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Well, you write a lot about value streams and the old software process and things like

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that.

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And I was, as I was reading through a lot of your systems, your systems, as I was reading

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through a lot of your stuff, I was thinking, this is going to be a great opportunity to

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get someone to extensively discuss the concept of waste, which I think is just like, it's

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just like a very, like, it seems, you know, to do the very short version, it seems like

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even to try to be overly clever, it seems like activities that people don't want to

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do that don't really add very much value to whatever goal they have.

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That's very vague and whatever.

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But like, I feel like, especially when it comes to using software to do whatever, right?

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Like, like more so, more so than just like developing the software.

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Zoom further out, Coté.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

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You know, not, you need to specific, not, not just like, not just like writing the software

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or deploying the software, but like any process that you have that depends on your own software

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to operate, right?

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Like, it seems like there's a lot to be said about what waste is.

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And, and then before, before I hand it over to ask you, you know, what waste is, it seems

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like, I know this isn't accurate, but it seems like if there was like one to three things

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you would choose to focus on to make things better, waste would be one of them.

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I don't know what the other two potentially are, but it seems like, it seems like the thing,

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you know, you could, I, I always like to discard software must work.

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Like that's always, it's, it's actually needs to function.

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So there's that.

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Uh, but like, as far as other things, like it seems, uh, I don't know, it seems very high

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up there.

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So all of that said, what, what exactly is waste in this concept?

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Well, it's, it's interesting.

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Cause like, yes, it, it certainly encompasses stuff that you don't want to do if that stuff

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doesn't add value, because a lot of things that are really valuable, we still don't want

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to do them.

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Yeah.

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As I was saying that I was thinking that's not the right criteria.

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The other thing is like, one of the things I will say, like my first encounter with, I

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think the most consequential waste is when I was an engineer and I was working on stuff

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that I thought was super important and I'm struggling away in, you know, in isolation,

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cause I didn't want to share the fact that I hadn't made progress and I was struggling.

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And this is like, I'm trying to, I'm trying to stand up like configuration management in

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a, in a fast moving startup.

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And, um, and I, you know, I didn't realize that I was just wasting all of my time and I

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wasn't doing anything that was ultimately delivering values of the organization.

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Cause the engineers that I was building this automation for were fine with the thing that

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they were doing.

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They knew it, it was comfortable.

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They knew the failure modes.

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They knew how to fix it when it broke.

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And I was trying to build this new shiny gold plated system that would remove all the, you

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know, from my perspective, waste and toil in the system and build something that was more resilient

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and scalable.

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And no, the delay between picking that goal and going to work and delivering, ultimately delivering

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something to the organization meant that I'd like departed from any kind of customer value from,

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from the organization's perspective.

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Right.

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My customer was the developers in, in the company.

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And so I had this like reconciliation moment where I was like, here's what I've got.

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It's not perfect, but it does X, Y, Z.

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And at no point had I talked to one of these engineers.

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I hadn't sat shoulder to shoulder with them.

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I hadn't presented a plan.

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I just kind of went to work.

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Cause I was like, I know what's valuable.

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I know what everybody needs.

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I know what I need.

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And so the waste in that context was just doing the wrong thing.

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And I could have been doing it the right way, but I was like running in the wrong direction.

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And, you know, my, my lack of success was actually.

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Like less consequential than if I delivered exactly what I wanted, I would have built a gold

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plated brick that would serve as a doorstop, you know?

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Sure.

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So at some point I was like, here's this thing.

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It's not quite working, but they're like, well, that's good.

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Cause we're throwing it away.

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It's, it's completely useless.

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We're going to be doing this thing over here.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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You know, it's making me think.

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So, so tell me what you think of this.

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If we were to try to break down waste again, in this context, into a couple of things,

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a couple of few things, if that's a phrase, uh, that's, that's, that's, that seems like

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a, some medieval talk for like two or three score.

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That's right.

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Say like, I don't know what, what would that be?

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40 or 60.

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I forget what a score is.

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Uh, but.

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Score 14, isn't it?

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I don't know.

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Yeah.

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We should look this up.

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I have no idea.

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Maybe I'm thinking of a fortnight.

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Oh, fortnight is definitely 14, two weeks.

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Yes.

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I don't know where that came from.

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Uh, the word.

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Agile estimation.

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Oh, there you go.

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So it's, there's one type of waste, which, and this type of waste is one of the more interesting.

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And, and that is what you built was not useful.

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And, and there's a new, there's, there's a, there's a further subdivision in there of it,

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it didn't function.

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It did.

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It wasn't good enough to be useful.

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Like it didn't fit the problem that you had.

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And then there's the one that you were kind of describing, which is like, it was fantastic,

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but you solved the wrong problem.

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Right.

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And so like, that's like, that's like this waste of like, good, genuine labor, right?

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As, as you were describing the golden doorstop.

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Right.

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And then, and then there's also the waste of like, and I think this is, this is the one

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that I think we were most familiar with.

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There's just like, this could have been automated.

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Right.

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Like, like that, that should have just been taken care of.

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And then, and then I guess there's like, there's like malicious waste where like, I'm not going

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to do that.

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Like, I'm, I'm going to go like, you know, do something else instead of this.

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So like, I'm kind of like, and I guess there's even a variation there where there's like,

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and maybe this gets, I don't mean to be the one like lecturing here.

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I was just excited to like, uh, talk about this, this waste stuff.

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There's, there's, there's like this, the negative part of product productivity is this weird

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phrase nowadays, but I think there's a type of waste from management's perspective, which

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is this worker gave me what I wanted, but they only had to do it in half the time that I thought

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they did.

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And then they went home and it's like, oh, I should have gotten more.

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Right.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Versus just like, just like, versus just like the worker just being like, I'm not, I'm going

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to leave work early.

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Who cares?

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Right.

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Like, it's kind of like, I don't know, but those are the things that like run around in

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my head as far as like types of waste.

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That is tough.

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I mean, yeah.

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So there's kind of like, I guess, slack in the system you can think of as waste, but you

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have to think about utilization in that case.

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Right.

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I mean, slack, there's a certain degree of slack that's very helpful and associated with

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resilience, right.

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Especially over a long period of time.

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You know, if you flip a coin and it comes up heads every single time, then, you know,

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then you bet your house on the fact that it's going to come up heads.

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Like, that's not a, it's a very poor strategy.

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So like to a degree, uh, uh, waste can be valuable and it's very difficult to say that any particular

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usage of time is wasteful.

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Right.

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I mean, if the best ideas come in the shower, then, you know, listening to a podcast while

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you're in the shower so that you maximize utilization of your time, maybe, you know, maybe entirely

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wasteful.

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Right.

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So like, I guess, I guess one of the most important things to mention here is that just

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like value is subjective, like waste is also subjective.

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subjective and it's subject to like a temporal dimension.

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Like it's the period of time matters.

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Like, like how long are we talking when we're talking about something?

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Cause something might pay off in the long run.

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Right.

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And this idea of like full utilization is just like a symptom.

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Well, it's a, it's a, it's a leading cause of fragility in a lot of cases because a slack

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allows you to pivot, allows you to make up time if anything goes wrong.

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So I think, you know, the engineer who finishes something in half the time, you know, if they,

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if they hand over the work early and there's an understanding in the organization that we're

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going to use the extra time to make sure that it's great.

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And maybe there's changes that we can make, you know, if you're kind of using an SLA to

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its fullest extent and saying, I'm going to use all the time, uh, because every time I

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highlight slack, it gets eliminated.

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That's kind of like a pathological response to like available capacity where, you know,

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you could use that capacity for much more valuable purposes.

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Like let's, let's go further.

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Let's test this under circumstances that we wouldn't ordinarily test it.

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Uh, let's send it to customers early and get some early feedback and maybe have a chance

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to, uh, improve it.

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Like, I think there's a lot of those things that that engineer would agree with and they

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might rather do than go home and do nothing.

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Like for sure, we kind of, we like, we like to work.

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We like to be productive.

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We're not always trying to like finish everything and go home and, and do, do something else.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I like that you brought up, uh, you know, slack, which, which is a, uh, an old, you know,

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it, it means something entirely different nowadays chatting and stuff, but like wait, but before

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that time it was a, uh, I don't know.

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I forget, I forget which, which one of the, the, uh, you know, the ancient, the elders of

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agile wrote that slack book, but it was one of, uh, it was one of those concepts that like

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kind of was seemed really nice and sort of, well, of course it seemed nice for an individual,

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but it kind of went by the wayside and, and like, I've, I've been thinking, I've been

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thinking a lot recently among many other things in my life, but every now and then in the shower

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as it were, like of, of trying to draw, figure out this distinction between, between like

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productive output and having a reliable capability, even if you're doing nothing with that.

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capability.

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Right.

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And, and, and, and, and, you know, you were kind of, we've, we've kind of brought up a

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few things, but it's sort of like, like the example I was thinking about the other day is

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like, uh, you know, I had to renew some medicine I had and, and I was thinking like, I don't

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really know if my pharmacy like needs to update their software every week.

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Like, of course, if there's a problem or like there's some regulation or all those things,

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right?

201
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Like, you know, if, if the screws in your building are rotting out, you got to go replace

202
00:12:25,760 --> 00:12:26,040
those.

203
00:12:26,040 --> 00:12:26,680
No problem.

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Right.

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Just to be metaphoric, but like, they probably don't actually need to do that much.

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00:12:33,700 --> 00:12:39,020
However, if some new log gets passed and they have like 30 days to do it, which would be

207
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unrealistic, but whatever, you know, they have 90 days to do it.

208
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Then they're going to need the capability.

209
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Right.

210
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And so like, it's, you know, so it's, it's almost like, I don't know, I don't really know

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what to do that with that in the software world.

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Cause we were so focused on like productivity and like getting value and all of that, that

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the idea of just like, yeah, but we don't need to do anything right now, but we will sometime

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like it's, I don't know how you account for that, so to speak.

215
00:13:07,160 --> 00:13:12,380
Yeah, I mean, there's, there is a, you know, there's the dimension of urgency that kind

216
00:13:12,380 --> 00:13:17,320
of adds, adds color to this.

217
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Like cost of delay is something that's very real and almost not understood by anyone.

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Right.

219
00:13:24,460 --> 00:13:31,620
I mean, we're very, very bad about pulling the future forward and quantifying it in any

220
00:13:31,620 --> 00:13:35,580
way, like quantifying the difference between doing something now and doing something later.

221
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One of the lean principles is, is like decide as late as possible.

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Right.

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And that's kind of very compatible with the agile world of like, let's do things when we have,

224
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you know, sufficient information and capability and availability, capacity, all these things.

225
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There is, you know, I think it's very, I think it's very important to think about your ability

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to respond.

227
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Right.

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So like in the pharmacy sense, the fact that you don't need under normal circumstances to

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adjust to any kind of eventuality that might arise, uh, is one, you know, is, is one thing

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that's one, that's one condition to optimize for.

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But if you pull too far in that, that kind of, uh, common cause variation, um, to, to talk,

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you know, in Deming speak, which we probably shouldn't, but like if you're optimizing for

233
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like ideal circumstances or even the status quo, ignoring the fact that there are disruptive

234
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occurrences that happen periodically, you're going to have a bad time.

235
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Right.

236
00:14:52,200 --> 00:14:55,340
It's just a matter of when that coin flip comes up against you.

237
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So I think it is really, really important, but then there's, there's also like, consider

238
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the fact that a lot of places will have, well, they used to more than now have like fully

239
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duplicated capacity.

240
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And like a secondary data center that's just running, waiting all day for like something

241
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to happen.

242
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And then what happens is it's waiting and sitting around for so long that all the staff

243
00:15:23,960 --> 00:15:29,580
who know how it works and all the documentation gets stale or, you know, moves on to something

244
00:15:29,580 --> 00:15:32,660
else or just becomes incoherent.

245
00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:39,720
And at the moment you have to leverage that capacity or capability, like nobody can actually

246
00:15:39,720 --> 00:15:40,260
do it.

247
00:15:40,260 --> 00:15:40,860
Right.

248
00:15:40,920 --> 00:15:44,840
So like, that's, that's like double waste, right?

249
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It's like, not only are you paying for the thing, but you, you're relying on it and you

250
00:15:48,940 --> 00:15:50,980
can't use it in their time of need.

251
00:15:51,680 --> 00:16:00,540
So you've, you've kind of have to have this capability and capacity, but, uh, it can't

252
00:16:00,540 --> 00:16:01,760
just be like a checkbox.

253
00:16:01,760 --> 00:16:10,240
It has to be something that you, you know, you've kind of, um, that's available to you

254
00:16:10,240 --> 00:16:12,240
to utilize if you need.

255
00:16:12,240 --> 00:16:12,560
Yeah.

256
00:16:13,060 --> 00:16:13,540
Yeah.

257
00:16:13,540 --> 00:16:17,120
You're making me, I, I, I like, I like the, the, the way you're going with that, that coin

258
00:16:17,120 --> 00:16:23,660
flip thing, like in, in, in the sense of it, it, it is kind of a vivid way to imagine,

259
00:16:23,660 --> 00:16:29,440
like you assume the future will be like the past and, and you make big plans on that.

260
00:16:29,440 --> 00:16:33,020
And so, you know, and, and this capacity thing is kind of like, it's like, ah, we haven't

261
00:16:33,020 --> 00:16:34,740
had to update our app in three years.

262
00:16:34,880 --> 00:16:35,260
Right.

263
00:16:35,280 --> 00:16:40,180
Like it, people call in, they renew their, their, uh, their drugs, they get them done.

264
00:16:40,800 --> 00:16:41,200
Right.

265
00:16:41,200 --> 00:16:46,060
And so there, and so therefore we can make plans based on that instead of like, uh, but

266
00:16:46,060 --> 00:16:50,900
you know, the, the, uh, the coin flip makes it more, uh, but we like, we, we, we both work

267
00:16:50,900 --> 00:16:54,200
with banks and large, like financial institutions.

268
00:16:54,200 --> 00:16:58,740
We work with a lot of these companies that have these regulations that come down the pipe.

269
00:16:59,060 --> 00:17:03,060
And, you know, you were saying it's not going to be 30 days or whatever, but even when it's

270
00:17:03,060 --> 00:17:09,560
18 months, the, the banks are always like, should we just pay the penalty?

271
00:17:09,560 --> 00:17:14,580
Like 18 months, that's pretty tight.

272
00:17:14,580 --> 00:17:17,580
Like, because it's not just 18 months, right?

273
00:17:17,580 --> 00:17:18,560
It's 18 months.

274
00:17:18,560 --> 00:17:21,640
That's already allocated an account.

275
00:17:21,760 --> 00:17:22,000
Yeah.

276
00:17:22,100 --> 00:17:23,720
They're already at full capacity.

277
00:17:24,320 --> 00:17:30,200
So I think that adds a really interesting dimension to this is like you, you know, this,

278
00:17:30,300 --> 00:17:38,280
this utilization and capacity challenge is something that really, um, really bites us because

279
00:17:38,280 --> 00:17:42,520
we don't like to have Slack, you know, and Slack doesn't work for the books.

280
00:17:44,140 --> 00:17:48,700
And so, so, you know, I want to get to the, the other side of waste, which, which is value,

281
00:17:48,760 --> 00:17:50,240
but why don't you introduce yourself first?

282
00:17:50,240 --> 00:17:55,920
How, how are you able to, uh, to opine for some 20 minutes about what waste is?

283
00:17:56,300 --> 00:18:02,060
Uh, well, I mean, it, it, it really comes from that initial experience of, of wasting a lot

284
00:18:02,060 --> 00:18:03,380
of time and effort.

285
00:18:04,320 --> 00:18:10,640
Um, you know, I really developed a visceral sense of waste.

286
00:18:10,760 --> 00:18:17,540
I, you know, buying, by producing it a lot and then being confronted with the fact that I'd,

287
00:18:17,540 --> 00:18:25,700
I produced a lot of waste and so I kind of, that, that kind of brought me to, um, the world

288
00:18:25,700 --> 00:18:30,880
of process and flow and, and value streams.

289
00:18:31,600 --> 00:18:37,120
Um, partially also because I, I'm, I'm a very non-systematic person.

290
00:18:37,120 --> 00:18:40,080
Like I find myself, I love Slack.

291
00:18:40,320 --> 00:18:41,560
I love to think in the shower.

292
00:18:42,000 --> 00:18:43,120
I love long walks.

293
00:18:43,780 --> 00:18:49,160
Uh, and I'm, I'm a very non, I would say very non type a person.

294
00:18:49,160 --> 00:18:54,280
So I've always kind of been fascinated with systems and, you know, the trains running on

295
00:18:54,280 --> 00:18:56,560
time and how all that works.

296
00:18:57,240 --> 00:19:05,760
So I, I kind of, um, got into systems and build and release engineering, uh, very, very

297
00:19:05,760 --> 00:19:08,460
long time ago, coming out of it and tech support.

298
00:19:08,460 --> 00:19:16,740
And, um, so this is like over, over more than two decades found my way to kind of running,

299
00:19:16,740 --> 00:19:27,380
uh, uh, B2B enterprise SAS company and having to, you know, lead teams and lead an organization,

300
00:19:27,380 --> 00:19:31,400
uh, and deal with the fact that we were always over capacity.

301
00:19:31,400 --> 00:19:41,180
So I, I, I kind of stumbled into value streams and value stream mapping as a way of improving

302
00:19:41,180 --> 00:19:51,580
performance, increasing capacity, reducing waste, um, helping my team like get unblocked and,

303
00:19:51,580 --> 00:19:58,240
you know, through conversations with other leaders and, and folks all over organizations just found

304
00:19:58,240 --> 00:20:02,560
that that that's something that we all know we have to do.

305
00:20:02,560 --> 00:20:08,920
Um, and, and there's very, there's no time to do it and there's not a lot of guidance on,

306
00:20:08,920 --> 00:20:12,940
on doing it efficient, efficiently and effectively.

307
00:20:14,160 --> 00:20:20,600
Um, so, so I've kind of spent a lot of time in that, in that domain for the purpose of making

308
00:20:20,600 --> 00:20:23,680
an easy to kind of unblock flow in organizations.

309
00:20:24,160 --> 00:20:24,740
Hmm.

310
00:20:25,080 --> 00:20:25,440
Yeah.

311
00:20:25,540 --> 00:20:30,100
And, and you've, uh, you, you named your, uh, like consultancy after value streams or

312
00:20:30,100 --> 00:20:30,480
something, right?

313
00:20:30,480 --> 00:20:31,560
What's, what's the name of it?

314
00:20:31,960 --> 00:20:32,180
Yeah.

315
00:20:32,180 --> 00:20:38,040
It's called visible value stream consulting because I think the visibility is, is really

316
00:20:38,040 --> 00:20:47,080
the first thing that unlocks people's understanding of like what's happening, what's where the waste

317
00:20:47,080 --> 00:20:49,940
is, where the issues are, where the opportunities are.

318
00:20:50,100 --> 00:20:52,600
So, uh, I'm a big fan of visibility.

319
00:20:53,440 --> 00:20:58,580
So like, here's, here's like, uh, you know, I was thinking we could go over basic definitions

320
00:20:58,580 --> 00:21:02,800
of things, but, but when, as you're going over that, you've got, I think you've got a great

321
00:21:02,800 --> 00:21:09,780
perspective on a few things that always like, uh, consternate me in the shower or out when

322
00:21:09,780 --> 00:21:15,200
I'm thinking, uh, you know, I, uh, similar, just like a idle mind of, uh, productivity,

323
00:21:15,200 --> 00:21:15,880
so to speak.

324
00:21:16,180 --> 00:21:25,340
Uh, but like, it seems like, and, and, and, and, and it'd be great to like, know your thinking

325
00:21:25,340 --> 00:21:28,200
on this stuff with all of the various companies you work with.

326
00:21:28,200 --> 00:21:33,120
So it seems like if you go over, we'd like what, one of the great things about like value

327
00:21:33,120 --> 00:21:36,000
stream mapping and making them visible to your point.

328
00:21:36,200 --> 00:21:40,780
I mean, that's often, I think, I think it's great to use that word because that's your first

329
00:21:40,780 --> 00:21:43,740
problem is just awareness or visibility of this stuff.

330
00:21:43,740 --> 00:21:49,380
But it seems like when you go over what that is kind of intuitively, everyone is like, yep,

331
00:21:49,380 --> 00:21:50,660
that sounds fantastic.

332
00:21:51,480 --> 00:21:51,980
Right.

333
00:21:52,120 --> 00:21:58,360
And then, and then you hit up against that problem of, we don't have time to do it or

334
00:21:58,360 --> 00:21:58,860
something.

335
00:21:59,040 --> 00:21:59,520
Right.

336
00:21:59,580 --> 00:22:06,220
And like, it is like, there's that old saying that like, you know, the most uncommon thing

337
00:22:06,220 --> 00:22:07,740
is common sense or whatever.

338
00:22:08,120 --> 00:22:14,220
And like, oftentimes someone like you would be brought in because someone is having an issue

339
00:22:14,220 --> 00:22:17,500
doing a value stream.

340
00:22:17,500 --> 00:22:17,840
Right.

341
00:22:17,860 --> 00:22:26,080
Like, but like, why does it seem so difficult to do what seems like a great idea?

342
00:22:26,500 --> 00:22:30,560
I mean, that's, it seems kind of like a naive question, but I don't know if I've ever come

343
00:22:30,560 --> 00:22:31,560
across an answer.

344
00:22:32,140 --> 00:22:36,280
Well, I think it's pretty timeless, right?

345
00:22:36,280 --> 00:22:41,360
It's not a business thing because the same thing applies to like diet and exercise and,

346
00:22:41,360 --> 00:22:50,860
you know, everything in life, I think goes back to that earlier point about pulling the

347
00:22:50,860 --> 00:22:51,900
future forward, right?

348
00:22:51,920 --> 00:23:01,520
If we could sort of, you know, think about the Christmas carol where we have kind of the

349
00:23:01,520 --> 00:23:08,320
ghost of Christmas future and we could see, okay, well, if we carry on the way that we're

350
00:23:08,320 --> 00:23:13,280
carrying on, here's how it ends up, then it's much easier the next day to wake up and say

351
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:15,520
like, I'm, we're changing everything, right?

352
00:23:15,520 --> 00:23:19,260
Like you there, buy me a turkey or however the story goes.

353
00:23:19,360 --> 00:23:25,900
I don't know what it is, but the, that, that, you know, that, that visibility of the future

354
00:23:25,900 --> 00:23:33,180
on our current trajectory is what catalyzes the change in the present moment, right?

355
00:23:34,060 --> 00:23:37,180
And there's, some people are better at that than others, right?

356
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:39,000
Some people spend a lot of their time in the future.

357
00:23:39,120 --> 00:23:43,920
There's even, I think cultures and languages that spend more time in the future than in

358
00:23:43,920 --> 00:23:45,160
the present or the past, right?

359
00:23:45,780 --> 00:23:46,480
That's weird.

360
00:23:46,480 --> 00:23:53,560
And it's, that's different, different territory, but the fundamental problem is we're very bad

361
00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:58,620
at sort of looking ahead and saying, if we carry on the way that we're carrying on, this

362
00:23:58,620 --> 00:24:04,740
is not going well and we should probably, you know, correct course today.

363
00:24:05,860 --> 00:24:12,100
And that's a really, that's a very real problem that I think affects every kind of change initiative

364
00:24:12,100 --> 00:24:12,700
and effort.

365
00:24:13,180 --> 00:24:18,700
And I'm not aiming to solve that because I'm, I'm, I'm, it's not my place to solve it.

366
00:24:18,700 --> 00:24:26,600
So what I've done in kind of response to that is shrink value stream mapping and shrink all

367
00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:31,160
of this stuff to fit into the slack that we have.

368
00:24:32,140 --> 00:24:43,360
So what I wanted to do to account for that is remove the time objection and requirement to

369
00:24:43,360 --> 00:24:51,620
say, if you have 60 minutes or an extended lunch meeting, or, you know, if you have time

370
00:24:51,620 --> 00:25:00,540
for a retrospective fit value stream mapping into that time box, and now you've removed that

371
00:25:00,540 --> 00:25:04,980
like common hurdle of we'd love to do it, but we don't at the time.

372
00:25:05,140 --> 00:25:11,100
So I think, you know, rather than say, well, you're just going to have to block out two days

373
00:25:11,100 --> 00:25:14,840
and, and that's the cost of entry.

374
00:25:16,140 --> 00:25:19,200
You know, my approach has always been, how do I make this accessible?

375
00:25:19,340 --> 00:25:20,820
How do I meet people where they are?

376
00:25:21,160 --> 00:25:25,060
How do I make it fit into the time that's available?

377
00:25:25,540 --> 00:25:32,260
And I think it's also helpful because, you know, the Parkinson's law is something that I

378
00:25:32,260 --> 00:25:34,720
reference all the time, or I think about all the time.

379
00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:40,420
The idea that like everything will happen in the space that's available for it to happen,

380
00:25:40,580 --> 00:25:40,840
right?

381
00:25:40,940 --> 00:25:49,020
You'll, you'll finish everything right before the deadline, 99% of the time, or, you know,

382
00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:52,780
the, the pessimistic version of Parkinson's law is just that like, if you have something

383
00:25:52,780 --> 00:25:54,680
that takes five minutes, it's going to take an hour.

384
00:25:54,780 --> 00:26:02,420
If you have an hour to take, but I kind of, I like to think about the inverse of that of

385
00:26:02,420 --> 00:26:08,080
saying that if you time box something, if you shrink it and you make it possible to fit

386
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:15,760
it into that time box, then, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a, a very motivating factor

387
00:26:15,760 --> 00:26:21,740
in that deadline, that end of the time box that can work in your favor and kind of act as

388
00:26:21,740 --> 00:26:24,220
a forcing function, like an enabling constraint.

389
00:26:26,140 --> 00:26:27,600
Yeah, no, that makes sense.

390
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:33,100
And, and, and, and I think what you, uh, what you laid out there, like it's, it's, uh, it's

391
00:26:33,100 --> 00:26:39,140
useful, you know, there's, you start with this principle of like, I, I don't know a, uh, uh, I mean,

392
00:26:39,140 --> 00:26:45,100
you, you said it well enough, but to try to say it, you know, in another way, like people don't

393
00:26:45,100 --> 00:26:50,780
really value optimizing for the future too much, like, like are changing things they're doing.

394
00:26:50,780 --> 00:26:51,020
Right.

395
00:26:51,020 --> 00:26:55,940
Like the example I always use is like flossing, like we all know we should be doing that multiple

396
00:26:55,940 --> 00:26:56,700
times a day.

397
00:26:57,420 --> 00:26:59,140
And I'm pretty sure we don't, I don't know.

398
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:05,460
Well, the other thing that, you know, that we touched on earlier was this idea that if

399
00:27:05,460 --> 00:27:12,860
you can do something in half the time in the wrong organization, that's usually used to

400
00:27:12,860 --> 00:27:14,140
your disadvantage, right?

401
00:27:14,140 --> 00:27:21,080
It's not usually celebrated and, you know, you're not rewarded for taking less time or doing something

402
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:21,760
more efficiently.

403
00:27:22,020 --> 00:27:25,280
The, the, the end result is usually that you get less budget.

404
00:27:25,820 --> 00:27:27,580
Your expectations are raised.

405
00:27:28,340 --> 00:27:30,560
Um, slack is driven out of the system.

406
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:36,940
So in, you know, in a lot of organizations, I think that the common management paradigm,

407
00:27:36,940 --> 00:27:45,220
uh, actually works against improvement because there's, there's not a positive response to

408
00:27:45,220 --> 00:27:45,720
improvement.

409
00:27:46,540 --> 00:27:52,240
So what do you, do you think, do you think that, you know, going on with kind of like the, the,

410
00:27:52,240 --> 00:27:58,960
the default disposition of people in a, uh, a large enterprise, the, the kind of people

411
00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:05,780
that we work with, it seems like most people, I don't mean that in a judgmental way, but

412
00:28:05,780 --> 00:28:13,060
collectively, like there's not a lot of thought put into like engineering how the work is done.

413
00:28:13,580 --> 00:28:15,900
You sort of like move into a steady state.

414
00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:17,760
And that seems to be like that.

415
00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:21,380
And, and I say that because it seems like when you, you know, when you first encounter

416
00:28:21,380 --> 00:28:27,980
and re-encounter like actual, like lean manufacturing and assembly line things, like one of the

417
00:28:27,980 --> 00:28:31,160
things that's, well, maybe it's not easy to overlook, but one of the things that stands

418
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:36,360
out is like, wow, everyone's always figuring out if they should change stuff to do it better.

419
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:37,240
Right.

420
00:28:37,300 --> 00:28:43,860
Like, and to me, that's a very, like, I mean, I'm not an engineer, but that feels like what

421
00:28:43,860 --> 00:28:46,900
an engineer does like versus a scientist, right.

422
00:28:46,900 --> 00:28:51,100
Who's trying to discover like the one thing, but an engineer is just like, I don't know.

423
00:28:51,140 --> 00:28:52,340
Let's see if this works better.

424
00:28:53,140 --> 00:28:53,540
Right.

425
00:28:53,600 --> 00:28:53,860
Right.

426
00:28:54,040 --> 00:28:54,320
You know?

427
00:28:54,460 --> 00:28:59,160
And, and so, but you know, when I've, when I've worked with people in the past, like it's

428
00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:04,720
really hard to introduce this idea of like, whether it's in work life or personal life,

429
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:08,800
it's just like, we should engineer what we do as much as possible, not to make golden

430
00:29:08,800 --> 00:29:12,760
doorstops, but like, you know, maybe we should change the way we do things.

431
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:16,200
I think that it's very rare.

432
00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:24,440
And that, you know, that engineering as problem solving is very much the, you know, the framing

433
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:31,140
that I was thinking of when I came up with the term flow engineering for like the, the work

434
00:29:31,140 --> 00:29:37,900
that I do, um, because it really is about, you know, solving flow problems with, you know,

435
00:29:37,900 --> 00:29:40,640
classical engineering methodology.

436
00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:51,300
But, um, you know, it's, it's not often that you hear about things like, like Satyala Nadella,

437
00:29:51,860 --> 00:29:59,380
uh, I think in 2002 or three or something said that if you have a choice between developing new features

438
00:29:59,380 --> 00:30:04,660
and improving developer productivity, improve developer productivity, like that was, that was a very

439
00:30:04,660 --> 00:30:06,620
profound and rare statement at the time.

440
00:30:07,100 --> 00:30:18,220
And I, I don't think it's actually taken hold elsewhere and maybe not even across Microsoft as a, you

441
00:30:18,220 --> 00:30:23,500
know, as a fundamental principle, but I think that it's, it's pretty profound.

442
00:30:23,900 --> 00:30:27,760
And I think it's very consequential to think in that direction.

443
00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:39,140
Like if you can, if you have a choice between doing something and doing what you do better,

444
00:30:39,560 --> 00:30:42,300
you should invest in doing what you do better.

445
00:30:42,900 --> 00:30:52,660
Um, that's, that, that I think is a very rare sentiment and it might be rare because of those

446
00:30:52,660 --> 00:30:58,240
things, those kinds of organizational antibodies or culture that says that we're going to drive

447
00:30:58,240 --> 00:30:59,060
out slack.

448
00:31:00,100 --> 00:31:06,320
Um, we're going to capitalize on efficiency gains and most of this is not going to work in the

449
00:31:06,320 --> 00:31:07,740
favor of the contributors.

450
00:31:08,260 --> 00:31:08,420
Yeah.

451
00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:08,880
Yeah.

452
00:31:09,060 --> 00:31:12,340
And, and, you know, it does seem like, well, well, here's a question.

453
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:19,520
Well, we will see that it's a question when I ask it, but like, do you, you know, if, if

454
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:28,260
you've ever done work with large government organizations, do they operate, do they, does it, is it

455
00:31:28,260 --> 00:31:30,520
similar like the issues they deal with?

456
00:31:30,580 --> 00:31:36,400
And I asked that to do my old question than a statement thing, because it seems like a

457
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:40,120
lot of, you know, we were, a lot of the pressures you have in a commercial business are just like,

458
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:47,260
we would like to make as much money as possible or, you know, either through growth or through

459
00:31:47,260 --> 00:31:51,800
spending less, whatever it may be, but like, we want more money.

460
00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:52,180
Right.

461
00:31:52,220 --> 00:31:56,400
Whereas the government, that's not really what they do.

462
00:31:57,260 --> 00:31:57,660
Right.

463
00:31:57,660 --> 00:32:00,000
Well, they kind of, I think they have the opposite.

464
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:07,540
Uh, they typically have the opposite paradigm, like their budgets get reduced and then they

465
00:32:07,540 --> 00:32:08,860
have to kind of respond.

466
00:32:09,520 --> 00:32:16,180
Whereas in the, in, in an enterprise organization, you kind of deliver the opportunity to reduce

467
00:32:16,180 --> 00:32:16,600
the budget.

468
00:32:16,600 --> 00:32:21,640
And then the budget gets reduced to kind of capitalize on that opportunity to increase margin.

469
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:22,120
Right.

470
00:32:22,660 --> 00:32:28,240
And I don't think margin and growth are the same, you know, you're kind of flipping them

471
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:29,180
in government.

472
00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:31,840
Everything is constantly trying to be minimized.

473
00:32:32,540 --> 00:32:41,960
Um, so I, yeah, I do see a fundamental difference there, but they're not any, you know, they're not

474
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:44,180
any more or less efficient as a result.

475
00:32:44,180 --> 00:32:49,900
I would say that, you know, they're, they are less efficient, uh, because it's very, very wasteful

476
00:32:49,900 --> 00:32:54,760
to just like cut budget and then see what, you know, see what happens, what happens.

477
00:32:54,940 --> 00:32:55,160
Right.

478
00:32:56,100 --> 00:32:58,580
Like, let's just cut the budget and they'll figure it out.

479
00:32:58,580 --> 00:33:05,300
Like that's not, that's a very, I think a very counterproductive way to drive performance

480
00:33:05,300 --> 00:33:05,800
improvement.

481
00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:06,920
Yeah.

482
00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:07,260
Yeah.

483
00:33:07,420 --> 00:33:07,680
Yeah.

484
00:33:07,820 --> 00:33:08,000
No.

485
00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:12,740
So, so then, you know, we've, uh, uh, been very abstract here.

486
00:33:12,740 --> 00:33:19,340
Thanks to my meandering, but like, like what, what is, what is, let's go over like what

487
00:33:19,340 --> 00:33:21,020
value is in this context.

488
00:33:21,180 --> 00:33:21,580
Right.

489
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:25,560
And, you know, you mentioned, we've mentioned a few things here and there, you know, top

490
00:33:25,560 --> 00:33:28,900
and bottom line revenue and making money, blah, blah, blah, those things.

491
00:33:28,900 --> 00:33:34,780
But like, what's a, what do you think about and what has been the practical meaning of value

492
00:33:34,780 --> 00:33:36,800
in, in the work that you've done over the years?

493
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:43,400
I think that, you know, value is one of the least understood things in the, in the technical

494
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:47,340
world, but even in the business world, you know, we kind of abstract it.

495
00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:53,820
Well, maybe, maybe we don't abstract it, but we kind of proxy it behind metrics.

496
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:54,260
Right.

497
00:33:54,580 --> 00:34:01,160
Um, but I think it's helpful to think about a couple of things.

498
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:05,640
First of all, like you don't ever define value, right?

499
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:11,540
Like value is, uh, evaluated by the recipient.

500
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:17,880
So this, I think is one of the fundamental things behind like deliver fast, give fast feedback

501
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:24,480
because everything up to the point of delivery is expected value, like an assumption of value.

502
00:34:24,580 --> 00:34:34,840
Um, and that reconciliation of like post delivery utilization, um, and then feedback is ultimately,

503
00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:41,740
you know, the opening the Schrodinger's box and finding out if the cat's alive or dead.

504
00:34:41,740 --> 00:34:54,860
So the, I love conversations like this, cause I will go like, I'll go really abstract, but I'll, I'll, I'll try to reign it in.

505
00:34:55,980 --> 00:35:08,280
So the, the, the thing that was really helpful to me was thinking about it across three dimensions, like value to customers is one thing, probably the most important thing to the business.

506
00:35:08,280 --> 00:35:26,200
Um, but there's, um, but there's also value to the organization in terms of longevity, resiliency, sustainability, capability, scalability, all these things that enable the business are also valuable.

507
00:35:26,200 --> 00:35:30,460
Right. Um, because they enable that customer value or they support it.

508
00:35:30,520 --> 00:35:39,160
And then there's value to contributors, which is, you know, an understanding that you can't do any of that stuff.

509
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:50,240
If you're not providing value to the folks who are actually doing all the work and that's, you know, that goes beyond monetary compensation.

510
00:35:50,240 --> 00:36:01,600
Right. It's, it has to do with personal development and positive feedback or constructive feedback, useful feedback, uh, meaningful work, all that stuff.

511
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:16,860
So thinking about, you know, one of the things that I did soon after starting to map value streams was I started mapping out outcomes, like trying to understand what are we actually trying to do?

512
00:36:16,860 --> 00:36:28,380
Um, because a lot of cases would go in and we'd start to map a value stream and then it's very hard to decide what to do if you don't know the ultimate purpose of the goal of doing the, doing the work.

513
00:36:28,380 --> 00:36:36,380
So after divine defining a target outcome, we look at like, what are the benefits of this?

514
00:36:36,380 --> 00:36:42,380
What's, what is this actually going to do for customers, for the business and for individual contributors?

515
00:36:42,380 --> 00:36:45,580
And that's really clarifying.

516
00:36:45,580 --> 00:37:06,860
It's really helpful because just having a target outcome doesn't necessarily help you make the decisions as you're navigating towards it, as much as understanding the value from these three different dimensions, because they kind of act as guardrails for you to stay on course.

517
00:37:06,860 --> 00:37:21,680
As you can consider, as you can consider, well, okay, if we do this, yes, it's valuable to customers, but we'd be significantly sacrificing margin, which is unsustainable, or this is going to be great for customers, but we're, we're going to hate doing it.

518
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:24,780
So ultimately that's going to work against us.

519
00:37:26,700 --> 00:37:35,860
Yeah, yeah, you know, I, those are, I like the idea of like, it starts with whoever the user, customer, whatever it is, right?

520
00:37:35,860 --> 00:37:45,020
And like, that does seem, that, that, that is, that does get confused a bit in talking about value and software.

521
00:37:45,020 --> 00:37:53,680
And then, yeah, and then rightly so, like, that's why you want to get it in front of them as soon as possible, because you kind of have no idea what's going on until, well, that's, that's not accurate.

522
00:37:53,680 --> 00:37:58,500
Right. You need feedback. You need to test out what, what, what people like or not.

523
00:37:58,820 --> 00:38:17,460
And it, and it also does seem like with those, with those three angles, you can, or those three perspectives, you can also like there, you can kind of get over one, one of my least favorite things in all this kind of work is like, is like constantly asking why, why are we doing that?

524
00:38:17,460 --> 00:38:30,000
Like, what's the goal of this? The why? And, and let's, I, I even, you know, there's this phrase that like puts my, uh, the back, the hair on the back of my neck, like on edge where someone's like, let's take a step back and ask why we're doing it.

525
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:34,320
It's just that every time I hear, take this, take a step back. I'm like, oh, this is going to take a long time.

526
00:38:34,600 --> 00:38:34,720
Right.

527
00:38:34,820 --> 00:38:51,120
But like, it, it, it's like, it's a different approach to answering this why question. Right. And I think maybe what, what irks me so much about people asking why is I feel like they're just trying to come up with an excuse that I create to not help me.

528
00:38:51,760 --> 00:39:18,900
Right. Like, and, and versus, well, let's make sure we're doing something valuable. Right. Like you do want to do something, but I'm not questioning if you should be doing that thing in the first place. Instead, we need to figure out like across these three to use another loaded term stakeholders. Right. Like, is this going to be good? Right. And, uh, so it's, it's, it's better than just one single metric of value.

529
00:39:19,820 --> 00:39:31,460
I guess, I think, and it's, this is a tough, it's a tough domain because, you know, the, the dominant narrative I think is really confusing.

530
00:39:32,420 --> 00:39:49,800
You know, a lot of people think about direction and purpose, uh, and they think about, um, you know, start with why, right. They start with what's the, what's the big idea or what's the reason for,

531
00:39:49,800 --> 00:40:02,420
all this stuff. But I don't think you can even get to that unless you have a vision, like, unless you have a, what, unless you have something that you're actually heading towards, then you can't really measure.

532
00:40:02,420 --> 00:40:24,060
Like, is this the right thing? Is this like, one of the things that we did with outcome mapping was we changed wise to benefits because why is just, you know, it's, it can be very abstract and very difficult for people to think about, but benefits is a lot clearer.

533
00:40:24,060 --> 00:40:39,000
Right. And so if you think about benefits to these stakeholders, um, you're framing it at a positive, but also like more concrete and tangible dimension that's much, much easier to talk about.

534
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:51,920
And I think that's, that's, that's, that's something that's really powerful. Like, cause, cause value is, you know, it's, it's very difficult for people to talk about, you know, it has this temporality to it.

535
00:40:51,920 --> 00:41:06,680
It has subjectivity to it, uh, is not very helpful. So if you're, if you're thinking about a target outcome and then the benefits of that target outcome, um, then I think you're way ahead.

536
00:41:06,680 --> 00:41:15,000
And it's much easier to meet people where they are rather than hope that they understand value before you can have a constructive conversation.

537
00:41:15,620 --> 00:41:25,120
Yeah. I mean, it's almost like, it's almost like the, uh, in, in, in the, the Ted talk version of what why means that, that why is like what you discover.

538
00:41:25,120 --> 00:41:30,240
It's like the last thing that actually comes up on the table and you kind of reverse engineer it.

539
00:41:30,240 --> 00:41:42,120
It doesn't seem like, you know, many people at the start of their enterprise, so to speak, have sort of like a mission in mind.

540
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:55,140
It's more as, as you're kind of were saying, they have, they have benefits or a product or an outcome or, or, you know, to, to, to borrow the term, like they have sort of like this flow in mind that they want to establish.

541
00:41:55,140 --> 00:41:58,540
Like, you know, I want to own a coffee shop.

542
00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:02,140
The why is because I like it.

543
00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:02,800
Right.

544
00:42:03,680 --> 00:42:04,300
You're right.

545
00:42:04,380 --> 00:42:05,360
I think, I think you're right.

546
00:42:05,420 --> 00:42:11,360
I think, you know, over time what you, you need, you need the why to be increasingly powerful.

547
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:13,960
It's like more like a reminder, maybe.

548
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:15,200
I don't know.

549
00:42:15,300 --> 00:42:15,540
Yeah.

550
00:42:15,740 --> 00:42:21,660
As a, you know, as a guard, as, as a, like as guardrails, but also I think as a pull mechanism, right?

551
00:42:21,660 --> 00:42:39,600
Like as something that is motivating to people and, and catalyzing and, and kind of like inspiring to people, but like, you know, Apple computer didn't start with think different, you know, like Nike didn't start with its like marketing strategy.

552
00:42:40,660 --> 00:42:47,000
And, you know, the difference between a marketing strategy and what you're actually doing is usually pretty, pretty dramatic.

553
00:42:48,020 --> 00:42:51,760
Uh, and if you're lucky, you can narrow the gap over time, right.

554
00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:54,200
Between aspiration and actual achievement.

555
00:42:54,200 --> 00:43:03,320
But I don't think it's very helpful to kind of hold people to these abstract terms to try and figure out whether they're, they're going in the right direction.

556
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:11,820
But I do think that, you know, the, the, the, why benefits can be really good as a test.

557
00:43:11,820 --> 00:43:14,680
Like I think of them as a test for the target outcome.

558
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:17,100
It's like, Oh, we want to do X.

559
00:43:17,220 --> 00:43:17,840
So, okay.

560
00:43:17,860 --> 00:43:21,180
What is, why is that important essentially?

561
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:27,580
And if you can answer that well, from all those different perspectives, then you might have something.

562
00:43:29,100 --> 00:43:33,820
So, so let, let's, let's, let's, you know, wrap up hopefully with, with a very practical thing.

563
00:43:33,820 --> 00:43:43,780
So, you know, using your time box inspiration, let's, let's say, uh, let's say I person in an organization, I've got an, I've got an hour, right.

564
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:52,840
And, uh, I don't know, I found a, a, a, an empty whiteboard and some markers and, you know, just me alone or this person alone.

565
00:43:53,200 --> 00:44:00,680
Like what, what could I do that would kind of get me like a value stream up on the board.

566
00:44:00,740 --> 00:44:01,180
Right.

567
00:44:01,180 --> 00:44:08,660
And, and, you know, using again, that word, like, because this will get like visibility into like, what is going on.

568
00:44:09,660 --> 00:44:10,100
Right.

569
00:44:10,160 --> 00:44:17,400
Like, like what, what's, what's something like, how would someone get started with that such that they did the end of this hour.

570
00:44:17,400 --> 00:44:25,320
So they'd be like, ah, now I can do something like not to complete something, but like, I'm left with more action about actionality.

571
00:44:25,520 --> 00:44:26,720
I don't know what that means.

572
00:44:28,400 --> 00:44:28,880
Yeah.

573
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:35,980
I'm left with more cape, you know, capability to do something than I was earlier.

574
00:44:36,520 --> 00:44:58,960
I would say, you know, I, I used to go right to the value stream map and I think you can do that if you have clarity amongst everyone involved on why you want to, what the purpose of mapping the value stream is, right.

575
00:44:59,000 --> 00:45:06,840
What are you hoping to get, are you hoping to increase quality or are you hoping to increase throughput, um, value added time?

576
00:45:06,840 --> 00:45:15,180
Like you can use a value stream map for a lot of different things, but there's no real value in just mapping a value stream.

577
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:16,160
Sure.

578
00:45:16,720 --> 00:45:28,840
Uh, compared to, you know, having a purpose for doing it because, you know, if you sure you'll find stuff, but it might not be the most important.

579
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:42,220
Thing and you might get distracted by what you find and you could have a completely more valuable target, um, that you're not serving by being distracted by what you find in the value stream map.

580
00:45:42,300 --> 00:45:54,160
So I would suggest doing an outcome at first, which is why I start, you know, I, I always start everything with mapping an outcome because it's, that's actually quite actionable.

581
00:45:54,160 --> 00:46:03,140
So if you, uh, the basic structure of an outcome app, the way that I do it is, um, this acronym OBON.

582
00:46:03,380 --> 00:46:06,960
So outcome benefits, obstacles, next steps.

583
00:46:07,640 --> 00:46:20,440
And if you zero in on a target outcome, like we want to go faster or we want to eliminate waste very simply, those are, you know, not super specific, but they're specific enough.

584
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:22,140
And then you think about the benefit.

585
00:46:22,140 --> 00:46:23,960
I think they're also well-known and understood.

586
00:46:24,480 --> 00:46:24,780
Yeah.

587
00:46:24,920 --> 00:46:27,420
Most people know what that looks like roughly.

588
00:46:28,100 --> 00:46:32,060
Um, so that can be a great starting point.

589
00:46:32,260 --> 00:46:36,700
The obstacles is another thing that we don't think about very often.

590
00:46:36,700 --> 00:46:37,180
Right.

591
00:46:37,860 --> 00:46:45,800
Um, but they increase that action ability by understanding, you know, what are we going to trip over if we just start running in this direction?

592
00:46:46,500 --> 00:46:53,840
Um, and then next steps can be anything from value stream mapping to a survey, to interviewing people.

593
00:46:54,840 --> 00:47:03,600
Um, so that kind of creates options, but also focuses those options on action, like on actually doing something.

594
00:47:04,500 --> 00:47:09,900
Uh, and you could take that in and go and map a value stream or do any number of other things.

595
00:47:10,280 --> 00:47:25,040
Um, but it's, you know, it's probably not true that you know exactly what to use a value stream map for, unless you've kind of thought about those things first.

596
00:47:25,840 --> 00:47:27,100
Yeah, no, that makes sense.

597
00:47:27,100 --> 00:47:43,660
And then also, as you were, as you were mentioning, right, it seems like, I mean, you, you know, much better than I do with much more firsthand experience, but like one, one of the great values of a value stream is all of the people involved and just sort of like having them share in that moment.

598
00:47:44,220 --> 00:47:47,760
And, and, and, and, you know, kind of the, the, the, seeing what's going on there.

599
00:47:47,760 --> 00:47:55,120
Whereas like, you know, if only one person knows the value stream, that's of limited utility, unless it's a one person organization.

600
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:56,700
Right, exactly.

601
00:47:57,060 --> 00:48:08,420
But I mean, to, to, to, you know, to really address your question, if you're a one person, you could probably very quickly do that outcome mapping stage.

602
00:48:09,560 --> 00:48:18,700
And then to, to speak to the, the value stream mapping itself, the fastest way is to actually work backwards from the delivered value.

603
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:23,000
In a case that has already been delivered.

604
00:48:23,000 --> 00:48:27,120
So think about something that happens pretty often in your organization.

605
00:48:27,120 --> 00:48:33,920
Like you don't want to take a one-off occurrence and try to map a value stream because there's probably not much of a stream there.

606
00:48:34,340 --> 00:48:46,280
But if you're talking about a release process, for instance, go from customers are using the new feature that we just released and then work backwards from, okay, what happened to make that happen?

607
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:53,560
And what happened to make that happen and you get the, the structure and then you add timing to that structure.

608
00:48:53,560 --> 00:48:59,720
So you say, how long did each of these stages take and how long were, were we waiting between the stages?

609
00:48:59,920 --> 00:49:05,420
And that's kind of the simplest representation that gives you a lot of information and you probably have something pop out.

610
00:49:05,420 --> 00:49:08,340
That's, that's very clear and very actionable.

611
00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:09,520
Right.

612
00:49:09,600 --> 00:49:16,240
And, but, you know, and, and then, I mean, as you were rightly saying, you don't want to have a gratuitous optimization, right?

613
00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:18,560
Like you need to have a reason to be doing that.

614
00:49:18,560 --> 00:49:30,720
But, but now I, I think that that's exactly what, what that that's perfect in the sense of it's to boil it down, just do a value stream of something that already happened.

615
00:49:31,140 --> 00:49:34,960
And instead of like, because you can also just do a theoretic one, right?

616
00:49:34,960 --> 00:49:42,180
Like what would it take to do this or, you know, whatever, but just like, think back on some process that already happened and just map that out.

617
00:49:42,180 --> 00:49:45,640
And then that's what you can do for your hour break, right?

618
00:49:45,640 --> 00:49:47,780
Like, yeah, you can do that really quickly.

619
00:49:47,780 --> 00:49:53,420
And it's, you know, it is this kind of very comfortable retrospective activity.

620
00:49:54,420 --> 00:49:58,340
Um, and it's a very productive way to run a retrospective.

621
00:49:58,340 --> 00:50:01,460
So like you could do it in your next, your next retrospective.

622
00:50:01,460 --> 00:50:05,080
Like you can work backwards from, okay, well, we delivered these things in the sprint.

623
00:50:06,120 --> 00:50:07,120
How did it happen?

624
00:50:07,420 --> 00:50:12,100
And then you can find, okay, well, where was, where did it feel really difficult?

625
00:50:12,100 --> 00:50:16,500
And where do we feel like we spent the most time and that can be super productive.

626
00:50:17,480 --> 00:50:17,840
Yeah.

627
00:50:18,200 --> 00:50:18,520
All right.

628
00:50:18,540 --> 00:50:18,860
Well, great.

629
00:50:18,920 --> 00:50:20,600
Well, this, this was, uh, this is fun.

630
00:50:20,840 --> 00:50:28,240
I think, I think I have a, uh, uh, slightly more precise and delightfully confused notion of waste and value and all these things.

631
00:50:28,640 --> 00:50:32,100
Like, I think, I think that, you know, to, to use the old silly joke, right?

632
00:50:32,100 --> 00:50:39,180
Like the, the, the, the, the more confused I feel about things, the more I feel like I understand them, but just because you have all the angles and nuance.

633
00:50:39,180 --> 00:50:40,300
So, so that was great.

634
00:50:40,300 --> 00:50:45,620
But like, so if people are interested in, uh, looking into more of this stuff, seeing what you're up to, where, where would you send them?

635
00:50:47,020 --> 00:50:56,740
Uh, well, I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn, so you could find me on, on LinkedIn, uh, or if you, you know, if you search value streams anywhere, hopefully I come up.

636
00:50:57,020 --> 00:51:03,680
Um, I do have, uh, I just wouldn't put, putting the finishing touches on a book called flow engineering.

637
00:51:03,840 --> 00:51:06,420
That's going to come out through it revolution.

638
00:51:06,420 --> 00:51:19,080
So you can take a look at that on their website and, um, yeah, I'd love to talk to anybody about waste and value and flow in, in big complicated environments.

639
00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:20,720
That's my favorite thing to talk about.

640
00:51:21,340 --> 00:51:24,340
Yeah, no, clearly it's yeah, no, it's, it's a good topic.

641
00:51:24,340 --> 00:51:31,920
The, uh, figuring out how big systems work and don't work is always, uh, fascinating as you were kind of alluding to earlier.

642
00:51:32,080 --> 00:51:32,960
Well, well, great.

643
00:51:33,020 --> 00:51:38,200
Well, if you've listened this far, you've been listening or watching to another Tanzu talk episode.

644
00:51:38,200 --> 00:51:44,280
If you go to Tanzu talk.com, you can hunt down the show notes, or if you're watching a video, I'll put some links down below to things mentioned.

645
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:46,080
And with that, we'll see everyone next time.

646
00:51:46,140 --> 00:51:46,680
Bye bye.

647
00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:47,740
Thanks.