George Herbert wrote: What you describe seems like a sign of frustration and siege mentality. The task becomes so huge that the admin becomes overwhelmed. For some it appears even bigger than it really is. Combine this with an atmosphere of serious mistrust where he believes the other guy is either trying to delete everything or keep everything, and you can soon become non-functional. Every admin should severely limit the amount of time he spends on admin duties. Spending a greater proportion of time on what really matters helps maintain a vision of what this is all about. Ec

on 2/15/07 4:16 AM, William Pietri at william(a)scissor.com wrote: Persons who are stressed are preoccupied with the effects that stress is having on them, not the source. They are in pain. That¹s why it is important to remove them from the source. You are expecting a person to listen to you suggesting alternative ways of doing something while they are still occupied with doing what they know ­ it is at least familiar. Imagine a person driving a car at 70 miles an hour over a road that is very difficult to navigate, but is familiar to them. You know a different, and better, route. You want to teach them about that route, but for them to listen to you they are going to have to take their hands off the steering wheel while still in motion. They¹ve got to pull over to the side of the road and stop the car. Now they will be in a more receptive frame to listen to alternatives. Marc Riddell

Ray Saintonge wrote: Hmm... Great question. Almost all of the work I've done in this area is with groups small enough where I can just go ask people to get a feel for what's going on. That's not such a good option here. The only starting point I can think of would be some sort of job satisfaction survey for admins, with additional questions to see how much time they're spending and on what. Has that been done recently? And if not, would people find that useful? William