How to Turn Process Pain into Progress

Every process-mapping session starts with good intentions. You gather the team, grab the sticky notes, and start laying out how work actually gets done. At first, it’s exciting: Clarity, here we come!

Then you start seeing the gaps. “Oh… I didn’t know you handled it THAT way."

The clarity exposes the pain. The Big Red Stars.

It's ok. This is your chance to leverage curiosity. Remember, mapping a process doesn’t just show how it works; it exposes where it doesn’t work.

Here’s how to recognize the signs of trouble, mark them clearly, and turn what you’ve discovered into focused, actionable next steps that move your business forward.

First, confirm the signals: What's the issue?

What to look for:

• No one can clearly explain what happens at a point in the process
• Only one person knows what happens and they always handle it
• Bottlenecks caused by limited people, equipment, or materials
• Costs piling up due to mistakes or rework
• Frustration because information is missing or late
• Repetitive issues because an earlier step wasn’t done correctly
• Continual customer complaints about a particular step

If you see any of these, you have an issue worth marking.

Big Red Stars: Mark the pain

As you map, tag every pain point with a Big Red Star. Make it obvious. When the wall is covered in stars around a single team or handoff, you are probably looking at a structural problem such as understaffing, unclear roles, or missing training.

Tip: Use the same icon and color across every workshop. The visual pattern is half the insight.

After mapping comes triage

Write an issue list with enough detail that someone new to the process could understand it.

For each issue, capture:

• What exactly breaks
• Where it breaks in the process
• Frequency and volume
• Who feels the pain
• Evidence: sample defects, timestamps, screenshots, dollars

Keep the descriptions crisp. “Quotes sit 48 hours in review queue because only Sally Sue can approve discounts above 15%.”

Prioritize: Pain Matrix vs. Relief Matrix

Score each issue with two sets of questions.

Pain score

1. How much is the issue costing us?
2. What happens if we do nothing?
3. What is the risk of customer impact or safety impact?

Relief score

A. How much will it cost to fix?
B. How long will it take to fix?
C. How certain are we about the solution and effort?

Place items into a simple 2x2:

• High Pain / Low Relief Cost: Low hanging fruit.

• High Pain / High Relief Cost: Needs a project plan.

• Low Pain / Low Relief Cost: Create a checklist.

• Low Pain / High Relief Cost: Park and monitor.

TIP: A low-pain issue you can remove this week beats a high-pain issue that requires a six-month platform change that's not in the budget.

Turn priorities into action you can track

For each selected issue, create an Issue Card:

• Problem statement
• Current impact (cost, delays, defect rate)
• Root cause hypothesis
• Proposed countermeasure
• Owner and supporters
• Start date, target date, check-in cadence
• Success metric and target

Common traps to avoid

• Jumping to tools before clarifying the problem
• Solving for one hero instead of building a resilient process
• Declaring victory without updating SOPs and training
• Ignoring upstream causes because they belong to “another team”
• Measuring activity instead of the outcomes

Make the improvement visible

Close the loop with the same team that helped map the process:

• Show the before and after metrics
• Point to the stars you removed and the ones still under review
• Celebrate quick wins and name the owners who made them happen
• Publish the updated process map and SOP links

Visibility builds trust. Trust fuels adoption.

The real key ingredient: Take next steps

Mapping is, albeit important, only the first step. The value is in the next steps you take:

1. Publish the issue list and scores
2. Confirm owners and check-in dates
3. Launch one quick win and one pilot
4. Put the follow-ups on the calendar

If you do that, your Big Red Stars start disappearing. More importantly, teams feel the difference in their day-to-day work.

Questions to leave with your team

• Which star would customers want us to remove first?
• What is the smallest change we can test this week?
• If our fix works, how will we make it the new normal?

Curiosity maps the problem. Discipline removes it. Ready to pull a Big Red Star off the board? We're here to help. Contact us now: askquestions@insightfullycurious.com.