Administrivia in Startups

Founders must recognize that administrivia in startups is the first thing they should find a way to delegate: it must be done but it does not have to be done by them.

Administrivia in Startups

I had lunch with Sylvia Nessan, a veteran of Synopsys, CoWare, and several high tech startups and she made an observation that I thought was worth writing down: the founding team, and CEO in particular, don’t pay enough attention to how much time they waste on administrivia.

Hiring an admin or other outside service providers to take care of the four to eight hours a week of work that they really don’t need to do–basic e-mail networking, taxes, finances, office management / operational issues–reduces the number of different balls they have to juggle at once and increases your effectiveness by 25-40% when you take into account that, although it’s an important set of tasks that must be done, the founders don’t have to do it.

Founders must recognize that administrivia in startups is the first thing they should find a way to delegate: it must be done but it does not have to be done by them.

FYI: Administrivia is really a word

Webster’s Dictionary defines it as “routine paperwork and other administrative tasks that are regarded as trivial, uninteresting, and time-consuming” offering two cites:

Without a doubt, current spending patterns put too many dollars toward administrivia and too often place political concerns ahead of real student needs.—
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), 25 Sept. 1999

Despite the school’s large number of inexperienced teachers, I.S. 193’s two staff developers do little teacher training, some faculty members said. Instead, they said, the developers work on what some in the school have dubbed “administrivia”—paperwork, reports and memos.—
Sam Dillon, New York Times, 9 May 1994

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