Joan Burge's Administrative Blog

With everything that transpires in the workplace and at warp speed, you and your assistant need to have daily huddles to make sure nothing falls through the cracks and the top priorities are always on the top!

Are you prepared? Times are tough and I am sure many of you have been touched by it in some way, shape, or form. We have been getting calls every week, sometimes daily, from experienced executive assistants at the top of their game that have been let go from their companies. Companies they have been with for 10, 12, 25+ years!

"I have been asked to come up with a way to electronically track the Outlook calendars of twenty-five staff members. I’m investigating whether Outlook will handle this many shared calendars, but I imagine it to be quite cumbersome." - Looking for advice!

Red, green, yellow or blue - which are you? It’s just plain fun to learn about communication styles. But more important than that is you can really have an impact on others when you understand various styles.

Think of information as puzzle pieces. Managers tend to give their assistant a few pieces of the puzzle here and there. Maybe you do this with most of your staff members. Remember, though, this relationship is supposed to be different.

We love it and we hate it; either way, it is a necessity of business. Here’s a summary of the steps you can take to keep e-mail from interrupting your work...

Forty years ago, women in corporate life started out as secretaries—and that’s where they stayed. They typed, they answered the phone, they helped with the executive’s calendar, they screened his visitors. That was all. That, unfortunately, remains the public’s view today of the job they do. “Glorified secretary” is the popular verdict, and executive opinion inside the corporation mostly mirrors what the man in the street thinks. That was not the way Joan Burge thought about herself.

During our Admin Blog-a-thon, one of viewers commented and asked about more information on multiple managers. She asked if this was a trend or unique to their organization. I’m finally getting around to responding as this is something 90% of the administrative assistants face today. Actually this has been happening for more than 10 years. It’s not something new but may just be affecting your or more admins in your organization

Today’s assistant is pretty savvy, wants to learn, grow and feel challenged. The best executives I worked for when I was an assistant (many years ago) challenged me. They didn’t let me rest on my laurels and they didn’t settle for mediocre performance.

Last week was a trying week for all of us at Office Dynamics. I swear the computer gremlins were at work on all of our computers. It started on a Tuesday and continued for 4 days. One major event was our office Internet was down. Now you have to keep in mind, that we are a small business so we don’t have some big IT department we can pick up the phone and get immediate help from. I won’t go into the entire story but needless to say, it made for a crazy week.