A manager asks how to make their admin assistant more proactive. The answer: pick three projects weekly together, block time for email instead of constant interruptions, keep a list of people to follow up with, and end each day counting wins. Small routines compound into real momentum.
Dan Ellison says, how do you keep your admin extremely productive? Their job is to take the reactionary work off your plate and thus can make their day crazy. So how do you make your admin more proactive instead of reactive? I do think these principles apply to admin. Your admin could have if you did this exercise, Dan, and you may already do it, so I apologize if you do. But if you did this exercise, you know, with your personal. The admin that kind of reports to you and helps you be productive. What if you, you each had, you know, you did this together, where maybe you had the same projects, maybe you had different, but at the beginning of the week, you determine which three projects your admin was going to work on, which three you're going to work on. You put your 15 steps in every day, and you make five copies of that. Five for you, five for your admin. Same projects or different. And then you do top six money make. Every day you guys sit together, be like, all right, let's do our top six together, me and you. And then you, you time block those. You say, all right, where are you going? To check email. I know some stuff is reactive and you got to get to it, but, like, how are you going to time block your day? And then what are the things, the people. I use this action item list, like, what are the people you need to hear from and the people you need to reach out today, Ms. Or Mr. Admin. And then end of the day, as you're going through day, man, just count the wins. Positive focus, go big, begin in gratitude or go home. Like, we're doing this to serve people. Write down 10 ways that you served at a deep level today. Like, Dana, I feel like if you did this with your admin every day, the tendency is to do this one day or maybe for a full week, and then you get away from it and you never get back to it. But can you imagine how productive and engaged and just enthusiastic and energetic your admin would be if you took this level of sort of let's do this together. Like, I suck at it. You. You probably have challenges with time management. Let's do this together. My coach challenged me to bring you in on it. It would change the game if you engaged with your admin at this level. And you've got to do it in a way where you're coming at it from a humbleness, right? Where like, hey, admin, I don't have all the answers. I'm not doing this to micromanage you. I promise I'm not, because you're going to decide. You know, obviously we'll decide together which projects are important, but you've got to just carve out your time, right? We've got to focus on money making activities so we can scale this team and there's more opportunity for everyone. And then, you know, I've got to keep you positive. You got to, you got to enjoy this work. I want you to come out every day, be like, man, shit, I ran out of room because I had like 16 positive things happened today. So is that helpful, Dan?
