What's Your Baseline? Enterprise Architecture & Business Process Management Demystified

Hosted by Roland Woldt / J-M Erlendson

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Nov 2026

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This show is about Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management, and how you can set up your practice to get the most out of it. It is for newbies who just get started with these topics, organizations who want to improve their EA/BPM groups (and the value that they get from it), as well as practitioners who want to get a different perspective and care about the discipline. Learn more about the show and read articles about EA and BPM on www.whatsyourbaseline.com.

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November 2, 2026Episode 655 min

Ep. 122 - Transformation Readiness: Hanneke Loefs-Mos

You are about to embark on a journey that you bet the future of your company on—a change of business model, a major investment, carving out and separating a piece of the organization. Major transformations ahead and you don't know exactly what the outcome will be or how you get there. But there is one step that I see to be forgotten over and over: taking a hard look at where you and your organization are before you take the first step, and if you are ready to begin. Do you have completely understood what is about to happen (and why?), are you and your employees aligned, how complex is the transformation, and can you articulate the patterns that you need to put in place to make the whole thing a success? That is what we speak with Hanneke Loefs-Mos about in this episode. Roland and her partnered up and created a new offering for What's Your Baseline? built on the BPM OS platform: a Transformation Readiness Assessment that will give you the answers for the questions above for about 10 different types of transformations. Hanneke has been on the podcast before and her motto is to “Embrace the Chaos”: creating structure during transition. She focuses on processes, finance, and systems with a human touch by implementing Business Process Management (BPM) so that she can be the linking pin between strategy and operations. In this episode of the podcast, we talk about: Distinguishing Improvement from Transformation: Incremental change refines existing operations, whereas true transformation fundamentally alters business models, capabilities, and market positioning. Navigating Ambiguity and Organizational Risk: Executing strategic transformations without established roadmaps introduces systemic uncertainty, requiring structured discovery over rigid execution. Overcoming Organizational Inertia: Transformational initiatives flounder without active executive sponsorship and genuine organizational urgency to counter inherent resistance. Establishing Tactical Baselines: Measuring readiness demands establishing contextual baselines tailored to specific strategic shifts rather than relying on generic metrics. Untangling Organizational Complexity: Complex initiatives like carve-outs necessitate early identification and decoupling of intertwined capabilities, contracts, data, and systems. Mitigating Organizational Friction: Structural complexity and unaligned stakeholders generate drag, requiring proactive intervention to maintain strategic momentum. Evaluating Multi-Dimensional Readiness: True readiness balances qualitative leadership alignment, technical viability, operational capacity, and risk awareness. Implementing Targeted Intake: Evaluating readiness begins with qualifying organizational context and complexity before triggering deep-dive diagnostic inquiries. Adaptive Diagnostic Workflows: Rule-based questioning filters irrelevant topics, focusing stakeholder engagement strictly on high-friction areas. Balancing Automation and Expert Intuition: Automated diagnostic rules streamline data collection, while domain expertise interprets qualitative nuances between the lines. Actionable Synthesis for Leadership: Diagnostic frameworks consolidate disparate stakeholder feedback into coherent, actionable insights for executive sponsors. If you are interested in the Transformation Readiness Assessment please reach out to Ha n neke or me via LinkedIn (or generally using the “Hello” email below). We are happy to show you around and discuss how we can help you make the right first step for your transformation. Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠ ⁠⁠hello@whatsyourbaseline.com⁠⁠ ⁠ or signing up for our newsletter and reading articles about process and architecture on our Substack… Go and subscribe at ⁠whatsyourbaseline.substack.com⁠. And if you like to support “the little podcast that could,” become a Patron at ⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline⁠⁠⁠ . We appreciate you!

October 19, 2026Episode 555 min

Ep. 121 - Causal Process Mining: Lukas Pfahlsberger and Jan Mendling

Process Mining has been the “hot thing” for a few years, but momentum has stalled as organizations work on rolling it out. Gartner classified it as "early mainstream," yet only about 20% of people in talks confirm actually running projects. However, a new evolution is emerging: Causal Process Mining . Instead of focusing solely on timestamp sequences, this approach analyzes cause-and-effect relations to discover not just what is happening, but why . In this episode, we sit down with Lukas Pfahlsberger (CEO) and Jan Mendling (Humboldt University Professor), co-founders of Noreja. They explain how their tool uses AI, knowledge graphs, and context like documents to shift away from traditional event logs and uncover root causes. In this episode of the podcast we talk about: The Evolution of Process Mining: Started in the 1990s and expanded around 2000 via Wil van der Aalst, originally focusing on simple, linear processes with single objects. The Complexity Gap: Classical techniques struggle with complex enterprise workflows (like order-to-cash) where objects split, converge, or diverge across systems. Moving Beyond Correlation: Causal process mining uses a priori knowledge to validate actual triggers rather than assuming correlation equals causation. Multi-Source Causal Modeling: Noreja builds models using database schemata (keys/cardinalities), AI/LLMs to validate logical steps, and domain knowledge. Skipping the Flat-File Headache: Direct connection to source systems avoids discarding rich database semantics and saves time spent on manual ETL data pipelines. Streamlined Onboarding: Connecting via database/API allows users to select core tables and automatically generate an initial entity graph. Perspectives Over Rigid Views: Users define custom "perspectives" by choosing specific starting objects, letting AI pinpoint root causes within scoped views. Lowering Barriers to Entry: Companies can immediately spot where data quality issues reside and measure their exact operational impact. AI Context & Token Efficiency: Graph databases structure processes cleanly for LLMs, saving token costs and avoiding messy "spaghetti diagrams." Maintaining Dynamic Context: Connecting SOPs and procedural versions lets organizations verify compliance against evolving business rules. Process Frontier Agents: Autonomous background agents manage context by scanning repositories, archiving outdated files, and organizing knowledge. Cost-Efficient Local LLMs: Using local open-weight models (like Gemma) during off-hours reduces API costs while handling heavy context tasks. Compressing the BPM Lifecycle: Combining AI insights and rapid artifact generation aims to shrink 12-month BPM cycles into 2-to-3-day workshops. Proving ROI: SAP research shows an average 1:20 return on process improvement projects, which accelerates as decision velocity improves. Next Steps & Resources: Explore Noreja’s whitepapers, blog, or demo environment on their website or reach out via LinkedIn. Connect with Lukas and Jan via LinkedIn and their website . Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠ ⁠hello@whatsyourbaseline.com⁠ ⁠ or signing up for our newsletter and reading articles about process and architecture on our Substack… Go and subscribe at ⁠whatsyourbaseline.substack.com⁠. And if you like to support “the little podcast that could,” become a Patron at ⁠ ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline⁠⁠ . We appreciate you!

October 5, 2026Episode 454 min

Ep. 120 - BPM & AI Operations: Bassam AlKarashi

Since everybody speaks about the wonders of AI (at least it feels like that), it is prudent to remind people that you still need to understand what you are doing and where you want to deploy it. And we are happy to have found an expert in this topic. Bassam AlKharashi is a Saudi entrepreneur, business transformation leader, and AI strategist with more than 30 years of experience across technology, BPM, enterprise architecture, innovation, and entrepreneurship. His background in process management has been a constant foundation: he has helped develop the process-management profession in the region and authored and co-authored books on process management and innovation. His interest in AI goes back to his graduate studies in computer engineering at Case Western Reserve University in the early 1990s, where his work included neural networks. Today, Bassam is the Founder and CEO of Nuhaa AI, helping organizations move from isolated AI experiments toward governed, production-grade AI transformation. His current work explores how AI changes business processes, enterprise architecture, and organizational design and how BPM can evolve as organizations become AI-native. In this episode of the ⁠podcast,⁠ we talk about: — AI as a Driver for Growth, Not Just Speed: Use AI to unlock new capabilities and market growth, not merely as a faster replacement for rule-based automation. — AI Agents are Digital Colleagues, Not Job Replacements: Agents work side-by-side with humans, multiplying productivity 10x to 20x. — The Necessity of an Enterprise Intelligence Layer: Non-generic outputs require AI trained on an organization's deep context: processes, sector knowledge, regulations, and competitor data. — Avoiding "Copy-Paste" Generic AI Outputs: Public AI prompts produce interchangeable reports; enterprise AI relies on company-specific intelligence. — Design Processes Backwards from the North Star: Start with the desired outcome and work backward, rather than shaving off incremental steps. — Setting Operational Guardrails: Define non-negotiables, such as budget, headcount, or compliance bounds, so AI solutions stay within constraints. — The Token Cost as an Agent "Salary": Tokens are the salary of AI agents; deployed for growth, like sales proposals at scale, the ROI far outweighs the cost. — Inquisitive Questioning Uncovers Real Goals: Finding the true North Star takes persistent questioning beyond "doing things faster." — Event-Driven AI Triggering via Sensors: Emails, system logs, or IoT sensors can trigger workflows that do research and prep work proactively. — Reverse-Engineering Enterprise Knowledge: Without documentation, organizations can use AI to research regulators, competitors, and unstructured data to bootstrap baselines. — Rethinking Traditional Methodologies: Lean and Six Sigma must evolve because AI agents don't follow static step-by-step logic. — Upskilling Employees Over Avoiding Tech: Change management means encouraging employees to ask better questions and learn new AI tools. — Central Intelligence vs. Domain-Specific Needs: Legal or Finance may need specialized tools, but a unified knowledge layer prevents silos. — Prompt & Context Engineering as Process Design: Modern BPM design relies on prompt and context engineering to guide AI agents. — Engage with Digital Twins: Bassam highlights personal and executive digital twins (such as his own) that let stakeholders interact asynchronously with AI personas. Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠ hello@whatsyourbaseline.com ⁠ or signing up for our newsletter and reading articles about process and architecture on our Substack… Go and subscribe at ⁠whatsyourbaseline.substack.com⁠. And if you like to support “the little podcast that could,” become a Patron at ⁠ https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline⁠ . We appreciate you!

September 21, 2026Episode 31 hr 6 min

Ep. 119 - Progressive BPM: Volker Stiehl

It feels as if we have a little streak going on here—guests who question the current operating mode of process teams today beyond just optimizing the existing process landscape. But then what? It is about using "process" to create new value. That's where "Progressive BPM" comes in, created by this week's guest, Volker Stiehl. Volker is Professor of Business Information Systems at Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt and initiator of Progressive BPM. With his "Processes First" principle, he shows how companies turn innovative ideas into executable digital business models. As the faculty’s Startup Commissioner, he also supports new ventures, following twelve years at Siemens and twelve years at SAP. In this episode of the ⁠podcast,⁠ we talk about: Introduction to Progressive BPM: Inspired by progressive rock, Progressive BPM emphasizes creativity, new ideas, and forward-looking digital transformation over traditional optimization. The Process Paradox: Despite being fundamental to products and services, BPM often remains a niche interest rather than a strategic imperative. Digitize vs. Digitalization vs. Digital Transformation: Digitize replaces analog materials with digital ones; digitalization focuses on efficiency and cost savings; digital transformation leverages IT to create new solutions customers pay for. Classical BPM vs. Progressive BPM: Classical BPM focuses on continuous optimization and bottom-line savings, whereas Progressive BPM targets top-line growth and new market opportunities. Overcoming the AI Distraction: Instead of spending 98% of time tracking AI trends without execution, Progressive BPM uses AI as a catalyst to drive insights into action through processes. The Abstraction Problem: Organizations often treat processes abstractly, missing the opportunity to understand the core engine driving the business. Starting Point 1 – The Greenfield Approach: Addresses an unsolved customer problem—like retirement planning—through an automated end-to-end process. Starting Point 2 – The Inside-Out Approach: Turns valuable internal process expertise into external offerings for other companies (e.g., SAP scaling internal translation workflows). Starting Point 3 – The AI Rebuild: Rethinks broader end-to-end processes into scalable services rather than just replacing individual steps with AI automation. Turning Static Knowledge into Executable Processes: Converting expert domain knowledge into executable processes creates unique, monetizable assets protected from simple AI scraping. B2C Potential for Process Models: Progressive BPM extends beyond enterprise scenarios to consumer domain processes, such as interactive workflows for growing plants. Corporate Culture and Startup Spinoffs: Establishing spin-off startups allows teams to de-risk early ventures and build entrepreneurial momentum outside rigid corporate IT. Open Standards Over Proprietary Tools: Relies on open-source standards like BPMN and DMN rather than locking core operations into proprietary platforms. Domain Processes vs. Integration Processes: Separates core domain logic from technical integration tasks to build adaptable process architectures. Connecting with the What's Your Baseline? Community: Connect with Volker Stiehl on ⁠LinkedIn or via ⁠ email⁠ , and catch Roland and Volker at the process management event in Stuttgart (Sep. 30 and Oct. 1). Please reach out by sending an email to ⁠hello@whatsyourbaseline.com⁠ or subscribing to our newsletter on Substack at ⁠whatsyourbaseline.substack.com⁠. To support "the little podcast that could," become a Patron at ⁠ https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline ⁠. We appreciate you :-)

September 7, 2026Episode 21 hr 2 min

Ep. 118 - BPM Essentials: Roger Tregear

One of the major concerns in our discipline is that in an era of instant gratification and "easy button" demands from clients, the core fundamentals are easily forgotten. Our guest today, Roger Tregear, shares this concern and wrote a book about it: Elements . In it, he details the 20 elements that constitute a good Business Process Management (BPM) practice, and I highly recommend downloading and reading it. Roger’s career centers on consulting, writing, and speaking about process management. He helps organizations improve performance by designing and activating "perpetual improvement machines" through active process-based management. In this episode of the podcast, we discuss: Engineering and Telecom Origins: Roger shares his professional background, moving from electrical engineering and early data communications at ICL into strategic telecommunications consulting. The "Aha!" Moment with ARIS: In late 2000, Professor Michael Roseman introduced the ARIS tool to Roger, providing the formal language and framework for cross-functional concepts he had been exploring for years. Bonsai as a Process Discipline: Outside of BPM, Roger nurtures bonsai trees—a hobby requiring a daily, seasonal, and multi-year process framework rooted in patience and long-term planning. Why AI Cannot Replace Process Understanding: AI tools and automation cannot fix broken or misunderstood workflows. Without a foundational process structure, deploying AI agents only accelerates unpredictable outcomes. The Primacy of Cross-Functional Processes: While traditional organizations manage vertically via org charts, actual value, strategy execution, and customer experiences occur horizontally across functional silos. Management vs. Hope: Every organization operates via processes by default. The only strategic choice is whether leadership chooses to actively manage those processes or rely on hope. The "M" in BPM Stands for Management: The ultimate purpose of BPM is not modeling or documentation, but improving organizational performance in a tangible, measurable way. Defining Core Processes from Strategic Intent: Rather than relying on generic templates like "Order-to-Cash," core process architectures should be built by analyzing the organization's explicit strategic promises to its customers and stakeholders. Overcoming Executive Resistance to "Busy Work": To prevent leadership from dismissing BPM as an endless flowcharting exercise, teams must set clear guardrails, focus on high-impact areas, and avoid building bloated internal bottlenecks. Pruning the Architecture (Starting Small): Building a working three-level process architecture takes only a few weeks. Implementation should immediately focus on piloting three manageable, high-priority processes rather than attempting to govern hundreds at once. Targeting Process KPIs (PKPIs): Effective process governance requires distinguishing vertical functional metrics from horizontal Process Key Performance Indicators that measure how the overall workflow satisfies key stakeholder expectations. Focusing on High-Impact Processes: Organizations should avoid modeling every process to the lowest level. Deeper analysis and governance should be applied strictly to the top 20–30 high-impact processes driving major outcomes or risks. Process Transformation is Social: Successful BPM implementation depends less on tooling and technical diagrams and more on engaging operational staff, earning buy-in, managing human change, and empowering teams. You can find Roger on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogertregear/ . Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠hello@whatsyourbaseline.com⁠ or signing up for our newsletter and reading articles about process and architecture on our Substack … Go and subscribe at ⁠whatsyourbaseline.substack.com⁠ . And if you like to support “the little podcast that could,” become a Patron at ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline⁠ . We appreciate you!

August 24, 2026Episode 11 hr 2 min

Ep. 117 - BPM Failures

It is about time—we took a (very) long summer break filled with travel, a new webinar series, and new and updated apps from What's Your Baseline? :-) Oh, and crossing that 75,000 download mark and celebrating our fifth anniversary—all in this month! But now we are back in the saddle, as they say, and we are starting Season 11 with a conversation between J-M and Roland, in which we dive into our shared painful experiences of process programs who have failed in on or another way. And the graphic below will give you the seven main reasons that we've seen in an overview. But without further ado, in this week's episode of the podcast we are talking about: BPMOS Updates: Roland highlights the release of new BPMOS apps and use cases covering learning and enablement, SDLC from requirement to implementation, planning and procedure factory exercises, and tool selection. The Root of All Evil: The hosts establish that practice failures almost always stem from people making poor decisions, setting up major categories like strategy, structure, governance, technology, and process. Financial Institution Redux: J-M shares a story about a major North American financial institution that struggled with employee happiness initiatives because "too many cooks in the kitchen" forced 30 different capabilities instead of a core MVP. Winning Through Jealousy: To fix the financial institution's fractured program, the team focused on making a single lead stakeholder look exceptionally successful using clear dashboards and KPIs to spark community engagement. The 10-Second Login Disaster: Roland shares a horror story of a healthcare company that bought thousands of software licenses, only to see a 10% login rate with average sessions lasting 10 to 15 seconds due to a total lack of use case definition. Vendor Accountability: The software vendor experience proved that overselling without clear internal commitment or matching use cases leads straight to corporate blacklists and shelfware. Airline System Silos: J-M recounts working with an international airline where a major ERP re-implementation was restricted to a strict "project bubble," causing massive scoping failures when touching unmapped system interfaces. The Business Therapist: Navigating severe adversarial relationships between vendors and corporate clients requires consultants with high emotional intelligence to act as mediators and keep the project alive. Process Mining Roadblocks: Roland details a financial institution that loved process mining initial proofs-of-concept but ultimately stalled out because rigid 8-to-10-week data request cycles choked agility. Top-Down Power: The lesson from the process mining hurdle is that bottom-up enthusiasm is great, but getting data and capabilities moving requires the backing of executive “big guns." The Lifer Employee Challenge: Working with decades-long corpor“lifers” who reject new methodologies requires understanding their unique values and reaching out early to secure true buy-in. Whiteboards vs. Repositories: The hosts lament seeing critical organizational processes mapped solely on office sticky notes, physical whiteboards, or locked filing cabinets rather than a digital twin repository. Summary of Failure Pillars: The episode wraps up by reiterating the core pillars of failure: strategy, people alignment, technology choices, process sustainment, structural design, governance, and value achievement. Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or signing up for our newsletter and reading articles about process and architecture on our Substack … Go and subscribe at whatsyourbaseline.substack.com . And if you like to support “the little podcast that could,” become a Patron at https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline . We appreciate you!

June 22, 2026Episode 1252 min

Ep. 116 - Opportunities for the Future: Michael Rosemann

Process and architecture folks excel at analyzing the as-is and optimizing it. But why? What if we skipped "As-Is" entirely and designed new processes from a fresh perspective? Scary? Our guest, Dr. Michael Rosemann, argues it's scarier to keep optimizing — because eventually you run out of things to optimize. Then what? Michael is the author/editor of twelve books in five languages and over 400 refereed papers. He's globally known for his work on BPM maturity models, context-aware BPM, process innovation, rapid process redesign, affective process design, and process modelling quality. He's presented at major global BPM conferences and delivered keynotes in 30+ countries, with research funded by Accenture, Cisco, Infosys, PwC, Rio Tinto, SAP, and Woolworths. In this episode, we cover: From efficiency to opportunity. After decades of classic BPM work, Michael pivoted from cost-cutting toward "crafting desirable futures" — partly sparked by his father asking if making companies more efficient was really the legacy he wanted. Three drivers of change: urgency (a burning platform), curiosity (testing the unknown), or ambition (a clear destination). Leaders without any of these stay "big, fat and happy" — and stuck. Root cause analysis of success, not failure. Instead of diagnosing what's broken, Michael's team studies "positive deviants" — top performers — and replicates their hidden practices org-wide using process mining. The seven types of opportunity (a counterpart to Lean's seven wastes), including "first data advantage" — examining what data your process already generates and who else might value it (e.g., an airline offering pet-sitting because it already knows who's traveling with pets). Process expansion, attention, and generalization — three opportunity types illustrated by Domino's "pizza tracker" (monetizing attention) and Uber's expansion from people to pizza, patients, and produce. "Lot size of one." The goal isn't catching up to best practice — it's building processes so unique that no competitor, and no design thinking exercise, could replicate them (e.g., QUT's "upgradeable degree" concept). Opportunity appetite statements. Just as organizations have risk appetite statements, Michael argues they need the opposite — a deliberate statement of which opportunities they're willing to pursue, partly modeled on NASA's approach to balancing risk and ambition. Make the future tangible. Example: a six-minute video imagining a trauma patient's full recovery journey in 2033, used to rally stakeholders around a shared vision instead of incremental fixes. RX, EX, TX — Revenue Design, Emotional Experience, and Trust Experience. A framework for evaluating opportunities beyond pure transactions, including "transactional benevolence" (e.g., Netflix pausing billing for inactive subscribers, or a retailer refunding a price drop you didn't know about). Reframing the business case. To win leadership buy-in for trust- or future-focused initiatives, Michael suggests shifting from short-term cost to long-term opportunity cost — the price of not acting. AI as a thinking partner, not just a tool. Michael previews a prototype built with SAP Signavio that uses AI to proactively surface opportunities from an uploaded process model — "reverse prompting," where the tool greets you with an idea instead of waiting for a problem. The Future's Triangle. A framework for organizational inertia: the weight of the past, the distraction of the present, and the pull of the future — and why most companies only operate on the first two. Find Michael on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/michaelrosemann/ Reach us at hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or subscribe at whatsyourbaseline.substack.com. Support the show on Patreon: patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline.

June 8, 2026Episode 1152 min

Ep. 115 - Startups: Vidar Hokstad

When should you start with process and architecture in a startup? That was the question that we've asked ourselves (as if there is a real-life example currently happening :-) and then we thought, “Why not ask someone who is living in this space?” Vidar co-founded his first tech startup at 19 because he didn't know enough to know how hard it would be. 30 years on, he has gone mostly from startup to startup, usually as the first technical hire or a co-founder. He has both bootstrapped and raised VC capital and recently spent 3 years working at a VC fund. He now runs a tech consultancy focusing on the intersection of DevOps and AI while working on his next big thing. In this episode of the podcast, we talk about: A startup is defined by pre-revenue or pre-profit status combined with rapid growth ambition — a chip shop is operational from day one, not a startup. Once you're profitable and growing modestly, you're a lifestyle business. Early-stage capital is the most expensive capital you'll ever spend, because you're paying in equity. The earlier you are, the larger the slice of the company you trade away for the same dollar amount. VC investors expect most of their portfolio to fail and are only looking for the 10x–100x outlier. If you can't raise your next round within about 18 months, their interest moves on — so failing fast and validating quickly is the entire game. AI has dramatically lowered the barrier to building a working prototype, letting founders show investors something tangible and compelling much faster than ever before. But the industry is swinging back hard toward upfront specs and documentation, because AI coding agents can't infer your unique business context. Writing a truly good spec turns out to be one of the hardest parts of the entire software development process — and most teams have been skimping on it for 25 years. Your truly proprietary assets are your ideas, processes, use cases, and customer segments. The generated code is a commodity — everyone building on the same AI tools has access to the same output. Lightweight processes pay off quickly once a startup begins to scale. The absence of basic QA, project management, and clearly written tickets is almost always what causes delivery to break down first — not the process itself. A common and costly mistake is over-engineering: developers building for 10 million users when the total addressable market is 10,000. This happens when engineering teams are never told what the product actually is or who it's actually for. Process and architecture function as a communication layer — aligning engineering, sales, and leadership around a shared vision, the customer they're serving, and the strategy connecting the two. It builds buy-in, and buy-in produces better work than a paycheck alone. Vision must be communicated continuously from the hiring process onward, not just stated once and assumed to stick. Developers detach from the "why" quickly when daily work becomes purely tactical. Both one-on-one check-ins and group meetings are essential to a healthy team. People rarely surface real blockers, interpersonal tensions, or technical concerns in group settings — individual conversations build the trust that makes those things visible before they become crises. Vidar can be reached on LinkedIn here and also has a website: hockstadconsultng.com . Reach out by emailing ⁠hello@whatsyourbaseline.com⁠ or subscribe to our newsletter and articles on Substack at whatsyourbaseline.substack.com .

May 25, 2026Episode 101 hr 3 min

Ep. 114: BPM Operating System

Roland and J-M go solo to pull back the curtain on something that's been years in the making: BPM OS , a purpose-built, local-first tool stack designed to help small, talented process and architecture teams stand up a real BPM practice — without the vendor dependency, IT overhead, or 12-month procurement nightmare. In this episode of the podcast we talk about: Most BPM programs fail not because of bad content, but because organizations treat it as a pure IT exercise — buy a platform, check the box, and wonder why nothing sticks. The three pillars every BPM capability needs are content, governance, and adoption — yet most organizations only address the first one. Knowledge rented from consultants or SaaS vendors disappears the moment you stop paying; BPM OS is built on the principle that you own it outright, forever. BPM OS targets three groups: small internal teams doing more with less, consulting organizations that want baked-in methodology for client delivery, and vendors looking to bundle a white-labeled practice layer with their platforms. Groundwork is the brainstorming and planning app — dump ideas onto a canvas, sort them into zones, and shift into structured planning mode with priorities and rough timelines. Playbook is a lightweight wiki for capturing structured knowledge, course profiles, stakeholder analyses, and methodology documentation — with templates so you never start from a blank page. Atlas generates visual subway maps of your learning curriculum or capability landscape, complete with time-sensitive station states, deprecation indicators, and links back to Playbook pages. Outline lets you define the detailed content structure of a course or deliverable in a hierarchical, mind-map-style view — moving from “What do we need to teach?” to "Exactly what are the chapters and items?” Course Flow is a Kanban-based project management tool for developing and iterating on courses, complete with a built-in feedback form, an inbox for triage, and a status dashboard across all active projects. Cadence is a personal (and optionally team) task planner organized by day and category — with recurring daily items, carry-forward of incomplete tasks, and a simple velocity metric to spot overload before it becomes a crisis. The entire stack runs on Node.js, saves files as Markdown and JSON (no database required), plays nicely with Google Drive or OneDrive for backup, and optionally connects to GitHub or GitLab for full version history. Apps interoperate through lightweight linking and import/export — cards from Groundwork flow into Atlas, tasks from CourseFlow export into Cadence, and every Playbook page carries a permanent link that works anywhere in the stack. Find out more and download your free personal copy of Cadence at whatsyourbaseline.com/bpm-os —and check the episode show notes for a PDF overview of all six apps. Reach out by emailing ⁠hello@whatsyourbaseline.com⁠ or subscribe to our newsletter and articles on Substack at whatsyourbaseline.substack.com.

May 11, 2026Episode 91 hr 1 min

Ep. 113 - Customer Success Excellence: Chad Stephen

Once you've sold the licenses you are done. Right? Well, not so fast, young Jedi. While the salesperson happily turns around and goes hunting elsewhere, the customer has high expectations about the treatment they get after the sale. Even today I see organizations who treat Customer Success teams as an afterthought and then wonder why they see churn or nastygrams from their customers. But it doesn't have to be this way. We discuss this topic with Chad Stephen. Chad has led cross-functional teams of 65, scaled Customer Success orgs through 4x ARR growth, cut renewal process complexity by two thirds, and reduced time-to-value by 50% — more than once, at different companies ranging from early-stage to scaled SaaS, across industries from FinTech to HealthTech to Restaurant & Hospitality. In this episode of the podcast, we talk about: What is customer success, really? — The most important definition centers on one thing: driving value for clients. Renewals, onboarding, and account management are elements of CS, not the definition of it. The buyer vs. the end user — The person who signs the contract is rarely the one logging in every day. A good CS function speaks to both audiences and translates value into something meaningful for each. CS as a function, not just a job title — Customer success can be owned by a team, a role, or — dangerously — "everyone," which usually means no one. The discipline matters regardless of what you call it. The QBR trap — Quarterly business reviews that run 80 slides and double as sales pitches miss the point entirely. The best QBRs focus on the customer's problems, not the vendor's product roadmap. Proactive vs. reactive CS — Waiting for a customer to come to you with a problem is reactive. True proactive CS means monitoring usage metrics, NPS surveys, and engagement signals before a crisis happens. The relay race handoff — The baton cannot hit the floor between sales, professional services, and customer success. There must always be a clear, singular point of contact at every stage of the journey. When to involve CS in the sales cycle — CS should never be absent from a deal entirely, but timing matters. Bringing them in too early creates confusion; the right moment builds the bridge between "excited to sign" and "ready to succeed." The hunter vs. farmer problem — When account executives are compensated only for net-new deals, they make poor customer success managers. Misaligned incentives produce misaligned behavior. Compensation drives behavior — If you want your CS team to own renewals and upsells, you have to pay them for renewals and upsells. Comp plans and job expectations must align, or you get animosity and dropped balls. Start CS early — even at Series A — Smaller organizations often default to the AE managing the account post-sale. The sooner a dedicated CS function exists, the better. Stickiness in SaaS is decreasing, making the long-term relationship even more critical. Onboarding is the most critical phase — Getting a customer up and running quickly, with a clear understanding of the value they bought, sets the tone for the entire relationship. A poor start rarely fully recovers. Keep it simple — Over-engineered CS motions with 12 segmentation layers and elaborate playbooks often collapse under their own weight. Always ask: How does this actually drive more value for the customer? You can find Chad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadstephen/ . And he has a website at https://www.doublewindconsulting.com/ . Reach out by emailing hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or subscribe to our newsletter and articles on Substack at whatsyourbaseline.substack.com.