How to Cut Admin Time with Creative Thinking

Creative thinking is an integral part of marketing – while we have countless tools and options at our disposal these days, the true key to success in marketing is ultimately human ingenuity. Many marketers take this kind of creative thinking for granted, but when administrative tasks pile up, big ideas can fall by the wayside. Here are some ways to cut admin time and get back to focusing on success.

Hold Walking Meetings

A study by Stanford found that walking around instead of sitting down improved creativity by an average of 60% – and with a consistently powerful effect on people, adding more walking to your day is one of the most powerful things you can do.

If your schedule seems too tight, try changing meetings in offices to walking meetings instead, where everyone involved can head down the street and around the area for as long as the meeting needs to last. If you need to be in the office for part of the meeting, schedule it so you can spend at least part of the meeting walking.

Aside from giving you added inspiration to help with big ideas, walking meetings can help you get some exercise in and allow you to cut down on that elsewhere without sacrificing a healthy lifestyle.

Related: How Smart Goal Setting Can Revolutionize Your Business Goals

Make More Use Of Appointments

Appointments are a great way to get your time organized and ensure you're not just waiting for other people to be free. Try to set specific times when you can talk with people – and if you must have an open door policy, encourage people to only show up without an appointment in a certain frame of time.

Your team should never be totally discouraged from coming to talk to you – the last thing you want to do is reduce their effectiveness in communicating, especially if something is time-sensitive. However, if they know that minor things should only occur during a specified time, they're more likely to abide by that.

Consolidate Systems

If you have to access multiple systems to get the information you need, you're wasting time – and the only way to get your time back is to somehow consolidate your systems. This can be done in two ways:

• In option one, you could have a unifying replacement system that does everything your current systems do, but all in one place. This is good for companies that are just starting out, but harder to integrate into existing companies. In those cases, it may be better to try...
• Option two, where a new system is put above the others as a consolidated layer, with the ability to access each of the other systems. This looks a lot like a single unified system, but it's really just a user interface to streamline things.

Consolidating things usually requires time and custom coding, so the earlier you start, the better off you're going to be. Don't skimp on this, either – the price tag might induce a wince at first, but over time, consolidating your software will make a big difference on the amount of time spent on creative work.

Use Document Managing Software

Much like consolidating systems into one interface, effectively managing your documents is a good way to free up administrative time that can be focused on creative efforts instead. A good suite of Document Managing Software (DMS) will help you – and your team – quickly locate, update, use, and generally interact with the documents that support your efforts.

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