Email is not a database
When important information lives only in someone's inbox, it's invisible, unsearchable to the team, and one delete away from gone.
Inboxes quietly become the system of record for things they were never meant to hold — approvals, decisions, customer details, the only copy of an important agreement. Email is great for messages and terrible as a database, yet a lot of critical information lives nowhere else.
Inboxes are private silos
Information trapped in one person's email is invisible to everyone else, unsearchable by the team, and tied to that individual. When they're out, or they leave, or they just can't find the thread, the information is effectively lost. It's the tribal-knowledge problem in digital form.
Move records to where records belong
Decisions, approvals, and key data should live in shared systems built to hold them — findable, durable, and not dependent on one inbox. Email can be the conversation, but the record it produces should be captured somewhere the whole team can rely on. Treat the inbox as a hallway, not a filing cabinet.
If the only copy of something important is in an inbox, you don't have a record. You have a hostage.