment or the promotion, but we all know that there is hedonistic
adaptation, right? That we always resisted to mean them and a couple of months
later we want the next bigger job, the next bigger car, whatever it might be.
So it feels like people have a hard time wanting something abstract, like
growth or like positive progression.
So I'm like, that's a little bit of a curveball.
What what do you think is behind the wish for innovation?
Because it feels great, but the implementation is painful.
So what is the wish behind the wish that makes us long for it?
0
Yeah, I find that too.
Somebody mentioned that same principle as calling it the hedonic treadmill.
It's we're running so fast, and and yet we stand still.
But what's behind it?
To me, it comes down often to the purpose.
Why are you changing?
And I would actually argue that not everything should change.
Right. So I work with startups.
I'm CEO of a startup myself.
And so everything there is about change.
Well, once you do a startup or once you do anything in life and you achieve it,
you worked so hard and so long to try to make it happen.
Wouldn't you want to have it?
Yes. You want to have that thing make it better.
You see ideas, you know, whether that's in personal life, your home could be
better. Your family is evolving what you're learning.
You can learn more in the same thing at work.
You know, we have a process.
It's established finally.
Now we want to optimize.
It doesn't want to change.
So the question becomes and I use this principle quite a bit in my work
actually. Do you have a must do purpose for your change.
And it seems almost inevitably in the real world, whenever there isn't a must
do purpose that everybody understands and everybody sort of agrees, at least
kind of the change will fail.
And so what's behind it then?
Why is that?
It's not a must do change to people.
And I'll give you an example of how that plays out.
Is it unavoidable?
Right. So I look when I sit in a meeting, when I hear people talk, do they even
squirm? Oh, I don't want this to change.
But guess we have to.
You see this in media articles.
They were forced to. It's unavoidable.
The second thing ends up being, is it urgent?
There's another conversation that happens a lot where it's like, yeah, we
should definitely change once we've done all this other stuff that's actually
urgent. And so then that becomes not urgent.
At some point we should change maybe.
Right. That's not unavoidable.
That's not a must do.
And third last thing would be that there's one that the intellectual people,
the rigorous, logical people sometimes don't acknowledge is is it set up for
success? For example, if your change is going to cut your boss's boss's bonus
in half, it's just not set up for success, no matter how logical and how proper
it is. So it seems like the why is is there a must do purpose.
0
I'm very drawn to a question that maybe is a bit odd because innovation to me
and the imperative of change feels like it comes out of a quite logical kind of
reasoning. You know, the destructive power of change.
You have to be set up.
It's like always have to evolve.
It's like a very enlightened, very rational kind of reasoning.
At least it feels that way to me.
But you now, said, when we go with the rational stuff, in your experience, it
seems to be prone to failure.
Whereas when you go with the it feels like the right thing to change, like a
very esthetic, very like personal kind of feeling, right?
That those are the boundary conditions for a successful change process.
And I think that's a very unintuitive but fascinating thing you said.
So would you say like change is non-rational at some point or like how how do
you feel about this difference?
0
Ooh feeling. Here we are, all intellectual and logical.
Talking about feelings.
I would agree it's the boundary conditions are the feeling.
It probably has to be both rational and feeling.
You want to make sure that it is not just rational.
Maybe it's not that it's not rational, but not just rational.
Just like psychologists have taught us over the decades now how we think we
make sense, but we really don't.
Recently there were some research, really fascinating stuff that the more
rational we think we are, the less rationally we will actually act, because
we're actually the same as other people.
We just have made it part of our self to need to be rational as part of our
self-identity. And so we push away anything that's different.
And all that means is we have more blind spots.
And so people who insist on being ultra rational sometimes are actually less
so. So and I'll get in trouble with this of course.
But it was fascinating.
But so it's not that you shouldn't make sense, it's that you shouldn't trust
just your own rationality.
Make sure you know, in human centered design, we say, get out of the building.
Get an outside in perspective because your rationality isn't everything.
And then even when something is rational, it's not enough.
There's a lot of rational priorities that you could rationally pursue.
It also has to be unavoidable.
It has to be a must do.
And even if you're uncomfortable, if you have an uncomfortable human feeling,
it just has to happen.
0
In terms of when you say it has to happen.
When we think about risks, we often try to put the risk categories into
different buckets. We talk about desirability, feasibility, viability,
agreeability so will our customers like it?
Can we make money?
Can we technologically like complete the project?
And can we?
Does it align with our values in.
How can we translate that to what you just said?
I'm curious because the question about the imperative of change and all of
that, where does the Unavoidability come from?
Does it come from any one of those categories or something else?
0
I think it can absolutely come from any of those categories.
And it differs a little bit by discipline that you work in.
So in my world, you know, I've been an operational consultant strategy
innovation. And the focus differs a little bit.
But the bottom line is it can come from anything where I'm now in innovation,
there's a love almost an obsession with the product or the service, the
solution. Right.
And yet that is absolutely not where the innovation is scoped to where it's
limited. It can really go across, just like you said.
And I'll give you an example.
Back when I was still at target.
There was a few this feels like long ago, but it's still current.
Hurricane Katrina bears down on the US, right?
And Louisiana is going to be in trouble.
And Hurricane Katrina washes over.
The city of New Orleans powers out.
No money, no roads flooding, and people are still there and they need to get
back into life.
Well, at target up here in Minneapolis, there was a small team that got cobbled
together and there was a must do problem.
We got to get our part of New Orleans working again.
We got to help those people and you got to figure out how you have no power, no
cash, no roads, you know, go.
And within a couple days, those people managed to bring refrigerated cold water
and functioning safe stores up and running again in a city that barely even was
just getting off its feet onto its feet.
And that is absolutely innovative.
Well, was there any one designer involved or an engineer who could write
amazing code? Maybe.
Maybe not. It was human innovation nonetheless.
Right. And so it's a matter of going with where the problems are or your vision
is, frankly, and going after those issues.
And it can absolutely be in finance.
It could be in supply chain, it could be in operations.
The team doesn't matter.
Actually, I'll go one level further.
Even if it gets me in trouble, I would say the problems that actually matter.
Yeah, they are usually cross-functional because they don't care that some
professional sitting in some tower working for some company have some certain
org structure or preference on their software or scope engines.
No, the problems don't care and so they can absolutely come from anywhere.
And second, they cut across the functions.
If it's a clean, functionally orderly problem, maybe either you haven't fully
understood it or maybe it's not as pressing as you think it is.
0
It was fascinating because I think you're tapping into something really
interesting there in terms of we focus so much on technological innovation, it
seems to be the most beguiling, the most like fascinating.
Oh, wow. We can harness the power of fire or whatever, right?
We're like yet another technological advance we master.
But I think it's a reoccurring motif that people say the hardest problems are
the ones where people and processes get involved, and not just the technology.
And just coming back one more time to those categories.
And if you talk about the cross, the nature of problems that are cross and from
your perspective or in your experience, which one are the hardest problems, the
ones that are more on the human side?
They are more on the I don't know, you broke it down into various categories,
right? Like which problem would you be most intimidated let's say?
Is it those cross functional problems?
Or what kind of intuition have you built up in your career?
0
Ooh. In my experience.
And debate me on this.
If you've experienced it differently because I'm only one is there's almost an
illusion of them being separate.
Oh, man, that sounds existential.
It's really going to be very practical.
We say, you know what? What should be automated, what should stay human, and
which are the human problems, which are the practical, the automatic or
technological problems.
They end up being the same.
And I'll give you an example to two principles that really show up.
One is, for example, an AI, and then before other technology, computer
technology, there's this idea of human in the loop.
And it's not one or the other, it's both.
You have the technology and then you have the human in the loop.
And I love that you just had fire as your technological advance, which at one
point it was right.
And the idea there is that we as humans, we only remember two levels of
automation. We remember the level of automation that we just had.
And you're either happy about that or you're annoyed at that, or we or and we
know the technology and the automation that's coming ahead.
Right. And either we are afraid of it or we're looking for it and yearning for
it. But all the things that came before all the way back to fire, if you want,
that's just normal.
That's not automation.
Even though if you put yourself back a couple hundred years, it would have been
massively automated.
Right? So.
We have all this automation, and yet there have been more humans, and yet we're
not all unemployed or sitting at the beach drinking, you know, drinks with
little umbrellas in them.
So there's always going to be a human in the loop.
And anybody who sells you a new technological solution and promises you full
automation, hands off.
Either they're selling you a story or they haven't understood it themselves.
So human in the loop, I think, is one case where it's not one or the other.
It's an illusion. And then have this other thing that I got really passionate
about over time.
I wish I knew who I learned it from, but there's this idea of humanize what's
human and automate the rest.
Humanize what's human, automate the rest.
And it sounds really esoteric, but it becomes really practical because what it
tells you is that what really matters in those differences is do you care?
Automation or human is not about the technology, it's about whether you care.
On the one hand, there's, you know, the light switch in this room.
Have I thought about this other than just making up this goofy example?
No, don't think about light switch.
And yet there's all this technology, industrial production, standard parts,
electricity, internal wiring, homes, all these technologies.
On the other hand, us talking, right.
A couple hundred years ago, I would have taken a horse.
I would have ridden to you.
We would have sat in a room if we wanted to recording, there would have been
another person madly writing away with quill and parchment.
And if we want that replicated, other people have to copy it.
It's not human or technology.
It's it's both.
And what matters is okay here.
We care. We are hopefully having a human conversation.
And all this technology is just in the backdrop.
It's a background thing.
And so what you can do practically then is think about where do I care what
steps. So you map a process, map you map a user journey.
Don't just map where the waste is.
Don't just map where in human centered design would say where the pain points.
0
When you say, where do I care?
Do you mean where do I care as a company?
Where? Where those care happen with with my customers?
Like, who cares about what would you say?
It's the purview of the CEO or the innovation office or the consultant.
Like how whose care are we talking about?
0
Ooh! That is probably the heart of the matter.
And I would argue when you don't answer that question well is when you get into
what people would describe, you know, soulless processes or feeling not
appreciated, not valued all those things.
So you have to get that right.
So there's probably three levels.
You have the person who is doing the work.
Maybe think of it as three circles rather than levels, three circles that
overlap the person who is doing the work.
So there's a project team or a person in charge.
It doesn't matter, but there's people working on it and they have really
functional worries.
Then there are the stakeholders.
So that could be the CEO and your example.
And that person is not directly involved and also is not zoomed in to that one
topic. They are zoomed out and care about many topics.
And this thing is just one piece of a puzzle that's a different and bigger
puzzle that they focus on.
And then there are the people affected by it, right?
So the users, the employees who have to execute a process once it's created, it
really doesn't matter. But so the people doing it, the people who sort of
commissioned it and the people who are affected by it, if you want to have
those three circles.
And so if you keep only focusing on one, it just won't work.
Think you can probably get by with only worrying about two of the three, but
you will pay for it later.
Like I said, if you only care about the doers and the deciders, the
stakeholders, and ignore the users, it will feel soulless.
If you don't care about the stakeholders, you might just get rejected and not
get approval in your various things.
And if the bosses want something and they hear from their customer, you know,
we're very customer focused or, you know, user centric, and they don't care
about what can happen in the real world and they just make promises that will
never happen. So you end up having to do all three if you want things actually
to work. And the best teams I find manage to strike that balance, even if it
seems hard.
0
Makes perfect sense, even if it raises the stakes.
I love that we gravitated towards the humanity and talking about that.
That being said, I know that you have a background in Six Sigma, right?
Which to me always struck me as a very methodologically straightforward process
which tries to not bring in the humanity too much.
Right? We think about statistics, about all these kinds of things when we talk
about like total quality.
So I'm curious, could you make the case for that approach as well, or what do
you think were the parts of that that inspired your position today?
Is it something you did?
And just like a ladder, you stepped it up and then didn't need it anymore?
Or is it something that gave you the tools to then focus on, let's say, the
other parts that you so eloquently pointed out just now?
0
Oh, man, I'm gonna get in trouble for this, but I'll just step right into it.
I appreciate it and think you're right.
There is definitely a tension there.
So it deserves attacking directly.
So my take is actually that Six Sigma and Operational improvement lean all of
those things. And innovation actually are not all that different.
You should be equally rigorous in both.
And good innovation work is just as rigorous.
In fact, I would say there's there's one sort of the godfather of modern
innovation theory and processes is somebody named Steve Blank, and he served
the person who who is at least credited with a lot of the current ways that
startups work and corporate innovation works.
And back in 2015, in a blog post, he coined this term that had people really
kind of worked up and think it was because it was a little bit too close for
comfort. And he talked about innovation theater, innovation theater.
And what that meant was that there's sticky notes and shiny modern rooms and
enthusiastic people coming up with ideas, and somehow nothing ever came of it.
And it kind of was a little bit of an awkward thing.
On the other hand, he argued, you can be absolutely rigorous on innovation,
work and so on the one side, there is rigor there.
So I would argue, on the other hand, I would actually say when I learned my Six
Sigma work, humanity was just part of that.
There were sort of three levels of care for it that don't get talked about a
lot. And and they matter a lot to me.
One is you have to care for humans.
And we learned formally there's a tool that Six Sigma people use, but other
people have since used it and adopted it.
So it might be familiar to many people.
It's called the Five Whys.
And it says basically to get to root causes, you can't just ask people about
why something is wrong.
You have to ask them several times.
And we would ask our coaches, so how do you know when you're done?
Is it five, is it six times?
How do you know. And our coaches would tell us, look, what you want to get to
is the point where you get away from process problems and you get to the human
problems that are under them all.
You know, you've hit the root cause when you figured out what the human cause
is below the process.
So I would actually then disagree, even with the statement of Six Sigma is all
about statistics and so forth.
It is also about that.
But if you want to solve issues, you have to understand why.
And that's going to be a human thing.
So care for problems.
And that's actually very similar in innovation work where you say, look, we
need to have empathy for our users and understand the deep whys.
It's the same idea.
And that is just one of the places where you really need them in both.
0
I find it fascinating, and I really want to specifically talk about one thing
you just mentioned when you talked about Steve Blank and his Innovation
Theater, right?
We all know those dog and pony shows, like the things where it's about
performance and less about the content.
Let's say if you're a consultant and we're talking about these topics because
we really want to get closer to, how can we help everybody have a conversation
about how to do change, right?
So I will ask for some secrets of the trade when you come in as a consultant.
How would you gauge whether it's a performance or whether a team is on the
right path, so to speak?
What are the telltale signs or listeners that people should watch out for where
you go, like, ooh, we might have left the actual change field and we have
entered, not the circus.
Don't want to be mean, but, you know, we have veered off the idea that we were
going for.
0
Oh yes, there are two themes, right?
The one is think this humanity side humanizing this.
Right. And we've already talked about that a little bit.
The other one is about it feeling like work, feeling like rigor feeling tied.
So and sometimes people will say innovation work is 1% inspiration and 99%
perspiration. Meaning there's the stuff that's cool, that's sexy, the stuff
that, you know, you're all worked up about.
And then there's the work that you say, you know what?
I'm at work, I'm getting paid.
I'm proud for it, for my, you know, doing a good day's work.
But it definitely is work and I'm glad they pay me for it.
And so those are really the two things that I look for.
Are people clear on the human dimensions of this?
Because it's not just the rigor, not just the process, but also the human
things. Secondly, are they treating this just like work in a good way, being
sort of being proud of your craft?
I'm a professional in a space.
I'm doing work that is solid and that I can stand behind and sign my name to,
but not in a way that is mostly glamorous.
The glamor is the part that we get to do when when things go well once in a
while and in between, we're proud of doing good work, right?
And then, of course, the last part is, are we clear on the problem solving
problems we're solving?
So maybe it's three things rather than than two the rigor, the humanity and
problems we're solving.
0
Not only do I agree, I find it really an important point, a question that I
definitely want to ask because of your background, I know that you have lived
in multiple places, right, in Europe.
You're currently in the US.
You also lived in India.
What is your experience with the, let's say, cultural backdrop or how those
perceptions change of the place?
Right. Because there is like, I'm not I'm not sure we should call it a myth,
but there is a perception that here in the US, innovation is done best in a
certain sense. Right.
So what are your experiences about different places and how they go about with
change management, with innovation and applying the principles that you just
talked about?
0
Right. And it definitely is a myth.
People in China and India, in African countries, in Europe, all around the
world would massively disagree with that idea, and they would all have a really
good case for it.
And look, I mean, this would deserve its whole conversation of its own,
probably, and to some degree would really veer even out of my competence.
But so maybe a couple of things.
One, really quick, just for anybody who hasn't experienced those specific
things, sometimes there is sort of an on average difference in that you
experience in different cultures and you will have, you know, you have the ones
that you've immersed yourself in have mine and others have different ones.
In the US, on average, there tends to be more of a focus on the upside of
change. And how can we bring that about?
In Europe. Sometimes it can be a little bit more about how do we avoid the
downside of change and make sure that it doesn't cause the unintended
consequences. India is a fascinating, multifaceted country.
I don't even know that I could put it into one box.
I think you'd have to talk about it in different ways.
So there are definitely differences.
And, you know, whenever we learn about living in other countries, we learn
about sort of those averages.
But look, even that is not all the same.
So it's a myth even here.
So, you know, I work in a startup and here in Minneapolis, our little Silicon
Prairie startups feel very different than in Boston or in Boulder or in Silicon
Valley. Different people, different attitudes.
Right? It's not the same.
And then when I've done my consulting work across different companies, that
people have been kind enough to invite me into, their cultures are massively
different. Even when they're in the same city.
You can feel each team, each group of humans has their own group.
And so it's actually, to me, much less about my experience or your experience
or those specific places.
It comes down more to.
Are you willing to put yourself out there and react to it?
There's let's see, I think three main points.
The one part is you will definitely have places where you fit right.
Fit is a thing and you will find where it is.
And the important thing there seems to be less about, hey, I want to become
somebody who fits in here, who belongs here, and more finding the places where
you're already accepted for who you are today.
But the second thing even bigger is.
People talk about valuing differences, but the people who are doing it are
finding it's actually really hard on the ground, because all those differences
mean people who value different things, do things in a different order, act
differently while they're doing it, express it differently.
That's hard work. And under pressure from timelines and deadlines and things
that have never been done, that's hard.
So being willing to do the hard work of valuing differences, that stands out to
me. And that's something that I've learned.
Luckily, I have an expert in my own family.
My wife is quite expert at navigating big transitions, but even then, it's
still hard when can rely on an expert and ask her, hey, how do we deal with
that? So the last thing actually is the biggest part.
Then you have to stop caring about your own perspective as the one that
matters. There's 8 billion people.
They all think that their perspective is important.
And if we stick to that, nothing much happens.
We just butt heads, you know, so they're after you value the differences.
There's still the part of saying, you know what, I have a way of doing this,
and I have a way that could be right, but other people do, too.
What if I was okay with assuming that the others also have goodwill and
competence and went with their way?
0
I think it's a beautiful way of putting it.
I think another idea that's currently very pervasive is that everything, once
again, will change because of generative AI.
And so we're all looking at the processes and how generative AI might affect
those. What is your take on how AI will level the playing field or making an
incumbents game?
Or currently when you work with other companies and people have questions about
whoa, there's another big change coming at all around generative AI or AI in
general. Like, what's your take on it?
Do you think it will be like a radical challenge to the change processes and
all of that? Or do you think with the same tools we can solve the problems of
tomorrow?
0
Right. Look, Lukas, that's where you and Signavio might be more experts than I
am. But I'll take an outsider's perspective for what it's worth, based on my
experience. Right.
And there'll be sort of two aspects.
The second one will be quite the thing in this.
So starting with the simpler first one, I think AI will infuse everything, but
not always. Obviously it might be in the backdrop, right?
And obviously it's hard to really understand it and map it and describe it
neatly while we're in the sort of the beginning Fiori of it and everything is
exploding like plants after a Minnesota winter.
But I'll take an analog, right?
So if you look at even something fairly similar, like desktop computers and see
where they've taken us, since I don't know windows 3.1, early 1990s, whatever.
Something in that range. Right.
There's been a ton of change just there.
Having a computer on every desk, laptops, mobile, everything that has come
since. And yet do we say everything we do is about computers?
No, it's just infused into everything, sometimes very obvious, but sometimes
it's it's just sitting in the background.
And that'll be the same thing for AI, I think, over our time in general, of
course, it's a little bit different.
I tend to think of AI as all human intellectual work in your pocket.
So anything that's intellectual work you can now have, so the topics will be
different, but it'll infuse everything sometimes in the background.
That's cute.
But there's a big second sort of.
But that comes with it and that is implementation or adoption.
And I'll tell you a story about it, maybe again from a technological wave
before there used to be digital transformations, even before AI and companies
would have them. And I was involved with a company that said, haha, we have a
very analog process.
It involves some desktop computers and then a bunch of printed pieces of paper
and handwritten stuff. We will digitize it, and it involved a whole floor of
people in one of the big office buildings and one of our big cities.
And so they brought in the software that they chose, and they implemented it,
and they trained it, and they installed it and configured it and all those
things. And yet it failed and the company ended up pulling out the software.
It was not SAP and they went back to this quasi analog process.
And how come?
What they had missed was the human side that we already talked about the
humans, that the floor of professionals working there had to do the entire job
differently before they would make their thinking work a little bit at a time,
think a little, do a little, think a doodle, do a little, adjust.
And throughout their whole work process, they would do that in this new world.
They had to do all their thinking up front, declare all the rules, all the ways
that things should do, tell it to the computer and the computer would do it.
And they had to change everything about how they did their entire thinking.
And that was squishy and human and, you know, shouldn't it be obvious?
And isn't there so much value?
And it got undervalued.
And yeah, there was training and change management, but sort of acknowledging
that dozens of people had to do things completely differently.
That was overlooked.
And so the same thing would say applies here with AI, right?
Yeah. There's going to be transformation and it's going be automation and all
these things. Where we need to consider is what are the human aspects, what do
we care about and how do we help the humans come along with it.
And again, it's not going to be where everything's going to be automated.
The humans don't matter anymore.
The humans will still matter.
Just like we don't have 99% unemployment right now.
There's a quantitative futurist, Amy Webb professors super, super amazing.
She just had an article out not that long ago about how interacting in an AI
world will look, and she talks about working with CEOs and executives who say,
"ha-ha" Now we will just have all these cost savings, everything simple,
everything automated. And she's like, no, you will have floors of people
working with the AI.
0
We talked a lot about future change and change itself.
I want to put you on the spot right now, here today.
If you had the power to instantly transform one single process, what would you
change and why?
0
Man. Oh, I'm going to still get in trouble here.
All right. Okay, I got one.
Yeah, I actually believe this one.
It's not just one I come up with.
So this one I actually believe in.
I would love to transform any process that boils down to this.
Any process that boils down to let's get people to agree.
And that's like: "Steffen, what do you mean by that?
We give it fancy names, right?" Process governance, milestone meetings, stage
gates, cross-functional alignment, project kickoffs, all these fancy names.
Right. And what we've really done, I think is we've created these elaborate
rituals. They're almost religious, right?
They have ceremonies and they have symbols and structure and all the things,
but they kind of don't always work.
And the people who are not in the midst of it see it and cringe and roll their
eyes sometimes.
And so it seems to me, what would be really awesome is a process for healthily
agreeing, because what's missing in the current way is we sort of gotten the
humanity totally out, right?
There is power, there is conflicts.
There's the neuropsychology, group, psychology incentives, what we know about
efficient meetings and good meetings and all of those things kind of get
ignored a lot of the time.
Not always, but a lot of the time.
No wonder it doesn't work.
And then you have between these decision points, you have very logical, very
sort of factual processes, whether it's Six Sigma, whether it's lean startup,
human centered design, strategy based problem solving doesn't matter what.
But then all these teams that do the work are stuck very efficiently doing work
for a purpose. That doesn't mean anything, because either people didn't agree
in the first place or they couldn't agree on what success looks like.
So they agreed in the front. But they won't agree the next time that you bring
them the work, or they never defined what they're focused on anyway, and the
work will sort of distribute and not really focus.
No wonder. So you're very efficiently sort of do the wrong thing.
And sometimes people will offer silver bullet solutions.
So if you know, if you just do this one thing, your process will be fine.
Click bait for companies.
Right. And there are some solutions that I've seen that actually work but are
sort of specialized. The design sprint process by Google Ventures comes to
mind. Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky third author, works very well, considers the
true human factors.
It's just meant for a special purpose.
I would love a general purpose automated process for healthy agreement.
And disagreement and disagreement, in fact.
So that's an old thing.
Even we should know better.
Who is at Sloan?
The CEO of General Motors in the 50s, he said.
So I won't get the quote exactly right.
But he said something to the effect to his executive team.
Have we figured out what this agreement this meeting is all about?
If not, let's adjourn until we know what the disagreement is that this meeting
is all about. So we should be able to figure it out.
And yet we haven't.
There's a fragility, a worry about all the things that really that feed into
it. But I would love if we could come up with a healthy way of reaching the
agreement.
0
That's beautiful. And thank you so much for sharing so many insights and a
wealth of experience about change, about the things that don't change and how
we can take better advantage of it.
And with that, thanks for listening to another episode of Process Transformers.
If you have questions or comments, email us at Processtransformers@sap.com.
Until next time for another transformative conversation.
