How to identify and eliminate busywork

In the past, lean used to apply to just manufacturing but over the last 2-3 decades different types of organizations have sought to apply the techniques to their businesses. Essentially, lean is about identifying and removing waste from your organization. You can also use the same approach to find and eliminate busywork or work that doesn’t add value.

There are 8 types of waste to be on the lookout for:

• Defects – when something is done wrong and doesn’t meet expectations
• Overproduction – when you do something more than what needs to be done
• Waiting – when you are waiting for inputs from others, in order to do your work.
• Non-utilized talent – when your job doesn’t make good use of strengths and experiences
• Motion – movement that does not add value
• Extra-processing – when you touch things multiple times when they could just touched once
• Transportation and inventory are the other two types of waste but have limited applicability in most people’s daily tasks.

At a high level, when you look at what you’re doing, you want to determine how it adds value vs doesn’t add value (non-value add). In some cases, some activities are enablers – they have to be done in order for the value-add activities to occur. For example, this could include steps required to meet regulations.

To get started, evaluate which activities in your job include waste. Then, identify one activity that you’re going to change or eliminate. Identify the root cause for why there is waste and identify options to change it. Build it into your routine and then you can continue down your list.

One of the most common examples is email. Often instead of dealing with an email when it’s first read, people will flag them to go back to them. Instead, you should only read emails when you have the time to respond to them (typically 2-3 times per day). When you read the email, you should take the action required to get it out of your inbox whether that is responding, scheduling time in your calendar to do the task, forwarding, filing or deleting.