Mapping craft
When efficiency maps mislead teams
A tidy diagram can be the most expensive fiction in the building.
Process efficiency mapping earns its keep when it surfaces friction. It fails when it becomes interior design for governance packs. Below are three patterns we see repeatedly in GB organisations — and how analytics cannot rescue them.
1. The happy-path swimlane
Every box has one arrow forward. Exceptions live in someone’s head or in a side chat. When cycle-time data later shows wild variance, leaders blame “people not following the process.” The map taught them the wrong process.
Fix: draw the override path with equal ink. If it feels embarrassing, you are getting warmer.
2. The system-centric blueprint
Boxes are named after applications, not after work. “CRM → Finance ERP → Warehouse WMS” looks modern and explains almost nothing about who waits. Analytics bolted onto system events then optimise interface latency while humans still chase email attachments.
Fix: label steps with human verbs first; systems become annotations, not the spine.
3. The averaged future state
A future-state map promises fewer steps without naming the policy or contract that created the extras. Business analytics then tracks a target that was never funded. Morale drops; the map gets archived.
Fix: pair every removed step with a decision owner and a date. If neither exists, keep the step on the current-state map and mark it as constrained.
What good looks like
A useful efficiency map is slightly ugly, dated, and argued over. Numbers hang from specific segments. Sponsors can disagree with a step without claiming the whole picture is invalid. That is the standard we rehearse in Mapping Lab sessions and the flagship studio.