Feel the Noise: Is It Draining Your Organisation’s Time?

How much time is your organisation losing to inefficiencies that fly under the radar? In the XeP3 method, we call these hidden inefficiencies "Noise." It’s the process waste you don’t often see but feel every day, measured in the time your team loses dealing with non-value-adding work. Research shows that, on average, nearly 38% of your processes are consumed by Noise. That’s two days a week lost to duplicated efforts, fixing mistakes, and chasing loose ends.

Noise is caused by failure in your processes—the little things that go wrong, slowing everyone down. It’s far more widespread than you might think. Every organisation has a "happy path" process—the ideal flow of work that should run smoothly. But how often do things really go perfectly? When something breaks or doesn’t happen as planned, it pushes customers and employees off that path, creating Noise. The frustrating part is, this disruption often stays hidden, making it hard to identify and fix.

Some of the biggest household names—banks, major retailers, hospitals, and logistics giants and more —have relied on Noise data to drive transformative process improvements. By pinpointing inefficiencies, these organisations have been able to drastically cut waste, improve customer satisfaction, and boost overall performance. XeP3's approach has been instrumental in helping them understand and act on their Noise.

Let’s break down the main culprits of Noise: the "5 C’s"—Checking, Correcting, Completing, Chasing, and dealing with the Consequences of earlier failures. These activities might seem like necessary steps, but in reality, they’re red flags that something isn’t working as it should. The more your team spends time on these, the less time they have for productive work.

Can you just stop doing Noise? It’s not that simple. In many cases, Noise acts as the temporary "glue" holding your processes together. Without it, your customers would feel the pain immediately, likely getting frustrated when things break down even further. So, while removing Noise sounds easy, the reality is more complex. You need to find a way to fix the process without causing chaos.

The XeP3 method helps organizations uncover and quantify their Noise. Once you can see where the inefficiencies are hiding, you can take action. In fact, XeP3 has proven to help reduce at least half of the Noise within processes. Imagine what you could achieve with just half the wasted time you have now. Your staff would feel the relief, your customers would notice the difference, and you would save both time and money.

You can’t fix what you can’t see. Start by asking yourself: What’s your Noise level? The answer might surprise you.