We have a member of the Matchbox team who has some of the deepest engagement insights of anyone we know. She serves as our Client Success Manager. In her previous role managing the live event support team, she was physically (well, virtually…) present in almost every single one of our events since the early 2020 days. As you can imagine, she has accumulated so much knowledge. Not surprisingly, clients that work with her request to keep working with her. Her experience and willingness to help in all situations make her an invaluable part of our team. With every action she takes, she lives and breathes and deeply embodies the core values of Matchbox, making it an absolute delight to watch her do her thing.
As you can see, I think really highly of Nina. And yet, it came to light recently that an egregiously high portion of her time has been spent in areas that are bringing her job dissatisfaction.
Is your time well-spent?
I asked Nina to start tracking her time spent on different tasks to allow us to diagnose the problem. When we analyzed the list together, another team member suggested she add a rating for her enjoyment level of each item on the list from -3 to 3 and add some detail on what each task required. What we learned from the data was clear – any tasks that hovered at a rating between -1 and -3 were activities that were:
- Repetitive – required no higher-level thinking skills;
- Time-consuming – taking large blocks of time out of each day;
- Not rewarding – completing these tasks gave little sense of achievement or enjoyment.
Most importantly, the data showed all these tasks could absolutely 100% be automated. Nina has been dragged into spreadsheets over and over and over again to sort data. She has undergone repetitive tasks that with a systems solution could have been a one and done.
And what’s worse, every minute of her time that she has spent on the lower level tasks that have poor Nina going cross-eyed with boredom, she is not doing the part of the job that she both loves and that brings the powerful insights that change the game for our clients.
It struck me when we looked at her list of manual tasks how many event planners and organizers are in a similar boat – bogged down with tasks that are time-consuming and take them out of a state of flow. That really got me excited about the new emerging tools on the market that will allow for technology companies (like ours!) to incorporate things like generative AI to remove the most tedious parts of it all and free up time to do the good stuff.
Finding focus for ‘the good stuff’
If Nina’s spreadsheet is any indication, “the good stuff” that got the 2s and 3s of her ranking system were the things directly enabling her to:
- Design, problem-solve, and be more creative;
- Connect directly with people, to understand their challenges and share her expertise;
- Feel a greater sense of purpose, in her role in general.
We want to see more and more of that on every organizer’s spreadsheet.
Nina has so much expertise to offer and her time and skills are too valuable to be spent on ‘busywork’. I am immediately looking at ways we can automate some of this repetitive work so she can find more enjoyment and purpose in her role. I know that our clients will benefit from being able to spend more time problem-solving and ideating with Nina. And Nina can redirect her focus into the higher-level skills that will help her to continue her career development.
A Challenge for You!
If you are reading this post and you are a client of Matchbox, I have a challenge for you!
Track the time you are spending on tasks related to the project management and coordination of our virtual experiences together. Mark your enjoyment level of each task and send us your list! In our own efforts to automate the parts that are the most grueling, your feedback will help inform our development priorities.
Send us your list
More broadly, if you have questions, if you have ideas, if you have spoken to Matchbox before or this is your first time, we are eager to hear from you. Feel free to scroll to the bottom of this page and fill out the form with more info if you’d like to share more or learn more about what we do.
