Episode 013 - 🤖 PPT, ESSA and the Trap of Automation Crap

Let’s be honest: Improving processes sounds straightforward.

Just remove the friction. Train your people. Add some automation.Done, right?

Well — not quite. Because in practice, process improvement is messy. We often don’t even know where the real problems are, how they arise, or what the actual root causes are.And when we try to fix things blindly, we risk making them worse.

That’s why this week’s episode of Processes Unleashed takes a step back and looks at what really helps:

The three essential levers of change — summarized as PPT:

• People — enable and support them

• Process — remove waste and rework

• Technology — automate where it makes sense

But here’s the catch: Automation is tempting. Especially when teams are stuck copying data between systems or managing approvals manually.

But automation alone is NOT a strategy. It’s a tool — and like any tool, it can either fix the problem or make it worse. That’s why we need a clear decision framework.

In this episode, I introduce one: ESSA

A four-step logic to decide what to automate — and when.

✅ Eliminate what doesn’t add value

✅ Simplify what remains

✅ Standardize how it’s done

✅ Automate only when it’s clean, safe, and predictable

It’s a simple principle — but one that helps avoid the trap of automating chaos. Because once a bad process is automated, it gets harder to fix, not easier.

🎬 Episode 13 is now live: “PPT, ESSA & the Trap of Automating Crap”

And yes — the title says it all.

Enjoy the episode, and see you next week!

Until then: Free the Process.