Interview with Sam Druschak

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Dr. P. Dr. Wayne Purnell, the breakthrough success coach and your powerful presence mentor. Welcome to One Sharp Sword cutting through to what Matters Most. I'm your host, Dr. P. Dr. Wayne Purnell, the exponential success coach and the president of Dynamic Leader Incorporated. Today, this episode, we've got an amazing gentleman. He helps organizations achieve maximum efficiency in business processes and energy flow. And it sort of sounds like, what? Why would I listen to something geeky like that? It's because these things are generalizable. Like every time you look at the way something's done, you get to see, wow, is there a way that I could actually do it better and also enjoy it. Sam Droschik is going to talk to us about how he does this with organizations and I'm going to pause him along the way and have some comments about how you can use those processes, those processes in your daily life, no matter what you you're doing. So Sam Droschek has. He's the co founder and the chief process scientist at Truval. Sam, welcome to One Sharp Sword.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, pleasure. Here's what I would love to do. Talk about kind of what you're doing now, why that fires you up, what Truval is all about, why you founded it. Let's start there. And then I'm going to wind back the clock and go, you didn't wake up to do that. So, like, what happened? How'd you get there?

Absolutely, yeah, I'd be happy to share. So for me, I am, my passion in life is process science, as boring as that might sound on the onset. But I'm a total nut about everything to do with process, understanding them, analyzing them, studying them. So this is something I've been doing for now, the entirety of my career. And why Truval, Why now? Trueval is a software company and after having consulted on the edge of process science, applied process science for many years now, I've decided to try to use put that knowledge into software products so we can really scale it because consulting can only get you so far. And I'd really like to share the insight and share some of these process science techniques with the world. So we're really trying to democratize this knowledge through software solutions. And it really, I look at it as a natural extension of me exploring and sharing the knowledge I've gained in the space. And that's why I'm at trouble today.

That's awesome. Well, you founded Co Founded Truville. So I mean that's, you don't, you don't do that unless you actually really, really, really believe in it. So good for you. And this is a kind of an international thing for you because when you talk about democratizing it, you're basically saying it could go anywhere, everybody should have access to it. So when we talk about process science, like, you know, my background, clinical psychology, into executive coaching and organization development, and when I was doing or development, we did our share of process mapping. You know, here's something and this, how many touch points are there and all that stuff. For those that aren't familiar with the actual mapping of a process, can you just talk us through the basics of what you do to process map and why would we want to do that? Sure.

So process mapping, I'd like to start here. When people talk about what is this process mapping and why do we care? Process mapping is the most effective way to capture and structure process data.

It is.

And people love data right now. Right? Like that's not, that's not a non intuitive thing. You know, people pay for data. Data is, is the goal of business right now because we want to be driving our business decisions based on data. So when you look at a process map as the most efficient distilled form of processed data, it's not really far fetched to say it's absolutely critical to have this competency to be able to draw visualizations that represent robust process data, which is really to say you're representing the operating, it's the data that describes your operating reality in a given business. Cont. And when you have that data, good process data, good quality process data, then it leads to what you can do with data. So you can analyze it, you can create inferences, you can find the results based on those analyses and you can make better informed decisions and you can really use those decisions to drive process improvement, process strategy and generally business success. So what is process mapping? It's really the structured capture of process data to be used in process methods to manage your processes better overall.

Amazing. I, I'm, I'm still writing. I just think it's, it's great, the structured capture of process data, which is a horribly geeky thing to say, you know, it's great. Yeah, the whole idea really, you know, what you just said really boils down to we take information, we watch how things work, we get metrics on that information and we put it into a picture of sorts. We draw what we see. Right. And, and that when you talk about a visualization you're talking about. We represent it in a way that it's not just a bar graph, it's actually how big is something, how many touch points does it have? How, like along those lines. So just for an example, I'm going to share really fast, like one of the process mapping pieces that I did at a major organization and they were struggling with the, with the issues of it is taking too long. And that's why people look at process mapping. It's taking too long. We, we know it's not efficient, but we don't know why or where. And I had about 30 people in front of a gigantic, gigantic wall and I had them each use post it notes to put like what is it that they do and where? Creating a timeline. Where is it that they do what they do? And then I had yarn and we connected. How many times one piece of information or one piece of a process was touched? Well, I have to process it when it comes to me, then I send it out, then I process it and then I send it out, then I process it. And we found out right when you do that, you find that there are certain pause points. So I just wanted to describe that because a lot of our audience doesn't do process mapping. And so to kind of give an example like that I think could be very helpful. How do you like, if you have examples from a recent contract, you know, or somebody you've worked with, where you're like, okay, this is the kind of typical person or place we would come in, that'd be great.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad you gave an example because I was just about to go there myself. It makes what I was talking about way less abstract. So I appreciate you injecting your own experience and I'm happy to also give another use case, please. Process mapping is. It really is. Like you mentioned, you can do it on the board, you can do it with post its, you can do it with whiteboard, you can do with pen and paper. There's not really a strong standard for this. It's really just drawing pictures to represent process data, data. And a lot of times the process mapping I'm doing now in the spaces that I'm working in is simply just people asking the question, what is the process? That's usually what this work serves. And I'm drawing a flowchart kind of like you did on the whiteboard. And it's really just using the same language that I use for most of my clients. But it's nothing more than interviewing, doing elicitation so going. And I oftentimes in the virtual sense, I don't get all these 30 people in a room anymore. Especially post Covid, we'd usually do this on one, on one sessions where we're having a conversation, asking about their day, asking about their flow, how much volume is moving through their process, asking about the details, getting, like you said, the basic five W's of telling a story. Who did it, when is it happening in sequence, where is this happening, what's going on, why is it happening this way? And really then taking that and drawing an accurate picture that represents what's going on in an organization. And I think for most of the clients now that are really engaging in this work, they've scaled out their decentralized geographically, they're heavily digitized now. And a lot of times people just can't see the process anymore. So there is a tremendous value in just having somebody document it. And it may seem fairly, fairly basic to say, what is my process? And just have somebody come in and write it down. But that's most of the use cases I've been doing when I'm still engaging consulting because people just don't know what their process is anymore.

I think that's huge. You know, one of the things obviously in coaching, which is what I do, it's very similar in that what we bring as an outsider is perspective. Right. The, the saying that I use is you can't ask a fish what water is like because the fish has no reference for. Not like it only knows water. Right. So something a perspective of, oh, well, here's what it looks like above that. I do that in, in people's lives. You do that in organizational process. And I think a way to bring it back to kind of a human level for any of us to be thinking about. It's kind of like when you wake up, what's the process by which you get to breakfast? And there are multiple things that you do, right. You, you may put on slippers, you may brush your teeth, you may hit the bathroom, you may start coffee, you may skip breakfast, you may stand at the fridge for 10 minutes looking at what's available. All of that is part of what you do when you bring. When you come to a business or like an organization and you're like, well, here's this thing you said you had trouble with what happens to get there. Right. Like you're curious basically.

Yeah. A lot of people, it is the most fundamental step, which is what are we doing so that we can analyze it.

Yeah.

And that's the biggest problem. And like you said, if you take the example of getting ready to brush your teeth or getting ready for breakfast in the morning or whatever it is. If I hired five consultants to come into your house and observe you doing your breakfast routine, and then I told them to draw out that process in a visual or in any way they wanted, I guarantee you get five different documents, completely different. They would focus on different detail levels. We might use different conventions, different shapes, different colors. So now imagine you're trying to get a perspective in an organization where there's thousands of people working simultaneously trying to achieve a goal, and they're working in different places and they're working with different systems. And then you're hiring people to come in and say, draw this picture out. And you expect. Oh, that's the simplest part. No, it's actually the most complex part because it's a very robust data set. It's a very complicated data set to describe what somebody is doing. Try it on your own process. Try to write down yourself what you're doing in the morning.

Exactly.

And then see if you can explain it to somebody else. It's. It's something that people consistently underestimate is the point I'm trying to make. And I think bringing focus, even in a conversation like this is super critical, that you can't move anywhere if you don't know where you're at. And it's a. It's a really common problem in businesses and also people's personal processes.

That's huge. Most people will say, yeah, I sort of want to get there. And they have no idea what their foundation is. Right. Like setting a gps. A GPS can get you there if you do three things. Set where there is. Figure out where. Here is what your starting point. Because GPS can't get you there if it doesn't have a starting point. And then take action, move right. So it can do course correction. This is, you know, when you talk about a robust data set, it's. You're saying that everybody has their own perspective. And your job is to sort of filter through what everybody is telling you about the way a process works.

Right. Process data is one of the most confused data sets. It's like you said, everyone has a perspective. So part of my job is. Yes. To decide what is the most likely perspective that's going to get the best ROI with people working with it is really, I would say, the practical answer. Because you could take anybody's perspective and say, okay, as long as it's maybe somewhat accurate, you could work A project from that point. But really what I try to do in my career is if I'm going to describe a process, how can I do it in the most universally understood process language? That's also would have to align with a more human centric language. Because the biggest thing about process data is if I draw a very colorful diagram and it takes me 10 hours, but no one can read it but me and I have to explain it to every single person that I show it to, the utility of that document and that 10 hour exercise is very low and the process work gets very stymied very early on. So it's more so even than whose perspective is right. It's how do I communicate a perspective in a way that other people and stakeholders from different parts of the organization could all pick up that document and understand it. Because ultimately, like the communication and the working with process data is largely a communication exercise. At the end of the day, it has to be. You have to be very strong in encoding data, decoding data and making sure that everyone who's part of the project can understand what's going on.

Are you using your language and teaching people what that is, or are you using the organization's language and adapting the former?

So for me, I find that most organizations don't have a standard process language, as shocking as that may sound in the context of this conversation. That's why even if they do, most of the times it's immature. So a lot of the value that I think comes with my consulting work and what I've tried to work on throughout my career is I do have a standard language. I teach it, and sometimes I don't have to teach it. I just show up and I use it and people understand it intuitively. And I think that's validation that it's effective. But yes, I come loaded with my own language. It's the language I use with clients and it's also language now. I'm now building into software tools so that everyone has access to it.

That's great.

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so talk a little bit about the software tool and I also have a question for you before you do that because I think this ties to everything. You've written a book called Becoming a Conscious Business and I'm assuming I haven't read it. I'm assuming that it focuses on how to use data to actually become aware. Is that close?

It is close. It's a close assumption, absolutely. Yeah. It's really, it's a book about my journey to understand process science as a discipline and it has a lot of my personal life in it. But it's absolutely what you say the punchline is. Consciousness comes with self awareness and self awareness for an organization is really having transparency to all the processes that really form an organization. So all of these concepts are interchangeable and we could definitely spin off into a very heady or cerebral conversation about organizational processes and consciousness. But yeah, you pretty much just guessing, you put it right on the nose there.

Well, I'm, you know, I'm with a background in organization development and a love of philosophy and existentialism and hermeneutics. It's kind of like what a great combo you've got. So that's awesome. So talk a little bit about what the company does, your company Truval and what does the software do? How does it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask something that's gonna sound crass and I want you to just go, well, here's how the difference, here's what the difference is. Sure. Why Truville and why not Chat GPT?

Yeah, how's that? That's perfect. So I'll answer that first. And I think, you know, and it's funny how many times I assume that most, you know, software founders right now are getting the same question. Why are you not just ChatGPT? It's probably a very common question in the space right now.

Yeah. So I believe.

And unless chat proves me wrong, I'm gonna, I'll be. If it's so, I'll be out of business next year. So this is just my presumption. My presumption is that the tool we're making is fundamentally for humans and is not yet automatable by any artificial intelligence that exists on the market. And that includes ChatGPT. So ChatGPT is incredibly advanced in terms of compiling data to answer research based questions and being able to pull all that data. But the issue with process data, right now, it's the most immature data field that I would say exists in any business domain. So I'd say in 10 years, if we were using the tools that I'm offering and people are out there structuring really great process data, putting it into process data repositories, then ChatGPT is going to be one of our biggest partners, because then it could use that data and really do some really neat things. But that data doesn't exist yet because the tools to really get that data set at good quality haven't existed yet. And that's really where we come in. So we're creating a process mapping tool that's meant to create better quality process data. I like to make the analogy that if this was just a general science, let's say it's biology. Think about people studying bacteria before the microscope. There was a lot of work being done in that field before the microscope. People were doing a lot of inference and they were using macro observations with their eyes or whatever they had available to just infer what was happening at the bacterial level. But then that data got so much more standard. When we had a microscope that had fixed views, you could do 10 times, you could do 100 times, you could do a thousand times. And suddenly now scientists around the world could look at a standard level of, of magnification and they can make observations, they could compare them. So this is really what we're looking at in the process space right now, which is there really needs to be a revolution of tooling so that people can use the same tools and get comparable data sets. Until there's any data, ChatGPT or any artificial intelligence, which even the most advanced forms are just using existing data faster and better than we are to create conclusions. They're doing analysis more so than anything else. Truval. And everything we're doing right now is the very fun foundation of collecting better data so we can do cool things in art, in automation, in artificial intelligence. So that's what really we're up to right now, which is creating tools so people can go out there into the field and collect process data. And no one's really doing that right now.

That's great. That's really great. What size organization do you target? And is it something that a, a just a person in their daily life? You know, what if they wanted to just find a way of maybe getting 20 minutes a day to exercise or. Right. That it's like, well, finding your process during the day would actually allow you to do that. So I'm trying to come up with ideas about how could somebody, how could anybody just use this? And then if there's an organization out there that's like, oh, dang, you know what? We've encountered these problems. We've had bottlenecks. We should probably look at process. Like, what's your ideal in terms of business Customer.

Yeah. So I'm going to disclaim what I'm about to say by saying marketing is absolutely my Achilles heel in business. So when you ask me things like what's my target market? And I say, oh, I love everyone who uses tool, that's where I marketing person usually hits me on the head and says, that's not the right answer. And that's not a good marketing answer.

Yeah.

So both of the use cases you came up with excite me. I would love for people to use this personally. The tool would be available for you to map your own daily process and start to find waste opportunities for improvement. Get a better process. I call it process vision. So starting to see your world in process and all the way up to the biggest enterprises at scale being able to use this in their process engineering center of excellence. Being able to use this on large project work. The foundational language that powers the process tool is the same. So anyone can use this obviously for the sustainability of our company so we can do more research and grow more. I would love to get some great enterprise clients, but I would also love to get data from people using it for everyday personal process improvement. Their own business applications. I love it all.

I think that's great. And you're not marketing to everybody at the same time, Right? Anybody could use this, right?

Yeah.

Just like there are time tracking tools out there. It's like, well, what did you do between this time and this time? I did this, this, this. Okay, well, don't do that anymore. No, it's like, okay, what if you do, you know, you're on your phone 400 times a day. What if you. Right. And, and you would come up with basically being able to point that out, like, here are, here's the congestion point. You get to make choices about that. Right.

So just like you said when you went into the businesses and you did this kind of work and you know, the whiteboarding and you know how people come together and they create the process for you even when you're doing it personally. Like you just mentioned tools about. Okay, we know that you're on your phone this many times a day because we're measuring it. We know that people tend to do this, but those presume your process. It presumes that most people are similar personally and that the process is something that they can offer solutions to without actually knowing your process. This is one layer behind that. Right. It's basically saying if you really want to improve your life, you need to build this muscle of what is my day to day process, what precedes what and what causes what, what are my habits formed like? And look at it like you'd like look at a business process. It's a fascinating thing. And, and, and I think that yeah, it's, it's not as much here's a solution, fit it into a problem you likely have. It's really just what is your process. And just to look at it. Because once you're looking at it, I love your fish and water analogy. When you're in it, you can't really see it. But as soon as you put it on paper and you can look at it, you become a third party to your own process and it gives you a tremendous amount of insight.

There's no other reference. Until you make yourself the reference, you put it out there. That's great. You talk about being or achieving maximum efficiency in business processes and energy flow. And I think that's where there is a broad appeal to this. It's like, well, how do I spend my day? What do I do? And because I'm a huge fan of can you reflect on like where you spend your time, your energy, your money, you know, like what's in your calendar, where are you spending your money? Those will tell me your values. But also write down what you really do around besides what's on your calendar because that's going to tell your true process in your life. And where your. You talk about efficiency and energy flow or maximizing it, it's like, yeah, energy gets jammed up anytime you stop. Like you, we toggle from one task to another. I mean, every time that happens, we're losing, we're losing momentum.

Right? And I'd love to hear how you've probably worked with energy in the coaching sense quite a bit. You know, if you talk about people personally, what is energy? But I'll say energy is very similar between organizations and people. So when I talk, people ask me, well, hey, that sounds very abstract. What is energy? What are you talking about when you're measuring it? Energy for the organization is mostly capital and human labor. That's going to be the way that I encourage people to think about energy in the business context because where that moves is what drives process motion? What drives change? But it's no different personally. What's the analog to you personally? You mentioned it. It's money and your time, your own labor. It's still human labor and capital. Money is nothing but energy. So when you look at your own processes, where is your labor going on a day? Where's your money going in a given day? That's the heat map for your process. What you care about, what you're drawn to. The value and the things that you're making move in your reality. It's no different from businesses and maximizing that energy flow for throughput at the end of those processes, where you're putting energy into, hopefully you're getting value out the other side. So we want to maximize flow and get as much of your time and as much as your money flowing and make sure it's not blocked. That's how we become super productive and we maximize value in our lives.

It's forward flow with a directed outcome because we can be really efficient, be pointed in the wrong direction, which a lot of people are. It's like, oh, I have so much time. I'm gonna go watch cat videos or whatever. It's like, that's a really bad use of time. So is worrying, right? So when. When people ask me about energy, I'll. I'll be talking about, you know, where. What are you focused on during the day? Are you focused on positive throughput? Are you focused on that outcome that you said you were after? Or you focused on the anchor that a lot of people get drawn back toward, which is, I don't have enough money. I don't have enough time. I don't. You know, I'm worried about what this person thinks or that person thinks. And that's a. That's kind of a waste. That's like, that's a dissipation of energy instead of a. A positive use toward, as you call it, throughput, which, like, having an open pipe to get to this endpoint is amazing. So it's been a long time since I've. Since I've been in the arena where this language is like, oh, that's the typical language. So it's great. It's great, Santa. It's great to hear you just sort of like, there it is. So what's next for you? And, you know, how can. How can people find you? What should. What else should people know? Like, oh, do you want to talk about the book at all? Is that something that. That you would like people to read? Or it's like, no, I just got it out there if you want to read it, whatever.

Yep. So on the book, probably more the latter, it's. I tell people, you know, I, I had to write that book for my own process. I, I went through some real breakthroughs in that book. I'm not going to say it's a work, work of literary art. If you want to read it, you may get something out of it, but it's really up. You're watching a point in my life where I had so many things going on and I had to get it on paper and I had to. I had to get it into a project where I could share with other people as part of my own. My own journey to understand process and understand the science of it. So, you know, I think any author would probably embarrass to say, like, this is the best thing I've ever written. Please, you know, read it as soon as you can. I think you may enjoy it, but I also think it's very. It's very exploratory. So I guess just be warned. I love the book. It's very dear to me, but don't expect, you know, like a New York Times bestseller. As far as where I'm so.

So here's how I. Here's how I categorize that. It's like it's my baby and I think it's precious. Awesome, right?

Exactly. Yeah. That was a much shorter way to say what I just rambled on about for, you know, all good.

I have a few books out there, and so it's sort of like they're not for everybody. Yeah, there are very specific people that will, that will actually pick them up and go, oh, my God, that changed my life. And, and that is what I wrote them for. And I know they're not for everybody, so it's like it's. It's my baby. I think it's precious. Awesome.

That what you said. That's how I feel about my, my book. So. Perfect. Take that where it goes. Yeah, it's very dense also. We'll go. We'll leave it at that. As far as where you can find me, Sam Draw Shack. You can find me sam@trugal.com. you can find me on LinkedIn. There's not a lot of draw shacks out there. I might be the only Sam Draw Shack on the whole Internet. So I invite you to find me on LinkedIn. Email me at the company or just look us up@Trueville.com so where we are in our journey, just to let Everyone know we're about to launch our very first product. So we're, we're a very early stage startup and we're about to put our first process mapping tool out there. So if you'd love to be an early adopter and sign on and, and join our early tribe to kind of get your hands on it, we'd love to have your feedback. So there's an early weightless signup and there should be a release this year, but other than that, just reach out. If you're interested in process science, you're interested in consulting work, process mapping. I love to talk about process all day, every day. So whatever's on, apparently.

No, that's. That's great. Like, you're really good at it. And, and there is this love that comes through. I've had my share of encounters. You know, I've been doing it for four decades, and so I've had my share of encounters of people who are just so cerebral, they've lost the. The connection to, like, the heart. Why are they doing it? And it's like you do it out of curiosity, out of love, out of a true desire to elevate those, you know, that could use your tools. It's like, that's so good. You know, I just get that sense about you that there's a connectedness versus a. Well, of course, you know, kind of the absolute, objective, removed piece of. Well, of course. If that's data, then it must be this, right? It's like, how exciting. This is live data, right? We get to look at it.

I appreciate that and I really feel heard by that comment because honestly, I. It seems like it can be a very dry subject. But as you said, I love it and I love sharing it. It's a really. It's a discipline that's going to grow through mutual understanding and through sharing with people. And I think that's super crit, and it's something that's really helped me not only professionally, but also very much personally. And I'd love to share that with other people through tools, coaching, conversations, whatever, whatever it takes. So I appreciate you saying that, and I absolutely feel that way.

That's great. That's great. Well, it comes through. It comes through to me. And, you know, I. I think part of my role is in doing podcasting is to guide a conversation and also to. To interpret, you know, and. And I get to talk about what I see in the people I'm talking to. And it's so good. You've got such a big heart and a gigantic Knowledge base. Holy cow. So amazing. Really great. Let me just say it's Sam Droshack. D R A U S C H A K. If you want to find Sam on LinkedIn or the socials and truv, the company that he's been talking about is T-R-U-V L E dot com. So find Sam because he's got so much to share and he's available. But you don't get geeky. Nerdy, Are you. Do you consider yourself more geeky or more nerdy?

More of a nerd.

All right, so you don't get really nerdy. People who are like, going, call me, talk to me. We'll have a conversation. It's great. It's awesome. Really good. Sam, what else would you add to this, if anything? What didn't I ask? Is there anything else that. That you wanted to share?

Not off the cuff. I thought it was a fantastic conversation. And like we mentioned in the episode, I'll just leave a parting thought, which is please start writing down your processes, whatever they are. Use pen and paper. Don't be afraid to do it. It really can be life changing. So just write it down and take a look at it.

It really can be life changing. It's true. It's really true. You know, we don't realize how much of any given thing that we do during a day and how many times we. We could be more efficient. And it's. You know, I use the example of breakfast. It could be loading a dishwasher, washing the dishes, whatever. It could be. You know, how many times do you go to the sink before you actually wash the dishes? And that could be for better or worse. Like, it's. It. It could be anything in your life. And the small stuff can add up to the big stuff. And that's, I think, what Sam's point is. All along this way. Good. Sam, thank you for being here. Appreciate you.

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

It was great. All right. Very good. Sam droshek has been my guest today. This is one sharp sword cutting through to what matters most. I AM your host, Dr. P. Dr. Wayne Purnell, the exponential success coach and the president of dynamic leader incorporated. We will see you here next week. If you like this episode, please rate it, please comment on it. Look forward to all of that from you and please share. You know, we. We want to spread the word about not only one sharp sword, but also process mapping. All right, we'll see you here next week. Thank you. Thank you for listening to one sharp

sword cutting through to what matters most

with your host, Dr. P. Dr. Wayne

Purnell, the breakthrough success coach and your powerful presence mental.