Coping with administrivia blues

Plus: a change facilitation worksheet from Seth Godin

Author

Drew Weilage
September 18, 2024

Newsletter Catch Up Service:

If your job is anything like the jobs I've had, you're familiar with the concept of administrivia—perhaps not by definition, but most definitely through the emotional responses administrivia causes ... because doing administrative work that is trivial, uninteresting, and time-consuming does nothing but cause emotional responses.

One of my favorite coping strategies for dealing with the effects of administrivia is asking the hypothetical question, "How would you it do differently?"

Asking yourself “How would you do it differently?” (at least) turns the trivial, uninteresting, and time-consuming into an opportunity for learning.

So, amidst a recent change management administrivia exercise, I returned to a set of questions I borrowed from Seth Godin's book "This Is Marketing" during a previous bout with administrivia blues.

He calls it a simple marketing worksheet. I think it works just as well for thinking about a change you're facilitating, especially since the first explicit change question doesn’t come until after six (!) questions meant to focus your thinking about the prospects of the change. I share it here with the hope that it can help you, too:

  • Who’s it for?

  • What’s it for?

  • What is the worldview of the audience you’re seeking to reach?

  • What are they afraid of?

  • What story will you tell?

  • Is it true?

  • What change are you seeking to make?

  • How will it change their status?

  • How will you reach the early adopters?

  • Why will they tell their friends?

  • What will they tell their friends?

  • Where’s the network effect that will propel this forward?

  • What asset are you building?

  • Are you proud of it?

(Administrivia coping strategies wasn’t going to be the point of this edition—but here we are, and that makes it worth asking: what are your administrivia coping strategies?)

Around The Water Cooler ⛲

Some recent love from Seth …

It looks like this:

• data

• information

• knowledge

• understanding

• wisdom

Which do we measure the most, spend the most obtaining and argue about most often? We might have it backwards.

That’s the first step, certainly. If you don’t, your boss will.

The second step is to take the time you’ve freed up and do work that the AI can’t do.

In medical TV dramas, losing consciousness is something that happens suddenly and dramatically. We can all tell… the body is still there, but the mind is gone, at least for now.

Unfortunately, this happens in real life. At work. In our personal lives. For a few minutes or even a decade or more.

We stop noticing. We fail to appreciate. Most of all, we stop making decisions.

Sheepwalking.

You probably don’t need a medical intervention. Instead, we simply have to find the guts to wake up.

Thanks for reading. Hit reply and let me know your thoughts.

How To Work is healthcare-focused work design inspiration (from the experts!) to nudge your perspectives and practices into better alignment with the world of work as it is, and away from what it was. Here’s my take on we’re working through.