In our latest episode of Test. Learn. Grow., we are joined with Tom Nassr, Co-Founder and CEO of XRay Tech to talk about how process automation can elevate your business.
Rather listen than read? In this podcast episode, Myles and Allyn talk to Tom Nassr, Co-Founder and CEO of XRay Tech about automating processes that will make your company more efficient and your employees freed up to do more mindful work.
Path to Process Gold
As an automation and process expert, Tom Nassr still uses his philosophy background every day. That is to say he asks a lot of questions as the Co-Founder and CEO of XRay Tech, a company that helps automate processes so humans can do creative and strategic work and robots can do the rest.
He gets to ask questions like: Why are we doing things this way? Why aren’t we doing it differently?
Tom works with companies to intentionally craft patterns of behavior. These patterns fall into two buckets: patterns of behavior a company supports and patterns of behavior a company disincentivizes.
Work for Humans vs. Work for Robots
It’s easy to assume that every decision needs to be a human one. It does not.
Tom says we really only do 3 things at work:
- We get ready to do work (make a list)
- We actually do the work
- We tell other people we did the work
Not everything on this list requires brain power. To call something robot work requires consistency and repetition. Identify the tasks that are the same every time you do them and that require the same chunk of information. That’s robot work.
When you automate and assign consistent and repetitive work to robots, it frees humans up to be creative, which calls for contextual understanding of a situation. That’s human work.
Preparing Your People for Automation
People are often resistant to automation changes. There is a fear that automation is replacing humans. But Tom says, automation only amplifies humans. Automation acts as a magnifying glass on the people and processes you have in the system. When you design an automation process right, it will help humans divide and conquer. Implementation requires trust so leadership is tasked with creating the organization’s cultural shift toward automation and framing it to be more palatable so it will be embraced by everyone.
Automation Considerations
Tom suggests starting by identifying the person in your company who is bottlenecked. Then figure out how to amplify their time. He also advises to start small. Start with building something for yourself that would help you in a small way first. A person gets better by learning how to build small things first. After you feel comfortable with small automations, you can then try and scale them across your company.
For a deeper dive, we recommend listening to the full podcast episode! If you want to learn more about how Level Agency is using automation, let’s talk!
