Spotting Value, Spotting Waste ◾ 35
Frequency-Based Organization
The main reason that paper and documents metastasize in the
office is that most people’s filing systems are inadequate to
manage the different types of information that flow through
them. The systems never get much more sophisticated than
“one of these things is not like the other.” For example, people
sort all contracts, purchase orders, and invoices by client—one
giant file for the Henderson account and another giant file for
the Sanchez account. They do the same for the various meet-
ings and committees they attend, for personnel records, and
for special projects they manage.
Intuitively, this makes sense. You wouldn’t want the
Henderson invoice to get lost inside the Sanchez file ...