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The plan for a successful project
As an assistant, you’re going to be tasked with completing both large and small projects. Whether tackling this year’s holiday cards, planning a multi-leg trip for 3 executives or just ordering lunch for the board meeting, each project can be thought of using the below “outline” to achieve maximum success.
Granted, you’re not going to have to follow this plan by writing out each action or idea for each step every time—especially for the lunch ordering—, however just thinking of both large and small projects from within the below frame work, you’ll greatly improve your chances for success while not missing any important step or overlooking a specific detail.
Take a look:
Outline for a successful project
1. Define success - it’s important to know what you and your boss view as a success for each project you’re assigned.
2. Brainstorm - you need to think of anything and everything needed to reach your definition of success. Don’t worry about being neat or making sure everything is in order, you just need to make sure that your brain is opened up for everything needed for success.
3. Organize actions and steps based on priority and time line - For larger projects, create a work-flow document that lists these actions/steps in order along with level of priority. This is especially helpful when working with a number of different people on the project.
4. Do the work and delegate specific tasks to the proper people/departments - as an assistant you’ll need to do a majority of the heavy lifting when it comes to completing your projects however don’t lose sight of the fact that at most companies, you have other departments and resources at your disposal to help for specific tasks.
5. Frequently check completed work against your time line & priority work flow document - these “check-ins” need to be used to make sure you’re on track to complete the project on time.
6. Once complete, reflect on the outcome of the project - What worked? What didn’t? What could have been done differently for future projects? These questions are very useful for streamlining processes and making sure your next project goes even smoother than the one before.
Next time you have a project, either large or small, think about these steps to ensure complete success. If you have any ideas for steps we might have missed or tactics that you use that help you with your projects, let us know in the comments.
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Email Triage: What it is and how it can help you
To be honest, I don’t know exactly where I first read the term “email triage” before—and if it was you who coined the term, please let me know in the comments and I’ll edit this post—but when I read that term, I realized that I was performing email triage for a very long time without actually having a name or term for the process.
It’s an extremely useful technique for dealing with the vast amounts of both work and personal email that comes in on a daily basis but before I go into detail about what email triage is and how it can help you too, let’s first start by defining the term “triage”:
tri-age
Function: noun
1 a: the sorting of and allocation of treatment to patients and especially battle and disaster victims according to a system of priorities designed to maximize the number of survivors b: the sorting of patients (as in an emergency room) according to the urgency of their need for care
2: the assigning of priority order to projects on the basis of where funds and other resources can be best used, are most needed, or are most likely to achieve success
When I read that above definition in terms of “email triage”, here is what it says to me: “the sorting of an allocation of treatment to emails… according to a system of priorities designed to maximize success in the shortest time period”.
Now I’ll detail how I use email triage with the hope that you see a use for this technique in your dealings with both work and personal emails to “maximize email success in the shortest time period”.
On Sunday evenings, I log onto my work email from home to take a peak at my inbox and perform my initial round of email triage so I don’t feel caught off guard come Monday morning bright and early when I boot up my computer at work. In this round of triage, I go through and delete any emails that I’ve signed up to have delivered to me daily like The New York Times since I usually keep up with the news over the weekend.
Then I quickly scan through for any emails from my boss as action items for the upcoming week. It’s not that I’m going to actually do anything with these emails, just make myself aware of them for the week ahead. Then, I go through the number of Microsoft Outlook invites that are sprinkled throughout and delete the ones that I can and leave the ones that need to be accepted on Monday morning in my inbox.
Lastly, I familiarize myself with which emails deserve priority. When I log out, I am familiar with what’s happening and have my inbox in tip top shape to tackle the following Monday morning. Two of the best benefits of dealing with my work email in this fashion is that I’m not stressed out come Monday morning and I’m on top of any questions my boss has first thing in the morning.
Email triage has also crept into my personal email habits which allows me to label emails and keep them as either read or un-read so I know what I need to get to and what can be left for when there is a break in the day… again, reducing my stress—even personal email can be stressful—and keeping me on my game with email communication.
What about you?... how do you handle the massive amounts of email you get on a daily basis?
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PermalinkFrom Executive Assistant to CEO
The New York Times has a great article about Ursula Burns, the new CEO for Xerox. She has held many different positions throughout her 30 years working for the company but what is particularly interesting to us here at ProAssisting is how Ursula was mentored in the executive assistant position by her two different bosses.
During downtime, they would talk with Ursula about her communication style and how she could round off some of her edges so she performed her job better. Here is a key section of the article:
He offered her a job as his executive assistant. It was January 1990, she was 31, and the offer felt like a dead-end. “Why would I ever want to do that?” she answered, assuming that the title meant secretary. The job was much more, of course. She would travel with Mr. Hicks, sit in on important meetings, help get things done.
She accepted, and, Mr. Hicks remembers, they talked a lot about leadership. Mr. Hicks, a vice president overseeing marketing and customer operations, explained the need to manage people in different ways, not to intimidate them, and to make them feel comfortable by listening carefully.
And then this too:
Later, the phone rang. Mr. Allaire [Xerox’s President] wanted to see her in his office. She figured that it was not good news. But Mr. Allaire wanted to poach her from Mr. Hicks, so she could be his executive assistant.
They, too, would talk about leadership during down time. He didn’t want to discourage her candor, but, like Mr. Hicks, he offered tips about how to be more effective—“like giving people credit for ideas that they didn’t have, but you sold to them, to give them ownership,” Mr. Allaire recalls advising her.
These working relationships are a perfect example of how much more the position of executive assistant can be and what that can lead to in the future. Finding the right boss who took the time—when there was time—to mentor her was key to Ms. Burns’ future success. You too can make the transition from executive or administrative assistant onto the career path of your choosing and when you think you can’t, just remember Ursula Burns and how she did it.
Photo credit: Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times
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PermalinkEntertainment Biz 101
As a way to “spread the word” about ProAssisting toward a target market that would benefit greatly from our training, I recently conducted a call with students and alumni from the University of Wisconsin where I gave a presentation to them about the business of entertainment.
Titled “Entertainment Biz 101”, the presentation is based on what I’ve learned while working in the entertainment and advertising industries here in New York City over the last 14 years. The truth of the matter is though that a lot of the tactics and strategies that I talk about on the call are the same ones that you should apply in any industry you’re interested in making your mark in.
We plan to hold more of these calls with other universities in the future and after a few more tweaks to this presentation, we’ll be presenting this information in ebook format as well as the recorded calls.
If you’re interested in hearing the call and how you can either use the information to break into the entertainment business or conquer your own chosen industry, I’ve linked to it below. Let us know in the comments what you think of it and if you have any questions, ask away and I’ll do my best to help answer them for you. Enjoy:
Here’s the link:
Click here to listen to or download the .mp3 interview
To listen now, just click the link.
To download the .mp3 to save and listen to later on your computer, iPod or other mp3 player:
For Mac users, hold “Ctrl” and click the link then select “save linked file to…” to save it to your desktop.
For PC users, “right click” the link and “save link as…”.
Flickr Creative Commons image by Echo_29
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PermalinkCould technology make Assistants obsolete?
Just downloaded a new app for my iPhone that the maker calls, “The Personal Assistant in your Phone.” I read that line twice and thought to myself, “Could technology make my job obsolete?” After thinking about it for a bit though, I realize that all of these technological advances (apps, cell phones, computers, google, etc.) aren’t going to supplant the assistant position, it’s just going to make our jobs easier to perform by being able to multi-task more effectively. My boss would never use the below app on their phone… that’s what they have ME for. BUT I am glad that I can now use this app to accomplish any such task demonstrated in the video below in a quick and seamless way while out of the office or home and on the go. Have an iPhone?... check it out, it’s free.
Siri - The Personal Assistant in your Phone from Tom Gruber on Vimeo.
Siri is a virtual personal assistant on your phone. You ask Siri in your own voice, and it helps you get things done when you’re on the go. This video shows a demo of Siri helping plan a romantic evening, get tickets to a great movie, discover cool things to do on the weekend, and getting back home.
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PermalinkOff Topic (kinda): An assistant in the making
The below video is from The Bonnie Hunt show and is a segment about a little girl helping her father out in a touch situation… she’s so calm, cool and collected, I know she’d make a great assistant! Very touching and a must watch:
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PermalinkSweet - SarcMark: A punctuation mark for sarcasm!
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read an email, IM, Facebook post or comment online and not known if the person writing the remark was serious or not. Most of the time I don’t even know them personally, just via email with no handle on their personalities so it’s hard to tell.
As discussed in our training, there is no place for sarcasm in business communications but now, with SarcMark, a punctuation mark specifically for sarcasm, that might be changing.
Say you’re in sales and you’re trying to build a rapport with a potential client by being funny—great idea if you’re in person but via email or text, a bit risky—then this new punctuation mark could help. However, if it doesn’t catch on and reach critical mass, no one will know what it is anyway.
We’re gonna keep an eye on this one but given that it costs $1.99 to download (why not free?), call us skeptical… don’t get us wrong though, the idea is genius and we’re pulling for it to succeed. And you can be sure we’ll update our training if is does catch on.
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PermalinkSo you wanna be a Virtual Assistant (VA)?
Beyond the e-learning modules, downloadable templates/checklists and resources that we provide to our enrollees, the other main component of our training is the member forum where they put us through our paces and ask us anything that comes up in either their job search or while working as assistants.
One common line of questioning surrounds that of being a Virtual Assistant or VA. What do they do? How do they get started? What do they charge?... and any number of other questions. Not being virtual assistants ourselves, we felt it best to seek out a top VA—in this case a VA coach and trainer—and get their take on how they made the transition to becoming a VA and what working as a VA is all about.
Thankfully Sydni Craig-Hart, founder of EAtoVA.com—a VA coaching service—, was more than willing to get on the phone with us and answer our questions. Now that our members have had a chance to listen to this interview, we’re pleased to offer it to you, our blog readers, to get a better understanding of what being a virtual assistant is all about. Enjoy!
Click here to listen to or download the .mp3 interview
To listen now, just click the link.
To download the .mp3 to save and listen to later on your computer, iPod or other mp3 player:
For Mac users, hold “Ctrl” and click the link then select “save linked file to…” to save it to your desktop.
For PC users, “right click” the link and “save link as…”.
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PermalinkHappy (belated) New Year!
Happy (belated) New Year!
Here’s to wishing you and yours a successful 2010 to kick off the new decade. ProAssisting came into being last year and this year our goal is to expand upon the great successes we’ve had so far…
Just to re-cap, in addition to becoming a featured writer for Monster’s AdminSecret, we had a very robust beta testing period thanks to their community of assistants who put our training through its paces. Then, we opened our doors and right out of the gate formed a 1-for-1 partnership with the prestigious and world wide philanthropy Dress for Success. All-in-all, a great start to our fledgling company!
To get some rest and relazation before the start of 2010, Steph and I headed to Las Vegas. Stephanie has never been to Vegas so we decided to leave NYC behind for a New Year’s Eve out on the strip. What a great trip we had… and yes, if you can believe it, we left winners!
Sadie wasn’t too happy with us for being left behind but she had a great time staying at our dog walker’s home and playing with his 1 year old puppy so all was not lost… I think she’s just getting over being mad at us:) I’m sure Steph will post some more pics of her soon.
As for 2010 and ProAssisting, we’ve got some great free content coming your way via our blog, we’re working on our free “Assistant Tool Kit” which will give you some of the information and tactics we teach on the inside of our training straight to your inbox via email and we’re going to continue to work with Dress for Success by helping their clients achieve greater success through our training. Should be an exciting time so stick around and check back often to see what we’re cookin’ up to help assistants of every variety!
Flickr Creative Commons image by Mr Magoo ICU & Nevada Tourism
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PermalinkQuick Tip: First thing to do to fix office equipment
Have you ever had a problem with your computer, fax machine, copier machine or any other computer machine that is essential for you to do your job?
For me, I’m usually under the gun with my hair on fire because I need to get this work done ASAP before my boss heads out the door for their business trip… and my computer freezes or the printer stops working or my fax machine won’t send. Hyperventilating with sweat dripping from my brow, I rush into the IT department and get one of the guys (or girls) to help with my “issue”...
...And do you know what they do?
They turn the device off and then on again!
I kid you not… most all the trouble we’re having in this situation is that our computer driven piece of office equipment has run out of memory (RAM) or has gotten caught up on any number of “glitches” that fix themselves when you turn the device off and then on again!
Try it, you’ll be amazed.
Flickr Creative Commons image by pierreverhoeven
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PermalinkWhat Matters Now!
This post doesn’t have anything to do with assisting per se but it has everything to do with living life, making a difference and finding your path… and the more I think about it, the more I believe that we created ProAssisting to help people find their path by teaching our enrollees (and our blog readers) the “tricks of trade” and the “ins and outs” of the working world so they (and you) can progress on their (and your) career path that much faster.
Huge props to Seth Godin for putting this together and for giving it away freely… if you want to get a little bit of Seth in your inbox every day, go and sign up here.
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PermalinkYour career and pizza - Part 2
Yesterday, in part 1 of this 2 part blog series, I described the philosophy behind and why we created ProAssisting.
You should read part 1 first before you read how pizza fits in with your career below. Go ahead, I’ll wait…
—
OK, now what in the world does pizza have to do with your career?
When I was about 12 years old, my father had already been in and out of a few different businesses (bar owner, real estate developer, real estate agent, bowling alley owner), a serial entrepreneur if you will, and over a couple slices of pizza one day he told me how, if I ever wanted to, I should go about opening a pizza shop.
Here’s what he said: “Ethan, if you ever want to open a pizza shop, this is how you should go about doing it.”
“How’s that Dad?” Believe it or not, at 12 years old I WAS very interested in business and as far as pizza was concerned, well, I believe to this day that it contains my four major food groups.
“First, you need to figure out where exactly you want to open this pizza shop. Which city or small town do you want to put some roots down and start a business”, he instructed. “Then, after you’ve figured out where you want to open your shop, put a dot on the map of that city or small town and draw a circle 50 miles wide with that dot at the center. Next, you need to identify every single place where you can get a piece of pizza in that circle. Now, are you ready to eat some pizza?” he asked.
“Every day of the week and twice on Sunday.” I replied.
“That’s my boy. OK, now you need to go and try every single piece of pizza in that circle on the map and figure out which piece is the best of the best. You with me?”
I nodded enthusiastically. With that much pizza involved, I’d be up for anything.
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PermalinkYour career and pizza - Part 1
So I know you’re asking, “What the heck does pizza have to do with my career?”
It’s a very valid question.
First, let me throw something out there right off the bat: I love pizza… always have, always will. I actually think my love of pizza is buried deep down in my genetic code passed down from my father but we’ll save that for a completely different blog post.
Second, these posts (click here for part 2) are the cornerstones of what our company philosophy is all about for ProAssisting. I know that we’ve blogged about a lot of different tactics, resources and tools that you can use as an assistant to succeed but we’ve yet to really lay out the reason “why” we believe that assisting is a great first step on any career path.
And that’s where pizza comes in… but before we get to that, let me share our beliefs about the working world based on our experiences.
We at ProAssisting believe that:
1. Most high ranking executives in every field started out as an assistant in some form or another as the first step on their career path (unless their the boss’s son or daughter).
2. Once you’ve built the trust and proved yourself as an assistant to your boss and the organization, you can get yourself “promoted from within” onto the career path of your choice.
3. A recent college grad trying to break into their chosen industry as an assistant could cut down the learning curve, build trust quickly and easily prove themselves IF they had the proper assistant training.
These beliefs, along with what we feel is a lack of “real world”, cost effective and comprehensive assistant training is why we created ProAssisting.
I know that this doesn’t answer the whole “So what’s my career got to do with pizza?” question but the suspense will be broken with part 2 (which is up and you can find HERE) so keep an eye out. In the mean time, just looking at that picture makes me want to go grab a slice. You?
Flickr Creative Commons image by callme_crochet
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PermalinkProAssisting & Dress for Success form 1-for-1 Partnership!
+
= 1-for-1 Partnership
To kick off this Thanksgiving week, we’re truly honored to announce our 1-for-1 partnership with Dress for Success!
Click here to learn more about this amazing partnership!
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PermalinkAre your work communications professional?... Are you sure?
Came across an article from the site Careerealism recently that was a great story about the difference between being professional and “not so” professional in your communications at work and how that can affect your reputation, responsibilities and yeah, even your promotion.
I see this all the time at the advertising agency when either as an intern or new hire just out of college, no matter if you’re out on the town for a couple drinks with your college crew versus communicating with a client/partner/sr. executive at work, there is no difference in the quality and tone of their communication. Speaking, emailing or writing a new business deck, the communication doesn’t take on the formal tone that work communication deserves.
Some of this is because these young guns want to get their ideas out of their heads as quickly as possible so they don’t forget them and the other part is just not realizing that there is a more formal mode of communication when working with co-workers, superiors and especially clients and customers. I don’t blame our “wired in” generation for this; they’ve grown up with Twitter, Facebook and IM status updates where slang and short communication rule.
The rule of thumb for work though is to be as formal as possible until the person your communicating with sets the tone of the relationship. And even then, I personally still communicate more formally since when I’m working, I’m working and then when I’m playing, I’m playing. Separating the two makes all the difference for me.
But the best trick of all for avoiding this communication pothole is two fold: Set automatic spell checking to all of your emails AND re-read every email and document you send out for tone before hitting that send button. Agree, disagree?... comment below please.
Flickr Creative Commons image by ruminatrix
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