The email overload solution: Scarcity, discipline, and information markets

By: Kelly Thul and Jeff Grimshaw

The volume of email that most of us receive in a day intrudes on our time and saps our productivity. In this article, we’ll outline a simple solution that can completely resolve this problem. Honest.

Information Markets

Information is a critical resource in organizations. Its distribution, consumption, supply, and demand all behave in ways that reflect economic principles and market forces in action. So, using an economic model to analyze the behavior of “information markets,” we can identify the forces behind the email problem and resolve it.

Email overload is a problem today because the sender faces no cost or consequence. Email is quick, easy, and, occasionally, effective. (You can’t build trust via email. You can’t innovate via email. And you can’t build coalitions to get things done via email. But because it’s so convenient, lots of people try.)

Like a Soviet factory churning out tractors according to a five-year plan, we use email to push information into already clogged distribution channels largely oblivious to the actual demand for the product and the costs of production.

What do we mean by “costs of production?” As any CIO can attest, the IT costs associated with supporting email communication are significant. Then add in the time that employees spend reading useless emails and the cost of losing the opportunity to have a few key messages resonate clearly in your organization. Email might be free to the sender, but it isn’t really free.

Accordingly, the email overload problem will never be resolved until we fundamentally change the way that the “email economy” works, so that the invisible hand of the market can work its magic.

Scarcity is the key

There is no scarcity with email. With no scarcity, there is no discipline. And with no discipline, there’s bad behavior--and tons of email.

Economists commonly refer to this problem—-where the lack of scarcity pits individual interests against the common good—-as the “tragedy of the commons”—-a term that has its roots in shepherding. Garrett Hardin, who popularized the term nearly 40 years ago, described a pasture shared by local herders :

The herders…wish to maximize their yield, and so will increase their herd size whenever possible. The utility of each additional animal has both a positive and negative [outcome]:

[So] the individual herder gains all of the advantage, but the disadvantage is shared between all herders. Consequently, for an individual herder…the rational course of action is to add an extra animal. And another, and another. However, since all herders reach the same conclusion, overgrazing and degradation of the pasture is its long-term fate.

And “Therein is the tragedy…,” Hardin concludes:

"…Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit—in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”

Yes, Hardin possessed a melodramatic flair. But if you replace “herd” with “email output” above, is it any less true?

In looking for ways to address the “tragedy of the commons” that plagues the market governing email flow, we can take guidance from an important trend in the field of environmental protection: The creation of markets for trading “pollution credits.” In a nutshell, the approach involves establishing a limit on the amount of a particular pollutant that can be emitted in a specific area. This artificial cap on emissions creates scarcity and produces incentives for industry to reduce the amount of pollution it produces—and studies show it’s working.

We see no reason not to extend the same proven principles to email. Fixing the problem is pretty simple. Introduce scarcity into the email environment and behavior will change.

The solution

1. Make email a privilege, not a right
2. Assign each email user a unique ID
3. Allocate a specific monthly quota to each ID
4. Put system controls in place to enforce the quota
5. Sit back and let scarcity work its magic

It CAN’T be that simple!

Yes it can. Markets are powerful and self-correcting environments. Create an “information market” and it solves the problem.

Further, the building blocks to make this happen are surprisingly achievable. Any self-respecting email server administrator could write the code to accumulate total emails sent by user before lunch—and still get in a good game of Warcraft.

And when it’s in place people will go through a quick cost/benefit analysis prior to sending an email. This is a VERY good thing.

Isn’t “email education” really the answer, instead of this draconian approach?

First, the approach is more Keynesian than draconian. Second, email education is not as simple as it seems. Want proof?

Even in organizations with intelligent employees who’ve had a big dose of email education, the following scenario occurs about once a year: An employee accidentally sends a communication to a 100 person email list where the content is clearly not relevant to the recipients.

100 inboxes go “ding” and this prompts the following responses in sequence:

Please remove me from this mailing list
(reply all… 200 dings)

Whee… this is fun!
(reply all… 1200 dings)

Now, if an email quota was in place, Mr. “Whee this is fun” would have been forced to decide if adding his two cents was really worth reducing his monthly allocation of emails by 100. In fact EVERY person in the death spiral of email replies (including the instigator of chain) would have been faced with the cost of their actions. They all face a cost that is real, has consequence, and would result in the desired behavior far more effectively than any education could ever hope to achieve.

And that’s not all…

The benefits of the quota system extend far beyond a more manageable inbox. If you know how many employees you have and the monthly quota for each, you are one simple multiplication away from pegging your internal email traffic EXACTLY. Kinda simplifies mail server planning, doesn’t it?

And, near the end of the month, individuals with a surplus of unsent emails could make a tidy profit by selling them to the “scarcity-challenged”--basically an in-house email eBay.

In summary

This can be done. It will solve the email problem. If you agree, consider telling your friends about this approach. Here is a spiffy “I love email quotas” graphic you can use to promote the concept.

If you have comments on this, please feel free to email the authors. Depending on where we are at with our quotas, we might respond back. But we are definitely going to think about it first.

Kelly Thul is the director of Enterprise Internet Solutions for State Farm.

Jeff Grimshaw is a partner with CRA, Inc.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are strictly those of the
authors and are not attributable to their respective employers.