Mapping one process end to end

Pick one process and follow it from the first trigger to the last step, on paper. An order from enquiry to delivery to payment. A patient from arrival to discharge to billing. A repair from drop-off to collection. One process, all the way through, with every hand-off, every wait, and every point where the work sits in a pile.

Do it by following real instances rather than by asking people to describe it. Descriptions give you the official version, which is tidy, short, and not what happens. Following five real orders gives you the actual version, and the difference between them is where all the useful information lives. Time each step, roughly. Note who touches it and how many times it changes hands.

Then hunt the exceptions specifically, because they are the real system. Ask what happens when the usual person is away, when a customer wants something slightly different, when stock has run out, when the payment is short. In most small businesses the exception path is not rare at all — it is thirty or forty percent of the work — and it is entirely undocumented, held in one person's head, and the reason nothing can be delegated. A map that shows only the happy path is a map of a business that does not exist.