I'm managing a very low-motivation team of Administrative Assistants. Most of them are tenured and are "career Admins". How do I make a high-performing team?

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Send them an article on how bad the job-market is.

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Can you define high-performing for us?

What levers can you realistically use?

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This. If perfection is the norm, every day (as it often is in operations roles) then you already have a high-performing team. I was in a similar situation and constantly under fire for infrastructure breaks and user errors. No amount of prevention and training could get the mechanical error rates to zero, and no amount of hustle on our side was ever fast enough to get it back on track. Worse, every time we did excel in our job by cutting an hour off repairs, that new time because the expectation -- even for problems with completely different issues.

Work with the admins to determine what "high-performing" looks like in this case and remember that they're juggling operational consistency and personal productivity in the mix. There's nothing worse than being tacitly accused of being a "low-performer" by someone who neither understands the process nor systems involved.

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Acknowledge and reward high performance publicly. Address poor performance privately

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Over many years of being a manager in various departments,.one of the tools that work best for me is treating each person individually. Finding out what motivates each person and speaking into that to help people do a good job. Acknowledgment is very good tool too for high performance.

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Bhailog jate hue balo ko kaise roka jaye

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Finally something to agree on🙏

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FWIW BCG London are still aggressively hiring for those looking to make a move over here, or switch firms in London

Generalist Senior Associate and Consultant roles and also sector specific specialist roles in Ops, Digital and PE. Feel free to DM if helpful to chat

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