Guides › Planning & Productivity
Find where office admin wastes time and money
Map a routine office process, see where the delays and duplicated steps are, and get practical changes you can suggest to your manager.
When to use it
When a process feels slower than it should be
Step by step
Describe the process as it really happens
Pick one process, such as ordering supplies, booking rooms or approving expenses, and write down each step, who does it and how long it takes. A rough voice note works too.
Ask for a review
Paste your description into your AI assistant.
Prompt to copyI'm an executive assistant reviewing how our office handles [process]. Here's how it works today: [paste steps, people, timings and costs]. Please: 1) lay it out as a numbered step list, 2) mark steps that are duplicated, wait for someone, or add little value, 3) suggest up to five practical changes using tools we already have ([list tools, for example Outlook, Excel, Teams]), 4) for each change, say what it would save in plain terms and what could go wrong. Don't invent figures; use only the timings I've given.Pick one change to try
Choose the easiest change with the clearest benefit and try it for a month before suggesting bigger changes.
Write a short proposal
Ask your AI assistant to turn the change into a half-page proposal for your manager: what happens now, what you suggest, and how you'll know it worked.
What you get
Step 3 (wait for manager sign-off on every stationery order) adds two days. Suggestion: pre-approve orders under an agreed limit and send a monthly summary instead. Risk: spending creep, so review the summary monthly.
Tips
- Time a process once for real before you describe it. Guesses tend to make things look better than they are.