Session Information:

Digital Process Automation: How Great Enduring Organizations Scale Technology and Value Creation

In a world disrupted by exponential technologies, how do you build systems and mechanisms where extraordinary performance becomes ordinary? How great enduring organizations consistently deliver exponential leaders, growth, and value creation?

We will explore how the best cross-industry organizations leverage "the right" culture, methods, technologies, and people as the ultimate engine for value creation and sustainable competitive advantage. 

Session Transcript:

And, what I want to talk to you about is how digital process automation is scale by great, enduring organizations, any organization can do an innovation and technology project here and there, and automate successfully parts of their business.

But, how do great enduring organizations do that systematically, not over a period of 1 or 2 years, but over a decade or more?

What are the secrets for sustainable improvement and innovation and the scalability of digital process automation in those organizations? So, I'm gonna switch hats to the, my innovation hat, if you will.

And we're going to be talking about how does organizations achieve that status.

I want to do a bit of a disclaimer upfront that this, some of this information may be a little confusing, some of the things that I'm going to talk about may sound a little contradictory and soul is the world of greatness. The world of greatness is not an or. World is A is a and the world, and it's filled with contradictions, forces the poor in very different directions that you're going to see when we go into the fundamentals of this, of this organ for this organizations.

So, I will share my presentation with you right now, and we'll get, we'll get started here. So, making sure everybody can see my slides, which looks good, and I want to make sure now that let's work together on this journey, and I have a big disclaimer upfront, which is, these are not theories of my own. I am not a visionary who can predict the future.

As a matter of fact, there are only two types of people who predict the future, those who don't know, and those who don't know, that they don't know.

And, so, you have to choose which one you are. I cannot predict the future.

What I can tell you is that, through empiricism over a long period of time, we can see what doesn't work and we let go of that.

And we can see what works. And then, we try to understand why it works. And once we understand why, it works, we can scale that.

That's one big lesson here. Great organizations and leaders. They are not necessarily visionary. What they are is that they are highly empirical. They experiment, constantly, and they find what works. And, then, they scale what works once they understand the underlying mechanisms for that.

Now, the lessons that I'm going to share it with come from hundreds of organizations.

I have had the privilege of personally trained more than 30,000 excellence and innovation leaders, who work in all industries, and over 100 organizations, all over the world.

Now, not every one of these organizations is a great enduring organization by any means, But they have pockets of excellence in certain cases. And certainly, we have many of the lessons that I'm going to share with you, derived from the best practices in several of these organizations. Now, I post you upfront?

A question, and you don't have to answer, to me, answer to yourself If you think about sustainable greatness organizations that do digital process automation any scale, digital process, automation and technology for value creation, and they become dominant in their industry. Whether and value creation here can be financial value creation and or social value creation, if you're operating in a non-profit environment.

Now, the question is, those organizations, when you look under the hood, what do you think matters most in their successful journey? Do you think it's about ideas? Do you think it's about the methods that they use? Do you think it's about the exponential technologies that they adapt and they leverage on an ongoing basis? Or do you think it's about the people, that they have this special people in those organizations, that are just different from everybody else that you know?

Well, let's talk about that. I will tell you hear me saying that it's about ideas because ideas are very important.

New ideas are fundamental for accelerating innovation, but I will also say that ideas are everywhere.

What are in common? Are people willing to put the reputation behind ideas?

You're going to hear me talk about methods, the importance of a discipline framework for the execution of our priorities.

You're gonna hear me saying that I've being a certified Link six Sigma Master Black Belt for more than two decades, but for most people, that sounds like a dangerous mental condition.

So methods are important, but methods do not transform businesses.

People do OK. So it must be technologists, right, and righteous that. Because after all, we live in a world of exponential technologists, never a human history. We had so many technologists develop exponentially concurrently.

Technologists are wonderful, because technologists can enable your processes to be better, faster, cheaper, higher, quality, greater safety, and those technologies are wonderful.

But, technologists can also make stupid happen at the speed of light.

So, we must be people.

Then, it must be people, because, after all, people are our most important asset.

Well, that sounds good.

But why is that, when I encounter large mergers and acquisitions and evaluations of assets are taking place, the people are often the first to go?

So, there was a disconnect.

So, this is not about idealism. It's about empiricism. And what we find for an empirical standpoint is that, for a human level, all people matter.

From the level of excellence, innovation, acceleration in this great enduring organizations, they have a disproportional focus on identifying the right people.

The right people in the organization are the amplifiers of the values of the organization, of the purpose of the organization, of the culture of the organization.

And the behaviors that demonstrate that culture in that organization, those people play a disproportionate role.

So as you can hear, as you can see and hear from my descriptions, the world of greatness is filled with contradictions, forces the pole in very different directions.

In the world of mediocrity, people and organizations spent endless hours, trying to choose between option A or option B, but the world of greatness requires intelligent blending off options A and B and often they are kind of, they're there, they have counter forces acting on the system.

And there is no bigger force, is bullying in different directions than the forces of excellence and innovation.

Which are fundamental ingredients in Great Enduring organizations.

However, most organizations, they either leave on one the sphere of attaining excellence by setting performance high performance standards and meeting and exceeding those performance standards, which sounds wonderful, but if you only do that, you will eventually become obsolete.

And then the flip side of that is the force of innovation.

That looks at excellence and says, Hey, that is interesting, but I don't get to design cars by squeezing efficiencies out of horses.

So there's gotta be a different perspective, a different approach and that's very enticing that's very seductive and you have a tendency to think that the most innovative organizations must be degrading during organizations of our time.

But the problem is that they're not.

Because the most innovative organizations, they tend to fall in love with innovation, and they tend to fall in love with technology. They continuously innovate and they lose track of their purpose.

They are not consistent with their purpose over time and they scatter a flash in the pan that disappears. And then we don't remember what they're used to be called anymore.

Still, great, enduring organizations do not choose between excellence or innovation. They know that you achieve and bring greatness. They must have an intelligent blend of excellence and innovation. By all means, you must optimize, where you currently have. You must increase efficiency. You must increase productivity. You must squeeze efficiencies out of those horses.

Yes, but that's not enough.

You must also develop the discipline to step away from the excellence that you have created and ask the question. There's gotta be a better way.

Not a five or 10% incremental way, but a 5 or 10 fold better way that looks at the problem from a different perspective. And here's the key.

Once you find that different perspective, you don't become dominant by just continuously innovating on that perspective.

You become dominant by scaling the innovation that you have created, better than others scan.

And, you know how you scale innovation.

You scale innovation by applying the principles of excellence to the innovation that you have created.

So, although excellence and innovation have a bit of a disdain for each other, culturally, they have a hard time coexisting in great, enduring organizations. You'll find just the right level of friction, between the two, and the right concepts and fundamentals apply to them.

Now, I want you to keep this at the background, because I'm gonna get more practical with you now.

Now, I will, I mentioned early on the organizations that I have been incredibly, uh, fortunate to collaborate with, to solve problems. To do innovations with, to train emerging and senior leaders on these concepts and principles.

But that's interesting, because I'm playing an advisory role.

It's different when I have to live with all the consequences of my advice.

And in these organizations, I don't want to highlight to you very briefly here. I had to lead from within I was a corporate leader for these organizations. I started my career at Sony as a design and process engineer. I was over the moon by working with the leading technology company of its time when I started my career.

And the lessons there that I want to share with you is simple.

In my first week of work, I was expected to identify 100 innovations, and I thought that my boss had lost his mind, because there's no way I can do that.

So the lesson is the following.

When it comes to real innovation and innovation in your organization, innovation, it doesn't matter.

What your gender, ethnicity, race, academic background, or how manias certificate.

Certificate, I love my self certificates you have.

When it comes to real innovation, there is only one way to find the real innovators in your organization, and that is through the test of innovation execution.

Your job is to create a meritocracy of ideas with Glu your execution mechanisms.

Empower those in the organization to use that system to identify, prioritize, and execute on what creates value for the organization.

This is easier to say than it is to do a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms.

And what you're going to find out is that the special people in your organization, the ones who actually do it, instead of talking about it, they will have four personal traits that will emerge. And you see that, as used as the outcome of their successful projects.

And the traits are, they have high levels of purpose alignment between their work and their purpose in their life.

They have tremendous passion for what they do.

They have high levels of discipline and high levels of resilience.

Purpose, passion, discipline, and resilience are the secret ingredients and key ingredients for successful innovators. That's the lesson there.

I left Sony to be a start in a startup company in California that changed the world.

In a period of few years, We created a new technology for Semiconductor Manufacturing that revolutionize Moore's law in the semiconductor industry and, to this day, is it based acknowledge the image is smaller and smaller circuits that give us all greater and greater computing capacity.

This company is called ..., and the this, the lesson that I want to share with you, there is the following. We had the best scientists from all over the world, in this one company, and we could not move forward.

Why?

Because we did not have the clear, common purpose with clear, collaborative leadership development in that organization.

We had too many smart people trying to boot, prove each other wrong, one, until we develop a common purpose and collaborative leadership skills. And I cannot emphasize that enough, that we could move towards that common purpose, And then we could become dominant.

And lastly, the lesson is simple.

What do you learn in our organization with 350,000 employees and more than 585 business units around the world?

What you learn is that every organization has culture and subcultures, and you must be empathetic to it. You must seek to understand it, emitted, where it's act.

Because if you don't, you are going to suffer the consequences.

Because if culture eats strategy for breakfast, excellence, and innovation, in any of the digital process automation initiatives that you have, will become side dishes in the jaws of culture that will eat it up and spit it out.

So Meet organizations where they are act do not fantasize about where they should be at. Meet, where they're at, and bring them along.

When I move to a 100 year old plus global engineering construction infrastructure company, with more than 12,000 pure engineers, designing some of the best NRG, water, telecommunications infrastructure projects around the world.

The challenge is, How do you move a culture that has been successful for 100 years to a new level of performance, where they are accelerating innovation for value creation?

And here's what we did, so I like to show data behind my, my discussions about this topics.

So what we did for six years, is that we've focused on what everybody else did, which you OS.

Focus on ideas and discipline methods for improvement and innovation in this organization. Engage your audience. We did all of that. It was wonderful.

For six years, we had increasing financially validated benefits in the organization, increasing engagement from professionals in the organization, but 80 are 6 as the leader for that program. I thought, you know, we're doing all of the things right by the book.

We're implementing Lean, six Sigma, and Business Process Management, and even innovation, but I feel that we have not tapped on the full power of this organization. We have 12,000 professionals here. Right now, we have 500 who are actively engaged on this.

So, what we did is that reflect this concept of focusing on ideas and methods and say, they matter. They are important, but we need to be bold. We need to be achieved greater results in greater engagement and satisfaction in the work that we do.

Oh, and by the way, let me preface this by saying that we should be very proud of getting through year six because most of the organizations that you're talking about this, no improvements and innovations in digital process automation today, 50% of them we'll be gone in the next three years. And I don't mean the organization.

I mean, the program that they have within their organization disappears, dies a slow death, 99% of them will not be talked about after five years.

So, we had made sure you are six, we're a part of the 1% Club.

So, what did we do?

What did we do at that time? Should we just maintain it? Should we just keep it going?

Know? we dare to be bold with they are to go back to the key fundamentals and say, Hey, we know it's not about ideas. We know it's not about methods, The two things that we're focusing on.

We know it's not even about the exponential technologies because they come and go very fast these days.

So we know it's about people. But that sounds like an HR cliche.

I want a Muslim three more meaningful, Something more substantive. What are we going to do of our people?

We're going to do is that we're going to empower them to achieve greatness through the work that they do in the meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms.

When I presented that to the CEO of my company, I remember him look at me and say, why are you doing that? Because we're doing so well. I mean, Lean and six Sigma, and BPM. And all the things we're doing are getting good results. You know, isn't there's going to be to try to no abrupt for the organization.

And I ask my CEO, if you would allow me to experiment for 1 or 2 years.

And he did power cheered him, for allowing me to do that.

I was always grateful for that, because what we saw is that we should with flipped from the ideas and methods to the, to this focus on finding the right people.

The right people are people with purpose, passion, disciplinary resiliency in our organization. And you only find those people for the deaths of execution.

So we set it up, and we let ever happen.

And what we saw was transformative.

We had an eight fold improvement in value creation and more than a tenfold improvement. Involuntary engagement in our organization, more than 5000 professionals on a voluntary basis around the world, identifying, prioritizing, and creating improvements and innovations that create real value for the organizations transformative.

We we not only use this within our organization, we provided services related to this transformation, because we want multiple global awards on business transformation, and we provided services to more than 100 organizations in all business models, and more than 20 countries around the world.

When I felt that my journey there was completed, my next challenge was to do the same in the Fortune 100 energy organization.

This organization wanted to go for extraordinary.

But the reality is there or anything, but extraordinary. They were very ordinary.

In 2010 after the 2008 financial crisis this organization was in the brink of bankruptcy and you're talking about becoming extraordinary just need to survive.

But with a leader, they had a clear purpose.

Strong set of core values brought the values of excellence, of innovation, of entrepreneurship, and intrapreneur ship into the organization.

We had no specific competitive advantage here from technology, from market segments, from geographies.

We want to use our culture as a comparative advantage that takes time.

That takes you to be chronically consistent with your purpose, which is a signature off, off being extraordinary developing discipline, which is being chronically consistent with our purpose around the right set of values.

So what we did, We implemented a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms and over a period of eight years.

from 2010 to 2018, we or fanatically discipline about establishing a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms.

We empower and equipped our professionals with collaborative leadership skills and innovation execution skills, and they engage into this system to identify, prioritize, and create the most value in the shortest time and simplest means, no matter where where they were in the organization.

By 2018, we were identifying, prioritizing, and completing, implementing over 2000 innovations on an annual basis.

Hundreds of dos related to digital process automation, financially validated benefits of greater than one billion dollars in EBA on an annual basis, and the mediocre $2 billion business. eight years later, was valued at $35 billion as a public company.

It requires chronic consistence with your purpose, clear fundamentals over a long period of time and requires us to unleash the power of our people to go for extraordinary.

Because once they see the path, and you have clear meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms, and you stand with them, not over them, they will join you on this, on this journey. Now, I want to get more tactical with you now, because this sounds inspirational.

This sounds high level, the results are there, and they're undeniable. Now, let's get under the hood, and specifically with the, with the framework and the point of view from digital process automation.

I want to get to focus on the fundamentals and the fundamentals for successful digital process automation, and the scalability of the technologies.

Then value creation rests on Intelligent Business Process Management. I'm gonna go brief on this. You can look at the slides when you play the recording again later on.

But I want to frame intelligent business process management as does intelligent, bland stewardship with the wisdom of the organization, and proven methods to identify, prioritize, and implement significant value creation, business process designs, improvements, and innovations.

Now, there is a maturity level here that several of you will know about.

It follows IT maturity levels, but proceeds that for sure, and then you can have different classifications. But generally speaking, your business process will go from being recognized that they exist, being identified, being defined, all the way to being managed, and being optimized.

Now, there is there is a certain level of maturity that's needed, depending on the criticality of the process that you have in the organization.

Also, keep in mind that your intelligent business process management system will have different levels of innovation that's going to be applied to it. And those levels of innovation depend on the type of innovation that you're doing. Is it innovation at the core? Is innovation and adjacent says, or is it truly a new business model and it's disruptive in the, in each nature.

So, typically, why you see here are the percentages on the most innovative organizations that scale innovation for value creation and scale technology better than their peers.

This is just overall with all industries distribution now.

So, what are the pillars for success, for this intelligent business process management, value creation? And there are three main pillars that I want to share with you. The first one is Governance.

You must have governance, you must have defined roles and the structure for IB P M value creation now the methods are important.

They do not transform businesses as people do, but they matter.

You have to have proven methodologies. And you have to have clear execution mechanisms for the, for innovation execution in your organization. You develop this common language that people understand that they follow now specific methods is less important.

Oh, I wanna use Lean, I wanna use agile, I wanna use I wanna use six Sigma, I one I use, add car, Bro psi. You choose what method you want, it's more important that you develop the common language, and that you're consistent with that proven methodology.

And now the third pillar, is probably the, along with governance, is probably the most fundamental pillars.

Is skill developed. It's collaborative leadership and collaborative leadership, skill development for all professionals on collaborative innovation, for value creation.

We had a wonderful discussion from the Sappy Leader today on the Collaborative Decision making. And a lot of that is built into this.

Collaborative leadership has a specific set of tools, and techniques, and methods for its effectiveness to play.

Now, I'll talk on this briefly on each one of them.

From a governance perspective, what we see in great enduring organizations is very simple, They have a summary of roles.

This can be, often, most of them are part-time roles, Their assignments on people who have existing roles, and they have assignments on the governance related show Excellence and innovation for their organizations.

And it's built on business and process ownership. That's clearly identified in the organization.

A set of development of entrepreneurs and collaborative leaders who are the leaders for improvements and innovations, and digital process automation, These organizations level of more specialize, professionals and leaders who provide business and project coaching to the teams.

And all for that hierarchical leaders, business and project champions who provide directional guidance to the teams as they navigate strategy as they navigate politics in every organization.

And above it all, a steering committee that supports that, that provides resources as needed for the successful growth of this program and this value creation for the organization. So if you do not have governance in your organization, your digital process automation efforts will always be scatter. There will always be point opportunities. They'll never truly scale, and you have to remember that this structure provides the building blocks to achieve discipline. I BPM, value creation. Now, what about the methods? Just, you talked about the map, as, we don't have time to talk about every single method that organizations use.

So let me talk about the four most common methods that we see And I showed them here as a rope, the cause the analogy is that none of them by themselves make a great. It's the intelligent blending of this methods that make you great and it's all about disciplined execution.

You must understand innovation.

You must understand innovation methods, because today's innovation is no longer an escape from discipline thinking. Innovation is escape with discipline thinking.

We can learn to think different. We can learn to purposefully innovate, and we can learn to simplify with innovation.

We also use the architecture of Business Process Management and Intelligent Business Process Management, where you have a score, and two, and process, understanding and ownership.

This sounds like common sense. But common sense is the least common of the senses.

In large organizations, People move fast, often, in the horizontal line, when there is no progress.

They zig-zag on a flat line, unique for you to make progress in the right.

And the right direction you must have understanding of what's critical in your business and how that those processes are defined, and Joanne, and how their own. And then you look at more efficiency approaches, if you will. Once you have those processes defined, You can talk about lean, which is about increasing speed, eliminating waste, facilitating the flow of value to your customer. And you can look at 3 6 Sigma perspective to reduce variation on the outputs your customer.

Because your customers do not feel the average of our processes. They feel their individual experiences.

They feel the variation of your process. Now, all of this separately are effective, but when they are combined, they're exceptional. But remember, it's not about the methods. Because the methods alone do not transform businesses.

Collaborative value creation leaders in your organization do.

Those are the ones that you want to find.

The methods is just, it's just a framework for disciplined execution that this amazing people in your organization we will leverage. But it's not about becoming an expert in a method. It's about becoming an expert on collaborative leadership and value creation.

And those are not the same things.

So in most organizations, when you look at their maturity level, when it comes to innovation for value creation, at the lowest level with multi-million dollar organizations, you have a single entrepreneur or a nice small company that can build millions of values in new wealth creation.

That individual is typically brilliant. Has passion, has discipline, has resilience?

Just see his or her business fur.

But if you want to become a multi-billion dollar corporation, that's not enough, you now need to scale the systems. You need to create systems and mechanisms that are scalable. You need to have clear governance. You need to have clear structures and roles for improvement and innovation and digital process automation.

You must have your growth in technology accelerators on the side, which experimenting with bullets constantly just see what works and why your works. And then using the systems to scale what while works.

And ultimately, when you look at the multi trillion dollar organizations of our time and into the future, they do all of that.

But they do more. And what they have is that they have develop those systems and mechanisms.

And they have plenty of individual brilliance, but they also have democratized collaborative leadership and innovation acceleration skills, development, broadly applied in the organizations.

And these organizations, they are built on that clear purpose, And this clear purpose is filled by a culture, with a strong set of core values that is aligned with that purpose. And these organizations are chronically consistent with their purpose, which is the ultimate level of discipline.

This is incredibly hard to do, that's most, or why most organizations will never be multi trillion dollar organizations.

So, with this, let's look at the an example. And I'm going to guide you through. I'm going to you and we're not going to have Q&A in the session.

I'm going to guide you through the, and then we're at the end was done with our time here. I'll take questions on LinkedIn later on.

Now, collaboration, innovation of value creation are the ultimate measurements of IBM effectiveness. Wonderful. So let's look at some details. Just. Yeah. Can you show me what it looks like in some organization that you actually implemented this? So let's take a look.

I'm looking at an infrastructure, a global infrastructure company, here. And they have a history. It's not that you go into a company and they haven't never innovated before if they have never innovative before They wouldn't exist. Of course, they do lots of innovations.

But by the year 2000, they had this high performance teams. They hire consultants to do this process mapping on everything, because they wanted to automate the processes.

So they wanted to do it right, and they were told to do it right. You gotta do process mapping.

They had hundreds and hundreds of process maps, if not thousands, because their businesses are incredibly complex.

No other benefit was zero.

You know what, the implementation was, less than 10%.

Why?

Because people are overwhelmed by complexity, They didn't know what to do with it.

So they followed that up by implementing a Lean six Sigma program and on their Lean six Sigma program, They, they had a combination of Green belt driven projects, and they got some good results.

As a result of that, they got 70% implementation of those projects that they identified, and they were moving in the right direction.

But they realized there's something fundamental missing in their business.

And what was missing to get to the next level, was process on our ship, to have sustainable solutions implement, and implementation.

You need to have ownership of the processes they are trying to impact.

The best technologists will not solve process ownership issues.

Once we instituted global process ownership for their critical processes, they had over 99% implementation rate over a period of 10 years, and they more than quadruple the benefits they had from before. So, notice that this is both an evolution and a revolution, which is typically how great and doing organizations get there.

They look at their processes at the highest level, and they identify what are their critical business processes? What are their supporting processes? And then the other executive leadership processes that they had.

This is a very important exercise that your senior leadership needs to engage on, to decide what creates value for our customers, and what are the processes that drive that value to that customer? These are your key core client facing processes, your key value chain processes. This is not an easy discussion, and there'll be many opinions about what is core, what's supporting in our organizations. It's a decision that the leadership must make, ultimately. Because the next step is to focus on one, is to focus your digital process automation and your improvements and innovations on matters most to the clients of the organization. And the organization itself, which are the processes, in that case, highlighted in green.

Now, once we get to that point, we need to understand it, the culture of the organization, and where this organization is at as we go into this journey.

This is not a process driven organization. This is a project driven organization that does this amazing billion dollars, projects around the world.

So, how they're gonna apply these concepts, If you're just couple, come up with digital process automation in a company that does projects, you're going to fail.

You need to seek to understand how they operate, and understand how you're going to apply the methods in their context.

And what we discover is that, of course, the project teams receive and apply process knowledge.

Now, how do process owners fit into that?

Well, this process owners, they look at processes not on a single project.

They are looking at processes across multiple projects, with different geographies, with different technology types, with different client types.

Now this process owners, they have a different set of responsibilities from the project team leaders and the project teams themselves, so the process owners, they develop and communicate the process knowledge that's then communicated to the project teams.

Now, this interface is what we call Intelligent Business Process Management.

Is this process excellence that exists, just serve the execution exxon's that we want to have with our customers.

So, it's important that we understand how methods apply to the context and the culture of our organizations. In an a project driven organization, this is the application. It could be dramatically different if you have a product driven organization.

Now, in this world, filled with complexity, how do we, how do we get through all of this?

How do we adjust?

So, this concept of innovation for simplification is fundamental for great enduring organizations, and I wanna spend a little time with you on that.

Innovation for simplification is the concept is simple, we live in a very complex world, and when people ask us to do things, we start thinking, Oh, my goodness. What else do I have to do?

I have to add things to this system. What else that I'm going to have to do here?

So, when you wonder what needs to be added, you're not applying innovation for simplification because innovation for simplification has to be a reminder to you that you can't only achieve perfection when there's nothing left to take out.

You don't, You don't get your achieve perfection by adding things to systems. Perfection is only attained when there's nothing left to take out when you have the essence of what matters.

So, keep in mind that before you ever tried to automate anything, please remember that automation is the last of three things that you should be considering.

The first fifth, a first feel things that you should be considered, is that, how are we going to design processes?

There are going to eliminate.

what doesn't need to be done?

How am I going to design process? There are going to reduce the complexity. It reduce this non value added activities that exist. Maybe I cannot eliminate them, but I can reduce them.

And only after you eliminate, only after you reduce, you're going to consider automation.

Cannot tell you how many people, including in this audience, jump to automation right away on everything, because it's seductive. It's tempting, it's a new technology. It's going to solve our problems.

Technologists are like romantic lovers. They solve one problem in the short run. They create 10 new ones in the long run. You have to choose them very carefully.

So, great, enduring organizations are chronically discipline about not just using technology. They will eliminate. They will reduce.

And then they will automate.

I wanna give you a practical example, multi billion dollar infrastructure company, designing power plants all over the world.

Each one of this power plants is about one billion dollars.

It takes anywhere between 3 and 5 years to fully design and build this very complex power plants.

So, one of the functions, there were identified on the design and building of this power plants is that we have to do 100 different types of unique and complex valve control stations for everyone in this power plants.

Think about that, there are hundreds of this valve stations across this complex. That is the size of 20 football fields.

It's a city, and in that, you have all these different control valve stations. And when we got the team together, we identify 120 different ones.

Well, what did they wanted to do? Initially, what they did is what most people are tempted by. Oh, there's this new technology that allows us to do easy automation. So, let's have IT involved, and let's automate this process. Wonderful. So they got together, and they did some process mapping. And they got the basic flow of the process documented, and they went on to outdoor made the process flow.

three years later, the automation was not done pushback from all different places in the organization because they were not. They said, this is not right. It's not working for me. It's not working for her.

So it's not ready yet, three years later, automation wasn't ready.

And even if it was ready, it wasn't ready because there's pushback. I thought it was right after 12 months, but nobody would use it because it didn't satisfy their needs. So remember, I do not just automate complex processes.

Think about how you're going to eliminate it, think about how you're going to reduce it. And we did that.

So what we did, we got everybody together around the table and said, Hey, we have 120 different designs going on here.

Can we standardize this design?

And people said, no, no, no, no. My design is unique. There's no way we can standardize that.

After three weeks of discussions and collaborative leadership, we got the group of chief engineers to agree on a standardization, but typically was my standardization, Well, that wasn't helpful. Everybody agrees on standardizing, but it's their way.

And there were six different people with six different opinions.

So, through collaborative leadership, we say, OK, what if we create six standards that we can use?

And by creating those six standards now, now, one, by six separate standards, we can reduce the number of our station designs. There are skeptical about it. But by creating the six standards, were able to eliminate all of those steps, because there are built into the standard, into one out of six standards. And by building those six standards now, we have a process where we eliminated and reduced complexity on it, and you have this process now that satisfies all six standards.

This process is 20 times faster than the previous one.

Now, this process, not with one design, but with six designs, was able to be to be automated.

Those six base designs were able to be automated in three months.

And they became an application, a model, a module, in an application called Plant Vision. And now I could drop one out of six options in there and allow people to customize the final design. And even with the post-production customization of those six blocks.

We could do it 20 times faster. So remember, eliminate, reduce, and then you think about automation.

So if we go back to the basics, what matters? most? ideas?

Mattos technologies are people, it is people.

It is people who are leveraging a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms, and they are creating value for the organization. They are the amplifiers of automation. They are the amplifiers of value creation, they are entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs in your organization, and this people, you'll find out that they have purpose, passion, discipline, and resilience.

So, how do you find this people?

They are in your organization right now.

They are sitting there with a whole bunch of other sauer face, people who are just kind of doing their jobs, but they have something different about them. And your job as a leader is to inspire them, to achieve greater things, to inspire them, to align their personal purpose with the purpose of the organization, to create value.

And you're going to inspire them further by saying that we're going to equip you with the ability to take different perspectives, that a problem, and we're going to create mechanisms here And a bit of a safety net for you to experiment for you to take some risks that before you couldn't take, we're not going to eliminate risks for you completely.

You still must have courage and we're looking for people with courage, but we're going to help you manage and mitigate risks and experiment in small ways and find out what can be scalable in our organization. I'm looking for collaborative leaders with courage, with purpose, with bastion, with discipline, and resilience In our jobs, as leaders, is to create an environment in our organizations where these great people and their great ideas can connect. And when you get to that point, now, you're looking at a decade, two decades long growth, and innovation, for value creation, in the process automation that will scale the right technologies, emphatic creation, for your organization.

Because, remember, ladies and gentlemen, none of us has a crystal ball.

We cannot predict the future.

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

and your ultimate competitive advantage to create, to create the future is to build a culture where excellence and innovation provides you with the ultimate competitive advantage.

This is not going to change, in the decades ahead, perhaps not in the centuries ahead.

So, join us in the journey for excellence and innovation, acceleration for culture, business, and digital transformation.

You can join me on my journey. I'll be doing this until the day I die or become mentally or physically incapacitated.

So, this is how you get hold of me, how we contributed to this journey, All of you who are here, already, great contributors, and I feel blessed to have you, and that journey with me, and we will continue to, to carry on.

So thank you, everybody. I'm gonna wrap up this presentation, and I'm gonna change hats to the conference hat here, and now we're gonna give you a quick few reminders before we depart for our days.

First of all, we have to say thanks to the incredible speakers we had. These are great, we don't bring theoretical leaders here. We bring practical leaders who are implementing what they talk about in their organizations. This, people are incredibly busy.

They are responsible often for multi billion dollar organizations, and they are taking the time to be here and share their wisdom and expertise with you.

So thank you for all the speakers, for doing a fantastic job, over 12 amazing sessions for our Global community.

I have to thank Brian Wrathful, who is our Conference Director in the brains and the muscles behind all of this. There are thousand moving pieces. There are lots of things that could go wrong. And, largely, you don't see any of that. Because, Brian, make sure it works. It's excellence at its greatest level, with lots of great innovation, built-in by Brian into Teams. So, very thankful for that.

Very thankful for VJ by Jacques, The man behind the scenes, the CEO of Broke his digit, Digital, who creates this platform that when a pandemic happen, had a vision to create platforms too.

Allow a global community to benefit from this tremendous expertise and practical knowledge so that they can improve their careers, they can prove their organizations.

Thank you, Vijay, for your vision. Thank you for your leadership.

Also we have to thank our sponsors Abby Commander and signoff you for bringing this world-class virtual advance to a global conference and no cost.

And we can only do that because of the sponsorship of Abby commander and stigma RVO. Thank you very much for all that you do.

Now, our next conference will be the Beetle's RPA, Robotic Process Automation and Intelligent Automation Live Event. That will take place June 15th for June 17th.

Please make sure that you register for that, OK? You are not automatically register. If you participated in this conference, There will be announcements, and there'll be links provided throughout this conference to already provided those links. If you search vetoes RPA in intelligent automation, you'll find the page as well.

You can sign up free registration because of our great sponsors, You can sign up for that. You can let others know. We have a limit on the maximum number of participants for free, and I think it's around 3000 participants. So, make sure you sign up early, and your register. so that you have all the benefits of being a register participant, including that you should be receiving in the next week, or so. a link, and an e-mail, with a link, and password, to access all of this session recordings from this conference. So, again, reminder, June, 15 for June 17th, we're going to be back here, at RPA and intelligent automation live.

So, whatever you are in the world, thank you for joining us. Thank you for any reaching our discussions. Our engagement has been terrific for out this conference, because of you.

Many, many of you are leading experts in this areas, in your own organizations. And we need, your leadership.

Society needs your leadership to improve and innovate the way we work and the way we live.

So, we're grateful for your participation, Connect with us on LinkedIn. There is a post about this conference, please extend your gratitude to the, To the, to the, to the people who make this conference happen. To the support to the speakers, to the conference sponsors.

And everybody who does the production for the conference, as well. And that you can ask questions. You can engage on that LinkedIn post, and certainly, you can find out what's coming up next by being engaged on that community. So, thank you wherever you are in the world.

Have a great rest of your day. Have a wonderful weekend and, and we will continue to move around, move, move on with our journey of greatness and having you with us, in the days and weeks ahead. Thank you. Great rest of the day for everyone.