Jeff Irby is the Principal at Speed with Purpose, a training company with a mission to change the way America works so that businesses thrive, employees perform at their very best, professional and personal relationships are rewarding, and families prosper. Based on thirty years of industry experience, Irby has taught thousands of individuals a unique method that combines work-life balance principles with a corresponding, tangible workflow. Most recently, his titles have included VP of Middle Markets for BearingPoint Consulting and Faculty member for BearingPoint's Yale School of Management Executive Development Program. Irby received his Juris Doctor from Thomas M. Cooley Law School and his Bachelor of Science from Indiana University. More information about Speed with Purpose can be found at www.speedwithpurpose.com. The average information age worker spends 40% of the day processing information, not actually working on the underlying content. Applying Lean principles to your processes can reduce processing time, thereby improving your performance.
The Invisible Processes of the Information Age
You may have heard the terms "Lean Manufacturing" or "Six Sigma", and most likely they were used in the context of improving quality or reducing the cost of operations. While in fact these terms do have their roots in the manufacturing industry, the truth is that both can also be effectively applied to information age companies.
Lean's major objective is to speed up processes, while Six Sigma's is to improve quality as defined by the customer. Applied together, you can achieve faster processes with a higher level of quality.
Today's Challenge
The challenge we face in the information age, unlike that of manufacturing businesses, is that often we cannot see our processes. Oftentimes processes are conversations, emails, or data stored in a software package and/or files that, once combined, result in a defined process. This makes them seem invisible and, in turn, this invisibility makes it very difficult to optimize the process to avoid waste and increase quality.
One of the main measurement tools used by Lean practitioners involves calculating the lead time it takes to complete a process. The calculation requires taking the amount of work to be done and dividing it by the average time it takes to complete the work. This is known as Little's Law. The application of this measurement and the tracking of the results can quickly point you to specific actions you can take to improve your lead time (i.e. the speed at which you complete your work).
Email and Little's Law
If you study the volume of email you receive on a daily basis, you will notice that there is a predictable flow to the timing and volume of the messages. For example, the number of emails you see filling your inbox on Tuesday morning is typically much higher than what you see at 9:00 p.m. on a Friday evening. Over time, you will begin to see a steady rhythm to the daily volume and topics that fill your inbox. Over time you will also be able to track how long it takes for you to respond. It is in this trending data that the opportunity lies for you to to speed up your work with greater quality.
Calculating Your Email Lead Time
Let's apply Little's Law to handling your email. To calculate the numerator (work to be done) at any point in time, record the total number of emails you have in your inbox.
Calculating the denominator (average completion rate) is a bit more time consuming. Review the emails you sent to other people over the last week. Compare when you received the original email to when you replied. Capture this difference in time. Make sure to use the same base measurement for each email (i.e. minutes, hours or days). Next, total the difference for all emails and divide by the total number of emails sent that week. This will give you the average completion rate. Now divide the number of emails waiting to be worked in your inbox by your average completion rate. This becomes your base line for measuring your performance.
Here is an example:
Joe receives on average 130 emails a day. Generally he must reply to approximately 26 of the emails, or roughly 20% of the volume.
Over the last week, he sent 125 emails in response to emails that came to his inbox. In measuring the time that lapsed from when he received the email until he responded, his average completion rate was 4.2 hours, meaning that, on average, he answered an email within 4.2 hours of receiving it in his inbox. Here is what his lead time calculation looks like:
Work to be completed ------ 130 emails ------ Lead Time
Avg. Completion rate -------- 4.2 hours ------- 31 hours
The calculation tells us that 31 hours will lapse while Joe works through the 130 emails to find the ones he must respond to, all while simultaneously tending to his other duties and obligations. If you dig further into these numbers you will see that the vast majority of time lapsed is the email waiting to be answered, not the actual act of responding.
Also notice that most people stop working after 12 hours, which indicates that with a lead time of 31 hours, this means the work is backing up. Most likely Joe will need to carve out a large chunk of time on the weekend to catch up and get his email current. This is a very familiar scenario for far too many people.
Improving Lead Time
Experts in the Lean process will tell you that the fastest and cheapest way to improve your lead time is to attack the numerator, the amount of work to be done, versus the denominator, the average completion rate. This is because improving the average completion rate generally requires investment in capacity (i.e. hiring another person to do your email).
By using some simple email tools and triage rules, you can reduce the amount of emails you must review at any point in time. To continue our example, if Joe were able to reduce his average inbox size to 75, keeping his same average completion rate, his lead time would drop to 18 hours. Drop it to 50, still maintaining the same average completion rate, and Joe now has a manageable lead time of 6 hours.
Without changing any other aspect of how Joe works, if he can keep his daily inbox to no more than 50 emails, he has a real shot at staying current.
Tips for reducing Inbox volume
- Create a rule to automatically delete emails that you consistently delete without reading. Examples are system generated emails such as reminders, report notifications, newsletters etc.
- Use the SPAM filters built into email tools to block junk mail - make sure to report those that get through the filters.
- Create a rule to move emails that you are addressed in the CC: line to a separate folder. Scan the folder once a day looking for topics of interest. Make sure the people who work with you know to address emails properly so you will read them in a timely fashion.
- Ask to be taken off of distribution list for reports or emails for items that you have no interest in seeing.
- By applying these four rules, you should see a reduction in your daily email volume by 50 to 75%. This will then allow you to focus your time and energy upon the emails you must read and act.
If, after doing all of these steps, you still find that your email volume is greater than you can handle, then you must address your capacity. You may have responsibilities that are too broad and greater than one person can handle, and thus they should be addressed in a different manner.
Applying Little's Law gives you a base line of your email lead time. Applying the four simple rules for reducing Inbox volume will help you focus on the work that matters most. Tracking this over time will give you the ability to adjust your approach so that you can do more in less time, and only work on what you most truly value.