Time-waste represents a significant drain on a businesses resources.

Some sources put the financial loss as high as $759 billion yearly. Most reports point to generally un-surprising culprits: employees spending time surfing the web, checking their social networks, making personal calls, etc.

However, if theres’ anything my ten years as a Lean and Six Sigma consultant have shown me, though, the problem is usually deeper than we think.

When my husband was getting his citizenship, I learned firsthand just how complicated and time-intensive this process can be. His application was bounced from department to department and back again: Immigration to Health to Justice to everything. It was a long, exhausting process that felt like it would never end.

As frustrating as the age-long process can be, the scenario is a complex one: information is handed from person to person to department to department and back again. Each hand-off is susceptible to time drain; the more hand-offs, the greater the potential time loss.

Swim Lane Diagrams

In these situations, building A Swim Lane diagram really helps brings clarity – and highlights where those hand-offs take place. Also called a cross-functional diagram, it provides rich information on job responsibility, addressing, who, what, and when.

Here’s how you build one:

1. Focus on the specific process you’d like to address – and use this as the title for your diagram.
2. List the participants in the process, and assign them to a ‘swim lane’, with the customer (if applicable) at the top row.
3. Diagram in the process flow, using arrows and shapes.
4. If necessary, break the the diagram into smaller, more easily manage-able pieces (i.e. pre-intake, intake,  pre-treatment, treatment, etc…)
5. If possible, indicate times for each node on the bottom of the diagram with the cumulative totals within each phase.

Breaking down your process to this level of simplicity and clarity is a crucial first step to eliminating pockets of time waste. As you’re looking at your chart, remember that whenever the flow of information crosses from one lane into the next, time can potentially be lost.

So… how effective can a Swim Lane diagram be? Well, a few years ago, a mid size manufacturing business brought me in to help shorten their hiring process. At the time, it took roughly 9 months for them to successfully identify and hire the right candidate. 9 months!

• That’s 9 months of a team working at reduced capacity.
• That’s 9 months of increased expenses.
• That’s 9 months of awkward, bulky, ad-hoc procedures.
• That’s 9 months of employees working in a limbo state.

Creating a swim lane chart was the critical first step in solving their problem. Through lots of hard work from dedicated individuals, we trimmed the 9 month process to 6 weeks.

So, which processes do you want shortened?