This is Doral.
It is just east of Miami, Florida.
Right here!
What was the City of Doral’s problem?
Whenever residents wanted to host an event requiring special permits, the process took too long, there were too many steps, too many handoffs, and things got lost.
Why?
Because it doesn’t land with just one person. There are multiple departments and multiple people and multiple touch points.
The internal process for the City of Doral’s Special Events Permits was out of date.
This process had been laboring for years.
The internal workflow had become cumbersome:
- Inefficient internal processing
- Too many handoffs between departments
- Delays caused by outdated coordination methods
Kyle Abraham and Jane Decker tag-teamed this service challenge for the City of Doral, Florida.
The two just led the Innovation Academy session focused on improving the Special Event Permitting process.
Historically, process improvement efforts like this would take weeks—sometimes months.
You know how it goes:
- Meetings upon meetings
- Long email chains that go nowhere
- Scheduling conflicts
- Little to no actual change when it’s all said and done
Instead, the team and the Innovation Academy session brought together 12 contributors for one focused working session.
The total combined staff time?
6 hours and 32 minutes.
Want to see it for yourself? Here is a short video.
That’s it.
Based on estimated costs, the total investment was roughly $314 total…
…only $26 per person for all the discoveries.
In a short amount of time, the team was able to:
- Align around the actual process
- Reduce internal processing time for staff across multiple steps
- Improve coordination and handoffs between departments
- Shorten turnaround times for residents and applicants
- Enhance overall customer experience through faster and more predictable service delivery
Now compare these numbers to how process discovery traditionally went down.
To reach this same level of understanding, Doral likely would have needed:
- 12 staff members
- 2-3 hour meetings
- 4-6 separate sessions
- Weeks—or months—of back-and-forth coordination
This could have taken anywhere from 90 hours all the way to more than 200 hours just to get everyone on the same page.
The Doral Innovation Academy compressed that into 6 and a half.
That’s a 90–97% reduction in time spent on the discovery phase alone.
So what saved all that time?
One of the tools they used was Coco.
Instead of dragging employees into a windowless room for an endless workshop, Coco simultaneously interviewed each staff member individually for about 20 minutes, gaining insight on how the permitting process actually worked.
Then it compiled all of that information into a process map within hours.
From there, the team could finally do the fun part:
Innovation.
By viewing the process from a bird’s-eye perspective, they were able to quickly identify inefficient steps and begin removing inefficient steps and streamlining the workflow almost immediately.
Kyle put it best:
“If process enhancements reduce handling time by just 10–15 minutes per transaction, and applied across recurring permitting activities, this translates into dozens to hundreds of staff hours saved annually, while directly improving service delivery timelines to the public.”
This is one of the main goals of Change Agents Training and rvrwrk.
Compress the time between identifying a problem and solving it.
Because every inefficient process you improve gives employees more time back to focus on the parts of their jobs that actually matter.
Interested in improving your organization? Drop me a line here for a free consultation.
P.S. Interested in seeing how Coco can help you map out your processes in just a few hours? Drop me a line here to schedule a free demo.
P.P.S. June 2026 soundtrack (courtesy of Yugs):