Improving the Student Experience Through Process Mapping

Every registrar’s office has a series of functions they perform as part of their regular business. Sometimes these functions are well thought out and run smoothly every time. Other times there are things we do that are cobbled together and have steps that accrue over time and no one is really sure why we’re doing what we’re doing. If you’ve ever wanted to crack some of those processes open because you think there’s gotta be a better way, then this episode is for you. We talk with Alex Aljets about how to map a process, key pitfalls to avoid, and how your office can benefit from well-documented process maps. 

Key Takeaways:

• Mapping a process doesn’t take any complicated software, but there are some very good digital tools available. You probably already have everything you need, though! Don’t let technology limit your process mapping. 
• Process mapping is collaborative. It’s important to include representatives from the entire span of the process for quality assurance and change management. 
• Start small! But keep going! It doesn’t take much to map a process, but the benefits can be significant in terms of time savings, gained administrative efficiencies, and more institutional knowledge.   

Host:

Doug McKenna, University Registrar
George Mason University
cmckenn@gmu.edu 

Guests:

Alex Aljets
Higher Education Process Improvement Strategist
alex@aljetsconsulting.com
Connect on LinkedIn

References and Additional Information:

AACRAO Core Competencies - Leadership & Management

AACRAO Professional Proficiencies - Records and Academic Services

“Given these constraints, how might we…”

University Innovation Alliance

IDEO U

Transcript

0:00

You're listening to for the record, a registrar podcast sponsored by Acro, I'm Alex ALJ Process Improvement Strategist and this is improving the student experience through process mapping. Hello and welcome to for the record. I'm your host, Doug mckenna University Registrar at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia Registrars are notoriously process driven. Many of the services we provide require multiple steps and sometimes multiple offices or multiple systems. Sometimes the things we do make a lot of sense. But I'm willing to bet that every person listening to this has had an experience in their office where they think to themselves we're doing what, why unpacking complicated processes to even begin to think about ways that we can improve them can be daunting or feel overwhelming. And that is where today's episode comes in to save the day. Today, we're talking to Alex Al Jets process mapper extraordinaire about all the ways the process mapping works and what it can do for you. So, Alex, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you for agreeing to be a guest. I really appreciate it. I have to give a hat tip to my friend, Rebecca Mather University. Registrar at Oregon State for putting me in touch with you. I am very excited to talk to you actually selfishly about this topic. I guess if we're being nice, yes. Other people might benefit from listening to this conversation as well. But this is a secret. Like if you look back through the list of topics that we that I've had on the podcast, a lot of them are things that like I need help with or I'd like to know more about. So this is one, this is an example of that. So let's start just about you. You are a higher education process improvement consultant. What does that mean? And what do you do and how did you get into that game? Yeah, for sure. Doug happy to help. So I'm an independent consultant. I'm based in rural Oregon and I provide training and facilitation and process improvement to colleges and universities to help them redesign their processes, to improve the student experience and student outcomes. That's amazing. How long have you been doing that quite a while? Let's see on my own as a consultant since 2019. But I've been using process mapping in my work since I have learned about it in like 2015. Nice. How did you learn about process mapping? Like when did this become a thing for you? Yeah. Well, I'll go a little bit back from that into my origin story. Um Yeah, my background's in academic advising and I've worked in academic affairs, student Affairs and it within higher ed. But back in 2012, I just graduated with my master's degree in higher Education Administration from the Ohio State University. And I was so excited to get my first professional job as an academic advisor. I was advising pre health students. Many of them, they want to go on to be doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, and we're studying science in order to prepare for that. And every day I was so energized in my work and, you know, I'd be at my desk with my coffee with my, my list of students to see that day. And, uh, you know, it was a really inspiring job. I really loved making a difference in the lives of my students individually. But at the end of the week, I'd often find myself frustrated that I couldn't be doing more for my students. We were spending our precious advising time those 30 minutes, sometimes less working on navigating a variety of logistical and bureaucratic barriers that students were experiencing in their education, you know, tracking down transfer credits that didn't apply to their degree correctly, applying for graduation, figuring out how to register late because something had happened in their life to forget how to drop a class or return to the university at a, at a different point when they're more able to continue. And those processes were challenging for me to navigate as a professional who knew all the ins and outs of the university and they're much harder for my students. And so I had a front row seat to some of the challenges and obstacles students were experiencing. And yeah, I learned about process mapping. A few years into that, I attended a training that was intended for hr and finance folks how to make their processes more efficient, like from a business point of view, which is a great benefit of process mapping too. But with my student services background, I immediately saw the connection that we could use these same strategies to improve the experience for students and likely student outcomes as well. That's awesome. Let's go from a super high level for now. What is a process map? We've said the words process mapping a bunch of times already in this brief four minutes that you know, we've been talking so far and maybe we should just try to work in the phrase process mapping as frequently as possible throughout the rest of the episode. We'll sneak process mapping in and then people will dream about process mapping. But what, what is a process map? What does it look like? What, what is it? Yeah, it's a process map is a visual diagram that shows a workflow and I'll go back one step further. What is a process? A process is any series of steps that are happening in a particular order and that lead towards some type of goal or outcome? So with that definition, nearly everything people are doing in higher education is a process and really anything we're doing in our lives, we both did a process to, to get here today to be on the podcast. Your, your morning routine, your commute. These are all processes in our lives that have steps that are in a particular order and have an outcome that you're trying to get to. That's amazing. I had not thought about that in that way until just this minute. Thank you. Why would anyone need to create a process map? What are they used for? Yeah. So we think we usually have a view into what we're currently doing. But the processes in a university are complex. There's usually multiple people involved, multiple units and the process doesn't work the same way for for every time and every student. So making a process map is incredibly helpful just to get a basic understanding of what it is you're currently doing today. What is the experience of navigating particular process? What is the process look like to change your major? What steps does a student need to go through? What processing are, is your team doing on the back end? And uh yeah. So process mapping really, it starts with a, with a process map. Uh There's there's three steps in process mapping. And the first one is to create your visual diagram of the current as is process. OK. And way back when I worked with IBM. And one of the things that I was taught about business process analysis were like particular sets of diagrams and particular shapes on the diagram. This is probably diving way way too deep at this point. But is that, is it a necessary component or a best practice to use like a diamond as a decisional point consistently across all of your process maps? Yeah. So you've talked to multiple people that have different philosophies on this, I'm sure. But mine coming from a higher ed lens is that if it's useful to you do it, but really the point is to get an accurate picture of what the current process entails. And if that uses different shapes than standard or, you know, maybe it's a bunch of post its on your wall, that is totally fine if it's getting to that purpose. And my focus typically is less on how to make the right format of type of process map. And more, how do I make something that's useful for me to analyze what's currently going on and then ultimately to make changes to my process? So those are the next two steps. Yeah. And I have a couple of questions about step one before we move on to the steps. Two and three. Are there any specific tools? And based on what you just said, the answer is probably no. But are there specific tools that are required or special software that is needed or are there other sort of prerequisite gatherings of information that somebody needs to do before they dive into creating a process map. Yeah, that's a common question I get and you can do it with a lot of different tools. I mean, you can go, I mentioned just having post its on, on your white board that is completely valid way to make a process map. There also are digital tools you can use lucid chart is is one fun one that has a as a great educator account to give you some free features. Um But you also can, I mean, use anything a lot of times I'm using powerpoint and Google Slides to make visuals with teams because most important part instead of what type of software you'd want to use is you want your map to be accessible to anyone who needs to edit it in the future because I've seen some teams make these beautiful maps and then they don't have that license in the future or someone needs to updated and it's not in a format that be updated. So I I kind of tend towards a more low tech and more common tools format. So you don't really need a lot of specialized software to get started. But if you have a license and you want to use, you know, Lucid Chart, Microsoft Visio is another one, it's going to be a little more specialized software, but you don't need specialized software to get started. Thanks. So you've talked about step one. Identify the process and now let's map the process of process mapping. We're getting very meta which I love. So first step identify the process, then get started alone with a group. Are there different pros and cons of each? How complicated of a process should someone start with? What are the sort of what suggestions do you offer to teams or to individuals who are reaching out about process mapping? Yeah, so I use kind of a three step process to help teams think through this. And the first step is making your visual of the current state process. So create your process map. Step one, once you have that you move into the second step, which is analysis. And so that's where you take a look at that current state map and you pinpoint what are all the where are all the places issues are coming up? What are all the pain points that students are experiencing in the process? What frustrations or faculty of having in the process, staff, your office, other partner offices and you kind of note all of those and note all the places issues are coming up in the process and what those issues are. This is the analysis. Step. Step two is also a great time to think about access and equity that that process doesn't uh isn't the same experience for everyone and you could look at are there particular, how do students from different backgrounds from different identities. How are they experiencing this process? Are there particular steps that are more likely to trip up transfer students, adult learners online only students? You know, any of these, the groups that you, you're wanting to reach out to more that you're seeing more of on your campus process. Navigation is particularly challenging for first generation college students. That's a lens. I often ask folks to take a look at their process from. If I didn't know what a registrar does, would I'd be able to navigate this process? Um That was a new term to me. So that's step two and then step three, that's where it gets really exciting. That's where you redesign your process and you use the knowledge that you've gained through understanding the full scope of the current process and their understanding of all the issues to make changes to redesign the process. And those can be actually changing the process steps, hopefully maybe eliminating a few, combining them, streamline it a little bit, but also it could be changes to how you communicate about the process and explain it to people, they know what to expect and when and how to do it. It could result in changes to training of how you equip faculty and staff with the knowledge to help students navigate the process or could even be changes to policy, who has to navigate the process when how and what that looks like. So lots of ways to explore that. And so three steps, create your process map, analyze it and improve it, simple but not easy, I assume. So, let's talk through some of the pitfalls. Let's say that you're working with a team. They've got, uh let's say I'm working with my team and we have the current state process hashed out. How do I know that I've done a good job identifying all of the steps in the process. What are, what are the ways that you can sort of quality check your work on step one because if you get to step three and you haven't documented half of what goes on in step one that leaves you in a lurch. So how do you know and how do you work toward a high quality representation in step one? Yeah, I think that work typically takes place as kind of pre work before you get to step one in setting the scope of your project. And when I work with teams, those are the first questions I'm asking because it cost mistake. I see is folks doing, you know, too broad of a scope and trying to boil the ocean and solve all the problems with one process map and that's going to lead to a lot of frustration. So actually focusing a little more is going to help. So before you get started with your process, I'd ask you about, you know, who, what groups are involved, what offices we'd set what is the starting point of your process? What's the ending point? Talk about? Yeah. What related processes there are, I maybe suggest if you weren't totally sure who all was involved, go out and talk to the couple people you do know are involved and be kind of doing this with a team, especially if it's a complex cross campus process. So that's kind of how you can and then after you make your process map, you can kind of go back and quality check yourself and say all those people I thought were involved. Did I identify steps in the process that they do? Oh, no, I missed at the financial aid office. I need to go back and see what they do in this process and seek more information. And I think you said to having the team involved in identifying all the stakeholders, do you recommend trying to get one big meeting together or is this an iterative process where two or three people from the registrar's office sit down and have a conversation about how things flow and then as they identify, oh, this goes to an associate dean for review and then reach out to like an associate deans group and sort of bring them in as you get to that point in the process or is it better easier more direct to kind of gather all of the people you think might be involved and then work through the process that way? Yeah. More, more. The second one is what I'd recommend. So I think process map is a very powerful as a collaborative activity because it's going to take if it's, if it's a cross cross divisional or cross unit process, that you're going to need multiple people involved to create change and to change the process. So once you do those prest steps of thinking through who all is involved, I love bringing together a team that includes at least one representative of each of those groups and having them do the actual mapping project together so that you're getting all those perspectives because sometimes what looks like a great redesign from 11 side, one perspective is actually like, oh we did it, we did it that way for a reason because of this issue or, you know, you really need those, those different perspectives together. So II I like doing it as a collaborative activity together with those teams. But if needed, you can kind of have a couple of people spearheading it and then just making sure they're really intentional and reaching out and understanding others points of view in the process. Yeah, I try to do a lot of things more collaboratively. I've learned to do that over time. I, I didn't spring into higher education thinking we should get everybody together and talk this through. There was a lot of time where I was like, I know what I'm doing. Everybody sit back. I can, I got this and I learned that I do not know what I'm doing and it's much better to bring people in and together and, and go through the process. I like the collaboration because not only do you get those perspectives in as part of the input, but all those other perspectives are often educated about just how complex some of the other things that they don't see actually are. And so it helps to be able to do some outreach to say, hey, academic deans, we would love to have your input on this. And then of the two hours that you spend with them, they, they talk for like 30 minutes, but they're listening to all of the other things that are going on in whatever process it is. So I really, I, I like the collaborative approach. I'm glad that you called it a collaborative practice because that's sort of what I was envisioning. And that is an approach that I have learned to take over time because it saves time on the back end of having to educate or the way we communicate about changes. Also, if you make changes to a process and people were involved in the conversation, identifying what the pain points are, they're much more likely to be like, yes, that's why we're changing it so totally. Yeah. And you know, it really helps to change management too because people support what they help to create. So if you have folks in co creating the new process with you. They're going to go out and share how excited they are about this process they've created and uh help you with. Buy in. Yeah. So a couple more questions and then I do want to run through sort of a sample. Let's talk this through brass tacks kind of an exercise. What does a process map do for you? And what doesn't it do for you? Like, I can see people getting to the end of step one and being like, did it. And I had a Dante instructor in college who was like, it pains me. It would ruin Dante to know that people just read the Inferno and they never go on to read purgatorial or Piso. And so like getting to step one is just, that's just the inferno part of this metaphor. So what does the process map do for you? And then what doesn't it do? You know, there may be good reasons to stop after step one such as you just need to document your process because you want, you know, for continuity in your office, maybe you have one person who's retiring, who has all the institutional knowledge, you need them to uh she never do. What are you talking about? I know. So there could be a good reason to stop with step one. Like here's our current state process, here's what we do. But I think the real power of using process mapping to improve the student experience and faculty and staff, student, faculty and staff experiences too is that you do something with it. So I really encourage folks to get through all three of those steps. So, and you know, they kind of flow into each other. It's very hard to create a current state map on a topic. You know, there are challenges and not start talking about what are the issues. And then we're all problem solvers typically in higher ed and we want to solve those issues. So, you know, people are usually starting to come up with ideas of how they can make improvements even back when they're making the process map itself. So those things really flow well into each other. And so a process map is as good as the effort you put into redesigning it and implementing those redesigns. So when you engage with an institution, what are some of the more common processes that they're like, hey, we're having problems with this or we really need your help on that? What are the kinds of things that you are holding for? Yeah, certainly, I have seen two main themes in the things that universities and colleges have been asking me to help them with. And uh they revolve one around student transitions and the second around communication and there's definitely intersection between those as well. But with student communications registrars offices are in the, in the middle of a lot of transitions. Students coming into the university, graduating switching majors, taking leaves of absence, maybe, you know, warning and probation suspension coming back in, you know, changing campuses, transferring, these are all like moments of transition that are really important in the student journey. They often have emotional components, whether excitement or fear and doubt and that they are very process, heavy times in the student journey that there are a lot of steps to do and that means there's a lot of steps that can get missed. And so those are some great areas to focus on if universities are thinking about like, oh where, where could I use these skills? And then the other thing is around communication that a lot of our communication channels are rather saturated with messaging and that there's really colleges and universities seeing the need to streamline some of their communication really intentional about what channels they're using with students to communicate which messages. And when especially as email becomes a less reliable way to communicate information to students less reliably checking it. Part of the reason that it's become less reliable is that everything became an email. And so at a previous institution where I worked, we went through the process of just identifying from the time the student says yes to the university and pays their deposit to the first time they move on to campus. How many communications do they receive from who you know what's the content? There were 53 different messages that we identified. Those are just the ones that we could identify. So, and they were all across the spectrum of, you know, voice tone graphics and it really gave a very disparate view of the university even before they got there. So the communications piece that really resonates with me. Yeah. And you know what, that is a great example of a process map. You'd put all that content in a visual format. There's your process map right there. I just worked at the university that did something very similar with mapping their onboarding communications from when students accepted to when they like actually started classes in the fall. And that's a similar story. So very common issue. I think across the universities and colleges, can we walk through? Can we do an example?-- Yeah.-- Is there something from your work you're interested in improving? I mean, there are so many things I don't know, I, I don't have like a fun bite size example to do. I've got the boil the ocean, you know, like this is where I struggle with. How do I document a process when I think of the process as well? The student enrolled as a freshman and now they're graduating, but we have to make them, you know, apply to graduate. So, yeah. Yeah. One of the exercises I've done with folks in workshops is to take their strategic plan and to break it down from this high level goal. And what, what I need what processes are kind of underlying and supporting that goal. So say there's goals in your strategic plan around graduation in a certain number of years, you know, say it's like increase our four year graduation rate. That's a very common goal. A lot of folks, a lot of institutions have. So processes that are underlying that application to graduate, that's one right, the finish line degree planning, what's a student doing to pick out their classes for a single term or maybe it's, you know, degree planning for the next year. What steps are they going through? What technology tools are they using and engaging with? You know, there's also behind the scenes processes that are going to underlie a goal like a four year graduation rate like uh the course scheduling, how much, how much of a headache is that for academic departments and registrars offices and then kind of back and forth and lots of different people involved, lots of different moving pieces and those behind the scenes processes improving those. So that maybe it enables you to do course scheduling out a little farther to help students plan their degree better. That helps those administrative processes can roll up to have a big impact on lofty goals like increasing your four year graduation rate. Yeah, they are definitely multipliers. You mentioned strategic planning and I just want to shout out Danny Ambrose and Dr Kelly Jenkins, who were guests on the podcast, a couple of episodes ago, talking about ways to incorporate more strategic planning, you know, to make it bite sized and simpler for people to engage with, with their teams. And that is a process that I've taken to heart as well. And we've started to do some of that. One of the things that I'm struggling with is sort of systemic and the president's goals have not been published yet for this coming year, which is, there's some political things behind the scenes there. But so the President's goals flow down to the Provost and the Provost goals flow down to my goals. And honestly, my goals don't change significantly unless you're listening to this at George Mason University and you happen to work in the Provost office. And then my goals change significantly radically based on the goals that the Provosts publish. So just keep that in mind if you're thinking about this. But between you, me and the lamp posts like the goals of the registrar's office, I could, I would say, I would bet that we could do a poll of 100 registrars offices and we could probably slot each individual's offices goals into four or five categories that all were commonalities. And so increasing administrative efficiencies using technology is one uh I would say improve reporting capabilities too, I would say overall supporting the student experience. And that is also incredibly ill defined. And so when you say like we're going to improve the student experience how are you going to measure how you improve the student experience? So these are things that I grapple with when I think about like, OK, let's sit down and map this process. I appreciate what you just did and that is break down larger processes into sort of the component parts. And so when I think about like, well, let's see, you know, getting students to graduation, breaking that down into like, what is the student experience of looking at their, at the schedule of classes? When do we publish that? Why is it published in that time frame? That's because academic schedule development has to happen before we can publish the schedule of classes. And like as you identified, that is a huge thing. And so like, we're struggling too with the I keep saying we're struggling, everyone's gonna be like, Doug's really struggling. There are challenges everywhere. So challenges and they're all here. I would love to be able to do more data informed academic scheduling. And so looking at the students that we have being able to share with departments, timely information about the requirements that students need to meet and give them suggestions for which courses should be offered with seats in what volume? How would you recommend that I or who would you recommend that I pull together to talk about that process? Yes, I heard you name a handful of folks but the academic departments folks that are making the decisions there usually department managers are having to wrangle their departments. So might be some really key collaborators for you in this effort. But everyone's approaching that problem in a different way and they're approaching it with a different understanding of the issues. And you know, you're thinking if academic departments just did XYZ, it'd be better academic departments. Probably thinking if Doug just did XYZ, it would be better. So getting all these, all the players together in one room and trying to get that common understanding of the current process and an understanding of each other's issues you're experiencing the process that will help you to, to kind of together, see some ways forward that you could improve and even just better in understanding each other can improve things in itself too. It's kind of a ancillary benefit of doing projects like this is better empathy and understanding and coordinations and that's one of those things too that it's very difficult to set out to say I'd like to improve those things. But it's really in the experience uh in the shared experience of working through or addressing a problem. That's really where a lot comes out of-- building-- relationships with the side benefits for that. Yeah, you mentioned technology and that is is an interesting point because one place I see universities and colleges using process mapping is before doing a technology implementation because nothing is worse than having a, you know, maybe messy process that's not the most efficient and then you get a new technology thinking, oh, it's gonna be a silver bullet. But really, you're just reproducing your current process in a new tool. You know, maybe you have in your digital form, you have just as many steps you have to go through. But now it's digital and that makes it a little better. No one's walking a form around campus, but still it's getting hung up when the assistant dean has too many emails and they're gone at a conference and they don't, you know, those are building up in their inbox to sign. Uh So how did you know? Yeah, I've been there for sure on multiple sides of this from it side from uh student services side. So yeah, mapping your processes can give you a big head start on improving them so that what you can one pick the right technology that the right features of what you're going to need for an improved process. But also one of the first things a lot of technology implements will do when they come in and say, tell me about your current process. You could pull out your beautiful process map with all the pain identified and say, help us fix this with your technology. And even as part of the RFP process, which I'm just going to give all the shout outs. Colleen Harms at the University of Minnesota has volunteered to participate in every university's rfps forever. So if you are doing an RFP. Please contact Colleen and ask her to be on the team. She does not like RFP. But even as you're going through the RFP, being able to produce this sort of process map with pain points identified, lets you make a better decision about the product that you're going to wind up with. Because as you pointed out, it's no good if they can recreate your current process, but they can't create your re envisioned process. You're just, I hate this expression, but I'm going to use it. You're just paving the cow paths, you're reinforcing the bad stuff that was already there. And so this is a great by product of doing process mapping and having those things documented and identified as, like this is a thing. This is a thing we'd like to get rid of those things-- for-- sure. Yeah, I'm working with the university right now who's looking towards a, er, P replacement and they're doing process improvement now so that they have those, those needs defined and know what issues they want to fix. Yeah, that's a big lift. So I'll get you a little bit of a head start on that. And it's something, you know, I love that process mapping is simple and pretty easy to learn. The key thing that you need is a little bit of knowledge about how to make a process map, but mostly it's the knowledge your team has about what you do today. And so simple and easy to learn but can be really powerful and be able to make changes to your current process or make a technology implementation go much smoother. So it's something universities can really often do internally themselves to make these implementations much more successful. Yeah. Are there classes, are there resources for people if they're like Alex said, it was simple. Where, where would I go? Yeah, certainly there is a lot of material about process improvement online because this really isn't a particularly new tool. Um especially in, you know, comes out of industrial engineering. And uh how do you make, make widgets more efficiently as far as higher education in 2015, when I first went to that training, I didn't find much in that was customized to higher education. And so that's why I kind of built out a consulting niche uh doing that type of training. And really, I, when I was still a university employee, I would, I went to a couple conferences and shared what I was doing and people said this is great. Can you come teach us how to do it? So that's kind of how I found myself. I didn't intend to go into doing training on this topic, but it is something I offer. I'd also point you towards some of the resources that the University Innovation Alliance has. Um Yeah, that is one of my uh prior employers as well and they're a consortium of public research universities that are collaborating on student success and they have some available mini trainings on this topic too, some of which I helped them build. That's awesome. I am trying to get Mason to join the UI A. So we'll see if that rolls around. There are a bunch of different initiatives that the, like I said, the President's goals haven't been published, but there are a bunch of initiatives that are underway. But that is one of the my own pet project is Get Mason into the UI A nice. Well, I'll offer too that I, I love talking about this topic and I love answering people's questions. So please, listeners are welcome to reach out to me linkedin email and I'm happy to answer questions or help them think about how to get started with their first process mapping project. That's awesome. I will include your contact information in the show notes page for sure. And if you're OK with it, I'll put your linkedin profile link there as well. Cool. What kind of fun little logic games are required in order to really make a good process map? Like, do you need to enjoy a puzzle in order to really enjoy a doing process mapping? Yeah. Well, I've actually preserved interestingly that people seem to enjoy different parts of those three steps. So some people really love like the tactical probably your puzzle, your puzzle, folks like they love making the actual process map and organizing it and seeing how all the pieces come together. Other people like to identify the issues. They're the ones that you typically see, you know, raising a hand saying like, hey, there's a challenge over here and I love the passion that's behind those. So it's, you know, passionate complainers who have a mission are some of my favorite people to work with.-- Absolutely. I want those people on my team-- for sure. So invite them to when you do your process analysis because that, that's the strength you need there. And then other folks really love coming up with the ideas and those are your kind of dreamer folks that are like, oh, wouldn't it be great if we could do this or that? And, and making sure you invite them to your, your redesign sessions. So-- there's a variety of strengths you need to, to do this.-- Well, getting the mix right is probably also equally important because if you just have the dreamers, you're missing out on the, you know, those critical vocal complainers, the passionate complainers as you. Yeah, totally. And it's important to have kind of a can do attitude and process improvement because there are gonna be things you can't do, like, you know, complaining it's regulations, you know, this is required for this reason. But what could you, you know, get creative and do around that? How could you communicate about it differently or? Yeah, change the training that folks have about around that part of the process that's required. So get, get creative. If you're getting stuck on something you can't change. Yeah. And that is a question that I have for you is when you get to the point where you're like, hey, we've mapped this out, these are the pain points and now we're stuck. What are ways that you can unstuck a group? Like, how do you get your team unstuck? How do you encourage that creative problem solving or I don't want to say just like acceptance of status quo because there's not a status quo, really, everything keeps changing. But if you get to that point where your team is like, well, we, we mapped it out, we identified the pain points and we can't do anything about the pain points either because of the system that's in use or the particular structures or sometimes it's a personality. Let's be honest. What do you say to those folks? Yeah, I think about how to get creative and say given this constraint, ask, how might we, I love that framing of a question because it opens up some possibilities. Address this particular issue in the process. What are some different ways we could approach it? I like some of the brainstorming resources from Id OU if you're familiar with them at all. So they use that kind of how might we question framing? They have some suggestions about impose different constraints? Like how would we fix this with no money how would we fix this if we had five minutes? You know, what's like the quickest thing you could do that would address that situation that, that can help people kind of break them out of the box. Uh You know, even some more fun brain summary questions like, you know, how would Disney navigate this, you know, to think about it and you're not going to implement the same solution that you come up with there. But it might help you think about how to do it differently. There'd be songs involved. Oh, for sure. So yeah. So thinking about it, just if you run into a roadblock, kind of how could you go around it and think back to? OK, how could we address this with different communication with training with a different policy? Not if I can't change that actual process step because of regulations or maybe some I don't have ownership or, you know, there's a political kind of situation around that, Alex. Do you have any closing thoughts on process mapping? You've sold me. This is, I was excited going in. So it was an easy mark for this topic. But do you have any closing thoughts on process mapping? Yeah, I'd say if this interests you or you think it could be helpful, try it out and I suggest try it out on like a really small process. Maybe it's just something you control. Maybe it's just something in your personal life like map your morning routine, see what steps are there and then, you know, go through those steps of analyzing it and thinking about what changes you want to make for that redesign and just see what that, see what that feels like and see what uh see what you notice about your own process, maybe even doing it every morning, um and how it leads to some ideas because that's something easy you can do on your own to kind of try out this methodology and see how if it's could could be useful for redesigning your morning routine. Could be useful for your students and your staff and your institution as well. That is phenomenal. Thank you so much, Alex. Thank you for being here for sharing your time and your expertise. I appreciate it. I can't wait to put some of these things into practice with my own staff in my own office. I love to hear. Thanks very much for listening. Go to the show notes, page to track down Alex's contact information if you're in need of some process mapping assistance. And a huge thank you again to Alex for being a guest and for sharing some great suggestions about how to proceed through the three critical steps of process mapping. Until next time, stretch your legs drink some water, be kind to each other. I'm Doug mckenna and this is for the record. And then I think that that elevates the awareness of some of those pinch points. Those are my dogs barking as they just ran down the stairs and then around. So I'll pause for a minute. We have people working on it in our backyard today. And so the dogs are just like, have been losing their minds all day.