Effective Management of Admin Tasks – Rules are the new normal!

This week I have had a break-through when it comes to effective management of admin tasks. Something has shifted in my thinking, and I am no longer seeing myself as someone who isn’t technical. I think what has triggered this shift is the amount of time I spend thinking about how to effectively use AI, a lot of which involves the creation of rules i.e. the intelligence that AI needs to operate.

I write this blog to inspire you to think about changing how you work, as we adapt to a world where AI is becoming the norm. Here are two examples of how I’m using effective management of admin tasks and how this is changing the way I work:

Effective Management of Emails

Discussions with many in my network about effective management of emails and the overload we all received led me to explore the rules available in Outlook. I then started reading blog posts and articles from others who have created their own short-cuts. Previously, I dismissed these ideas as too much bother, and also because I was a little intimidated as I wasn’t sure how they worked. With so much time spent with clients establishing rules and logic for how to do things, I have felt empowered to give it a go.

Before, I just left everything in my Inbox, but now I have a series of rules that mean emails from special interest groups automatically go into my Ideas folder. Emails from suppliers go into their specific folders, and – this is my “aha” moment – I am putting emails from my colleagues into their own folders, so that when I have a few minutes, I go into their folder, and deal with everything from them. It feels as if I am working alongside them, because everything they have asked for or want me to know is being dealt with at the same time, almost as if we were in a conversation together.

Effective Document Management

This might sound really obvious, but I had an “aha” moment working with a colleague on establishing the structure of our shared drive. We were having a tidy up and realised we needed to establish rules:

1. Rules for deciding on the titles of folders – sounds obvious but is our understanding of what should be in the Operations or the Marketing folders the same as other colleagues?
2. Descriptions for the contents of each folder – based on the title, we needed to capture our perspective of what the words mean, so that we can decide what files to keep or move from the folders, but also what will be placed in these folders in the future
3. Who can access each folder – this was the “aha” moment – because realising that we need to give access to certain content has changed our decisions on the folder structure. We have had to break folders into sub-folders to enable access to some content without enabling teams or individuals to have access to things that do not concern them or are commercially sensitive

What I’ve Learnt Whilst Exploring Effective Management of Admin Tasks

These rules work for me, but I challenge you to think about creating rules that will help you. After all, it is not just the benefit of sorting your inbox, it is the action of defining and applying rules which is the new skill, and one that is increasingly relevant in an AI world.