How To Use A Process Map To Improve Organisational Output

The more complex organisations that we work with have grown significantly with a lot of moving parts but are still tied to old ways of operating when it comes to their organisational structures. What happens is as a business increases in size, it will also increase in complexity. This typically manifests initially with everybody wearing several hats, more and more positions are  created, and delegation happens gradually. The interactions between workers develop into a complex matrix of roles and responsibilities that becomes complicated to manage and hold to account. 

Process mapping is a simple tool that can have a big impact on untangling this complexity and helping clear out any bottlenecks to growth, as well as improve efficiencies through redesigning processes and procedures and the various interactions between internal and external stakeholders. This will give you, the leader of the organisation, confidence that everything is running smoothly. The purpose of a process map is to allow you to really understand your business in an intricate and intimate way.

What Is A Process Map?

In short, a process map serves much the same function as a map you are following to get to a destination on a road trip. It is a tool to determine where you are, where you have been, and where you need to go in order to accomplish a goal. It is a graphical representation of the individual steps and interactions from start to finish of key operational processes within your business, made up of simple and easy-to-understand symbols which identify points of decision making and hand-off between workers, manual operations, and data inputs and outputs. It may start with nothing more than a blank piece of paper and a pencil. The end result is an intricate map of each step in the process and each stakeholder’s interactions with other internal and external stakeholders. Its goal is to increase the efficiency of the process by visualising it and isolating areas and duplication, redundancies and bottlenecks as a precursor to redesigning and improving the process.

Why A Process Map Is Important To Companies and Leadership Teams

Processes transform inputs into outputs and are a series of steps that it takes for you to reach a particular outcome. The purpose of a process map is to understand the workflow of intricate business processes and procedures and to determine what is working and what is not. These could be inefficient processes or flawed systems, but the important part is determining what to keep, what to dispense with, and what simply needs modification. 

As an example, by mapping out processes, you will be able to determine where the process is being held up as a result of too many people being responsible for, or there is a lack of accountability for the outcome of the process. Or it may be the identification of interdependencies between people or areas of operation, which may, for example, be resulting in inefficiencies in the process if fully prepared workers are being left idle for long periods of time because they are dependent on inputs or decisions being made from another area of operation or co-worker. 

In the long run, reviewing a process map can do wonders when it comes to promoting accountability and streamlining workflows that have become sluggish or fallen prey to duplication of effort. 

Process Mapping: 

• Describes the flow of information, materials, and documents

• Shows the tasks required to move the process along (both significant and seemingly insignificant) 

• Clearly shows that the tasks transform inputs into outputs visually

• Indicates the decisions that need to be made along the chain for efficiencies to flow

• Demonstrates the essential inter-relationships and interdependence between the process steps and how any weakness is the chain could affect the overall process 

How To Build A Process Map

To build a process map is surprisingly simple: you simply ask those that are responsible for the process to describe each step of what they do, from start to finish, who they interact with (both internally and externally to the organisation), who needs to make key decisions throughout the process and what are the key data inputs and outputs of the process.

The overall goal of the process map is to have a very clear understanding of the ‘as is’ process before you embark on designing the ‘to be’ process. Ideally, a process map will be a format that can be easily edited as needed with an archive of past drafts available so that stakeholders can see what was changed, when it was changed, who authorised it, and the purpose that the change was meant to facilitate.

Having mapped out a particular process, it is typical that several aspects of the process will come to light. Firstly, it may identify that there are several people responsible for completing the task. Secondly, it will identify who is accountable or the lack of accountability to successfully complete the task. And finally, it will certainly highlight those people who have various levels of input or impact the process in a more tangential way. All these factors lead to the next and possibly, most critical stage of the redesigning the process; the RACI Matrix.

RACI and Expected Results

So what is a RACI Matrix?  RACI stands for:

• Responsible

• Accountable

• Consulted

• Informed

The RACI Matrix can be easily created in an Excel spreadsheet by listing all the tasks in a process down the left-hand column and all the stakeholders/positions across the top row. Then in each interaction between a task and a stakeholder you designate for that particular task, whether the stakeholder is the person Accountable for the task, Responsible for performing the task, needs to be Consulted before or during the process, or simply needs to be Informed at the completion of the task. An example of a RACI Matrix is shown in the following graphic:

There are some key points to keep in mind when creating a RACI Matrix. There can only be one person who is Accountable for the achievement of the outcomes of the task. This is the key decision-maker for the task and the person “where the buck stops!”.

There may be more than one person Responsible for executing the task, but this isn’t ideal.  Where there is more than one person Responsible, you should consider that the task needs to be broken up into sub-tasks so there is only one person who is Accountable and one person who is Responsible for the task, which may be the same person.

It may be, and in fact, often is the case that multiple people in the organisation will be Consulted before or during the execution of a task or Informed at the completion of the task. The purpose of identifying who is Consulted in the execution of a task is to reduce the number of people to be consulted to only those people who are essential to achieving a successful outcome, rather than canvassing a wide range of people, which will only slow down the decision making processes.

Once completed, the RACI Matrix is a very simple and easily understood tool that can be used to communicate any changes throughout your organisation.

If you would like to find out more about how we can guide your leadership team through a process mapping process to improve efficiencies, please contact us.