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Hey, what's up, Toby?

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We are at episode four of the Process Debt podcast.

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And today we're going to dig in a little bit deeper onto what Process Debt is.

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You have some thoughts there, so I'm just going to kick it across to you.

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Appreciate it.

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Always happy to be joining you for these insightful calls or just a little bit of venting.

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One of the questions that came up since our earlier episodes was somebody said, but how

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do you describe Process Debt?

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And I had started by sharing this kind of generic definition of tech debt because a

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lot of people get that differently.

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And I've seen it described as the cost of future maintenance and rework, right?

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As people prioritize speed over quality, as they prioritize something over consistency

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or over quality.

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And so I know you've thought deeply about this.

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I'm just kind of the sidekick, hopefully setting you up for some brilliant insights.

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And so get ready.

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Yeah.

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Fingers crossed.

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No.

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So tech debt, better understood because people have been banging that drum, but Process Debt

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has been this hidden thing.

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How do you describe Process Debt?

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How would you define Process Debt?

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You know, what's interesting is tech debt is unseen.

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Right, like you look at any corporation, you look at Amazon, Microsoft, Google, it doesn't

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matter.

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Somewhere in that organization, there is something falling apart and is duct taped together.

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And there's basically two people in the whole organization that understand it.

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And without them, it would just be a really, really painful ride.

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And I think Process Debt is really similar.

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On the business side, the only difference is, and I really define it as like the hidden

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burden of inefficient processes that erode growth, employee satisfaction, and organizational

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success.

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That's really how I define it.

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Yeah.

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And the reality is it's hidden.

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And it's hidden because we don't think about our work oftentimes.

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We do what we're asked, but we don't necessarily differentiate between work that is always

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done versus work that is one-time work.

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And I think if you could, I think where you end up getting into trouble is you put a lot

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of process around one-time analysis or one-time work.

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And the stuff that you're going to do all the time or in perpetuity, like a QBR or a

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monthly business review, those are the ones where you could get the greatest gains from

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just slowly defining the process and making it better and better instead of doing complete

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and total overhauls.

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Because the reality, and what I've seen, and I've seen it at probably every company that

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I've ever worked, I think about process.

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But what you end up seeing is you end up seeing like people will take a framework and they

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will hack that framework in a partial way only to come up with a semi-broken new process

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that doesn't work the way that the known process works.

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So like you take smart goals and you change the acronym because it's more flashy.

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You take Scrum and you think that Scrum is, and we talked about this last time, but you

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take Scrum and you think it's just a meeting.

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No, no, there's actually a purpose.

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There's like real reasons.

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You take a balanced scorecard where like businesses want to grow, like that's a given, but we

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create all these custom KPIs or custom, all the acronyms.

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We just get away from them and that creates this newness that doesn't actually add value.

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Yeah, it's a little bit too cute by half, isn't it?

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I feel like with so many things in life, it may not be a perfect process, but if I'm the

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only operator in it and I know what the steps are, how important is the documentation?

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And we'll talk more about transferable and discoverable probably in a future episode,

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but when to your point, like if it's one-time analysis, I don't need to document every step.

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What I want to get to is the outcome.

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And a lot of times you and I've been part of these conversations where we're saying

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if you want to become a deck builder, it's important to understand all your tools.

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If you want to just throw a barbecue, then cut to the chase, get the deck built and focus

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more on picking out your stakes.

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And so I love your call out around process.

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Too often we do try to engineer what we believe will be needed instead of this kind of discovery

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as we go.

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And personally, I would say my healthiest processes have been the result of, I should

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say the healthiest ones I've touched over the years, whether it was Sarbanes-Oxley or

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process re-engineering work.

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Fundamentally, it's when somebody already understands very innately why they do things,

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but they're so close to it and they're working in the business, producing outputs that they

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don't have the time to look at it in total.

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And sometimes that's the easiest way to kind of unlock it.

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Is that-

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Have I shared the Conway's law?

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No, Conway's law.

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Conway?

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Yeah, not Jim Conway.

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Although, one of the funniest things for you, the kids out there that are in their

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20s and 30s, Jim Conway does a skit of him being a dentist and he puts the Nova cane

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in his hand.

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I've cried multiple times watching that thing.

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It is hilarious.

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Anyway, Conway's law, I digress.

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Conway's law is that organizational structure follows the business structure.

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So the, you know, who your boss is, right?

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And so essentially what you find oftentimes in businesses is you find very, very efficient

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silos and very crummy handoffs.

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So it's very much a tone at the top.

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Whoever-

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Yeah, because it's built top down, right?

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Those silos get really, really, really good.

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But a business isn't just one silo.

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It's 50, hundreds, thousands of silos.

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And it's when that one silo, whatever they're delivering, right?

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Let's say they're delivering grain, right?

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They might be really good at getting that grain packaged, but that next piece of the

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process, whether that's bagging or something, like it's when it goes outside of that organizational

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structure, that's when you end up with process debt that no one sees because both silos are

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super efficient.

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They're super real.

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They're really good at what they do.

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But in between, it's the handoff.

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And that handoff could be via code, right?

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The handoff could be the fact that there needs to be operational supervision over that handoff,

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right?

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Yeah.

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But I've seen that a lot.

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And that's why, again, process debt oftentimes is hidden.

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And that's why by profession, I mean product.

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And so what happens oftentimes is the end users will ask for something and you're like,

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well, what are you trying to do?

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And they're like, well, I'm trying to push this button faster.

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You're like, no, no, no, no, no, like not talking about what they're pushing the button

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faster.

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We're talking about like, what's the outcome of this?

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And it's so hard for them to define because their work is tactical.

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And so it's like, oh, what I'm trying to do is I want to like, I need to get more information

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from the client.

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You're like, oh, okay, well, let's go upstream and figure that problem.

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Right.

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Well, I go back to your definition a minute ago, so, you know, it's invisible, which you've

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touched on several times, but the idea that it erodes growth.

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So if I'm not seeing the detriment, is it, you know, if a bear farts in the woods, that's

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a case of process debt.

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The second thing you touched on was employee satisfaction.

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And if I'm satisfied enough, then who cares?

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And the third is really about organizational success, which feels like that overarching

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umbrella.

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So if it's not about employee facing, you know, how do you keep them engaged in the

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work?

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And it's not about growing the business, then ultimately it's going to come back and it's

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going to bite us because we're just not going to be as successful.

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Yeah.

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Well, the thing is, is like, you know, we've, you know, we've talked about this before,

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too.

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Like you can't make something so perfect.

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Like oftentimes, oftentimes businesses have to choose between revenue and perfect process.

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And unless you're manufacturing French fries or you're manufacturing Tide or something

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that you're basically selling billions of dollars of this thing, it's very hard because

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a lot of times business stuff is not repeatable.

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And the reason it's not repeatable is, is that over overarching strategy never ties

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to something.

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And so once, so like if we look at what happened over with Gen.ai and again, we're running

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out of time again, Toby.

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We need to extend our podcast.

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Anyway, this is the most powerful five minutes people are going to have all day.

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It takes close to 10 minutes to get there.

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But that's so funny.

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We have, so it's funny is like, with like Gen.ai just came out of nowhere.

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Yeah.

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Right.

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But like, but, but where did that come from?

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Like what, what, what, where did that align in the org?

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Because it's, it's whiplash every business that I know of.

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A hundred percent.

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And like, and the reality is, is like, okay, well is that, was that, you know, and I, was

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that a revenue play?

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Well, it's tough to make a revenue play when chat GPT is free.

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Like that's, that's a, that's a tough, like that's a tough thing, right?

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But GPT makes me more efficient.

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Therefore it's maybe a pro, maybe it's a better efficiency play ops efficiency.

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Really now that being said, I, you know, maybe it's revisions history.

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Oh, I will own that piece too.

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Like I'm always smarter after the fact.

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God knows.

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Amen.

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You too.

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Yeah.

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Well, I have a hunch we'll come back to AI again, because it's a solution in search of

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a problem.

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Yeah.

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And we're all trying to pattern match to ask, is this one way for me to become more efficient?

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Is it a one way for me to derive more joy out of the work I'm doing?

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Yep.

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So that's a great call out.

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Well, good.

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Hey, I appreciate you sharing the definition and really starting to bring myself and our

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growing audience.

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Did I mention urging on the East coast recently?

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Tens of people will probably, tens of people, like we were not even, yeah.

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And which is sad considering our LinkedIn connections are, you know, in the greater

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than tens.

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We could, we could like top 20 by the end of the year.

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This is what consistency does for us.

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Consistency.

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Thanks a bunch.

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Yep.

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All right.

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Take care, man.

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See you.

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trap!