Every family has its memorable characters—the people whose wisdom, humor, or blunt observations stick with us long after the moment has passed. In my family, those voices belonged to my father, Dick, and my grandmother, Betty. Their colorful sayings, or “isms,” left a lasting imprint:
- “You have champagne taste on a beer pocketbook.”
- “You have two ears and one mouth. What do you suppose you should do more of?”
- “Use your head for something besides a hat rack.”
Over the years, I developed a few “isms” of my own. They often surface when I work with teams and clients, especially when we uncover habits or thought patterns that stand in the way of operational excellence.
At the top of that list is one of my most important principles:
Email is not a process.
Understanding the Difference Between Communication and Process
To understand this concept, it helps to examine definitions:
- Email: A system for sending messages electronically from one user to one or more recipients.
- Process: A series of actions or steps taken to achieve a particular end. A true process is continuous, measurable, and produces a repeatable result.
These two definitions share only one element: sending an email may be an action. But it is not a repeatable, trackable, validated series of steps. Therefore, an email is not—and cannot be—a process.
Yet across many organizations, especially those striving to increase efficiency, email is used as a substitute for structured workflows.
How Email Chains Masquerade as Processes
When documenting processes with clients, I often hear descriptions that look less like workflows and more like communication trails. A typical “process” is explained as:
- Email a group of people.
- Wait for responses.
- Email again if necessary.
- Hope that the right action is taken.
This approach has major flaws:
- There is no way to confirm whether the required steps were completed.
- There is no ability to measure how long tasks take.
- There is no mechanism to ensure tasks occur in the correct sequence.
- There is no accountability beyond reading and replying to emails.
What you’re left with is not a process—it’s a string of messages with no guarantee of execution.
A Common Example: Employee Status Changes
Consider something as simple—and as critical—as updating an employee’s status for military leave.
In many companies, the steps look like this:
- Someone emails HR, payroll, and scheduling to notify them of the leave.
- The email triggers multiple follow-up messages (“email babies”), asking for clarification or confirming changes.
- Some recipients miss the message entirely.
- Some fail to take action.
- Others update the information days later, or not at all.
If no one verifies the end result, the employee may remain listed as active even while on leave—creating compliance risks, payroll errors, client coverage gaps, and more.
The email chain may or may not achieve the intended result. What it will do is clog inboxes, create confusion, and introduce unnecessary risk.
Reevaluating Your Internal Workflows
When you examine your own processes—big or small—ask these essential questions:
- What is the intended outcome?
- In what timeframe must the result occur?
- How will progress be tracked and validated?
- Where are the potential points of failure?
- Which steps are essential, and which add no value?
A productive exercise is to map your workflow visually. A whiteboard diagram often reveals broken paths, excessive steps, and opportunities to reduce waste.
When the process is clear, measurable, and auditable, you gain efficiency. When it depends on a string of emails and human memory, you inherit risk.
Elevating Your “Isms” for Better Business Performance
The sayings passed down by my father and grandmother were timeless, and they still apply today. But as we navigate increasingly complex operational environments, we must adopt new “isms” that help us think more strategically.
And one of the most important is this: Email is not a process.
When organizations move away from email-driven workflows and adopt structured, automated, and measurable processes, they see improvements in accuracy, efficiency, accountability, and overall performance.
It’s one of the simplest shifts you can make—and one of the most powerful.