Principles
A map people are willing to correct.
Process mapping usually feels like being watched. So people tell it what sounds good, and the map is wrong.
Anyone who has sat through a mapping workshop knows how it goes. The manager is in the room, someone is writing times on a whiteboard, and the step that takes forty minutes on a bad Monday goes down as ten. Nobody lies. They say the version that is safe to say.
A map built that way is tidy and wrong, and every decision made from it is wrong in the same direction. Portal only works if people will say how the work really goes, and correct the map when it gets them wrong. These six principles are how it makes that safe.
1. Every figure is a claim.
A time on the map is never just a number. It says where it came from: someone said it, someone counted it, a system measured it, or it is a guess. A guess looks like a guess until someone firms it up.
So nobody has to argue with a figure to fix it. They say what it really is, and the figure changes with its source beside it. The map gets more exact and nobody is caught out.
Booking in
- Check the pallet2 min
- Type pallets into Excel1 min
- Stock count4 h
An example company. The figures are illustrative.
2. The conversation is yours.
When the clerk tells Portal how booking in works, Claude asks a few short questions and the clerk answers in their own words, half-sentences and all. That conversation belongs to the person who had it.
Everyone else sees what changed on the map, in one line: which step got a time, which step is new. Never the questions, never the answers. People can be honest about a bad Monday because the bad Monday is not on show.
A manager seesWhat changed
Cold store clerk timed “Check the pallet” at 2 min; added “Type pallets into Excel”, 1 min.
Booking in is now about 610 hours a year.
The questions and answers are not shown to the manager.
3. The work stays. Who does it changes.
Portal counts work, not people. Booking in is about 610 hours a year of checking and typing, whoever does it. When pallets are scanned at the dock, the work does not vanish and nobody is marked down: more of it is done by tools.
There is no ranking of people, no timer on anyone’s screen, no score per person. Hours are counted by step. That is enough to decide what to build, and it is all Portal needs.
The same 610 hours of work. 70% of it, about 430 h a year, moves to tools.
On the map
- Hours, step by step
- How much of them tools do
- Who knows a step
Never on the map
- A ranking of people
- A timer on anyone’s screen
- A score per person
4. Money is shown to those who decide it.
Everyone sees the hours an idea gives back and how much a step hurts, in the words of the people who do it. That is what makes an idea worth raising, and anyone can raise one.
Cost and payback are shown to the people who decide the budget. An hourly cost beside a step is never far from somebody’s pay, and nobody should have to think about that before saying a step is painful.
The cold store sees
Rank 1: Scan pallets at the dock
- Hours a year back
- 430 h
- Pain
- Numbers get swapped.
- Cost and payback
- Not shown here
Management sees
Rank 1: Scan pallets at the dock
- Hours a year back
- 430 h
- Pain
- Numbers get swapped.
- Cost
- EUR 3,3006 d of work
- Pays back in
- about 4 months
5. Anything can be undone.
A map that 24 people correct every day has to be safe to get wrong. Every change is kept with who made it and when, and any change can be undone.
That is what lets an owner hand the map to the whole company without a review meeting. If a step is moved to the wrong area, someone moves it back, and the history shows both.
Booking inHistory
- Today 07:46Cold store clerkAdded “Type pallets into Excel”, 1 minUndone by you, just now
- Today 07:46Cold store clerkTimed “Check the pallet” at 2 minUndone by you, just now
- Yesterday 15:58Office managerMoved “Receive the truck” to Transport and papersUndone by Owner, 16:12Undone by you, just now
- Monday 11:20First callDrew Booking in with two stepsUndone by you, just now
6. Secrets never go in.
People paste what is in front of them, and sometimes what is in front of them is a password. A note that holds a key or a password is refused, and Portal says why.
The map can still know everything useful about a secret: what it opens, who owns it, when it expires. It never holds the secret itself.
1 A note comes in
The carrier portal key is cp_9f3K-2xQ7-mW4p. I look after it, it runs out at the end of June.
2 It is refused
Not saved.
This note looks like it holds a key or a password. Portal does not keep secrets. Take it out and send the rest.
Held backThe key is hidden and not kept.
3 The map keeps the facts
Carrier portal key
- Opens
- The carrier portal
- Owner
- Transport
- Expires
- 30 June
- The key itself
- Not in Portal
What Portal will not do
Portal will not time anyone, rank anyone, or show anyone’s conversation to someone else. It will not keep a password. And it will not put a figure on the map without saying where it came from.
It starts with one call.
Tell us what your company does. The call becomes the first draft of your map, usually the same day. Your people correct it from there.
What happens next
- FirstWe read what you wrote and book the call.
- Usually the same dayThe call becomes the first draft of your map.
- The first weekYour people correct it in their own words.