Describe a scenario where a well-run process mapping exercise would change the solution significantly.

1. A common one: a client asks for a complex approval automation because approvals take eleven days on average.
2. Mapping the as-is process with cycle time on each step shows that only a few hours of the eleven days is actual approval activity. The rest is waiting for a weekly committee meeting and chasing incomplete submissions.
3. That reframes the problem entirely. Automating the approval routing would save a few hours out of eleven days.
4. The higher-value change is upstream: validate submission completeness at the point of entry so requests are not rejected, and replace the weekly committee for low-value requests with a delegated threshold.
5. The resulting solution is smaller and cheaper than what was originally requested, and it addresses the actual bottleneck. That is the difference between mapping the process and taking the request at face value.