If you ask people what they think is the biggest creativity killer, they will often reply “lack of confidence, fear of making mistakes etc”.
I think they are wrong.
I think the biggest creativity killer is “admin work”.
While fear is killing the creative spark of people who lack creative confidence, meaningless, tiresome, time-consuming, and redundant admin work is killing the creative sparks of actual creative people with confidence.
People who would just love to create – but who are forced to fill out forms, time reports, etc that should have been automated long ago.
If an administrative task can be removed, automated, or reduced, it should be.
There is absolutely no reason to keep an unnecessary administrative task – but there are many reasons against keeping it.
It costs time and money, and it steals time – but more than anything else, it suffocates creativity.
One company that has taken on the Admin Monster is the recruitment team Moody’s. Melissa Barch Katz, who is SVP – Talent Attraction Strategy & Innovation at the company told me how they had done a determined review of admin work that could be reduced, removed or “robotized”.
The job of recruiting people should not be about drowning by screening 500 resumes, filling out reports or booking meeting with candidates, it should be about creative problem solving and connecting with candidates.
Creative work. Not admin work.
So Melissa and her team worked to automate things like sorting out the right resumes, booking meetings etc.
Melissa described the strategy they have for introducing new tech: “Tech should make you more human.”
What a simple and profound message.
The Moody’s recruitment team will be aiming to reduce the admin work for their recruiters by 40% (!) over the course of the next year with their new tools.
Time that can now be used for more productive, more creative and more fulfilling work.
Melissa: “Our recruiters can now do more sourcing, spend more time with the business, have longer and deeper conversations with candidates and so on.”
Imagine how many millions of hours each day that humanity is spending doing soul crushingly boring admin work that could have been reduced, removed or “robotized”.
Now don’t get me wrong, some admin work is needed, but we should question each and every admin task to see if we could get rid of a person doing it, because it sucks the creative energy out of almost every single creative person.
I will go so far as to say that admin is not work.
Admin is something that takes you away from doing your work. From creating.
In short: Admin kills work.
It steals time.
It steals energy
it steals the human experience.
Admin eats up humanity.
The admin monster is evil – and people like Melissa, who are actively working on reducing the admin work for their people, are heroes.
What admin work could you get rid of for yourself, your team or your clients by reducing it, removing or “robotising” it?
Jan