Virtual Assistance and You

Since this is the planning time of year, thought I’d weigh in with a comment or two. I’ve always been a planning evangelist, ending up the company planning cheerleader wherever I’ve worked. It’s always been tough going, because planning is seen as a detestable activity by so many workers. It’s just plain contrary to many a nature: focusing on goals and objectives, hair-splitting language, writing everything out in recipe form. Those who enjoy planning are in a special sub-sub-category of annoying management nerds.

Nonetheless, I’m here to promote the concept of planning as a journey and adventure that makes progress much more accessible. When you seriously devote time and attention to a planning process, you make a connection to meaning that motivates forward progress. Your mind mapping serves to orient your efforts. You dream a working solution, and then it gathers around you. What’s the hitch? Your dreaming must be devoted, intense, precise. You can’t phone it in.

As you prepare for another year in your business, you can make a plan so that, at moments of confusion, you can consult it and carry on. Again, this works best if the plan itself is made with the hearty commitment of its stakeholders. Don’t use someone else’s plan. To live it, you have to have birthed it.

And here’s the deep inner reason for this post. I believe many businesses aren’t taking advantage of the savings and expertise available through virtual assistants because they don’t know how to plan for it. Either they don’t know how to plan at all, and spend all their time barely holding the wispy ends of their businesses together; or they plan religiously, but don’t have the data to scientifically predict the ROI from working with a VA.

Fellow VAs out there – Isn’t this true? I’d be glad to be proven wrong, but it’s a sad fact, most likely. What can we do? For people who don’t like to plan, we can encourage them with articles like this one; and if they’re clients, we can help them work though a planning process (making sure it’s REALLY FUN, of course, both ACCURATE and STIMULATING).

For those who plan routinely, we VAs can do a better job providing data to bolster projections. Our articles and posts need to emphasize the hard facts as much as is tasteful. We know VAs save money, time, and the environment. Are we each armed and ready to share this info convincingly with clients?

And may this post serve to suggest to all you owners and managers out there who could use a helping hand: make a plan for how your VA will operate in the structure of your business. Make it specific and clear. You’ll be amazed how it manifests. Just by articulating your needs, just by visualizing in detail a new approach, you begin to make improvement happen.