Six Critical Workflows
Every person on your team participates in processes and workflows. As small businesses expand, processes become departments, and departments become roles and further it goes until you get down to the nitty gritty tasks in a step-by-step tutorial or manual. And Big Corps love manuals.
But let’s take a step back for a moment and talk about workflows in your small business. Your admin participates in workflows constantly, whether they are well documented or live inside your head. A great admin loves a great workflow. Processes and workflows are their thing. And so we’re tempted to give them more….and more….
Frazzled Admins and Frustrated Bosses
When it comes to admins in small businesses, here’s what I see: lots of unrelated things fall into the admin’s lap and their role becomes fuzzy. Some responsibilities are clearly part of a prescribed process for your business, but others are random tasks. The admin isn’t clear on the priority. As organized as the admin may be, the constant reshuffling and piling on tasks is inefficient and ineffective. This leads to frazzled admins and frustrated bosses.
To avoid the frazzled admin and the frustrated boss, take a close look at the most significant groups of tasks in a typical day/week/month. When analyzing your admin’s roles and responsibilities, identify up to six critical workflows in which they have ownership. This isn’t all-encompassing of their position, but they are the most important aspects of their role that determine if they are performing successfully or not. These are the six, or fewer, workflows that drive the purpose of their position in the company.
Why six?
Through research and personal experience, a role’s capacity is typically limited to no more than six critical workflows. When a role has more than six workflows, the priorities become muddy, the person is spread thin and it’s difficult to have a handle on what they did all day. Having more than six in one role is a sign that your processes are not well defined and you might be falling into the trap of the catch-all admin. In this situation the admin becomes the firefighter, jumping from one emergency to the next, instead of having an organized plan of attack. This isn’t sustainable or scalable. By limiting the critical workflows of an admin to six, you are protecting their time and value while forcing your company to become more efficient and effective.
Sneaky Number Seven
Frequently we have a stellar admin on whom others lean constantly. If Kelly always responds, the team will continue to ask. In the Adminnovate Model House, Kelly has six windows, equating to six critical workflows. Even if Kelly has six windows, there might be a sneaky number seven.
A seventh window starts as a small peephole when someone asks a favor of Kelly. Since Kelly is such a stellar admin, Kelly happily responds to the favor. Then comes another question, another favor, another task, that quickly turns into a barrage of unrelated tasks. The peephole widens to a fully open seventh window that takes up just as much time and energy as a workflow, but has no real process attached to it.
Sneaky number seven is a common issue among strong admins. They don’t want to say “no” when someone asks a favor. They are helpful and supportive and great problem solvers, and that’s why we love them. They need YOU to help protect their house by periodically inspecting their windows and workflows.
When you order Buried in Business, you will receive 4 bonuses, including the Inspection Checklist. This checklist will help you identify small cracks in the foundation before they become threats to your admin’s house, including examining the six critical workflows.,
