Value Streams - The Tool AI Experts Don't Know They Need

"I have never heard a single AI thought leader stand on a stage and say the words value stream." Mark's observation cuts to the heart of a strange disconnect: while AI dominates every conversation, the people building AI futures don't seem to know about one of Lean's most powerful tools—and the people who do know aren't connecting their expertise to AI possibilities.

Mark anchors this exploration with Stephan and Niko, asking why value stream thinking might be more relevant in an AI-disrupted world, not less. Niko identifies a split in the AI conversation: personal productivity (prompting, tools, typing faster) versus end-to-end thinking. The former dominates; the latter is where organizational impact actually lives. "By the end, it's AI. It's a tool, and if I use it as my personal tool, I will not help my teammates and my value stream."

Mark's epiphany came working through Anthropic's delegation model—mission, sequence of steps, how AI helps each step. "And then I went, well, actually, this is just a Value Stream Map." AI thought leaders are reinventing tools that already exist. Stephan imagines AI-powered real-time mapping—systems that show how work actually flows rather than how people think it flows. The traditional two-day war room with all functional leaders? "I've never managed to get that collection of leadership together for two days," Mark admits. AI might finally bridge gut feeling and reality.

Niko pushes toward bigger ambitions: don't just use AI to optimize individual steps—use it to see the whole picture. "We call this transformational thinking—think about how you change the whole process or parts of the value stream, and not optimizing it." His takeaway is blunt: "AI without value stream thinking is just a hype."

Niko's jiggle asks what Disney movie captures AI meets value streams. Mark goes straight to The Sorcerer's Apprentice—powerful tools that go catastrophically wrong when wielded without understanding. Stephan sketches a Wall-E-inspired tale about a burned-out process engineer and an AI named Flow. Niko's creation features a hero whose power is connecting specialists to see the whole picture.

The episode surfaces a gap hiding in plain sight: AI experts optimizing algorithms while missing systems thinking, Lean practitioners holding powerful tools they're not connecting to AI. Whether you're building AI solutions or wondering how AI fits your value streams, this conversation asks the question few others are asking.