What Great Executives Know and Do

Despite the huge impact executives can have on their organizations, failure rates remain high. Prescriptions for what to do continue to fall short. So we wondered: If we closely studied the executives who succeed in top jobs once appointed, could we identify distinguishing features that set them apart and defined their success?

As part of our ten-year longitudinal study on executive transitions, which included more than 2,700 leadership interviews, we did a rigorous statistical analysis (including more than 90 regression analyses) to isolate the skills of the top-performing executives. We isolated seven performance factors correlated to strong organizational performance as well as leadership strengths through IBM Watson’s content analysis tools as well as historical performance reviews of these leaders and their direct reports. These seven factors led to our discovery of four recurring patterns that distinguished exceptional executives. What separated the “best of the best” from everyone else is a consistent display of mastery across four highly correlated dimensions, while “good” executives may have only excelled in two or three. Executives who shine across all four of these dimensions achieve the greatest success for themselves and their organizations.

They know the whole business

Exceptional executives have deep knowledge of how the pieces of the organization fit together to create value and deliver results. Many leaders arrive into the C-suite having grown up in functions like Marketing or Finance and lean too heavily on instincts and cognitive biases shaped by their ascent within those disciplines. Leaders who ran one business of a multi-business enterprise often favor that business within the larger portfolio. Exceptional executives defy such predispositions in order to integrate the entire organization into a well synchronized machine. Executives develop breadth by broadening their exposure to the full organization and taking assignments across disciplines.

They also focus on strengthening the organization’s seams to minimize poor coordination and fragmentation while maximizing the things the organization must do in competitively distinct ways. One client struggled for years to consistently meet customer satisfaction expectations. In comparative rankings they were generally at or near the bottom of the list. When quarterly forecasts were missed again, Sales retrenched to fix a pricing issue, Customer Marketing focused on better content, and Supply Chain tried to stay ahead of last-minute changes. When all their well-intentioned, but separate, solutions showed up at retail, customer satisfaction never improved. It was the head of R&D who forced all the functions into a room to solve the problem systemically. Together, they revealed obstinate issues of coordination and contradicting priorities between functions who needed to synch up to meet customer expectations. A year later their customer satisfaction improved by 40%. 

They are great decision-makers

Exemplary executives have the ability to declare their views, engage others’ ideas, analyze data for insights, weigh alternatives, own the final call, and communicate the decision clearly. This skill inspires markedly higher confidence and focus among those they lead. Because they’re good decision-makers, they’re also good prioritizers, since setting priorities is all about selectively choosing from among various tradeoffs. Focusing on a few priorities helps these executives ensure successful execution and avoid overwhelming the system with competing goals. They also ensure accountability is crystal clear to the organization.

At the heart of great decision making lies a balance between instinct and analytics. On one end of the continuum are leaders who “trust their guts.” They combine experience and emotion into well-developed intuition. On the other end of the continuum is the leader who relies on exhaustively mining data for insightful perspective to address the decision or problem they face. Exceptional executives function fluidly along this entire continuum, and recognize where their predispositions lie for either being overly impulsive or paralyzed by analysis..

Making good decisions seems to be a comparatively rare skill. In one McKinsey survey of 2,207 executives, only 28% said that the quality of strategic decisions in their companies was generally good, 60% thought that bad decisions were about as frequent as good ones, and the remaining 12% thought good decisions were altogether infrequent. This is consistent with our own findings. The proclivity of bad decision making is usually intensified by poor decision-making systems in organizations. So even leaders whose instincts might otherwise be effective have their ability compromised.

They know the industry

Exceptional executives maintain a solid grasp on the ever-changing context within which their business competes. Their natural contextual intelligence lies at the intersection of insights into how their organization uniquely competes and makes money, and what is most relevant to the customers they serve ─ even when customers may not know themselves.

The ability to apply intricate wisdom of one’s business to emerging competitive threats requires the ability to see trends and emerging possibilities on a multi-year horizon. Too often, leaders are stymied by competing investment options or caught flatfooted in the face of profit shortfalls. Lacking an understanding of how value is delivered to their market, they make suboptimal investments. More typically, they reflexively make across-the-board cost cuts that restrict their ability to maneuver in a shifting competitive arena.

The leaders who scored highest on this skill were described as having innate curiosity and deep knowledge of their business context which they apply to wider economic, technological, and customer trends. Armed with a clear point of view, these exemplars more readily addressed threats and took earlier advantage of opportunities. Executives develop context by grounding themselves in external realities of their organization, by remaining curious about adjacent industries, and seeking disconfirming data about commonly held assumptions regarding their company.

They form deep, trusting relationships

Every organization has executives everyone wants to work for. These executives form deep connections with superiors, peers, and direct reports, studying and meeting the needs of key stakeholders. They communicate in compelling ways and reach beyond superficial transactions to form mutually beneficial, trusting relationships. Their legacy becomes a positive reputation within the organization for consistently delivering results while genuinely caring for those who deliver them.

It was no surprise that of the four dimensions, relational failure led to the quickest demise among second-best executives. While exceptional executives led with a humble confidence that graciously extended care to others, second-best executives were inclined to manage perceptions, creating the illusion of collaboration while masking self-interested motives. Executives develop connection by investing heavily in their own emotional and social intelligence, actively solicit feedback about how others experience them, and learn to be vulnerable with their shortcomings to create trust with others.

There’s a lot of research on the importance of executive relationships. One study revealed that executive’s fears of appearing incompetent, underachieving, and political attacks from rivals accounted for 60% of bad behavior among executive team relationships. Another study supports our findings that among the high failure rate of transitioning executives, failed relationships account for a disproportionately higher percentage of all executive failure.

All four of these attributes are learnable, and it’s never too early to start developing these skills. Consider where in your current role you have the greatest opportunity for more impact, and which of these four dimensions might be holding you back. You will quickly find they are highly interrelated. So learning more about your own company’s business may require building relationships in others departments. Making sharper investment choices might require learning more about your industry’s changing context. Pick one place to start that will accelerate your impact, and you will be surprised at how quickly you and others see the difference.

Source: HSM

8 soft skills to make a good executive assistant

f you’ve ever seen The Devil Wears Prada, you may believe that being an administrative assistant is a stepping stone to something greater. Though it can be a proving ground that opens doors to other positions, being a personal assistant to an executive or middle manager can also be a fulfilling career that is currently totally in vogue. Candidates may not need previous work experience as a receptionist or assistant, there are several crucial soft skills that make a candidate the best person for an administrative or executive assistant position.

Soft skills are those character traits and interpersonal skills. Character traits tend to be ingrained unlike occupational or hard skills, which are learned and honed over time. They’re less what we know and more the core of who we are. While experience in similar positions may get you the interview, your ability to showcase these soft skills should get you the job.

Not everyone can be an administrative assistant. It takes a very specific set of skills to assist an executive or manager. The following soft skills make for a great assistant: time management, project management, strong communication, and active listening skills, as well as common sense, a flexible personality, attention to detail, natural curiosity and research ability.

1. Curiosity and Research Ability

An assistant with a natural curiosity and research ability benefits the executive or manager in many ways. The perfect candidate is someone who reads a lot, gathers information and builds bridges between ideas. Executives and managers dream of the kind of assistant who reads trade news, keeps him or her up-to-date, points out networking connections that should be made, and research the boss’s new ideas with vigor.

2. Attention to Detail with a Great Sense of Urgency

The great executive assistant must be meticulous in all things. However tiny, details are expected never to go without notice. Assistants must pride themselves on noticing things others do not. All those arguments about work-life balance? A great assistant is the key to helping an executive or manager achieve it. When a great assistant respects his or her boss’s need to balance work with their family or private life, he or she approaches the details of the boss’s day with urgency and accuracy. Arrive well before the boss does, stay after the boss is gone to prepare for the next day, and work their calendar with proper planning and recommendations.

3. Common Sense

Despite what the name implies, common sense is rare. The great assistant is capable of filling in the gaps and demonstrating initiative. When given incomplete ideas, the assistant uses knowledge of his or her company and boss to round them out, all while keeping the executive informed and in approval along the way.

4. Active Listening Skills with Vision for the Future

Listening leads to learning. While most people are “hard of listening” rather than “hard of hearing,” the great assistant processes information quickly and boldly asks questions to fill in his or her understanding. When an assistant understands the direction his or her boss is heading in and the strategy behind every move the executive or manager makes, the assistant will be able to have a greater impact on this growing partnership. Ultimately, the assistant will accurately anticipate what goes next.

5. Flexible Personality

A great assistant must have the ability to interact with all people. Whether you meet in person or over the phone, the assistant must build rapport. With as many unique personalities as an assistant must deal with, he or she must be able to build rapport in a number of ways. An assistant must remain flexible and patient with all people.

6. Strong Communications Skills

Communication is key. Understanding and conveying information between people is absolutely invaluable. There’s perhaps nothing in the world more valuable to customers, clients and business partners than understanding and being understood. Strong communications skills could be the difference between your legacy as “The Greatest Assistant Ever” and “What was their name again?”

7. Time Management Skills

A great assistant needs to know how to prioritize and keep things on schedule because the job of assisting an executive or manager includes scheduling his or her meetings, events and other means of spending time. An executive assistant works with his or her boss to understand priorities and help manage daily scheduling so that the executive can spend more of his or her valuable time on long-term goal planning and setting.

8. Project Management Skills

As much as an assistant’s ability to manage his or her time and the boss’s daily operations so that the boss has time for big-picture thinking, it’s incredibly important for an assistant to help bring the boss’s big picture thinking to life. That means being able to help manage the projects the executive or manager is working on. Big pictures are made from many little ones. With each project, there are many moving parts and you’ll be invaluable to your boss if you can help manage these moving parts. That may mean managing the deliverables assigned to all project team members or just making sure that the boss is working on the right project at the right time. It also means being able to pick up the threads of projects that have been tabled earlier but are now the boss’s focus. A great assistant is one who can make his or her boss’s job easier by tackling things like comparing expenses on financial statements, analyzing client trends or even simply highlighting a budget. These things make a huge difference in growing the partnership between an executive and an administrative assistant.

While the job title and description of an assistant may seem straight-forward, it can be less so in practice. An assistant’s job requires the delicate use of dozens of desirable skills that people mostly notice when there’s a distinct absence of them. If you’ve got at least some of these skills, you’ve got a shot at being a great assistant.

Source: http://huff.to/1wFEh1J

Boosting productivity by arming managers with executive assistants

The secretary of the 60's has gone the way of the carbon copy and been replaced by the executive assistant, now typically reserved for senior management. Technologies like e-mail, voice mail, mobile devices, and online calendars have allowed managers at all levels to operate with a greater degree of self-sufficiency. At the same time, companies have faced enormous pressure to cut costs, reduce head count, and flatten organizational structures. As a result, the numbers of assistants at lower corporate levels have dwindled in most corporations. That’s unfortunate, because effective assistants can make enormous contributions to productivity at all levels of the organization

At very senior levels, the return on investment from a skilled assistant can be substantial. Consider a senior executive whose total compensation package is $1 million annually, who works with an assistant who earns $80,000. For the organization to break even, the assistant must make the executive 8% more productive than he or she would be working solo—for instance, the assistant needs to save the executive roughly five hours in a 60-hour workweek. In reality, good assistants save their bosses much more than that. They ensure that meetings begin on time with prep material delivered in advance. They optimize travel schedules and enable remote decision making, keeping projects on track. And they filter the distractions that can turn a manager into a reactive type who spends all day answering e-mail instead of a leader who proactively sets the organization’s agenda. As Robert Pozen writes in this issue: A top-notch assistant “is crucial to being productive.”

That’s true not only for top executives. In their zeal to cut administrative expenses, many companies have gone too far, leaving countless highly paid middle and upper managers to arrange their own travel, file expense reports, and schedule meetings. Some companies may be drawn to the notion of egalitarianism they believe this assistant-less structure represents—when workers see the boss loading paper into the copy machine, the theory goes, a “we’re all in this together” spirit is created. But as a management practice, the structure rarely makes economic sense. Generally speaking, work should be delegated to the lowest-cost employee who can do it well. Although companies have embraced this logic by outsourcing work to vendors or to operations abroad, back at headquarters they ignore it, forcing top talent to misuse their time. As a longtime recruiter for executive assistants, I’ve worked with many organizations suffering from the same problem: There’s too much administrative work and too few assistants to whom it can be assigned.

Granting middle managers access to an assistant—or shared resources—can give a quick boost to productivity even at lean, well-run companies. Firms should also think about the broader developmental benefits of providing assistants for up-and-coming managers. The real payoff may come when the manager arrives in a job a few levels up better prepared and habitually more productive. An experienced assistant can be particularly helpful if the manager is a new hire. The assistant becomes a crucial on-boarding resource, helping the manager read and understand the organizational culture, guiding him or her through its different (and difficult) personalities, and serving as a sounding board during the crucial acclimation. In this way, knowledgeable assistants are more than a productivity asset: They’re reverse mentors, using their experience to teach new executives how people are expected to behave at that level in the organization.

Getting the Most from Assistants

Two critical factors determine how well a manager utilizes an assistant. The first is the executive’s willingness to delegate pieces of his or her workload to the assistant. The second is the assistant’s willingness to stretch beyond his or her comfort zone to assume new responsibilities.

Delegating wisely.

The most effective executives think deeply about the pieces of their workload that can be taken on—or restructured to be partially taken on—by the assistant. Triaging and drafting replies to e-mails is a central task for virtually all assistants. Some executives have assistants listen in on phone calls in order to organize and follow up on action items. Today many assistants are taking on more-supervisory roles: They’re managing information flow, dealing with basic financial management, attending meetings, and doing more planning and organizing. Executives can help empower their assistants by making it clear to the organization that the assistant has real authority. The message the executive should convey is, “I trust this person to represent me and make decisions.”

Not every executive is well-suited for this type of delegating. Younger managers in particular have grown up with technology that encourages self-sufficiency. Some have become so accustomed to doing their own administrative tasks that they don’t communicate well with assistants. These managers should think of assistants as strategic assets and realize that part of their job is managing the relationship to get the highest possible return.

Stretching the limits.

Great assistants proactively look for ways to improve their skills. When I was the assistant to Pete Peterson, the former U.S. commerce secretary and head of Lehman Brothers, I took night classes in law, marketing, and presentations to burnish my skills. Today I see executive assistants learning new languages and technologies to improve their performance working for global corporations.

In my work, I frequently encounter world-class executive assistants. Loretta Sophocleous is the executive assistant to Roger Ferguson, the president and CEO of TIAA-CREF; her title is Director, Executive Office Operations. She manages teams. She leads meetings. Roger says that he runs many decisions past Loretta before he weighs in.

Another example is Noreen Denihan, whom I placed over 13 years ago as the executive assistant to Donald J. Gogel, the president and CEO of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, LLC. According to Don, Noreen fills an informal leadership role, has an unparalleled ability to read complex settings, and can recognize and respond to challenging people and circumstances. “A spectacular executive assistant can defy the laws of the physical world,” Gogel says. “She [or he] can see around corners.”

Trudy Vitti is the executive assistant to Kevin Roberts, the CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi. Often when you ask him a question, he’ll say, “Ask Trudy.” He travels for weeks at a time and says that he has utter confidence in Trudy to run the office in his absence.

Compared with managers in other countries, those in the United States do a better job of delegating important work to their assistants—and of treating them as a real part of the management team. Outside the United States, educational requirements for assistants are less intensive, salaries are lower, and the role is more typically described as personal assistant.

You can often tell a lot about an executive’s management style—and effectiveness—from the way he interacts with his assistant. Can the executive trust and delegate, or does he micromanage? Do assistants like working for her, or does she have a history of many assistants leaving quickly or being fired? Not every boss–assistant relationship is made in heaven, but an executive’s ability to manage conflicts with an assistant can be an important indicator of his overall ability to manage people.

Finding the Right Fit

Hiring the right assistant can be a challenge. In some ways, it’s trickier than filling traditional management positions, because personal chemistry and the one-on-one dynamic are so important—sometimes more so than skills or experience.

Expert assistants understand the unspoken needs and characteristics of the people with whom they work. They have high levels of emotional intelligence: They respond to subtle cues and react with situational appropriateness. They pay close attention to shifts in an executive’s behavior and temperament and understand that timing and judgment are the foundation of a smooth working relationship. A good assistant quickly learns what an executive needs, what his or her strengths and weaknesses are, what might trigger anger or stress, and how to best accommodate his or her personal style. Good matches are hard to come by: That’s the reason so many good assistants follow an executive from job to job.

After many years of debriefing assistants who’ve been fired, I’ve identified several factors that make for bad relationships. The most common missteps an assistant makes are misreading the corporate culture, failing to build bridges with other assistants, failing to ask enough questions about tasks, agreeing to take on too much work, and speaking to external parties without authorization. Bosses usually contribute to these deteriorating relationships by not being open in their communications or not being clear about expectations.

There’s an assistant I placed recently who’s having trouble developing the right relationship with her boss. The executive called me and said, “Melba, I expected her to read through these memos and then get them out very quickly to my managers. But she left them on my desk, didn’t call me over the weekend, and didn’t send them out.” I asked the assistant about it, and she said, “He didn’t tell me it was important—I can’t read someone’s mind.” But in fact, in this job you’re supposed to be able to read minds—or, at the very least, you’re supposed to ask questions. 

Simply put, the best executive assistants are indispensable. Microsoft will never develop software that can calm a hysterical sales manager, avert a crisis by redrafting a poorly worded e-mail, smooth a customer’s ruffled feathers, and solve a looming HR issue—all within a single hour, and all without interrupting the manager to whom such problems might otherwise have proven a distraction. Executive assistants give companies and managers a human face. They’re troubleshooters, translators, help desk attendants, diplomats, human databases, travel consultants, amateur psychologists, and ambassadors to the inside and outside world.

After years of cutting back, companies can boost productivity by arming more managers with this kind of help—and executives who are fortunate enough to have a skilled assistant can benefit by finding ways to delegate higher-level work to him or her. Executive–assistant relationships are business partnerships: Strong ones are win-wins between smart people. In fact, they’re win-win-wins because ultimately the companies reap the benefits.

Source: Hbr.org

3 things the most creative leaders do

A great article worth reading from Tom Kelley, published at the Harvard Business Review this week:

Over the past three decades at IDEO, I’ve worked with some of the most innovative companies in the world and seen a lot of creative leaders in action. I’ve paid attention to how the best of them operate — how they nurture creativity all around them — and I’ve noticed three things:

They build core enthusiast communities inside and outside of their organizations.Chris Anderson, CEO of drone-maker 3D Robotics, started seeking knowledge and insight from drone aficionados with his website DIYDrones long before he ever hired his first employee, and has continued to practice open-source innovation in the years since. The company nurtures its creative community and recognizes participation at every level. When a contributor offers even the simplest input, the company sends him or her a T-shirt, signifying inclusion in 3D Robotics’ tribe of “insiders.” As bright people from around the world ratchet up their participation, they might instead get plane tickets so they can travel to the company’s headquarters and meet its leaders in person. Some eventually cross over to become full-time employees. The free-flowing exchange, in which employees, partners, and collaborators gain social capital through their creative input, has helped propel growth. 3D Robotics currently makes more consumer and commercial drones than any other company in America.

They achieve big change through a series of small experiments. Many years ago, Jim Hackett, then CEO of Steelcase — a long-time IDEO strategic partner — wanted to get his top executives to move to open workspaces. Then, as now in many organizations, the private office was a privilege of rank, but because Steelcase was a global leader in system furniture, Hackett thought it was important for its managers to walk the talk and demonstrate the value of working in non-traditional office formats. He had a hunch that if he simply announced a sweeping change — out with the old way and in with the new — many of his execs would have resisted and asked to be exempted.

So Jim instead proposed a small experiment. He asked his management team to join him in a six-month prototype of the company’s open “Leadership Community.” All he wanted was for them to give it an honest try for a limited time, using the best of Steelcase’s own products, and he promised that whatever was not working at the end of six months would be addressed. When a respected leader asks you to join a short experiment, it’s very hard to say no, or even complain. And no one did. Though it has evolved over time, Steelcase’s six-month experiment turned into 20 years. The executives never went back to their private offices.

They jump-start their innovation journey with storytelling. Marketers have always understood how great messaging contributes to the success of new products, services, and brands. And the best creative leaders are now screening ideas from the very beginning for the potential to both delight customers and also tell an engaging story. Jane Park, CEO of the beauty-products start-up Julep, worked with IDEO to find a breakthrough in nail polish that would spark new conversations among core users, known as “mavens.” The design research highlighted an issue long understood but never fully addressed: the difficulty that women have applying nail polish when holding the brush in their non-dominant hand. Park and her team realized that all tools requiring precision — like a pencil or a paintbrush, or even a surgeon’s scalpel — have length. So they developed a long, articulated handle — dubbed Plié — which allows users to get a smoother, more precise finish and also docks magnetically to the nail polish cap.

The creative solution had value all its own, but the origin story linking Plié to other tools gave it the buzz it needed to catch on. It helped win the hearts and minds of both Julep’s internal team and external stakeholders out in the marketplace. Noting the combination of great stories and an invested community, Forbes recently suggested that Julep might be “the next billion-dollar beauty brand.”

There are, of course, many other ways that creative leaders push their colleagues and their companies to achieve greatness. But community-building, experimentation, and storytelling are three very important pieces of their repertoire.

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How to Stop Overplanning (Even If You’re a Perfectionist)

When done well, daily and weekly planning rituals can help you travel gracefully through life in a peaceful, intentional manner. But sometimes, overplanning your day-to-day activities can make you a neurotic, stressed-out person who feels like you would have been better off if you hadn’t planned anything in the first place.

In my work as a time coach and trainer, I’ve found that people experience planning stress when they don’t understand the role that spontaneity plays in the process of implementing their plans for the day. Instead of embracing change as part of the process, they get irritated at themselves or others whenever something doesn’t go exactly according to plan, such as a meeting running late or something taking longer to do than expected. They can also cause themselves and others stress when they refuse to move something forward because they don’t have the ideal amount of time to work on it. For example, when the three hours they had designated to work on a project gets shortened to one and a half hours, they may not even bother to start on it.

The way to reap the benefits of daily and weekly planning without these unpleasant stressful side effects is to take a more relaxed approach. In How to Invest Your Time Like Money, I encourage people to use seven ways to achieve the effectiveness that’s only possible through planning, while retaining the happiness brought about by acceptance of and openness to any unexpected circumstances that might emerge:

Intention matters: You wouldn’t want to take a seat on a plane without knowing the intended destination because you could end up heading in the wrong direction. Similarly, the whole point of planning is that there’s a decision in advance about where you want to end up, and the proposed steps to get you there. Sure, pilots often need to adjust their flight path or even land if there are storms. But the fact that they had a specific end point in mind vastly increases the chances that passengers will end up in the right place. Similarly, you will have the best results when you set the course for your day. The next time something comes up that “messes up” your plans and you’re tempted to dismiss planning as irrelevant, remind yourself that your plan did help you set an initial trajectory and equip you to get to your desired destination eventually, even if you have to modify your course along the way.

Redefine a 100% score: One of my coaching clients recently asked me if anyone ever gets 100% on following through on their plans. I told him that a 100% day is rare. For most people, a great day is when you accomplish 60-70% of what you had intended to get done. Later when I contemplated it more, I realized that a better answer would have been that a perfect score should be defined as having confidence that you made the right decisions about how you invested your time based on the data you had in advance on potential tasks, your overall priorities, and the circumstances that arose throughout the day. The best way to evaluate the day is to ask yourself: Did I make the best choices in how I invested my time today? Instead of: Did I do everything as planned?

Don’t waste time obsessing about a perfect plan: There is no perfect plan. Even if there was a way to make one based on the current data, you can’t know what will come up unexpectedly, so you still can’t guarantee that your plans will be perfect. The goal of planning should be to get just the right level of clarity, so you know where you should focus your attention and how to evaluate opportunities that arise. I recommend setting a limit on how much time you invest in planning. For most individuals, an hour is the maximum time appropriate for weekly planning. Then daily planning should take 15 minutes tops, since you’re not re-evaluating all of your priorities, you’re only recalibrating your weekly plan.

Consider plans a road map: Your plan for the day, the week, or even the year, is a road map that gives you a sense of direction and a high-level overview of the various paths you could take. Just as you may find yourself on a detour and then need to turn back to your map to find the best way to continue on your journey, having a plan to come back to after an interruption gives you the insight you need to reroute your schedule. Throughout the day, I’m constantly looking back at my daily plan and saying, OK, based on how long that activity just took or on the fact that an important call came up, what’s most important now? You can do the same. Instead of reverting to checking e-mail after an unplanned meeting or phone call, go back to your daily plan and if necessary, move around items on your calendar or renumber your to-do list to give you clarity on what to do next.

Expect the unexpected: One of the greatest powers of planning is that it gives you the ability to respond to the unexpected without experiencing massive stress. When you plan correctly, you’re looking ahead and moving along activities ahead of deadline. This then means that when something comes up that causes you to have to switch your plans, you can do so without it causing issues, because you planned to have margin. When you don’t plan, you end up being so close to the edge that anything going slightly off kilter can create major problems. To dramatically reduce stress, give yourself a personal goal to complete items at least one day, if not multiple days, ahead of a deadline. This gives you flexibility when an unexpected interruption comes up or when there’s a technology problem.

This is not a test: If your plans—and then the accuracy of their subsequent implementation—form the basis of your self worth, you’re on shaky ground. Although I wholeheartedly believe in intention and discipline, I also know that we can’t control life. We instead need to embrace it. When you find yourself becoming critical of what you did or didn’t do, stop and ask the questions, “What happened?” and “Is there anything I could do differently next time?” Then use your answers to those questions to inform your decisions moving forward.

Be open to creativity: I loved this insight that one of my clients shared with me recently. With his permission, I’m sharing it with you as I feel it’s a wonderful way to think about the interplay between intention and freedom:

“I had some beautiful one-on-one time with my mom this week, where she was teaching me oil painting techniques. She shared how some artists sketch their scene before beginning, but she emphasized that a sketch on canvas is temporary—a guide only—which should not be too detailed, and is not to be strictly adhered to, as doing so can reduce a painter’s spontaneity and hinder creativity in the moment. I relate that lesson to managing my time, as well. I am starting to discover again what’s really important, what I want my life to look like and how to live life more fulfilled. Thank you for helping me realize that it’s my painting and I can paint it like I want it.”

So in short… relax. Breathe. Set your sails and then adjust with the currents and winds. Our safety and security doesn’t lie in our plans, but in our hearts. Life is to be lived and enjoyed, not just “done.”

Source: HBR

Executive Assistant: How This Career Will Change in 2015 and Beyond

When you think of executive assistants, what comes to mind? Someone like Joan Holloway from Mad Men? A secretary behind a desk with a stapler?

The truth is that executive assistants have long expanded beyond administrative roles. Today’s executive assistants take on project management, are involved in strategic planning, and often work directly alongside the executives they support.

I should know—I worked as an executive assistant for four years, assisting first the vice president and then the president of a non-profit organization. During that time, I also took on the roles of project manager, event planner, photo editor, wiki editor, document drafter, and countless other jobs far above and beyond answering phones and making photocopies.

Today’s executive assistants work hard, take on complex tasks, and are well compensated. U.S. News and World Report lists executive assistants as one of their “best business jobs,” and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the average salary at $51,870. Here’s a sample job listing for an Executive Assistant for Treehouse, an educational technology company.

How will the executive assistant role continue to change in the future?

I talked to Emily Allen, Director of Programs and Services at the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP), to learn more.

Brazen: How has the executive assistant role changed in the past 20 years, especially pre-Internet and post-Internet?

Emily Allen: The role has changed significantly.

First, candidates for these positions receive more education. Many executive assistants now have either two-year degrees or four-year degrees.

Second, the role itself has expanded from what it was 20 years ago—and even from what it was 10 years ago.

The executive assistant role used to be pretty singular. It was a support role, and the EA’s primary job was following orders. Now, the executive assistant is being brought in on decision-making processes. Executive assistants are being put in charge of whole projects.

Because of this, today’s executive assistants need overall project management skills and critical thinking skills.

As the job has changed, the perception of the EA role has shifted. People are seeing the necessity of having executive assistants because of the variety of their skills.

How do you see the executive assistant role changing in the future?

To answer this question, let’s go back to the 2008 recession, when we started to see a shift in positions. Middle managers were being laid off, and executive assistants were handed the extra workload. They weren’t managers, but they had projects to lead and watch over.

I’m not clairvoyant, but I do see that trend continuing. Managers and executives will continue to realize that they can hand over their projects to their assistants.

You’re not going to see executive assistants doing overall strategizing, but they’ll be in the room where people are strategizing and they’ll help carry the strategies out.

What skills should today’s college grads build if they want to become executive assistants?

First, they need to understand Microsoft Office. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Sharepoint, along with basic office skills.

To set themselves apart, they can get certifications. The Microsoft Office certification is good, and we also offer an IAAP certification. Getting certifications tells an employer that you’re taking this career seriously.

So the first way people can set themselves apart is by having the certifications that show that they’re serious about the business. Another way to stand out is by having a clear understanding of project management and how project management fits into the role of an executive assistant.

Critical thinking is essential. Don’t wait for your boss to give you instructions. Have an ear to the ground and come to your boss with ideas.

Don’t be a follower; be a leader, even though you’re in a support role. 

Demonstrate to your employer that you’re actively seeking continuing education. Like my mother told me: “We teach people how to treat us.” So prove to people that you’re serious about your work. Let them know that this isn’t a career that you’re marking time in.

Source: Brazencareerist.com

5 tips for boosting your resiliency

Part of an admin’s job is knowing how to handle unexpected, uncomfortable and sometimes downright awful situations. This means being flexible, patient, and expert trouble-shooters. Yet even the best, most experienced, and innovative admins can get flustered or lose their concentration in times of extreme chaos.

We are admins. But we’re human, too. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed when an unforeseen situation comes up. However, there are some best practices that can improve your resilience and help you weather difficulties in a proactive and productive way.

1. Build your personal and professional networks. 

If you need to troubleshoot a problem at the office, find someone with more expertise, get a quick recommendation for something, or find a new job, your network is one of your biggest allies. Connect with people on social media, attend networking events, and talk to your colleagues. You never know when you might need to rely on your network for help, so it’s important to start expanding it now…before you need it.

2. Develop your personal advisory board. 

Whether you need advice, feedback, or just someone who will listen, your personal advisory board can provide valuable support. These people can help you make difficult decisions, evaluate new opportunities, toss around ideas, and more. Your board should include trusted confidants who have an interest in your professional and personal success.

3. Implement systems that will support you. 

If something happens and someone has to fill in for you, do you have the systems in place to make the transition as seamless as possible? Developing systems – at the office and home – makes it easier for someone to step in and take the reins. They also reduce your stress level and provide reassurance that things will be taken care of if you have to be away from work or home.

4. Develop the habit of intentional self-care. 

You have to be strong and healthy physically, mentally, and emotionally if you want to be as prepared as you can be for the unexpected things in life. This means practicing intentional self-care consistently. If you don’t take care of you, you can’t take care of others in the moments and situations when they need you most. This doesn’t just improve your resiliency; it improves your overall quality of life, too.

5. Have faith. 

In my opinion, this is the most important one of all. It doesn’t mean you have to be religious. It’s more about believing that there is a reason or purpose for everything that happens. And knowing that while the reason or purpose may not always be apparent, it’s something you can handle. Having faith can get you through the peaks and valley of your personal and professional journey – often with incredible results.

By implementing these best practices, you can navigate the unexpected, bounce back more quickly and get things headed in the right direction for yourself and the people you support. You can bring calm to even the most tumultuous situation and maintain some semblance of order, which benefits not only your career, but your life, too.

Source: Office Dynamics

Doing more with less

Ever feel like when you get to the end of the day, you’ve worked really hard but don’t have much to show for it?

To prevent these moments, we can choose to work smarter, instead of harder.

The energy of springtime (even for us in the land of eternal summer) is ripe for planting new seeds, starting new projects, and getting in the creative flow. Once the project is rolling, we might notice that we’ve taken on too much, adding to our already full plate.

Instead of stressing out and giving up, use these 5 powerful steps to stay in the flow, or to know when to step away for a bit.

1. Take a few moments to center yourself

When we struggle and push to get a project done, we tense up and restrict the free flow of energy – in the form of new ideas and positive feelings – and get downtrodden. Take 5 minutes to connect with the breath, let the mental and physical tension go, and come back refreshed.

2. Determine what’s important

What do you value? Why are you working so hard on this project? Does it really add to the larger vision for your life, company or personal well-being? In the space provided by your breathing practice, you can ask these questions and get clear answers.

3. Know your daily MUSTs

I like to go into each day knowing the top 3 things that I need to accomplish to make today a WIN. Make them necessary. Choose the 3 that will move the dial forward and leave you feeling like your efforts counted.

4. Chunk your time

When I was writing my book, I found that I could get the most done if I set a timer for 60 minutes, and then focused entirely on writing for that amount of time. No distractions, no excuses. Just writing. When the timer went off, only then could I take a 15-minute break. After the break, I’d come back and write uninterrupted for another 60 minutes.

5. Give thanks

The surest way to get into state of positivity is to bring to mind those things that are grateful for. Make a list of 10 right now. Feel the joy, relish the smile.

Each of these steps work to lower your stress levels and keep you in action. Breathing turns on the relaxation response, so does gratitude and joy. Working in alignment with your highest values helps you know what you’re working for and working in potent bursts keep you striding boldly forward.

Stress Release Tip

Your surest weapon against stress is your ability to choose different thoughts. Is your boss really out to get you? Did that guy who cut you off really mean it as a personal attack? Reframe your thoughts by looking at them differently. Lengthen the space between what just happened and your response. Take a breath, count to 10, then choose a kind response. You can always go back to the old way.

Mindful Moment

Break out a piece of scratch paper, and write down the answers to the following questions:

What’s the biggest cause of stress in your daily life right now? Why? Have you ever considered it? What would it feel like if this thing didn’t create stress for you?

So let it go. That’s it. Just let go of the struggle. Each time this cause of stress pops up in your daily life, just skip it. Laugh about it instead. Stand up and shake your hands out. Skip down the street. Defuse the thought until there’s no ammo left.

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

– Albert Schweitzer

Source: Office Dynamics

Think outside the box!

Food for thought... What would you have done?

Source: 9gag

Designing an agenda for an effective meeting

We’ve all been in meetings where participants are unprepared, people veer off-track, and the topics discussed are a waste of the team’s time. These problems — and others like it — stem from poor agenda design. An effective agenda sets clear expectations for what needs to occur before and during a meeting. It helps team members prepare, allocates time wisely, quickly gets everyone on the same topic, and identifies when the discussion is complete. If problems still occur during the meeting, a well-designed agenda increases the team’s ability to effectively and quickly address them.

Here are some tips for designing an effective agenda for your next meeting, with a sample agenda and template below. You can use these tips whether a meeting lasts an hour or three days and whether you’re meeting with a group of five or forty:

Seek input from team members. 

If you want your team to be engaged in meetings, make sure the agenda includes items that reflect their needs. Ask team members to suggest agenda items along with a reason why each item needs to be addressed in a team setting. If you ultimately decide not to include an item, be accountable — explain your reasoning to the team member who suggested it.

Select topics that affect the entire team. 

Team meeting time is expensive and difficult to schedule. It should mainly be used to discuss and make decisions on issues that affect the whole team — and need the whole team to solve them. These are often ones in which individuals must coordinate their actions because their parts of the organization are interdependent. They are also likely to be issues for which people have different information and needs. Examples might include: How do we best allocate shared resources? How do we reduce response time? If the team isn’t spending most of the meeting talking about interdependent issues, members will disengage and ultimately not attend.

List agenda topics as questions the team needs to answer. 

Most agenda topics are simply several words strung together to form a phrase, for example: “office space reallocation.” This leaves meeting participants wondering, “What about office space reallocation?” When you list a topic as a question (or questions) to be answered, it instead reads like this: “Under what conditions, if any, should we reallocate office space?”

A question enables team members to better prepare for the discussion and to monitor whether their own and others’ comments are on track. During the meeting, anyone who thinks a comment is off-track can say something like, “I’m not seeing how your comment relates to the question we’re trying to answer. Can you help me understand the connection?” Finally, the team knows that when the question has been answered, the discussion is complete.

Note whether the purpose of the topic is to share information, seek input for a decision, or make a decision. 

It’s difficult for team members to participate effectively if they don’t know whether to simply listen, give their input, or be part of the decision making process. If people think they are involved in making a decision, but you simply want their input, everyone is likely to feel frustrated by the end of the conversation. Updates are better distributed — and read — prior to the meeting, using a brief part of the meeting to answer participants’ questions. If the purpose is to make a decision, state the decision-making rule. If you are the formal leader, at the beginning of the agenda item you might say, “If possible, I want us to make this decision by consensus. That means that everyone can support and implement the decision given their roles on the team. If we’re not able to reach consensus after an hour of discussion, I’ll reserve the right to make the decision based on the conversation we’ve had. I’ll tell you my decision and my reasoning for making it.”

Estimate a realistic amount of time for each topic. 

This serves two purposes. First, it requires you to do the math — to calculate how much time the team will need for introducing the topic, answering questions, resolving different points of view, generating potential solutions, and agreeing on the action items that follow from discussion and decisions. Leaders typically underestimate the amount of time needed. If there are ten people in your meeting and you have allocated ten minutes to decide under what conditions, if any, you will reallocate office space, you have probably underestimated the time. By doing some simple math, you would realize that the team would have to reach a decision immediately after each of the ten members has spoken for a minute.

Second, the estimated time enables team members to either adapt their comments to fit within the allotted timeframe or to suggest that more time may be needed. The purpose of listing the time is not to stop discussion when the time has elapsed; that simply contributes to poor decision making and frustration. The purpose is to get better at allocating enough time for the team to effectively and efficiently answer the questions before it.

Propose a process for addressing each agenda item. 

The process identifies the steps through which the team will move together to complete the discussion or make a decision. Agreeing on a process significantly increases meeting effectiveness, yet leaders rarely do it. Unless the team has agreed on a process, members will, in good faith, participate based on their own process. You’ve probably seen this in action: some team members are trying to define the problem, other team members are wondering why the topic is on the agenda, and still other members are already identifying and evaluating solutions.

The process for addressing an item should appear on the written agenda. When you reach that item during the meeting, explain the process and seek agreement: “I suggest we use the following process. First, let’s take about 10 minutes to get all the relevant information on the table. Second, let’s take another 10 minutes to identify and agree on any assumptions we need to make. Third, we’ll take another 10 minutes to identify and agree on the interests that should be met for any solution. Finally, we’ll use about 15 minutes to craft a solution that ideally takes into account all the interests, and is consistent with our relevant information and assumptions. Any suggestions for improving this process?”

Specify how members should prepare for the meeting. 

Distribute the agenda with sufficient time before the meeting, so the team can read background materials and prepare their initial thoughts for each agenda item ahead of time.

Identify who is responsible for leading each topic. 

Someone other than the formal meeting leader is often responsible for leading the discussion of a particular agenda item. This person may be providing context for the topic, explaining data, or may have organizational responsibility for that area. Identifying this person next to the agenda item ensures that anyone who is responsible for leading part of the agenda knows it — and prepares for it — before the meeting.

Make the first topic “review and modify agenda as needed.” 

Even if you and your team have jointly developed the agenda before the meeting, take a minute to see if anything needs to be changed due to late breaking events. I once had a meeting scheduled with a senior leadership team. As we reviewed the agenda, I asked if we needed to modify anything. The CEO stated that he had just told the board of directors that he planned to resign and that we probably needed to significantly change the agenda. Not all agenda modifications are this dramatic, but by checking at the beginning of the meeting, you increase the chance that the team will use its meeting time most effectively.

End the meeting with a plus/delta. 

If your team meets regularly, two questions form a simple continuous improvement process: What did we do well? What do we want to do differently for the next meeting? Investing five or ten minutes will enable the team to improve performance, working relationships, and team member satisfaction. Here are some questions to consider when identifying what the team has done well and what it wants to do differently:

1. Was the agenda distributed in time for everyone to prepare?
2. How well did team members prepare for the meeting?
3. How well did we estimate the time needed for each agenda item?
4. How well did we allocate our time for decision making and discussion?
5. How well did everyone stay on-topic? How well did team members speak up when they thought someone was off-topic?
6. How effective was the process for each agenda item?

To ensure that your team follows through, review the results of the plus/delta at the beginning of the next meeting.

If you develop agendas using these tips, and the sample agenda and template below, your team will have an easier time getting — and staying — focused in meetings.

Source: Harvard Business Review. 

101 tasks you can outsource to Virtual Staff to grow your business

One of the biggest misconceptions of working with virtual staff is that one employee can do everything for you. It’s just not possible. Not in the real world, and not in the virtual world.

In order to effectively use virtual assistants to grow your business, you need to hire for the role, not the task. That means building a team. A team that will work together to achieve what you’re aiming for as a business owner.

It’s with this in mind that I decided to put together this list of tasks that you can outsource to virtual staff to grow your business more effectively. You’ll see that I’ve broken it down into the following roles:

• General Virtual Assistant (GVA)
• Audio / Video Editor
• Content Writer
• SEO / Web Marketer
• Graphic / Web Designer
• Web Developer

It’s important to acknowledge and appreciate that no one person can handle all of these different roles. It’s about using what you’ve got at your arsenal, to get what you want out of your team building and outsourcing.

So, let’s begin with a look at the one person that I feel every single entrepreneur on the face of the earth should have at their disposal – the General VA (GVA). This is that one person that you can lean on to help you, day to day, more so than any other employee.

They are true time savers – and therefore, as an entrepreneur, they’re your life savers, too!

ROLE: GENERAL VIRTUAL ASSISTANT (GVA)

Email & Schedule Management Tasks

One of the biggest time-suckers in the land of entrepreneurship is email. Working with a GVA to handle your email, as well as things like your calendar is essential to becoming more productive as a modern-age entrepreneur.

1. Filtering Emails / Managing Spam

2. Database Building / Updating Contacts or CRM

3. Answering Customer Service Emails /Tickets / Chat Support

4. Sending of Greetings eCards, Event Invitations, etc.

5. Calendar Management

6. Appointment Scheduling

7. Travel Arrangement and Planning

8. Reminder Services

File Storage & Organization Tasks

We live in a world of flashing lights, buttons and other things that distract us consistently throughout the course of our working day. Being organized is about as important as being productive. If not more. VA’s can help you systematize and put processes in place to help your business become more organized.

9. Dropbox / Google Drive Organization

10. Data Entry in Word, or Google Docs

11. Creating / Managing Spreadsheets

12. Preparing Powerpoint / keynote Presentations

13. PDF Conversion, Splitting and Merging

Administrative & Blogging Tasks

There is so, so much more your GVA can do for you when it comes to additional admin tasks, and generally helping you, day to day on the managing of projects, and your marketing efforts.

14. Transcription of Video and Audio Files

15. Simple eBook Layout / Formatting

16. Preparing Online Meeting Minutes

17. Report Creation

18. Forms Creation

19. Document Template Creation

20. Online Research

21. Data Mining & Development / Lead Generation

22. Blog Publishing Management

23. Moderating Blog Comments

24. Adding Tags & Images to Blog Posts

25. Receptionist Duties

26. Voicemail Checking

27. Sending Client Invoices

28. Basic Bookkeeping (MYOB, XERO & Quickbooks)

29. Personal Errands (Purchasing Gifts Online, etc.)

30. Project Management & Training Tasks

31. Project Management Between You and Team members

32. Preparation of Training Materials

33. Training of New Virtual Staff 

34. Deadline / Deliverables Tracking

35. Social Media Management Tasks

36. Creating Facebook Fan Pages / Groups 

37. Posting and Scheduling Facebook Insights

38. Promoting Facebook Pages

39. Collating and Interpreting Facebook Insights

40. Creating a Twitter Account

41. Managing and Increasing Your Twitter Following

42. Schedule Tweets and Track Mentions and Hashtags

43. Create and Manage LinkedIn Account / Profile

44. Create Pinnable Images on Pinterest

45. Scheduling and Tracking Pins

46. Create and Manage YouTube Account

47. Upload Videos on YouTube

48. Moderating YouTube Comments

49. Uploading Videos to other Video Sharing Sites / Social Media

50. Answer inquiries and Messages on All Channel & Profiles

51. Create Slideshare Presentations

Email Marketing

All this work is pointless if you’re not a) growing your email marketing list, and b) engaging with that list on a regular basis. It’s been said that for every name on your list, you should be making an average of $1 a month. So, working with a VA to help grow and market to your list is a complete no-brainer in my book! This takes the concept of choosing tasks to outsource to virtual staff to the next level – a level that equals money!

52. Creating a New List in Email Marketing Software

53. Adding and Removing Subscribers from Lists

54. Creating and Scheduling Broadcast Emails to Promote Content

55. Editing Follow-up Emails and Auto-responders

56. Creating Email Newsletters

57. Editing / Proofreading Emails

ROLE: AUDIO / VIDEO EDITOR

The use of virtual staff in audio and video production is still a little new – it’s only just started to emerge over the last few years. Not having to edit my own videos (even in a basic way!) has enabled me to spend more time developing my content, instead of worrying about the details. The same can be said for my podcasting.

58. Basic Editing of Audio Files

59. Removing Background Noise from Audio and Video

60. Adding Intro’s and Outro’s to Videos

61. Basic Photoshop / Image Editing (Not Graphic Design)

62. Powerpress (Podcasting WP Plugin) Installation

63. Podcast Setup on iTunes

64. Podcast Insertion on Blogpost

ROLE: CONTENT WRITER

Outsourcing your content is not something I suggest you do often. Especially if your brand is attached to it. However, if you’re doing a lot of online marketing, especially if you’re involved with niche site creation and promotion, or even bigger, more authoritative sites, it pays to save time on creating all that written content, by teaming up with a good selection of virtual writers.

65. Content / Blog Post Creation 

66. Guest Blogging / Ghost Blogging

67. SEO Writing

68. Press Release Writing

69. Newsletter Writing

70. Copywriting (Don’t Suggest Sales Copy)

71. Directory Submission

72. Article Spinning

73. Article Marketing

ROLE: SEO / WEB MARKETER

The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) world has changed drastically over the last couple of years. What used to work doesn’t anymore. And what works today might not work so well tomorrow. However, create solid content and you’ll be off to the races immediately. But, what happens after you’ve marketed and promoted your new blog post, or podcast episode via social media? The storm calms down, right? 

Having a solid SEO / Web Marketing VA in place will enable your content to be positioned and marketed in a way that will bring in consistent, long-term traffic.

74. Site Analysis

75. Keyword Research for Blog Content

76. Competitor Analysis

77. Landing Page Set-up/Creation

78. Web Master Submission

79. Sitemap Submissions

80. On-page optimization for a post / page

81. Off-page optimization for a post / page

82. Social Bookmarking (Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Digg, Delicious)

83. Creating a Social Bookmarking Tracking Sheet

84. Blog Commenting – Off Page Optimization

85. Forum Participation / Moderation

86. Creating Backlinks / Link Buidling

87. Weekly / Monhtly Google Analytics & Traffic Reports

88. Monthly Keyword Ranking Reports

ROLE: GRAPHIC / WEB DESIGNER

Tinkering around in Photoshop is a massive waste of time for every entrepreneur that doesn’t know what he / she is doing. We do it though, right? We love the idea of letting our Superhero Syndrome take over and we believe that we can do everything – including graphic design.

Please – c’mon people… Pay those that truly DO know what they’re doing, to do it right the first time – not only will it look better, but you’ll be able to spend time on a marketing plan, or putting together your next info-product!

89. Designing Logos, Banners, Icons, eBook Covers and Headers

90. Designing Infographics Images (Content Provided)

91. Designing Websites, Creating Mock-Ups

92. Designing Landing / Sales / Opt-In Pages

93. Basic Video Editing (Splicing Intros & Outros with Raw Footage)

ROLE: WEB DEVELOPER

While you’re putting together content plans and a publishing schedule for your site, get a super-skilled Web Developer VA to handle the coding and customizing side of things for you. It’s just plain smart!

94. Support and Develop WordPress (PHP) Websites

95. Install WordPress PlugIns and Themes

96. WordPress Theme Customization

97. WordPress Functionality and PlugIn Enhancement

98. Site Maintenance / Security and Troubleshooting

99. CRM Integration & Social Media Integration

100. Payment Gateway Integration

101. Install and Support an Email Ticketing System (eg. ZenDesk)

Conclusion

As you can see, the list of tasks that virtual workers can handle for you is about as diverse as the roles that are available at our disposal as business owners.

The fact is that working with VA’s has gone far further than most people ever thought possible. It’s more than just filtering email and managing your social media (although thats covered, too!). It’s about business growth. It’s about waking up and understanding that, as business owners, we shouldn’t be doing half the stuff that we are doing on a day to day basis!

I hope this list serves as a bit of a spring board for some of you yet to take the VA plunge, and perhaps a ‘go to’ source of additional potential, for those of you that are already utilizing the power of virtual staff in your business.

Source: Chris Ducker