We are back with our first episode of the brand-new season 9 of the podcast—and we are starting right into the topic of these days: AI … well, the AI hype that is out there. And we are discussing what you can do to avoid falling into the trap of falling for that hype.

Our guest today is Maxwell Smith, who I had the pleasure of working with in a past life. He has years of experience in product management and product marketing in the BPM space with an IT background.

Max is a detail-oriented analytical thinker who enjoys empathizing with customers' problems and bringing solutions to market through products and positioning. The attention to detail is always contextualized with the larger vision of the product. The key success factor is his passion for tech and understanding of people's perception of it.

In this episode of the podcast, we talk about:

• Max' background
• A look at the different forms of AI (and their benefits and drawbacks)
• How to see through "AI-washing"
• Guiding questions to help folks to see if the vendor is really using AI
• Secondary questions/guidelines to consider if AI seems to be legit in a vendor's pitch
• Other concerns to look out for when implementing AI-supported technology

Max can be reached on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxwell-smith-1b612b83/.

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to [email protected] or signing up for our newsletter and getting informed when we publish new episodes here: https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/subscribe/.

Soooooo … We're a grown-up adult podcast now, and we're approaching our season 9. (Oh, so you claim.) If season 8 was great, will season 9 just be fine? More than fine. The world might be in chaos, but we are a safe harbor. Come join us, full of good friends, good cheer, and excellence in BPM and EA.

And of course, even we are changing. So we resisted, for example, the AI topic for long enough. And I think it matured to a point where it's actually worth talking about. Get ready to hear our thoughts and best practices from our rogues gallery of guests. So join us as we continue our journey together, kicking off season 9 of What's Your Baseline? next Monday, July 28, 2025. And we'll see you… in the next one.

Today we have our last “What's Your Baseline?” short during our little summer break. And this time we're looking at something special.

This is a Shorts about APQC and we had a long episode with Moritz Berger about what that framework is and all of those things. Moritz put in the APQC reference framework into a tool called The Brain.

What I really like with that and the short is mostly a demonstration of what he did and we're talking about what to take in care of when using APQC. What he did was, the tool is not linear; it's not folders and models, etc., but it's connected nodes. And this is where I think the process modeling tools should go.

Anyway, enjoy the show.

(And here are the show notes from the initial release)

This is another What's Your Baseline? Shorts episode and we are following up with the guest from our last episode, Moritz Berger.

Moritz took the APQC Process Classification Framework and imported it into “The Brain” to visualize the breakdown and connectivity of processes to each other. Since this Shorts consists mostly of a demonstration, you might want to watch at it on Spotify, YouTube, or on our website.

And if you like to click through the Brain for yourself, please go here: ⁠⁠https://bra.in/3qzgr6⁠⁠.

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠ or signing up for our newsletter and getting informed when we publish new episodes here: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/subscribe.⁠

This week we release another What's Your Baseline? Shorts for you just to lighten up our summer break a bit. The topic is why simulation should not be in your process mining tool. And I'm fully aware that this is a controversial thing because people might think, “Well, it's convenient to have it in your process mining tool to do some what-ifs and move on.”



But I honestly think it's a bad decision because you're limited to your process mining data, and, hand on heart, how many processes have you mined in your organization? So without further ado, have fun with this week's What's Your Baseline? Shorts. See you next week!



(And here are the show notes from the initial release)



The topic of this What’s Your Baseline Shorts podcast is process simulation and why you should not have this in your process mining tool but rather as part of your design platform.

We speak about these topics:

• Why simulation?
• What do you need for simulation?
• What are the outcomes of a simulation?
• What are the different types of simulation?



Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠ or signing up for our newsletter and getting informed when we publish new episodes here: ⁠https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/subscribe.

Today, we are re-releasing a “What's Your Baseline?” short from about two and a half years ago.

And the topic of today is how to create good dashboards. And I do not think about how to do this mechanically with your tool of choice. I'm thinking about what is the thinking behind it. That might be because I'm currently writing on the chapter about dashboarding and storytelling in my upcoming second book, “Successful Processed Mining Projects”.

So without further ado, enjoy What's Your Baseline? Shorts 6: How to create a good dashboard.

(And here are the show notes from the initial release)

Everyone wants to consume and understand large amounts of data. But how do you plan, design, and implement a good dashboard?
In this What's Your Baseline Shorts, J-M and Roland walk you through the process and the considerations at each step, so that the next time you create a dashboard (for example as part of your Process Mining analysis) it will be stakeholder-oriented with a clear visual hierarchy that will make your users understand your message easily and quickly.

In this episode, we are talking about:

• Identify your stakeholders and information needs
• Define KPI and measures
• Create a solution design
• Build the dashboards
• Identify data stories
• Roll-out dashboards

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to [email protected] or sign up for our newsletter and get informed when we publish new episodes here: https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/subscribe.

We are off for a few weeks, but instead of leaving you without your regular What's Your Baseline? fix , we decided to do something different this summer.

Since we started the podcast almost four years ago, we have grown quite a bit, and back in Season 2 we did a little "side show" and produced the "What's Your Baseline? Shorts" - 15 minutes, one topic, barely an edit.

And this week, we are re-releasing Shorts 1, in which we are discussing the age-old question of "EPC versus BPMN".

Enjoy!

(And here are the show notes from the initial release)

This is the first episode of the What's Your Baseline Shorts series. We are talking about the topic of process notations, especially if you should choose the BPMN or the EPC notation.

High-level topics include:

• What are EPC and BPMN?
• A bit of history
• Specialties of each notation, and difficulties that might arise
• Data exchange with BPMN
• External standards

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠ or leaving us a voice message by clicking ⁠here⁠.

The full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at ⁠whatsyourbaseline.com/shorts1⁠.

The world is changing faster than one might think, or at least it appears this way … and nobody seems to do solution architecture anymore.

And plenty of organizations seem to have given up on planning what they are doing and changing in their system landscape, organizations, processes, etc. But that is wrong. You need to describe the changes so that you can agree on things and everyone is on the same page (and understands the direction, goals, and measurements going forward).

In this episode of the podcast, we talk about:

• A quick review of Season 8, and what happens here at What’s Your Baseline?
• What is solution architecture?
• How does it fit into the solution lifecycle
• Benefits of having a solution architecture
• Where in the organization should solution architects be located?
• The network of solution architectures and how to manage those
• What do you need to do solution architecture in your organization (tools, approach)?
• Elements/steps when creating the solution architecture
• How do you implement this capability (waterfall, agile, devops)?

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to [email protected] or sign up for our newsletter and get informed when we publish new episodes here: https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/subscribe/.

Some folks go to work and are drained before they even turn on their computer, and they cannot figure out why that is when all the aspects of the job seem to be fine — the tasks, the title, the money. What they don't see is that the managers might be the reason, and that the managers miss emotional intelligence — the ability to “read the room” — and cannot adjust their behavior (and therefore are “off”).

This challenge is why we speak with Steve Ponting, who is thinking hard about this topic and is a great advocate for org change management and the way how we as humans behave (and he gives us a brief intro into the three major professional steps that brought him there at the beginning of the episode).

Steve is a strategically minded go-to-market leader at ARIS, and he guides cross-functional teams to position our capabilities with enterprise clients across multiple regions. He is recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice and featured across leading publications and major platforms including CNBC, Steve combines strategic vision, operational acumen, and industry insight to deliver lasting impact.

He's passionate about helping organizations adapt, scale, and lead through change. Having gathered over 10 years' experience in direct and in-direct leadership (managing managers), Steve fosters high-performance cultures, promotes innovation through a fail-fast mindset, and enables cross-functional collaboration.

As a technology generalist, Steve's career spans senior roles across both industry and enterprise software. From serving as an IT Director to leading technical sales teams at portfolio software firms, he has developed a practical understanding of how to connect business needs with technical solutions.

In this episode of the podcast, we are talking about:

• Steve's background
• What is Emotional Intelligence (EQ), and why is it important?
• Is EQ still needed in these times of advanced technology (AI)? What happens with the people, and what are the impacts on the organizations and their customers?
• How to recognize/measure emotional intelligence
• How to get people to develop EQ and the positive benefits — purpose, belonging, and autonomy
• Where will the future go?

Steve can be reached via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-ponting/.

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to [email protected] or sign up for our newsletter and get informed when we publish new episodes here:

Have you noticed transformation fatigue in your organization? The feeling that you run faster and faster, and have to do more with less, while you don't accomplish the results of the changes that you were out for?
Well, one aspect of that might be that you haven't “picked up” the folks in your organization where they are, and now they are working silently against the positive change that you want to instill. In the past, this was a simple concept, but today it is difficult to manage. That is why we invited Neelesh to our show so that he can share his years of org change management experience with us.

Neelesh is an Operational Excellence Leader with 18+ years of experience driving enterprise-wide transformation, automation, and performance optimization for Fortune 500 firms in financial services, banking, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and high-tech.

He's a proven expert in end-to-end process improvement, digital transformation, intelligent automation, and large-scale operational strategy, leading global teams to streamline workflows, enhance efficiency, and reduce costs. Neelesh specializes in scaling process excellence initiatives, integrating AI, process mining, and automation to drive sustainable business impact.

In this episode of the podcast, we are talking about:

• Neelesh's background
• The resistance to change — the “why” … and the lack of a “change muscle” in organizations
• Did the approach to OCM change over the years?
• The change curve and the “never-ending change” today — take a break and celebrate milestones
• How can change be decelerated to a more “human pace”? (Spoiler alert: not likely)
• Best practices in OCM
• Setting up communities / safe space
• The role of managers in change — bottom-up vs. top-down changes

Neelesh is active on LinkedIn and can be reached here: linkedin.com/in/neeleshharmalker.

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to [email protected] or sign up for our newsletter and get informed when we publish new episodes here: https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/subscribe/.

In many minds, legacy is “everything that works”. And even if that is not always true, many organizations look at their legacy systems and get a headache. How do you replace or update a set of systems that have served you so well over years or decades?

That is why we are speaking with our guest Kastin Deal about legacy modernization in this episode.

With over 8 years at Hitachi Rail, Kastin's expertise lies in spearheading IT strategy and digital transformation, aligning with the company's mission towards sustainable technological advancement. At Hitachi, the role involves balancing application, infrastructure, and data project investments and ensuring their alignment with our overarching IT strategy. Kastin's commitment to innovation and process excellence contributes to evolving business models and driving success within a global framework.

Most recently, as the Global Business Architect Lead, Kastin designed and executed the digital revamp of Hitachi Rail Group's business management system. This initiative encompassed strategy execution, process excellence, and enterprise architecture, harmonizing 50 global processes. The responsibilities also extended to product rationalization and the integration of sustainable IT practices, which have been instrumental in enhancing operational efficiency across multinational IT services and lines of business.

In this episode of the podcast, we are talking about:

• Kastin's background
• Definition of “legacy”
• Benefits of legacy modernization
• Alignment of Enterprise Architecture, Business Architecture, and Solution Architecture as key players
• How to get to the desired outcomes in legacy project and what architects contribute to this
• Different views needed when defining the legacy replacement solution
• Use of ArchiMate as notation for solution design

You can reach Kastin via LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kastin-deal-1b22b4203/ and email at [email protected].

Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠ or sign up for our newsletter and get informed when we publish new episodes here: ⁠https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/subscribe/⁠.