A manager at one of my clients came up to me at the end of a meeting. I had been talking about some of the factors that was stopping us from delivering on time and one of them was not making decisions in a timely fashion. Many of the people in the meeting put up some of their arguments about why they had so little time and email came up repeatedly. So, I asked them a qualifying question: "How quickly do you need to respond to your emails?" They largely looked at each other, rather than responding. I continued by asking them whether they were processing their emails in a systematic fashion, or being distracted by their email program (with their 'helpful' pop ups telling you that you have new messages). I got a mixed response to my question and observation, but a couple of them got the point I was making: email is a tool and you get to choose how to use it. In Lean manufacturing there is the reference to 'just in case' manufacturing; product being m