Back when I was in high school, before the turn of the century, there was a class being taught which frankly never interested me much. The class was titled "Office Procedures". This class was one that was primarily offered to students who were not, shall we say, academically gifted. It was usually the girls (I went to an all girls high school in Trinidad & Tobago) who wouldn't be successful at Physics or Chemistry, Biology or Technical Drawing who were guided into Office Procedures. Hah. Would that we had known then what we know now, everybody would have had to do that class and everybody would still be doing it today.
Over the last several weeks, I think we've all seen the negative effects of bad administration. We see it in the management of the claims processes in the Gulf region, we see it in the spill in the Gulf, we see it in the mess at Arlington National Cemetery and this morning, we saw it in the Enterprise Rent-A-Car catastrophe in which two young women died because the car they rented had been recalled but not pulled out of circulation by Enterprise. Closer to home, I have seen it in the six phone calls I've had to make to one doctor's office to get a single letter. I still haven't got the letter.
I've had cause to say this before but I'll say it again, administration is not some throw away aspect of an organization's activities. If it were, they wouldn't bother to do it at all. It is critical to the efficiency of an organization that the right people, with the right skills and the right personal attributes be placed in positions of administrative leadership. Why organizations treat these positions as ancillary I don't know, but in truth, they are anything but.
An assistant who fails to make appropriate flight arrangements for her boss leaving said boss on the ground while a critical meeting takes place is of no use as a travel planner. An assistant who fails to see that reports needing to be generated will require paper for printing said reports; binders into which documents must be placed and tabs to separate sections, and fails also to recognize that the appropriate order for supplies must be placed in a timely manner, isn't much help in supporting his/her manager whose responsibility it is to report on company performance. Certainly, administrative staff can learn these things, but wouldn't it be better if we all got to the office knowing how to think these things through?
When is the world going to realize that the cost of high school dropouts is not just a cost to the dropout, but also a cost to those of us who stayed in! Since the boss can't do it all, she has to rely on support staff. If her support staff is ill-equipped to support, what happens then, 'Ole mas' as we say in Trinidad. Loosely translated: all hell breaks loose. So go on a quit if you want to, but just bear in mind that you're not the only one who's going to have to pay the price. You will pay, your family will pay, your community will pay and ultimately, your country will pay. Concerned about national debt? Say your behind in school and do something about it.
