All right, so we're going to talk about process storytelling today. But the first thing you need to know before you do process storytelling or process mapping is what is a process. And actually, we hear this word all the time. But this is a very confusing and ambiguous topic. So it's always good to start here to make sure you know what you're working with when you're actually trying to work with processes. And particularly, we're not gonna be able to get into all the definition today of water processes.

But you want to know enough What are processes so you know, what you're capturing what you're visualizing and what you're actually going to be speaking to. So in this first slide, you're going to see the sort of simple definition of process, which is you have inputs that go into process, which then transforms them into outputs. This is the standard definition, but I'm going to give you another definition today. That's more from the process science methodology. And again, across the science is proprietary to Kathy consulting, but it's something that we're sharing in this course, and I want to get out to share with everyone So that everyone has a better sense of what process is a process is actually going to look more like this, which is energy is the input, that universal input energy goes into process, which then creates value. And what is the difference?

And why is this different, so important when we're talking about what is a process? Well, and the first definition, you could say, based on that diagram, that the definition of process is anything that transforms inputs and outputs. But the issue here is, what happens if the outputs are not good? Or nobody wants the outputs even if nobody wants the outputs of a process? The question is, is the process continue to exist over time? And the answer is no, just to make the conversation a little bit shorter.

The answer is, it can't define process because processes that create unqualified outputs are outputs that don't exist or nobody wants. They don't exist very long. So it's not actually something you observe in the business environment. In nature or in anywhere where you can actually observe processes. So you have to have a qualified aspect to how you define process. So and what you're looking at in front of you on the current slide, energy of any kind, that could be human energy, it could be capital in the business sense.

It could be mechanical energy, kinetic energy. Those are usually subsets of human labor energy. But it's what you would Intuit it's anything any kind of energy that would drive emotion or drive forward momentum. That goes into series of activities, sequences, and transformative physical things that happen in the real environment. And that's the process piece. But what comes out of stable processes is not just outputs its value.

And this is what you really want to focus on in your business, which is value creation, value creation for the client. And if you have a process that's going to be sustained over time, it must create value, it must create benefits in excess of its costs. And that's the definition of value, anything where a process is taking Something some energy informing a benefit in excess of the energy cost and make it. And that's how processes sustain themselves over time. So what you're getting here is the actual definition of process is process is the mechanism that change energy into value. And in this course, we're going to talk about how to capture your processes, how to capture your value creation, so that you can communicate it and it can benefit you and your business.

Here, it's just a list of processes. And what you're going to see here is they go all over the place, preparing your breakfast, brushing your teeth, putting gas in a car, cleaning your room. These are personal processes, but I could also challenge you to name a few business ones. And the trick is you can say anything, because in reality, anything in motion is a process. Anything that takes any sort of energy and transforms it into some value that you do every day is a process. So if you actually want to know what processes process is everything.

Which seems like maybe I made the definition more ambiguous. But in reality, it tells you that there is no one way to say this type of thing is a process, this type of thing is not a process. anything happening in the physical world is a process, because it's happening around you, and you can observe it. And it's not just transitioning out of existence. It's adding value and it's a stable process. Just think about brushing your teeth.

Why do you brush your teeth every day? Why do you put the energy into doing that there's a value there to your energy. The same thing with making breakfast, developing a budget, some of the things on this list. The idea here is that you should start to internalize that everything you touch, everything you do is a process and it can be captured. There can be a storytelling aspect to it. It can be communicated through that it can be managed and it can be improved.

And that's the idea about defining what a process is. So what is a business process particularly? Well, we just went over that everything is a process. A business process is one that comprises your business. So it is specifically the activities, that and the mechanisms that transfer business energy that you're putting in which in the business world we call mostly labor and capital, because capital is a form of energy that drives processes. And then human labor is the other major aspect that drives processes.

So if you're thinking about what is a business process, it's the mechanisms that transform that energy that you've allocated for business activities into customer value creation and the customers being the consumers of whatever your business is, or whatever it's trying to produce. So here the next slide, you see some examples of business processes, so you get a better flavor of what we're talking about sending invoices, creating client reports, logging payments, but ideally, anything anything under the umbrella of your actual business activity is going to be considered a business process. And that brings us to one of the last important points I want to make in this section that I get all the time is, do I have a process Do I have a process? If it's not written down anywhere? What does it mean to have a process or have created a process? This is a huge confusion point, one of the dimensions I mentioned around the definition of process.

And I'm going to tell you right now that if you have a business, or even if you planning a business, and there's activities there, you have a process because it processes everything in motion, whether you've documented it or not, is completely irrelevant. You don't have to write down something. You don't have to write down your plan steps, or your training guides or any sort of documentation to have a process in place. Anything that you're taking your energy and creating something for the business, you already have business processes, they're just waiting to be discovered. They're waiting to be captured. They're waiting to be visualized.

They're waiting to be managed. So you don't want to get in the habit of saying to people, I don't have any processes, because nothing's written down and I think standard I get up and do different things every day. Everything you touch, everything you do is a process. If it's different All the time. It's a very complex process, but what you'll find is when you start writing it down, telling stories about it communicating other people, you'll see an underlying value chain or underlying value activity that you are doing probably more stable and more consistently than you think. So don't be fooled to think that because you haven't put in the work if you don't have any processes, and that's really how we're going to define process for this course.