Life and Work Balance

Admin Gal has been a busy person.  Her duties as an admin and her extracurricular writing duties has created a dilemma. 

My simple truth is I have become to busy to update my adventures as a admin on a regular basis.
So, I am taking the time to say thank you to my regular readers.  I can't tell you how much I have appreciated your support.

I promise to update the adventures when I can.  Please come and visit my other site, writeami.wordpress.com, to catch up on the latest adventures.

Thank you again for your support.

Staying on Task

Admin Gal has been running amok the last several weeks.  Projects to run, people to manage and chaos to sow.  With all this fun, it has been hard to stay on task.  The 'to do' list is lengthy and the writing illegible.

Yet, with out the almighty task list, little things might fall through the cracks.  So, what's an Admin to do?  Make a list, check it twice and be flexible to bend in the wild whirlwind that is the job.

Life of a Mushroom

Admin Gal is a mushroom.  Buried deep in the minutiae of secrets and bureaucracy, poking her head out in order to get the lay of the land.

In the teeming soil she sits in, Admin Gal gathers information.  Piecing together the puzzle that will keep her boss savvy to the powers that be and in touch with the people that work in the division he manages.

Being a mushroom is a very difficult job!

A Beastly Week

Admin Gal is sorry for the delay, my dears.  This week has held her hostage.

The run down:

1. A 3-day meeting for a business unit only works on her floor.  Yet, they are cut off from their administrative support and needed hand holding, planning and feeding.  It wouldn't do to have starved corpses littering my hallways. It wouldn't do at all.
2. An executive on vacation.  But not really if you count the emails, telephone conversations and meetings he called into.  Admin Gal admired the dedication, but this is what put her much admired boss into the hospital last year with a heart attack.  She would rather not repeat the experience.  Good bosses are hard to find.
3. The floor move to the new building is on.  Finally.  The planning and panicking has begun.  Panicking on the Project Manager's part, who doesn't have a clue to the actual administrative minutia involved in.  Planning involved on Admin Gal's part in making sure that every desk is free of anything valuable and every person will receive all the contents of their cubicles.  
4. The department is an Admin down, so Admin Gal is covering three additional VP's.  All of whom have had heavy, last minute international travel schedules.  
5. And Admin Gal has developed sudden and vicious allergies to the building she works in.

So, gentle reader, how has your week gone?

Calendar Misfires

A professional calendar is just that - Professional.

More often than not, Admin Gal finds more and more of her colleagues using their work calendars to keep up with the events of their personal life.  As the administrator of more than a few of those calendars, Admin Gal does not want to see the following:

1. Nip and Tuck.
2. Pick up 'Sexy Stuff' for tonight.
3. Keep 'R' from knowing about 'S'.
4. ANYTHING to do with intimate performance.
5. Innumerable references to dinners, doctor appointments, dates, children's plays and other performances, etc.

All of these things belong on personal calendars. If they need to be on your professional calendar, by all things sane, create a code by which you can spare the Admin.  We already know to much about your lives.  

Seriously!

Taking Stock of My Wretched Existence

Admin Gal ran across this fabulous speaker from TED on work/life balance.  Nigel Marsh gives an amazing break down of how we can take a hard look at our lives and take control.



We have to be responsible for setting and enforcing the boundaries the boundaries in our lives.

May we all strive to seek our balance and find our lives.

Let's Take a Break

Admin Gal once had a boss who once had the gall to say, "I own your time, you don't get a lunch break."

I worked on an hourly model, the boss was reluctant to pay for the time I worked 'off the clock'. (We won't get into legalities here.)

The boss was surprised at my response of 'Until you actually pay for the overtime you owe me, you don't get more than the 40 hours a week that you pay me for.'

No, that particular employer and I did not have a long nor fruitful relationship.

It is a myth that says we need to put all of our time into the job.  CNN had a great article about the productivity of a lunch break. Taking a break rests the mind, allowing opportunity for insight, rest and decompression when the environment is stressful.

Take a look around you, those who never step back to get a fresh perspective find themselves stuck in professional holes of their own making.  While those who take breaks, tend to be creative, innovative and energized.

Personally, everyday I take my lunch hour.  The result is a happy, well balanced employee who looks favorably on her work situation.

Morale

Sometimes morale is a tough sell in the workplace. With budget cuts, lay offs, increased productivity in the form of more to do with less people.  Everyone is under the gun at work.  It gets really tiring, and frankly demoralizing.

At the end of the day we should be able to walk out the door each day and leave the job behind, satisfied we've done our best.  And that should be enough.

But it's not.

How do we take control of our work environment, making it healthy?  The answers are simple, the implementation, not so much:

1. Say 'NO'.  If people have a habit of dumping part of their job on you, enforce your boundaries and push back.  
2. Prioritize what comes across your desk. - When there are conflicting priorities, communicate with the parties involved and find a solution that won't send you over the edge.
3. Don't take work home.  
4. Just Breathe.  Take a moment and breathe.  Don't let the stress build.  A little stress is normal, it comes and goes.  Stress that doesn't go away is deadly.  Take the time to breathe, work through stress.

When you are happier and in a healthier place, your morale is good.  Morale is a virus that is contagious, good morale will spread as easily as bad.

Shark vs. the Guppy

There are some days this admin feels like a guppy surrounded by a bunch of sharks.  Small, without a lot of merit.

Those days tend to be few an far between. Why, faithful reader, do you ask?  It's simple.  As I dart in and out of the different sharks swimming along their various paths, I realize a have a mobility and an ability to change direction in a blink of an eye. Staying out of the way of the serrated teeth that might look at me as an appetizer.

And if I get really annoyed, I'll give the shark a firm punch on the nose. Sending them off to sulk in the depths of the sea to think about what they might have done.

A good admin, swims among the sharks with finesse and savvy, biting back when necessary.

Up & Down - Trending Morale

So at any given time in a company you can take a snapshot of morale. It can be ugly, meh, okay, good or great.



The trick is to realize that you need to be in an environment where the average is good to great.

There will always be the people who are cranky. Apparently, for them their fuel tanks are running on fumes. And to be fair, there will always be the super perky people who you just want to strangle for being to cheerful.

But sometimes, you can't help an environment that has trended to a poor morale due to the company circumstances. Layoffs, off-shoring, closures.

So, what can you do?

Work to stay out of the drama. Keep your own morale at an even keel. Stay as positive as you can. I know that these are difficult times. As an individual, I can control my reaction to adverse conditions.

I choose to trend upwards in my morale. I choose to be positive in the face of adversity.

Happy Administrative Professional Day

Not much to say but ROCK ON my compatriots!

No matter what level of admin you are, your accomplishments are important and valuable.

Thank you for all you do!

Admin Gal

Pearls Before...

In the world of an Adminstrative Professional, there are a multitude of levels that can be achieved. From the receptionist, whose demeanor sets the tone for employees and visitors as they enter the facility. To an actual executive level, where the Adminstrative Professional sets policy and procedures for the admins through out the organization. An entire spectrum lays between.

I only point out this breadth of range because of common comments I hear amongst my peers. "I have no way to advance." or "Nobody takes me seriously because I'm an admin" or, my personal favorite, "I just can't do what they are asking me to do because they haven't trained me."

Pardon me as I call bullshit on these whiners! I'm sorry to be blunt and rude, but enough! We who are admin are not brainless space holders who do nothing. If that is all you do? Get out now. You are doing your peers no service.

If you feel stifled, plenty of opportunities abound.  You just have to take them.

Today's economic climate does not leave pearls strewn across the road for the lucky to find. Instead you have to be savvy. Take advantage of work assisted education. Look for grants and programs that might suit your circumstances.

Opportunities abound, no one will hand them to you on a silver platter.

Won't You Be My Frienemy?

The old adage ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’ seems to have become an unfortunate by product of today’s work environment. 

The workplace is always wild mix of personalities.  The quiet to the quixotic, the domineering to the domestic, no two people are the same.   Yet management models do their darnedest to smush us all into identifiable geneses for easy judgment.

So we cozy up with people that we frankly don’t care about to further our careers, sometimes leaving the important people behind.  How can that be healthy?

A healthy work environment would allow people to get the job done; judgment would be based on performance and merit.  I really don’t enjoy working with people that I don’t trust, I can’t feel free to collaborate with, or want to spend time with.

So, no, I’m going to be honest.  Maybe start a quiet revolution.

I won’t be your frienemy.

Melting the Myth

Admin Gal is irritated. Why do you ask, oh fabulous reader? I’ll tell you!

Admin Gal is irritated with the double standard of perfection. Yes, that nasty, unobtainable expectation that is set forth before us in our performance evaluations. Yet frankly, never achievable.

Perfection on the job is a high subjective thing. One person’s perception of perfection will be completely counter another person.

The dilemma Admin Gal faces is she can’t read minds. This automatically sets her up for failure in the eyes of the person expecting perfection.

Maybe Admin Gal is becoming Zen or numb. But she has come to the realization that perfection is as elusive as the frost on a window. Pretty to look at, but under scrutiny it melts into nothing.

So, Admin Gal ignores the unobtainable expectations of others dreams of perfections. She simply lives a life that is guided by integrity, diligence and the desire to always do ones best.

At the end of the day, those same people can seldom live up to their own expectations of perfection.

Why should Admin Gal?

On the Cheap

Nothing seems to be safe anymore in today’s employment climate. Gone is security of generations gone by. Very few people can stick with one company for their entire career. If they manage to do that, they have to reinvent themselves to stay ahead of the latest management model that leans toward automation, downsizing or out-sourcing.

I realize that there are many processes that can be outsourced, off-shored, and just plain automated. When all these cost cutting measures are taking place, what happens to the actual employee, who helped build the company? The general morale? The principles that built the company? More importantly the corporate history?

While the government gives lip-service to keeping jobs in the country, more and more companies are sending department functions overseas. Why? ‘Because it can be done cheaper elsewhere’. Sure, there are binding contracts that impose penalties if things are not done to the SLA's (service level agreements) of the corporation, but what happens to the customer service interface? There are no guarantees that expectations will be met.

To be frank the customer wants to interface with employees they feel confident will fulfill their needs. Not third-party vendors that have no clue as to why the company even exists.

As employees ride these waves of uncertainty in the workplace, they go through cycles of anger and fear. Rightfully so. Whether they have been with the company 3 months or 30 years, their livelihood is threatened. So the affected portions of the company are shunted off to the side, cut off from the rest of their corporate brethren. The isolation takes its toll on morale and perception.
While the management who has to manage the outsourcing process must be sensitive to the needs of the employees, the rest of the company is oblivious and often makes matters worse.

I don’t have a crystal ball that tells the future, but I do know that when a company treats their employee as well as it treats its customers there is a renaissance in business and vitality.

When a corporation treats its employees as so much dross, they will soon follow their greatest assets, the employee, into oblivion.

Valuable Resources

The Administrative Assistant has come a long way from the days of “Would you like cream with your coffee, sir?” 

While we still might answer phones and take meeting notes, we also manage offices and projects, balance budgets, act as unofficial keepers of morale, and general ombudsman of schedules.  Sometimes our job descriptions have us working in a more personal capacity to our employer, for example running small errands for your boss, helping them in small details in their personal lives all so they can have time to get their jobs done. 

As Admins, we often have the pleasure of training people new to the experience of having an Administrative Assistant’s skills at their disposal. For the newly appointed manager who has never had access to administrative help.  An experienced Admin will work hard at determining their needs and creating a partnership that will be beneficial to both in the long run.

My personal favorite is the new MBA or clueless collegiate graduate who comes into a department with an admin.  Lo and behold, they are incapable of sending faxes, getting coffee, composing letters or other tasks they consider menial because ‘that’s what an Admin is for’. 

While I am willing to offer assistance to those in need, they are secondary to my primary function.  That function is to support the executives that too whom I report directly. 

This Admin firmly believes in teaching people how to fish.  You see, I have one to two top executives that take the majority of my time.  If they ask me to send a fax or compose a letter, it is because they do not have time not because they are lazy.

After one or two instances of people not in my direct chain of command pawning their work off on to me, I will have a conversation with them.  If that doesn’t work, woe be unto them.  I will then bring out the big guns.

You see my executives do not like to have their resources wasted. 

I am a valuable resource.   

The Hierarchy of Things

In the grand scheme of things there will always be bigger fish and smaller fish in the hierarchical order of the universe.  By law the bigger fishis meant to chomp the smaller fish and on down the line, or so Darwin would have you believe.  But as a smaller, more clever, and agile fish swimming in a pool filled with large sharks, I have found that my ability to think fast and maneuver on a dime to be ahead of the sharp teeth of the carnivorous predators that swim in my waters.

Working in the corporate environment is often a drama of survival of the most clever.  Who can adapt to the newest paradigm, avoid the latest pitfalls, and stay ahead of the bigger, less agile predator.

So I swim smart, swiftly and sleekly through the corporate waters of life, working to keep my fins intact and knowing that I have a lot of life lessons still to learn.

Dress Code or How Not to Dress Like a Pop Tart

The summer has drawn to a close.  People have once more started covering their bodies with more layers of clothing in order to accommodate the wildly fluctuating temperatures of the fall.  HOWEVER...
That doesn't mean that some people do not try to keep summer alive.  The sad, sad truth is that companies need to put forth some sort of dress codes. If only to educate the clueless.
This summer my eyes have been assaulted with cleavage baring tops on people where more fabric is a necessity not a fashion statement.  Skirts that with a stiff wind or an inappropriate bend the world would be privy to their privates.  More knarly, sparkly flip-flops that were stinky bio-hazards that did not belong in a corporate environment.  All of the above a direct violation of the company's dress code.

People.  I am not the fashion police.  I'm sure that people look at me and say I could desperately use a make over.  But when I leave the house in the morning, I know that no fashion catastophe will happen.  All my bits and parts will stay properly covered and never see the light of day so that my co-workers will wish never had happened.

The advice of a good friend follows :   Folks – put a mirror in your foyer – one last look before you leave for work, doesn’t hurt.  If you have to question to yourself whether or not something is appropriate, it probably isn’t!

Mid-Year Evaluation Time

Time for the Mid-Year Evaluation.   I dread this time of year.  My stomach clenches, migraines lurk on the edge of my consciousness, every little stupid annoyance becomes a drama of epic proportion. Why?  Because I’m being judge by people who really have no clue about what I do.
Gone are the halcyon days when the average secretary was thought to just answered phones, typed memos and got cups of coffee (yes, I know this is a glittering generality).   The reality is the Administrative Professional is a project manager, an office manager, often times a human resource manager, an accountant, and a candlestick maker.

We do all this while making our boss look good.  The surface of our pond, lake, inland sea is smooth as glass, while the rip currents underneath are treacherous.  The people around us have no clue about what it takes to make things go smoothly.

So, I sit here filling out my portion of my Mid-Year evaluation, celebrating the triumphs and delicately explaining my defeats.  Because when push comes to shove, the triumphs aren’t what get in your personnel jacket.

De-Stressing

I received an article in my email today about 22 Affordable Ways to De-Stress.  To be honest I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.  You see, today was a very bad day.  Murphy, of the Murphy's Law fame, had visited me with a vengeance.  Leaving me ready to raise my white flag in defeat.
I'll recap some of the recommended methods of de-stressing that I thought could prove to be a little dangerous for a person on the edge:

1. Visit the Shooting Range - Who hasn't had an urge to destroy something, it is usualy a passing fancy that I know that I can't act on.  But never in my wildest dreams would I give a stressed out individual a gun.  Even to shoot at a poor defenseless target.  You never know when the shooter might just snap.

2. Cook a Delicious Dinner with the Items you have in your Fridge - In principle this sounds good.  But the typical stressed out person usually has many questionable things in their refrigerator that no amount of cooking will kill the bacteria that will likely send you to the emergency room.  Instead, take yourself out to your favorite restaurant or have a potluck with friends.

3. Make "To-Do" Lists and Actively Check Items Off - In theory, this might sound like you are accomplishing things. But if I were to have one more list on top of the myriad of lists that I have and keep track of for other people, I would have to take the gun from number 1 and find the author of this article.

4. Take a Long Drive - I can only see this working if you don't live in a heavily populated area.  Commuter traffic is enough to make a person mental.  Five minutes on the road with people behind the wheel on cell phones makes me tighter than a snare drum.  Nope, no long drive for me.

I know that the author(s) of this article were only trying to help. De-Stressing in today's workplace is a highly personal process but extremely necessary.

My only advice is find your center and take the time to relax.  Do whatever it takes, you will be a better person for it.

Just keep away from fire arms.