Lean Thinking – Eliminating Waste in Email Management
Jan 13, 2025
by intelli
in Education and Training, Technology
What Is Lean Thinking?
Lean Thinking is a used to make any process easier, simpler and faster. Lean thinking is most well known in the manufacturing and engineering industries, but its principles are applicable in every business. In fact, most businesses in various industries use lean thinking to improve their processes and bottom line.
How Lean Thinking can be implemented in E-mail management?
We usually receive many emails daily, which consumes our effort and time. So normally we postpone taking action on the emails, which results in WIP.
Many unread emails waiting in our inbox take up space and make the mailbox look cluttered. Due to our busy schedule, we may forget to reply to the emails waiting in the WIP.
A cluttered mailbox filled with unwanted and unread mails is similar to a cluttered workstation or table.
Eliminate Waste in Email Inflow
Whenever I receive an email, I ask “Is this email value-adding for me?” An email should either give me required information or knowledge related to my interest or in any way useful for my work for it to be value-adding.
If it is not value-adding, I take steps to stop receiving those emails immediately. I, either unsubscribe or inform the person to remove me from CC. By this step, I eliminated more than 50% of the inflow of emails. I do this step continuously.
Eliminate Waste in Email Outflow
Some emails go to and fro many times between people. This takes more time and effort of the people involved, which is a waste. Mostly it is due to a lack of clarity in the information being shared.
To solve this, I usually ask, “Do I need to have this conversation via email?” So mostly, I have one-on-one discussions either in person or via call. This eliminates the time in checking and drafting emails and send the required information with less effort.
If the information needs to be sent via mail, I double-check before adding anyone in CC or BCC. In this way, I try to eliminate waste being sent to my colleague’s mailbox.
Implement 5S
I categorize the emails and move them to the respective folders or categories. Being organized reduces the searching time for a particular email in the future.
Implement One-Piece Flow
After these basic steps, I follow a one-piece flow strategy. Instead of processing emails in batches, I try to process the emails as I receive them.
It is not like I check my mailbox every second. But I take action on all the emails I see whenever I open the mailbox.
I receive different types of emails. Management emails, client emails, reports, inquiries, automated update emails, reminder emails, marketing emails, newsletters, etc., require different types of action. The action can be anything like just read to get information, reply, forward, delete, schedule the reply time, etc.
I follow this process because I believe that “If I do not have time right now to decide on an email, then I won’t be having time to process a batch of emails together later.”
Eliminating waste continuously and implementing one-piece flow helped me to manage my emails effectively.
Nowadays, I don’t have my mailbox filled with numerous unread emails (WIP) waiting for the action to be taken. This helped me save storage space and prevented me from missing any emails.
Applying Lean Thinking will make any process easier, simpler and faster.
Have you made any improvements to reduce your effort and time in managing emails?
