Flagship · Eight weeks
Operational Grid Mapping
A cohort for people who will still be on the floor on Monday. You bring one live process. We refuse to map hypothetical futures.
What you leave with
Not a laminated poster. A field book of the trail your chosen job actually takes, a named list of waits, and one proposed cut with the conditions under which it would fail.
Participants typically supervise operations, service desks, dispatch, or back-office queues in Australia. We cap cohort size at twelve so the critiques stay specific.
Listed fee for the open cohort is AUD 4,850 per seat. Private run-throughs for a single organisation are quoted after a call. This page does not take payment.
Modules
Week 1 — Choose a job that stalls
We disqualify vanity processes. If nobody is waiting on it this month, it is not the subject.
Week 2 — Walk the trail
Shadowing notes, timestamp harvest, and the first grid sketch. No software required beyond what you already use.
Week 3 — Name the waits
Queues become first-class objects. We separate idle time from rework time because they need different cuts.
Week 4 — Dual systems
Official tools versus the workbook that actually runs the week. You estimate the tax in hours.
Week 5 — Constraint reading
Load, policy, habit. One of these is usually wearing the others’ clothes.
Week 6 — The single cut
You propose one structural change. The room tries to break it.
Week 7 — Conditions of failure
Write the circumstances in which your cut should be reversed. This is the unglamorous week.
Week 8 — Hand-back
A briefing your manager can argue with. If they cannot argue with it, it is still too vague.
Instructor
Maren Holt
Maren spent a decade in plant operations around the Hunter before opening the Bolton Point studio. She teaches from field books, not from a certified toolkit. She will not map a process she has not seen in motion, which occasionally means a cohort week is spent on-site instead of on video.
Questions we actually get
Do you implement the software that comes after the map?
No. Operational Grid Mapping stops at a decision-quality picture of the work and one proposed cut. We do not configure ERP modules, rewrite core systems, or staff a PMO. If you need that, we will say so early rather than stretch this programme to look like it.
Can we send people who have never supervised a queue?
They can attend, but the exercises assume you can obtain timestamps and walk a live job. Analysts without floor access struggle in week two.
Is the fee refundable if our process is the wrong subject?
If we jointly decide in week one that the chosen job is not stalled work, we stop and apply the unused weeks under the refund policy. We would rather lose a seat than invent a process.
What is the real limitation?
This programme will not rescue a team that cannot spend three hours a week on observation. Reading the notes is not a substitute. If your calendar cannot protect that time, wait.
From people who sat it
Week seven felt like homework. Writing failure conditions for our “fast track” lane showed we had designed a VIP queue, not a fix. I would have skipped that week if Maren had allowed it.
Clearer than the last lean event we hosted. Still too little time on policy constraints for a public-sector room.
Ask about the next cohort
Tell us the stalled job you would bring. We reply within two working days.