Why Business and IT Are Always Misaligned

When IT and business leaders are aligned, technology shifts from a cost center to a growth engine—focusing investment on high-impact outcomes, speeding innovation, cutting waste, reducing digital risk, and enabling faster adaptation to change for a durable competitive edge.

In this episode, I sit down with Roland Woldt—transformation leader at firms like KPMG, Accenture, and iGrafx, former German Armed Forces officer, host of this show, author of *Successful Architecture Implementation* and *Successful Process Mining Projects*, and creator of the *What’s Your Baseline?* Substack. His core message: digital transformations rarely fail because of technology, but because organizations lack alignment, clear baselines, strong governance, and true adoption and change readiness.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rolandwoldt/
https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Process Management and Podcasting
03:00 Understanding Architecture and Process Mining
05:52 Challenges in Business Leadership and Process Improvement
10:00 The Short-Term Thinking Dilemma
13:01 Scaling Businesses and Systemization
15:55 Mergers and Acquisitions: Process Challenges
19:12 The Role of IT in Business Value
22:57 Bridging the Gap Between IT and Business
24:41 The Role of IT in Business Growth
27:02 Risks of In-House Software Development
29:39 The Shift Towards IT-Centric Business Models
30:46 Bridging the Gap Between IT and Business
33:40 The Impact of AI on Business Decisions
36:41 The Reality of Automation and AI
41:38 Roland's Journey into IT and Process Management

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

The AI bubble will burst, you know, because it's just not sustainable, right? But everybody sings the AI song. And why do they do this? Because they have FOMO. You want to figure out where it stinks, how it stinks, and how you remove the stink. So basically getting better in what you do. And and they have no idea how that even could look like. There will be the next thing coming around after AI. And it will be hyped until whatever, right? And five years later.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Hi there, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. In this episode, I had a discussion with Roland Watts. Roland is the executive with over 25 years of experience in a business transformation, specializing in business process management, enterprise architect, and process mining. He's the founder of What's Your Baseline? He's a host of a podcast and author of books on a successful process mining and architecture implementation. Now, this was a very interesting discussion. We talked about various topics around process management architect and the challenges faced by business leaders in integrating IT with the business strategies. Roland shared insights from his extensive experience in a field, emphasizing the importance of understanding processes, the risk of short-term thinking, and the need for alignment between IT and business objectives. You know, we also explore the impact of merger and acquisition on organization processes and also evolving roles of technology in a modern business. You know, if you're business owners or if you're in any leadership position, don't miss this discussion. Whether you're already building a software or you're thinking about building a software house, uh, you know, go through this discussion in a role and share a lot of lessons learned over the years and also a lot of mistakes he made and also how he has been helping our business leaders to uh align uh software development with the revenue um and and the payroll. So if you find a value in this discussion, you only got a one simple ask, please share, uh, comment, and uh you know, subscribe to this channel. It means a lot to our team. Uh, we're always looking for ways to deliver more value for you on a daily basis with the different discussions and different topics. So, until next time, please welcome Roland Watts. Welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today we're guest at Ronald Watts. Um, hopefully, I said the last name properly, yeah, Ronald.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Well, last name was good. First name is Roland, but close enough. Cool.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm looking forward to this discussion. Thank you so much for time, Ronald. You know, that we can talk about many different things, but I want to learn from you is process side of things, which you do in terms of software development and a BPM side of things. So there's so much to learn from you. I'm looking forward to a discussion. Thank you so much for time.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Hey, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Okay, so let's start from there. What is what is your your your podcast name? What's a baseline? So, what is that about if you just walk us through what are you guys trying to do there and how did that start it?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Well, oh gee, how did it start it? Well, you know, Adam, Eve, peace, apples, you know, no, just kidding. Uh so it started basically almost five years ago. And I don't know. When you get of a certain age, you start thinking about what's your legacy and what do you do and is it important and and whatnot. And in my role that I had there, I always got asked the same question. And what I'm doing is, maybe I should start with that. What I'm doing is is process management, is enterprise architecture, is process mining. Okay. Right. So the the practices of understanding how operations and how organizations tick and what they do and how they do it, and obviously how you can improve that, because that obviously has an impact on the overall performance of the organization. And at that point in time, I worked for a vendor in that market, and I always got asked the same questions much. And I thought, oh, you know what? That's tedious, always telling the same story. You know, why why don't you write it down and say, hey, gourmet, just read this thing, and once you've read it, we're gonna talk, right? Yeah, yeah. And then relatively quickly I figured out, damn, writing is hard. Right? Talking is so much easier. Yeah. And I I asked my friend JM if he was interested who had the same job, who if he was interested to uh do a podcast with me. And it took him about three milliseconds to say yes. So the good news is he had a music company as a side business at that. So he knew all the guys, he audio, whatever, engineering, and all those things. So he makes and still makes us sound good, which is great. Yeah, and then fast forward, the podcast became then turned into two books, and now it turns this year into trading and more books and tools and templates and consulting and and all that stuff, all around architecture and and process management. Starting from a question, why it's called what's your baseline? That has a little bit of a double meaning behind because obviously baseline is a term in project management. Might you make an initial planning and that's your baseline, and then you deviate from it. But it's also a term in process management. Because when you do performance management, you know, you need a baseline to say, okay, this is where we are today, and you want to show the improvement. So what's the the difference? And to have this, you need to have a baseline. So what's your baseline?

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Very interesting. So the bit the two books you or you uh publish one is on architect, another one is uh process mining. Which one came first? Is the architect first and then the the mining work?

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Yeah, came about architecture implementation, right? So that's that's not necessarily how to that will be book number three, how to create an architecture, which is in the works. The first one is about architecture implementation, which is basically people who say, Well, I need to, I don't know, formalize is the wrong word. I need to have more structure in managing my processes or manage my applications or manage my risks, right? So that you typically have specialized tools. I don't want to name names here, okay? But that the point is it's just like an implementation when you do an ERP system implementation or a Salesforce implementation, right? You need to talk about strategy. What do we want from that thing? How do we create visibility? Are we 5% done or 85% done? How do we communicate? Right, and then you look into governance, how do we run the show? What do we do? Which people do we need? What's the structure that we need? What's training? And then you look at technology, how do you have to configure your tools? How do you bring existing content in, and so on and so forth. So that was my first book. And then the second book was about process mining. And in the first book, I introduced the concept of a process lifecycle. And process mining covers one of those five stages in that life cycle, which is the measure and analyze, because what process mining does, and I don't know how familiar you are with uh how process mining works. You you basically take event logs from your runtime systems, okay, smooth them, and then the process mining tool draws processes and gives you statistics, and you can build dashboards and stuff to analyze and understand your process with the idea you get more ideas for the next improvement round. Right? And what I've seen there, just to close it out, in the second book was the vendors come and they say, Oh, look at my fancy tool. And they say, Oh, you just need to plug in your your systems, and then everything will be fine when reality is not like this, you know. And I what I did is I I created a six-step process, how to do successful process mining projects, and then the book talks about it. And I have a data set that you can download and you can try to see if you get to the same conclusions that I did in my linear example.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Okay, and you can measure every step in a way, right? So as you mentioned, that when you when he breaks it down, you can measure it. Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

So so let's talk about from business standpoint, uh uh Ronald. It's uh, you know, business leaders, CEO, you work with a lot of them on an ongoing basis. You know, there's so many benefits of for doing this architect or whether it's a process side of things. What what are the what what is the struggle? Why don't they, you know, a lot of them they don't come from IT background or technology background, you know, definitely have a they have a different what is that they don't understand, or something that they did, you know, what is a roar black that the stopping them not to take on some of these initiatives? Because there's so many different ways you can see the benefits out of this process side of things, or whether it's architect, whether it's software development, improvement, so many different areas. So, what is something they're missing that they don't completely understand, or they're not they're not willing to take on these initiatives and investments.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

I think they just the majority of people have not been exposed to how good look could lie, right? So it in the end, the promise of all those things is very simple. You want to figure out where it stinks, why it stinks, and how you remove the stink, right? So basically getting better in what you do, and and they have no idea how that even could look like. It's it's so funny because the first commercial process mining tool came out in the late 90s, and that was way too early. Everybody was busy with drawing SAP processes and whatever, supporting blueprinting and and all those things. Nobody thought about that. And then that little company called Sandonis came up around 2011 with the tailwind from SAP, and they grew into a I don't know, 11 billion valuation back horn, if you will, you know, and and it's like damn, we work, I worked for those guys who had it 15 years earlier, you know, yeah, and and it was just too early, right? So but I still I still encounter people who have never seen that. Right. If I I'm just wondering, how do you run your organization if you don't know what you're doing?

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Yeah, if you don't measure the stink, first of all. If you if you don't yeah, and and is it if I measure it, it's gonna be worse than what I think it is, not having a you know the guts to simply just deal with the devil. Is that part of it? Or is it simply listen, I don't know how to measure it, I'm gonna just leave it out and I'm not even not gonna revolt. Oh, there's a lot of measure the stink, yeah, yeah. Because if you don't measure the stink, you don't have to fix anything.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Yeah, yeah, that's a lot of denial, you know. Oh, we're fine. You know, last time I checked, we're fine. But it's also, especially here in North America, it's the the attitude of short-term thinking, right? Because think about it, and I I've been in those roles, right? Being part of the the executive leadership of a tool vendor uh in that space. What is the average tenure of an executive in in those positions? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Probably five years, ten years, probably less than that. One and a half.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

One and a half, one and a half. So if your bonus and and all the wonderful stuff is dependent on that, would you go and and try to do some whatever fundamental changes and and go and say, oh, by the way, this thing that stinks for 20 years now, do I really wanna do I really want to fix it? Or or do I say, oh no, no, no. I'm gonna take the shiny thing, the the AI stuff, or whatever's hot in that moment, you know, and I I'm I'm the hero because I introduced this this new technology.

unknown 11:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

I think that is the that is the problem. That the short-term incentivation.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Small goals, small tasks, small objectives, small thinking, just take it on a small like that's such a great point. The way, yeah, and big bonuses, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:09

A big bonus, yeah. So it's not it's not that that this is without risk, quote unquote, right? But the the incentive is just not there, at least not in North America, to fix those structural things.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Yeah. No, that's a great point. And I can see that in a corporate world, that's what what's happening, because you know, a large corporation, there's they have a small, but I've seen some business owners who run their own businesses, small, medium corporations, you know, got the companies, even 100, 200 employees out of things, you know, business owners tied to business. I mean, it would make sense to have a long-term vision and deal with it. But it's the same kind of attitude that you just mentioned. I'm just gonna focus on the next couple of months, what's gonna get us there, not to worry about the long term.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Well, it also makes sense for a corporation, but obviously, you know, definitely, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm I'm with you. What I see is, and I I have to admit, I haven't worked with so many small and medium-sized companies, you know. Obviously, there's some investment for the tools and the implementation effort and all those things that come with it that might push those things out of the affordability for for a small and medium-sized business owner. But obviously, it would make sense to uh capture what you do, right? Because it it think about it. When you start your organization, it's you. You do everything, you have the vision, you have the legs, uh, you know, you create the results. At some point, you might grow, right? So you you get more people on board that work for you. So you build a lifestyle business. You know, you can you can afford the nice car and the vacation and and whatever, whatever it is, but your business stops at a certain point, right? Because you are still driving this thing. You might have more helpers, more legs, more arms, but at the end it stops with you. If you want to go to the next step, you need to systemize it. Right? You need to say, I as a person am not the the the the block in the middle, right? My role changes. I start in being the enabler of others so that they can do their job and step up, right? And then you can scale. And and that is a shift that I see that then would, in my mind, require thinking about those structures and how do we do things and do we do them well, and and all those stuff. And that then comes with process mapping and SOPs and performance criteria and blah. Right. So it's it's past the the shiny red car in your driveway. It's like, okay, how do I how do I grow this thing from five to a hundred million or more?

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and it's a hard work, right? That it I think that's where the hard work comes in. And because the same kind of frame mindset, whether it's a mindset, mindset change or whether it's a framework, whatever what framework applied to one process is gonna apply to all other processes in their business as well. You can same way, hey, I'm gonna measure it, I'm gonna improve it, I'm gonna review it, I'm gonna come back to it. Same kind of mindset you could apply apply to, but that I think that's where the hard work comes in, right? So you could get to put a lot of work work in to improve every single area of your business.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Yeah, and and then think about it. Every organization grows organically, inorganically, whatever, right? During that growth, you take on a lot of ballast, right? Say you merge two organizations, they have worked independently of you before. So they come with their stack of apps, they come with their processes. Oh, we do it like this here, you know. They come with a certain org structure that comes with certain privileges and and whatnot. You know, nobody wants to step back, right? But but your task is it to bring it together. And I think this is where uh to talk about money, right? This is where you would go and then have the chance to save money, right? So but to bring to a close our last thought, you know, so now you've scaled your organization, right? At some point you were successful, and then you're in that corporate situation, right, where everyone is a hired gun, if you know what I mean, right? So nobody has the ownership, it's just oh, that's my job. I'm supposed to do my job here, right? And that comes with its own set of problems, like I don't care, or I care about my bonus and nothing else, and whatever, right? So it's a spectrum, but I think, like I said before, looking at what you do and figuring out ways how to improve it, that would apply to everything, but maybe a startup, because they're busy with creating their product and finding customers and and all that type of stuff. But at a certain point, you know that, you know, you love your business, you you've been through that.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Yeah, we we you know what we're refocused more on operational process, not on you know on an enterprise process, but it's a similar concept, similar kind of approach, right? But I think one thing one thing, Bruce, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I don't think that's a difference. No, it's it's the same approach, same approach. Yeah, it's just a different level of uh um you know um uh corporate. But I think one of the item process does is build the standards for as well. You know, if you built if you dealt with that you know a bunch of processes in your business, definitely is gonna give you a standards to apply to all other areas in your business as well. And I think that's where I see a lot of struggles, you know, especially I'm not sure where you are, where we are in Canada, a lot of MA transactions are happening. People buying new companies, and and uh when you buy a new company or or trying to consolidate businesses, if you haven't figured out your own process, how are you gonna handle somebody else's? Because who the they're gonna bring the same problem to yours as well. Do you do you see some of the challenges in this area as well when people trying to consolidate a bunch of businesses?

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah, yeah, same thing. And I also see them non-prepared. Right. And then it's it's the the first map wins, you know. The guy who cares up because the first idea is the thing that, oh great, yeah, let's do that, you know, and yeah, then you move on. And that might be an idea, but maybe not the the the most ideal idea, you know. But yeah, I've I've seen that. I've been through one merger, and it was basically our company was roughly the size of the other company. So we're talking about 5,000 man people, and we got a two-page PDF. Oh, this is what you do. Welcome to the new firm.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

What? You know, so that was that was suboptimal, I'd say. You know, I I would have expected a little bit more, some warm words, you know, a little bit of a training program, uh, a little bit of oh, that's our mission, our philosophy, our whatever. Nope, two pages. This is what we do. Here's the product links. Good luck.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Yeah, that was weird. That was really weird.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

And and and in that area, whoever spent a little bit of time that wins. And and if uh your your company you're taking over, they have a little bit better process than what you have. That who's gonna whose culture is gonna come over, whose problems gonna, who's gonna run the business the way they want to run it? Instead of you, it's it's gonna be the company you buy, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Yeah, it's also it's also how you care. So in that example, that company has bought another company two years earlier. And and I was said, oh, those guys did it right. They were bought, got the money, and now they're running the the overall company, right? So it's basically just switching out the the logo on the business card. And and they were very how do I say that, power sensitive, right? So they played that game, and and others were just like, yeah, whatever, you know. And obviously, those guys who had the better idea, they just pulled through with it, you know. Yeah was it good or was it bad? Well, depends on what the idea is.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So we want to talk about IT professionals. You know, that's some one of the challenges see on a daily basis. We hire a lot of people as well. Is process, you know, where's the schools and universities are dropping a ball on that? Even IT people resisting to either either looking into process or even not having an understanding of that. We hire a lot of them, and we think is uh, you know, where we come to the point where we think it's a mindset, uh mindset change. If you don't think in terms of pro, if you don't think in terms of process, you're not gonna understand the process, you're gonna go for we're always gonna do responsive stuff. Okay, that break, let's run to it, let's do firefight and fix that something instead of just thinking in terms of process. If I can fix the process challenges, I don't have to fix, I have to run, I don't have to run around. I for you, we think it's a it's a mindset, and and we filter a lot of people out just because of that. It's hard to find the skill set. Where you think is that university, college is not teaching enough? You know, they should this should be a basic course for every software developer or or any any of those uh you know programming courses that teaching process first before we teach up development.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

So, first of all, I have a lot of sympathy for our IT friends, right? Because when you look at it, what they do day in, day out, nobody thanks you for that. You know, yeah. 80-90% of their budget just goes to keeping the lights on, right? They build up a lot of technical debt that at some point you have to pay back, you know. Yeah, and and the question is the question is how much room for innovation do you have? And then those nasty business folks that just come and swipe their credit cards, their corporate cards, to buy a new service, and now we have shadow IT or shadow AI, and now I have to deal with that, you know, because I also want to be compliant, you know, don't want to be in in jail with one foot. So I I have some sympathy on that with them. But I agree with you, right? In my mind, a good architect is able to create a clear line of sight from the strategy, and I actually hate that word, so from the place of where do we want to be when we're grown up through what do we actually do, right? Your processes, your risks, your organization to IT, cables and boxes, right? And if you don't have that clear line of sight, then how do you make decisions? And then you see those wonderful things like a couple of months ago when MIT stated that 95% of all AI projects had no business value. I was not surprised about that. Because what do you have? You have some geeks in IT who think that's cool and I can build a cool tool, but they have no idea how an average user would use it because they didn't look at the process. And then they build some features that nobody cares and they miss the ones that they care and then it doesn't fit into the the bigger picture and then it will not be used.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Yeah and it doesn't tie to the business value end of the day as you mentioned I mean if you don't tie any anything in IT that what we do to business value, I mean how do you justify that investment? How could you even say that let's this is what we're going to do.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah of course yeah how do you justify spending whatever a gazillion dollars on something if you can say oh by the way I think this will improve your bottom line your your business results by and this is I think that the the main pace that I want to make by aligning what you have orchestrating you know your different org units your systems your processes your skills whatever right alignment is one of the the key terms that I would put in there and I'm pretty sure everybody can buy whatever Microsoft products they're happy to sell you something they have certain capabilities and you can use them right so that level is the playing field. Remember when back in the 90s when you wanted to set up a web server and you easily pay$20,000 for it and now you buy a monthly wholesale for$250. Yeah what I mean so yeah so the the the the technological playing field is level that's not the distinguishing thing it's what you do with those things. That is the interesting thing and there for this you need alignment you need a clear line of sight of what do you want to accomplish and how does it shake out down to cables and boxes.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Yeah I heard so many times from IT departments or IT leaders you know I work with a CTO's IT department say our management has an issue with them making decisions. I said well that could possibility it but maybe there's a there's an issue with that you're not tying IT with the business value. Maybe that's why they can't make a decision. Right? So you know when you look at a couple days down that's usually the issue that you're not tying back to business leaders sitting how could they make a decision but you don't see the business value in it which what they're trying to do.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

I had a I had an head of IT in a telco company and we were chatting you know coffee in the in the break room and he said oh this department could work in any other industry you know what do we do we give you a computer we maintain your computers blah blah blah and I thought by myself you didn't understand the whole thing right because he he just saw himself as an admin and his team as the administrators of technology right but not as the driver who gives an an impulse to the organization and it says oh look at this new stuff that you could implement that would have this benefit for you.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Right and yeah and he didn't he didn't so try try to tell business owners see listen I'm gonna increase by by doing this project in IT I'm gonna increase revenue by by 5% 10% see how fast they will make a decision on that.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Oh but the on the other side a lot of business people just don't understand right for them it's all black magic you know it's like the computer can now talk to me that's great I believe everything I hear you know what I mean so yes it's blissful ignorance on both sides I guess.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

Yeah I think I it just education piece and back to the mindset listen are we gonna be you know working on the same and same on a productivity side as well you can whether you can you know you can impact impact the revenue with the IT department or you can impact the productivity and that cut the the bottom car the the the the the bottom layer of the cost right or what expenses yeah so in IT I think that this is probably only department in a in a any any company that where we can impact both sides top line and the bottom line in a company instead of simply just being a status quo just being administrator of the the technology.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

Well having said that I've seen a lot of IT departments that that are now seen as a pure cost center.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Right and not as sad whatever the area of investment yeah it's sad it's it's a sad it's I mean IT should be you know on the table to help you grow more revenue or or cut the cost I mean both ways I mean you know if you try to compete in a market and and what a better a use of tool that is as IT department use a tool to to get to where you want to get to and and it's called information technology. Yeah just called technology side the information needs to flow so yeah I'm I'm with you I'm with you got it got it good stuff so I see a lot of business leaders uh Ronald you may have us some perspective for them a lot of uh I see a lot of businesses where they have about you know five ten IT IT uh folks in the IT department they take on take on a software devolvement as part of the business and they you know I I see a lot of businesses they think that's a competitive advantage because they built something in-house nobody built can build it the way they built it but as you know that having building a software with the one or two guys you can expose a lot of risk nobody's gonna there's not gonna be room to document there there's not going to be room to to uh you know version controls a lot of issues that software developer development should have as a basic uh you know they're not gonna have that so I see a lot of business owners they take on this small development and they think that's their competitive advantage but they added a lot more risk to the business and now they're tied with it they can't even change that the staff or they can't even do anything with it because they these those are the only two guys know what the software does right so it's good for them right it's it's called employability you know good for them but it's not good for business right so a business being just just captured that way seen so many scenarios over the last five six years like whether it's two guys whether it's four guys these these business owners without annoying it they just tie themselves to something that they didn't they didn't uh you know plan for or they didn't envision but now they're so tied with it and the business kind of lives and dies with that little piece of the software because that's a business software.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Any thoughts have you seen that any thoughts on those area the business owners can you know even start thinking about so I could I could follow the argument that everything that we do in the 21st century is technology. When you go to a bank you know they don't handle money well they do it somewhere in the branches you know but what they actually do is they maintain IT to manage numbers yeah right so or you look at you look at uh whatever allies right yes they do I almost said meat back you know they all they also ship people from A to B right as their product but what do they do in the background right you see when when you have all those flight outages and whatnot most likely your computer system just glitched you know you don't get the right pilot in there there's there's rules around how long a pilot can be on standby then the plane is not there you have some technical issues with the plane what whatever right I'm really surprised that that we actually have thousands of flights in the air at any point in time that this thing works. You know this is like me like a little like a little boy like oh this is great they're doing a good job you know yeah I hope you know and I obviously hope when I sit in one of those things that it doesn't settle down or at least in patrolled way. Yeah yeah so I I could follow that argument you know that everything has become IT the question is now how do you deal with that as a business owner right you might oh god I might make that up you might be very interested in I don't know art and painting or flowers or whatever right there's aspects behind to make that thing run that you quickly grow into a role where you don't do the thing that you want right why you started that business no no you're now busy in running the business in all its aspects you know you're chasing people paying your invoices you're you're fixing IT you're hiring people blah blah blah blah blah right so the character has changed and and I think in the 21st century it has changed to a very large degree towards IT right so so whatever 20 years ago if you would have come with those ideas like Agile or DevOps or whatever a business purpose a business person would have stared in your eyes and and would say what are you talking those crazy talk you know I don't know what you're talking about you know yeah and now they they even come back and say oh yeah remember when we did those containers and we're using Docker and Kubernetes to manage all that stuff you know it's like as if they have never done anything else in in in their previous life. So even the business people step up in in that stuff is that good is that bad I don't want to put a judgment on that because you might lose the I don't know the soul of your organization or yourself you know because then you end up in that busy phase. Yeah I don't know I don't know yeah so it's a lot of waitress so so a lot of CEOs still this day you know there's a well I'm I don't understand IT so I don't want to get involved so I don't want to make a decision I'm gonna leave it to IT folks so you know that get that goes back to these people you just mentioned that you know you can't uh just shy away from IT you can't be intimidated by it you gotta get involved you gotta even you don't want to understand technical level but you gotta understand that business level how much business impact it has and how to manage those business impacts right you got to manage that's impact is yeah yeah what what came to my mind is a quote that a boss my one of my bosses once said to me I said Roland you need to understand those people went into IT because they don't want to talk to people there's a grain of a grain of truth in that sentence you know so even then the the IT people don't have the I don't want to say social skills that's a little bit too harsh but they're rough around the edges when it comes to other to other folks so they cannot communicate clearly what they want you know because if if you go as an IT person says oh yeah I want to build some capabilities and and get that framework right and oh yeah I'm following TOGAF and blah right I literally can see how business people's eyes just roll over and and it goes in here and it goes out there and and it's not processed in between. So somebody got to build a bridge in between simply say listen I'm gonna translate technically technical whatever we're talking into business languages it can make sense to business oh I spent years on that I spent years on that I was working on a project it was an internal project where we wanted to revamp one of our offerings with one of the big audit firms where I worked and we started developing stuff we developed workflows in Appian you know MVPs quick things turnaround and whatnot and then corporate IT came in and said no no no we're a Microsoft shop you know or we have something built on Microsoft blah blah blah you're gonna do that as well we just skin it right and their their hidden agenda was yeah we want to standardize on that Microsoft technology so our Appian stuff fell through the approval it's a non-standard technology you know and then the business people the business people looked in in and asked hey Roland why do we start over this thing worked you know we put our work in there I saw what we wanted to do it was implemented we want to do new stuff why do we start again right and they did not understand that hidden agenda item of standardization of IT and whatever agenda they had and by the way I I I agreed with them I said yeah no you know we're we're a big enough company to afford another tool if it brings us faster forward and we save a year or whatever time frame to to go to market with what we built. Right because that we're better fish to fry than IT standardization. Yeah obviously I was on the losing end with that. Yeah but but still the decisions controlled but IT in uh you know whether standardization rather efficiencies rather productivity the business decisions are controlled by that which is not good right so it's it gotta align properly instead of uh you know IT is driven IT should not be driving those decisions it should be business driving those decisions should be the other way around yeah I do agree yeah that's what I said the clear line of sight from strategy to cables and boxes yeah and it happens I've seen so many times you know technology driving business decisions should be the way around business should be driving technology decision what we need to do in order to align that back to that revenue you know the expenses yeah I don't I don't want to burst your your I don't want to see a grown man cry you know but we we see that for the last three years you know with the whole AI stuff yeah right I my prediction is within this year or maybe one and a half years from now so I hope my my predictions doesn't hold that back that worse the AI bubble will burst you know because it's just not sustainable right but everybody sings the AI song and why do they do this? Because they have FOMO right if I don't use it my competition will use it you know and and it was so funny I I read a quote today said if AI was so great it would wash it would clean my laundry it would fold my laundry wash my dishes all that stuff instead it does social media it writes articles it summarizes texts you know that's what I want to do you know I don't want to do my dishes and my laundry let's do that you know and I thought that's that's also a kernel of truth you know so how we do this nobody and I had those conversations on LinkedIn when somebody said oh I can do this and I could then can do that you know in the context of CrossMite I said oh that's great of your six point I've seen maybe two and a half in products can you show me the other and and then he was like well that's aspirational and blah right but but he he wrote it like like whatever as if it was a fact right yeah I think this is what what people just don't see right I think software people always see that I think software development people always see that because we've been doing that for so many years that with something procedural let's put something in a in a in an automated functional procedures and and just put a bunch of task that we can automate some other stuff.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

As a software developer we've been doing it for so long I think that's why we see that clearly but uh the people without a the software development they see that as a as a something new there's something so exciting black magic that is gonna black magic magic you know something yeah magic something yeah yeah yeah but I well you you've also seen well I look at the color of our beards you know we've seen the thing also there will be the next thing coming around after AI. There's always a piece and and it will be hyped until whatever right and five years later but it sells it sells a bunch of stuff right so you saw yeah Y2K sell sold a lot of software a lot of hardware you know cybersecurity sold a lot of software a lot of hardware which is basically security every time there's something comes up it you know it sells a lot of stuff so I think yeah is it's selling a lot of software selling a lot of hardware you see every software out there on their website AI feature in it you know maybe possible they have up two you know the one percent of the AI features that haven't even worked out properly but they just have that there as a marketing to sell the software so yeah you know you see a lot of that stuff right so but every time that something comes like shiny it sells a lot of hardware software I think that's what people are so keen to it they use all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

Yeah I agree I agree I had the I had the conversation we're both not with that company anymore I had the conversation with our ex-cto about that company that just did a rebrand and put some AI in their big taboo and I said I said well isn't that a lot of hot air you know and and then back and forth you know and then then the guys from the company said oh yeah your post ruffled a lot of feathers in here and I said I'm not part of your organization I can say whatever I want you know uh but it's it's it was an interesting conversation to say at least I I'll use one example I be rec I recently bought a software AI uh AS software set it can do so much stuff in a service business for you guys it can you know trigger a bunch of tickets service tickets you can do this it can do this sure that will save a lot of time let me buy the software for you bought it for one year when we're gonna deploy well first four months you have to train the AI engine what needs to be done so when you train it it will it will learn all the stuff you're doing and then we'll talk about it you know when we're gonna implement it.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

It's beautiful so first four months I'm simply just get you just gathering a bunch of data and and just yeah so we can we can use a little one.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

And then it then it hallucinates right so you don't know what to trust yet and and yeah I'm I'm super skeptical. From what I learned or read it's that that companies who rolled it out you know like Clona who fired people and all that stuff they are hiring them back because the work that you have to clean up after the AI was more than if they would have done it themselves in the first place. So I think what we need to do is and I I honestly think there's more capacity and capability in those tools but there's still just automation right yeah still just a lot of automation a lot of automation yeah put some some good applications some some great applications up there definitely you know in terms of gathering data and and doing all the data massaging and and you know there's a lot of the capabilities a lot of good applications there but back to what you just mentioned it's just automation at the at the at the we built we built a a a little dummy example in in the last company that I worked right we used N8N which is one of the low-cost freely available tools for this and the scenario was imagine you're the poor guy who has to keep your systems patches up right so that you don't have any whatever vulnerabilities right so the process is basically and and we did a a mock-up list you know Microsoft Service Now whatever and we misspelled it and gave some fantasy version numbers and whatnot we said okay hey let's automate this right and the thing looked up okay what's the proper spelling of the company what's the latest version blah blah blah what do we have installed then it went to the NIST the National Institute of Science Technology looked for vulnerabilities came back with a score you know like oh yeah we have version five the current version is 12 that's the get the delta well it's rated X whatever and then it spit out a list in a Google Sheet that says start upgrading this and then this and then this and then this and it has a long list. If you would have to do that research by yourself you would spend hours and hours on end. This thing did it in a few minutes. You know obviously it took some time to to build it right but I could see the benefit because that job I'm pretty sure neither you nor I want to do that job for a living right yeah but you rather would go and say okay I run this little thing it gives me a list that I know okay now I need to go and download and patch and deploy and and all those things I would take it yeah you know I would I would not be afraid of AI or whatever. Give it to me it makes my life easier and I think we need to get back to that realistic thing. What can what can the tool actually do today? You know what is aspirational which they might not even reach you know when I think about AGI and all those nonsense that I currently need we're we're miles away from this stuff. Oh and by the way I still want AI to wash my clothes and wash my dishes and fold my laundry you know when does that come?

SPEAKER_00 42:34

Yeah good stuff. So I know we run into a very short of time so I want to I want to get the last bit of that your journey how did you get in uh so interested in the process other things architects out of things you know uh was it simply just working on a software like if you just walk us through your journey's been so at the tender age of 18 I got that letter from my government that said man age 18 and older you know near to go and serve in the army.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

Right so so the mailman had a big smile when I got the certified letter you know and he said oh my time there was the best in my life I had no responsibility blah blah and I said okay so I I I I got drafted went to the military within the first couple of months I said oh it's not so bad here you know and then I stayed 11 years. So I'm I'm a tank officer blah blah blah you know studied during my time there but then I realized I don't want to do that for life you know because the realistic perspective is not everybody becomes a general right realistic perspective is you're a major or lieutenant colonel in a gray concrete building along the river Rhine shuffling paper from left to right you know yeah that that's not fancy and I thought okay so what else? Right? So I left and I started at one of the big consulting firms Anderson Consulting now Accenture and I was staffed on a project With the German railway. And they did a greenfield implementation of a customer service center. That was the time in the late 90s when the German railway was split up in five private companies. And they were working with a cargo entity, right? And they were using a tool called Aeris, which is one of the main players in that thing. And people said, Don't touch it, you can break something. You know, my colleagues. And what do you do as a 29-year-old male? You know, you touch it and you break things, you know. And that was my first exposure to it. Fast forward another couple of years. I started working for the company who created Ares, Adias Shear, well back when. And then Adias Shear was bought by Sophage. In between, I moved to the US. And then I thought, oh, maybe the pages are greener elsewhere. So I moved on to KPMG, was heading there, EA offering there, and whatever. West history. Right. Now I'm I'm doing the what's your baseline thing because I thought, okay, in almost 30 years I learned a thing or two. And why should somebody else do the same mistakes that I did? You know, maybe if I can help you to prevent that big faux pas, then I succeeded. You know, and and now I I wrote books and whatever, all that that other stuff. Have a podcast that runs for almost five years. I'm I'm not complaining. I'm I'm good, you know. But that is how I came into that whole topic. And I think the other thing is, and I don't wanna don't wanna put too many stereotypes in there. Germans are very structured people. I like structures, you know. What is architecture? Architecture is building structures. Right. So it it it was something that that I found very interesting, right? And then the the other topic is I find human behavior very interesting, and how that is contradicting. And I think the the the conflict between structure and human behavior is a is a topic that I really liked, and that's what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

And even the even the concept of process came from engineering backgrounds, right? Because that's where it started from engineering fields. But they're they're master of building process, and then we uh implemented and do business side of things or software side of things and all those things. But I think the background for the process came from engineering background as well.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Yeah, I think you need to, again, it's the the simple thing. You need to understand what you do, you know, where it stinks, why it stinks, and how do you remove the stink. Yeah. And that is a an age-old concept that will never go out of fashion, you know, and everybody who has kids knows exactly what I'm talking about. And and that will continue in the future, right? So for all the younglings that listen to this podcast now, you know, I think if you go and study something like this, you know, process management or or architecture, yeah, you will have a job, you know, because when you look at big organizations, as I like to say, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand does. That's your skill spot. You know, you figure it out, you connect the dots in those organizations. And those those people are always in high demand.

unknown 47:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:07

You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna borrow this if you allow me to borrow this term's uh stinks uh piece, you know, the phenology of it. I'm gonna borrow because I'd be using a gym analogy, right? You go to the gym, first thing they do is measure where you went, and then they you know keep training you and and and it keep and they keep measuring it, and then they keep showing you whether how much difference are you making. So I'll be using the gym analogy, but this this sting analogy is I think is much better to explain process.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

Thank you. Where can people find you? How can they connect with you?

SPEAKER_01 47:35

So the easiest thing is obviously as for for every corporate drone, go to LinkedIn. You know, I have a profile there, just hang me there. If you're interested in the shenanigans that I do, go to what's your baseline.com.

SPEAKER_00 47:49

I'll put the link below this video as well.

SPEAKER_01 47:51

One word, one word, no apostrophes, no blanks. Right now, if you look at this in January 26th, it's more like the the cemetery for show notes of our podcasts. You know, I will redo the website sometime this year. I have other things on my list before that to show a little bit more what my idea for what's your baseline is in 2026. But listen to the podcast, we're well over 100 episodes by now. So people find it interesting. We grew a nice community, join us there. We just started a Substack this this month, actually, you know, to publish articles. So it's what's your baseline.substack.com.

SPEAKER_00 48:30

Yeah. Brutal. No, there's a lot of good conversation. I just lit, you know, watch a couple of them on your website. Great conversation. So, yeah, business leaders who are watching us, you know, IT leader, you know, department leaders who are watching us, you know, you know, listen to this podcast. I reach out to you for conversation. Definitely, I learned so much from our discussion. And whoever connects with you, they're gonna learn a tons of it, you know, both an IT and a business site. So, yeah, there's so much to learn from you. Some, you know, whether you're listening to us on a podcast or you're just watching us on a YouTube, I will strongly say, listen, connect uh, you know, click on a link below and then reach out to you for a conversation. Who knows where the conversation is gonna go? Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_01 49:04

Yeah, yeah. Don't be shy. Don't be shy, keep it coming. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

I want to acknowledge your time. Thank you so much for spending time with me, and it was a great discussion. Hopefully, I will talk soon, but thank you so much for time.

SPEAKER_01 49:14

Hey, thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

Pleasure, thank you.