📎 Please Find Attached
Your weekly round up of what's going on in the Admin world
Happy Friday you lovely lot!
I’ve been a busy bee this week working on a large scale system migration project for my company. It’s amazing how many people have an opinion when they aren’t doing the work! Assign a task or workstream to them and suddenly they don’t know what’s going on. Funny how they knew enough to broadcast their opinion across the team Slack channels!
Anyway…
This week I’ve been reading some interesting (and some annoying) articles about peanut butter pay (spoiler: it’s nothing new); how to tell someone in a more interesting way that you have attached a file to their email (although these have not been tested against our email’s ability to remind us when something is in fact NOT attached 🤦♀️); and what is the most costly mistake your leader could make (now this one IS worth your attention).
I wish you all a fantastic weekend.
Yvette 💛
NewsWrap
In this week’s edition of Something That’s Been Happening For Ages But Now Has A Stupid Name is “peanut butter pay”. LinkedIn alleges that more employers are moving away from performance-based pay increases, and “spreading” pay increases across teams like “peanut butter on a slice of bread”. The fact that there are people saying that there are benefits to this is astounding to me. As has been the case for years, it demoralises high performers and encourages mediocracy. So in my opinion, anyone who is saying this is a good thing because it’s “easier” to implement clearly has never had to performance manage anyone - either up or out.
“Please find attached” is heading into the bin, along with “yours sincerely” and “I hope this email finds you well”. We most likely just go onto autopilot when typing out messages like this - especially if you are over a certain age (cough cough me cough cough). This article is probably AI-generated, but I don’t really mind if it’s got a load of alternatives to that super annoying phrase. Check it out. Do you use any of these already?
If you’ve just taken on the responsibility of your office cleaning, don’t just hire an office cleaner and expect everything to just magically happen. There’s a lot to think about and Clara OM have this helpful article to guide you in the right direction. Funny (not funny) story: I once had a cleaner lock themselves in the stairwell of our office because all the doors closed on them when they took the rubbish out. So make sure you have a back up plan in place in case that happens to your cleaner!
Leaders make mistakes. They are human beings, after all. This article about the cost of mistakes is aimed at the staffing industry, but I think it applies to all. I wont’t spoil it by revealing what they believe to be the most costly mistake, but it’s something I feel quite passionately about.
If you’ve been a customer of Reed & Mackay, you’re soon to be moved over to the Navan brand (since they acquired it back in 2021). There will be a transition period whilst the brand is moved over, but apparently you will have access to Navan’s “superior content”. Now, I’m a big fan of Navan, so I’m confident you won’t have anything to worry about long term. However, just brace yourself - transitions like this are always risky, so make sure you keep abreast of developments and what they mean for your company.
If you’re not a customer of either, you can try out Navan here.This is the last time I’ll mention Preply, but it’s SUCH a great tool! I’m very excited that so many of you are kicking off some foreign language lessons! If you’ve not yet signed up, you can get 70% off a trial lesson with my link. They also have a business section, meaning that your company could pay for the lessons for you!
Looking for a Mentor?
I’ve teamed up with three fabulous mentors to offer mentorship across a range of specialties. You can book in for an hour, or a block of three hours, to get expert advice and guidance from one of four women who all have vastly different backgrounds and experiences. Take a look here
By referring your friends and colleagues to The Admin Wrap, you can earn yourself free access to The Extra Wrap - our in depth thought leadership pieces which are sent out every Monday. Can you make it to the top of the leader board?
🔎 RealityWrap
The Competency Trap
There’s a career trap that almost no one warns high performers about. It isn’t laziness, politics, or lack of opportunity. It’s competence.
If you are the person who can always be relied upon to “just sort it,” you will be asked to sort everything. And because you are capable, you will. You will fix the CRM; you will rewrite the deck; you will sense-check the forecast; you will smooth over the awkward stakeholder dynamic. You will quietly stop the wheels coming off.
That reliability might build a strong reputation, but it also builds a ceiling.
The more operationally competent you are, the more likely you are to become the unofficial safety net of the organisation. You become indispensable, but not necessarily visible. While you are busy rescuing this quarter’s delivery, someone else is shaping next quarter’s priorities. While you are fixing broken processes, someone else is presenting the “big picture.”
Competence keeps you busy and makes you feel important - indispensable, even. But it does not automatically make you promotable.
Most organisations reward visible impact more than invisible effort.
If your contribution is absorbed into operational smoothness, leadership may genuinely believe things are fine. They don’t see the chaos you prevented; they see stability. Stability rarely triggers investment, additional scope, or a title change.
There is also a more uncomfortable truth. Over time, it can feel good to be the fixer. Being needed is validating. Being the person who understands how everything fits together creates influence. But if your influence depends on dysfunction, there is a quiet tension there. The more broken the system, the more essential you become.
High performers sometimes protect the very inefficiencies that make them indispensable, not because they are manipulative, but because they are wired to help.
The shift required is uncomfortable. At some point, you have to stop proving that you can do the work and start proving that you can design the work. That means escalating recurring issues instead of quietly absorbing them. It means naming structural problems rather than repeatedly fixing symptoms. It means saying, “This keeps happening because ownership is unclear,” instead of stepping in yet again.
It also means tolerating short-term friction. When you stop being the safety net, gaps become visible. Standards wobble. Deadlines feel tighter. That discomfort is not failure; it is exposure. And exposure is often what creates the mandate to change something properly - because your efforts are now visible.
If you want to operate at a more senior level, you cannot be both the buffer and the architect. You have to allow the organisation to feel the cost of poor systems so that redesign becomes necessary rather than optional.
So here’s the question for this week: are you being valued for your capacity or your impact?
Capacity means people trust you to handle it. Impact means the system works differently because you changed it.
One keeps you exhausted and essential. The other changes your trajectory.
EventWrap
C&C Search are hosting a webinar on Mastering Difficult Conversations on 18th February at lunchtime for UK participants. Hosted by Lucy Chamberlain, this is going to be a really valuable session for anyone who might need some help managing your defensiveness when having this kind of conversation.
For you Australian and NZ assistants, there’s a great interview you’re going to want to watch - this one is being hosted by Trinity James, and she’s speaking with Rachel Bonetti, talking about all things capacity, influence and strategic partnership. This is on 17th Feb at 10am Aus Western Time
The Office Management group are hosting their next Conference on 27th March in London’s Cumberland Hotel. This CPD-accredited event is for Office Managers and those who have office management or facilities responsibilities. Check out all the details and how to get tickets here
For a list of Conferences, head over to the Conferences section in our Ultimate Assistant’s Toolbox.
If you are running an event aimed at administrative professionals, please send me an email and let me know all about it - hello@theadminwrap.com
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