đ¸ The Three Martini Lunch
Your weekly round up of what's going on in the Admin world
Hello! Thank you so much for all the lovely birthday messages last week đĽ°
Thank you also to all of the people who took the time to reply to this weekâs Extra Wrap about moving from EA to Chief of Staff. If you missed it, itâs linked below (if youâre not a paid member, you can use your free trial to access it - just remember to cancel it if you donât want to continue to pay).
This week Iâve been reading about how to spot when a leader needs coaching; what some NY companies are doing to help workers through the World Cup, and what the Three Martini Lunch used to mean to us.
I hope youâve had a great week.
Yvette đˇ
NewsWrap
A really interesting article this week - signs a leadership needs executive coaching. Now, when you read this, Iâd ask you to put yourself in the position of âexecutive leadershipâ to see if you might be showing any of these signs. You might not have direct reports, but that doesnât necessarily matter. Think about how you might fare in these situations, and see whether you yourself might benefit from some coaching.
You might also read this with your own boss in mind - might you be able to recommend some executive coaching to him or her if you think they could benefit from it?Working long hours - on occasions - can be part of the job. Regardless of the industry or job you are in, thereâs a reasonable chance that youâve had to burn the midnight oil at some point. However, there are some industries where working long hours seems to be the norm, with some - like in this article - where those who worked before us seem to think that itâs right to impose what they âwent throughâ on newer employees. So if you are in an industry where working longer hours is ânormalâ, is there anything you can do to support it being a high performance culture and one where people donât burn out?
I shared an article a week or two ago about the likelihood of increases in sick days over the menâs football World Cup. So when I first saw this article I thought that it was speaking about the generosity of two of Wall Streetâs larger occupiers when saying they were going to be more flexible when it came to working from home during the event. However, it would seem that itâs not so that people can go to the games, or watch them at home, rather so they donât get caught up in the travel chaos. Now, sceptical me feels like this is more to do with making sure people donât drop working hours - given how vocal the leadership at these two banks have been about working from home at all. What are your thoughts? Do you work at JPMorgan or Goldman Sachs?
Quantas have announced that they will launch non-stop Sydney-London flights next year. The âultra long haulâ will run out of London Heathrow and take 19 hours đłThe previously-longest flights ran between London and Perth, but were temporarily stopped due to the war in Iran forced refuelling stops in Singapore. To be honest, I donât hate this idea. No, itâs not going to be great sitting with the same stuffy air for 19 hours, but at least itâs all done in one go, rather than having to get off the plane and get on another one. What do you think? Would you rather a stop?
The rise in remote work has directly correlated with the demise in working lunches. I remember when I started my working career in the early 2000s, it wasnât unusual for my colleagues to go out for lunch and then come back to the office only to collect their bags on their way home - having had a skinful at the pub. That kind of behaviour is almost non-existent these days (although Iâm sure it still happens in some places), so are we losing out on the sentiment of these lunches? The building of personal relationships canât possibly be done in the same way on a Teams call. Iâm not saying we all have to go to a bar and have Three Martinis - far from it - but thereâs something about meeting someone in person, in a relaxed setting, to really build the relationship.
Chief of Staff Isn't the Next Step After EA
There is a narrative that has become increasingly common within our profession over the last few years. As the EA role has evolved and become more strategic, the Chief of Staff position has emerged as the career destination many people are encouraged to aspire towards. Recruiters reference it as a natural progression. Career coaches talk about it as the next stage of development. Professionals who make the move are often congratulated as though they have reached the summit of the profession.
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?
đ RealityWrap:
Everyone Wants an AI Agent. Nobody Wants Better Processes.
This week, I spent a day at Salesforceâs Agentforce World Tour in London.
Like most technology conferences, it was full of impressive demos, including AI agents booking meetings, AI agents updating records, AI agents summarising conversations, AI agents taking actions on behalf of employees.
The message was clear: the future is automation and to be honest, some of it was genuinely impressive. However as I walked around the exhibition hall, I couldnât shake a thought that has followed me through almost every technology project Iâve ever worked on:
Everyone wants an AI agent. Nobody wants better processes.
For all the excitement surrounding artificial intelligence, most organisations are still struggling with the same problems they had before AI arrived. Their data is incomplete. Their systems donât talk to each other. Their ownership structures are unclear. Their processes exist in someoneâs head rather than being documented. Different teams are following different versions of the same workflow.
Yet somehow we are jumping straight to automation. Itâs a bit like buying a self-driving car before youâve learned the Highway Code.
In many cases, this AI will expose operational holes much faster than before.
An AI agent is only as effective as the information and processes that sit behind it. If your CRM data is inaccurate, your AI agent will work with inaccurate information. If nobody knows who owns a process, the AI wonât magically solve that problem. If three departments all follow different procedures for the same task, automation simply allows you to execute inconsistency more efficiently.
Technology has always worked this way. Iâve lost count of the number of times Iâve heard someone say, âThe new system will solve the problem.â
Usually, the new system just makes the existing problem more visible, because a poor process executed manually remains a poor process. A poor process executed by AI simply happens faster.
Assistants spend their careers dealing with how organisations actually operate, and long before an organisation starts talking about AI agents, we are often already acting as the human workaround.
Perhaps thatâs why I find some of the AI panic a little misplaced. The question isnât whether AI can book a meeting, write a summary or create a project plan.
Of course it can.
The more important question is whether the organisation has created an environment where those outputs can be trusted, acted upon and maintained, because if the foundations are weak, AI doesnât solve the problem - it automates the mess.
So while everyone else is chasing the next shiny technology, the people improving processes, clarifying ownership and cleaning up data may end up being the ones who unlock the most value from it.
EventWrap
Iâm SO excited to be joining EA How To next week on 23rd June (6pm UK time) as Aliciaâs guest for Cocktails and Conversations. Listen to me be quizzed on all things Operations, Chief of Staff, and anything else Alicia decides to ask me. This is for EA How To Plus members - if youâre not a member, you can join here. If you are, you can sign up in the memberâs portal.
The Office Management Show is hosting their next conference on 25th September at The May Fair Hotel in central London (which is lovely - Iâve been there!). Office Managers can attend for free, but thereâs the choice of paying a fee to get lunch and post-show drinks. Get all the info you need here
The EA Campus i
For a list of Conferences, head over to the Conferences section in our Ultimate Assistantâs 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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