Let’s talk about windows
I talk a lot about windows for your admins. The windows are the workflows, or the parts of your company’s processes, that your admins are responsible for.
For example, let’s say your company cleans houses. You have a process for new customer sales that starts with lead generation and ends with a confirmed sale. The admin’s workflow is to receive the information from the sales person, update your internal database, generate the quote and email the quote to the customer.
Visualize this:
The admin is in their house with a Sales window wide open. Information about the customer floats in. The admin follows their workflow. A quote is emailed out. In a perfect world information floats in and out of your admins’ windows calmly and in an orderly fashion. The ball is never dropped.
Reality
Let’s face it. Information rarely floats in and out of admin windows in an orderly fashion. It flies in! Or it’s jammed in by customer, vendor or company demands. Or it comes in bit by bit, incomplete, forcing the admin to leave their house and chase information to complete their workflows. Sound familiar?
You’re not alone. In fact, this is the reality for a majority of small business owners, and, let’s face it, some large businesses. If that’s the norm, what’s the problem? Don’t we hire admins to keep us organized? While it might be true that you hired an admin because you need to focus on other aspects of the business, having defined processes promotes scalability and transferability.
What’s worse than messy windows?
The purpose of this article is not to harp on the need for defined processes and workflows. The purpose is to visualize the reality of your windows so you can contemplate something worse than messy windows…
What’s worse than messy windows?
Visualize this:
An admin is hired at the same cleaning company. When they arrive at their cubicle, they receive a stack of customer information sheets. The sales associate comes over and says “alphabetize these and then give them back to me.” That’s it. Their only job today is to alphabetize the customer sheets and give them back. Nothing more is ever explained to the new admin.
In this example, the admin is not working in an admin house with a Sales window. This admin has no real windows. What’s worse than messy windows? No windows.
I have a riddle for you…
What building is:
small
stuffy
has no windows and
is full of crap?
An outhouse.
If your admin is stuck doing the crap you don’t feel like doing, without a real purpose or contribution to the process, then they are in the outhouse. For goodness sake, give them some air and open a window!! You’re wasting everyone’s time if they aren’t making a meaningful contribution to the process or company.
Do you know an admin working in the outhouse?
