11 minutes
Drawing the handoff map Six columns, one page, and the path the person travels rather than the chart of who reports to whom. How to draw it, and why the first draft should go out before it is right.
What you’ll be able to do Draw a six-column handoff map for one real process, showing each change of hands, what moves, what the person is asked for again, how long the wait is and what the person hears during it. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: Where should the mapping work start? Document a next step for Drawing the handoff map: Draw the path for one process on a single page, in the order a person meets it, and send it to the other named owners with one sentence asking them to correct your version of their step. Map the path, not the organization chart A coordination problem looks entirely different depending on which picture you draw. Draw the organization chart and you see units, leads and reporting lines. All of it is accurate, and none of it tells you where the work stalls. Draw the path the person travels, from their first contact to the answer they finally receive, and the picture changes: a short chain of steps separated by long, undocumented waits.
Keep the map to one page and six columns. It should be readable by someone who does not work in your unit, and it should be written in the order a person meets the process rather than in the order the units appear on a chart. An hour is usually enough for a process you already know well, and considerably longer for one you only thought you knew.
Two cautions. First, completion times reported unit by unit will not reveal the seams, because each unit starts its clock when the work reaches its own queue; the days between queues belong to nobody. Second, your first draft of another unit's step will be wrong in some detail that matters to them. Send it to them anyway, early, and ask them to correct it. The point of the draft is to be corrected.
The six columns, and what belongs in each Step and named owner Name the person, not only the unit. Contracting is not an owner; a named contracting officer is. If nobody can name the owner of a step, you have already found something worth writing down.
What moves, and in what form The request, the decision, the file, the approval, the money. Note the form it arrives in, because the form decides whether the next unit can use it or has to rebuild it from scratch.
What the person supplies again Every piece of information the person has to provide a second time. Each repeat request marks a seam where something did not travel, and repeat requests are where people quietly drop out.
The wait, and what the person hears How long the work sits between units, in days, and what the person on the other end is told during that time. In most processes the honest answer to the second half is nothing at all.
Who could be excluded here Name people and situations, not categories. Someone who reads in another language. Someone who cannot call during business hours. Someone whose rent is due. An organization with no cash reserve. Categories are easy to agree with and hard to act on.
First fix, owner, next review point One change, one name, one date already on somebody's calendar. A line with no owner is an observation, not a fix.
Whose burden is this, and is it even true? The request sits in a shared queue for eleven days between the program unit and contracting.
Choose a category A handoff the division owns A wait the person absorbs An assumption worth checking A grantee delays payroll for a month while an invoice is corrected and resubmitted.
Choose a category A handoff the division owns A wait the person absorbs An assumption worth checking Counties will pass the change along to families, so a separate notice is probably not needed.
Choose a category A handoff the division owns A wait the person absorbs An assumption worth checking The plain-language version is written from a draft, and the final legal edit is never sent back for a new one.
Choose a category A handoff the division owns A wait the person absorbs An assumption worth checking People who do not answer the second notice are most likely no longer interested.
Choose a category A handoff the division owns A wait the person absorbs An assumption worth checking A family loses an unpaid day of work for an appointment rescheduled twice while two units settle who approves it.
Choose a category A handoff the division owns A wait the person absorbs An assumption worth checking Check matches Reset Send the draft before it is right What you can change You control whether your map arrives as a question or as a verdict about somebody else's work.
What to watch for Do not present another unit's step as a finding in a meeting they are not in. The map will be argued rather than corrected, and you will lose the people whose help you need.
Your next step Send your draft to each named owner with one line: this is my understanding of your step, tell me what I have wrong.
Private reflection, for you only: think of a handoff you are part of every week. How might your role, your authority or the words you choose decide what the next unit assumes? Nothing you write here is collected, stored or seen by anyone.
Carry this forward Map the path the person travels, not the organization chart. The two pictures rarely look alike, and only one of them shows where work stalls.
Six columns are enough: the step and its named owner, what moves and in what form, what the person has to supply again, the wait and what they hear during it, who could be excluded here, and the first fix with a name and a date on it.
Step times reported unit by unit hide the seams, because each unit measures from the moment work reaches its own queue. The days between queues belong to no one and appear in no report.
A map is a draft until the other owners correct it. A map that arrives as a question gets corrected; a map that arrives as a finding gets defended.
A scenario about shortening the time to a decision, a sorting exercise that separates a handoff the division owns from a wait the person absorbs, and a knowledge check on what unit-by-unit reporting cannot show.
Draw the path for one process on a single page, in the order a person meets it, and send it to the other named owners with one sentence asking them to correct your version of their step.
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Previous lesson Next lesson Carry this into practice Most public-service work fails between two units rather than inside one. Four lessons on the seams where work changes hands, ending with a handoff map you fill in for one real process you touch.
Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
