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# Map the Pain, Not the Process
- URL: https://bigecho.co.uk/articles/map-the-pain-not-the-process/
- Published: 2025-10-06T09:49:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-20T11:27:15.000Z
- Description: Use the Five Why's technique to move past current ways of working and drill into the root cause behind team frustrations.
- Author: Tom Parson
- Tags: Plays, #illustration-card, #colour-red

**Instead of mapping how work should happen, gather your team and map where it hurts.**

This play is for when:

- You all agree something needs to change
- You're faced with a 'blank page'
- You need to avoid repeating old mistakes

## How to Play

### Step 1

Rather than trying to 'start at the end' and come up with a new solution, instead, start with what you know all too well: the pain.

Each team member contributes one or two key points. These could be:

- A pain you're facing
- A bottleneck you're experiencing
- A workaround you're using

You can do this using post-its or a virtual whiteboard like [Miro](https://miro.com/?ref=bigecho.co.uk).

### Step 2

Review the contributions together, and ask yourselves the question:

> “Why is this happening?”

Spend 10 minutes as a team discussing. Write down one or a few answers.

Next, take your answer, and ask again:

> "Now, why is *this* happening?"

Again, discuss as a team and answer the question. Repeat this process until you've asked "why?" 5 times in total.

### Step 3

Once finished, you should have a list of root causes to the pains your team are experiencing.

Finally, prioritise these together as a team.

## Why it works

Teams are often too close to their routines to see where effort is being wasted. Focusing on pain points rather than formal processes surfaces what people quietly tolerate and rarely question.

This is called the [Five Whys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five%5Fwhys?ref=bigecho.co.uk) and is a technique used to really drill down into the root cause of something.

Rigorously asking "why?" ensures any superficial causes are picked apart until you arrive at a problem really worth solving.

## Use it to

- Identify where new ideas can remove friction
- [Spot low-effort, high-impact improvements](https://bigecho.co.uk/articles/how-to-prioritise-with-a-weighted-matrix/)
- Build empathy between teams that rely on one another

****How did it go?**

If you try this play I'd love to know how it went for you.

I want Big Echo's plays to be the go-to source for sparking new thinking in teams. If you think this play can be improved, let me know!

[Get in touch ](https://bigecho.co.uk/contact) 

## Read the Story

Read more about the importance of mapping pain over process in our innovation story, below.

[ 139 days of admin saved annually Smarter ways to connect with investors ](https://bigecho.co.uk/innovation-stories/139-days-of-admin-saved-annually/)