Mistakes get lost between departments

A department can do its own work very well, and the operation can still fail.

That happens when nobody checks what happens between two departments.

Inside a team it is usually clear who does what. There is someone responsible, a standard, a rhythm. But work rarely stays inside a single team. It passes from reception to Maintenance, from preparation to the dock, from the dock to the driver, from the night shift to the morning shift. And it is exactly in these handovers, where work changes hands, that many mistakes get lost.

In the hotel: who receives it, who solves it, who closes it

In the hotel, the most visible handover for me was between reception, Housekeeping and Maintenance.

I had cases where a guest reported a problem with the water pressure in the shower. Reception took the complaint, but the technical fix belonged to Maintenance. I also had a case where a bathroom had not been cleaned properly. In that situation, the problem had to be followed up with Housekeeping.

In cases like these I distinguish three different responsibilities:

• who receives the information;
• who solves the problem;
• who checks that the matter is closed.

Often these are three different people. And if the third belongs to nobody, the problem may have been “passed on” to the right department, but the guest does not know whether it has been solved. Neither do we.

Another important handover was the one between shifts. Night Audit took on open matters from the previous shift and had to pass on to the morning shift whatever had not been finished. I have written about that at more length in the essay on the handover.

For the full handover from Night Audit to accounting, with each department's exact responsibilities, I do not have enough confirmed information, so I will not describe it.

In last mile: the chain before the driver

In last mile, the handover points were even more visible.

Outbound prepared the orders. The warehouse and the dock had their part in the physical organisation. Last Mile coordinated the departure. The DSP drivers took responsibility for transport and delivery.

I handled cases with bags that were missing or arrived late, carts that were badly organised, mixed loads and delays during loading.

One concrete example is a bag missing during loading. The rule was that the driver informed the Team Leader and waited according to the procedure, without moving the cart out of the designated area.

That rule handles the moment. But to me the problem has to be looked at earlier too.

If the driver is ready but the order is not complete, the delay shows up at departure. In the report it may look like a driver delay. Yet that does not automatically mean the driver is the cause. A delay can have several causes: late preparation, missing bags, the organisation of the dock, or the driver's readiness.

The place where a mistake is measured is not necessarily the place where it was born.

So when I see a negative KPI, I would not start by looking for someone to blame. I would first try to understand at which point in the process the deviation began. It is the same logic as in Pareto and 5 Why: the number tells you where to look for the problem, not who caused it.

What I will not claim

I have concrete examples of problems at operational handovers. But I do not have a documented case where two departments refused responsibility and the mistake was officially left without an owner. I will not invent one.

Nor do I have a confirmed formal matrix that defined every handover between departments. I worked with SOPs, checklists, instructions and notification rules. That is what this essay is built on.

“I informed them” is not enough

For me, a good handover has to make two things clear: who is responsible for handing the work over and who is responsible for accepting it.

It is not enough for the first department to say: “I informed them.”

It has to be clear whether the other department has taken the matter on, what it is expected to do, and whether there is a deadline.

Information sent is not always information received. And a problem reported is not necessarily a problem solved.

That is why mistakes between departments are so hard to catch. Each team, from the inside, has done its part. One sent it. The other did not receive it, or received it without understanding what was expected. And nobody was responsible for the space between them.

Status, responsibility, confirmation

In the hotel, a structured handover was very important. If a problem was not solved during the night, it had to stay documented and visible to the next shift. That is why I cared that the notes were not just a summary of events, but showed what was still open.

In last mile, what helped were clear notification procedures, contacts with the Team Leaders and coordination between Last Mile, Outbound and the DSPs.

In my view, three things are decisive at every handover:

• Status: where is the work really?
• Responsibility: who has to act now?
• Confirmation: how do we know the handover has happened?

A phone call can deal with the urgency. But when a matter needs follow-up, there also has to be a clear trace for the person or team who picks it up next.

The first question

If a mistake keeps repeating between two teams, I would not start with the question “who got it wrong?”.

My first question would be:

At which point did the work change hands, and what information was lost in that handover?

Then I would look at whether both teams had the same understanding of what had to be handed over. Was there a clear standard? Was the work really ready for the next team? Was receipt confirmed? Was there someone responsible in case of a problem?

If those questions have no answers, then we have a process where mistakes can keep repeating, however good the people are.

The handover map

The tool for this essay is simple. Take every point in your operation where work changes hands: from one department to another, from one shift to the next, from inside to an external partner. For each one, ask the same five questions.

If you cannot answer all five for a point, you have found the place where mistakes will keep getting lost.

In last mile I saw how quickly a problem in preparation can show up as a delay at departure. In the hotel I saw how much it matters to pass a complaint to the department that can solve it, and to document what remains open.

A process does not end when I hand the work over.

It ends when the next team can carry it on without losing the information, the responsibility or the time.