The Role of the Executive Secretary

It has now been 5 months that we have been on our mission and next week will mark the beginning of the 6th month, as the executive secretary. It has been quite a journey. In the beginning, most of my attention was given to learning the 14 missions and gaining some basic orientation to geography. The language was a considerable barrier, because it is so foreign...no latin roots!! So when you hear a word, it is just that much more difficult to remember. Examples would be Dniprepetrosk, Novokuznyetsk, Vladivostok, and Novosibirsk. Now convert these to their Cyrillic equivalents and you have quite a challenge. It seems that the Russians can't live without words that are at least 4 to 5 syllables long. Next, as the executive secretary, you receive about 20 to 40 emails everday. Many of these are questions that people send in regarding procedures. How do I...What form do I use to ....etc. Many of them are just fyi sorts of things, but things you need to be familiar with, in case the Area Presidency asks you to follow up on an item. Of course, as the new kid on the block, I knew less about the answers to these questions than the person submitting the querie. Finding things in the computer files was the next great obstacle (we are currently in the middle of a process to reorganize all of our computer files). Next, are the tasks that are assigned directly to the executive secretary, such as faciliating all boundary and leadership changes throughout the area. This involves receiving requests for new unit creation or boundary changes, reviewing, modifying and correcting recommendations that come in from the missions. Once the paper work is completed properly, including maps to show the old and new boundaries, these items are taken to the Area Presidency for their review. If all is in order and if the recommendation is approved, the paper work goes to the Boundary and Leadership Committee at Church headquarters and the mission is advised that their recommendation has been sent forward. At any given time, there may be 4 or 5 of these requests in process. So a log has to be kept showing where, in the process, each proposal is. When units are created, a unit number is assigned and that has to be communicated to the mission. Then the mission can proceed with the creation of the unit and new leaders are called (another review process). The final step is gathering record of the creation of the unit, the new leaders and their contact information so that that information can be put into the Church Directory of Organizations and Leaders.

The executive secretary also processes all recommendations for new district presidents, counselors and mission president counselors. There are forms, approvals and notifications associated with these activities as well.

As the executive secretary, you are the office manager. So the drivers and secretaries report to you (these are full time church employees). You are responsible for their work assignments and performance evaluation and salary administration. Job evaluation and grade changes are also thrown into the mix.

Three times a year we (Chris and I) are responsible for hosting a Mission President Seminar. These, like the one just completed in Sochi, involve arranging travel for approximately 50 people, hotel and conference accommodations, group meals and activities. Once a plan is in place and arrangements have been made, the continuous process of change begins. It does not end until you are actually back to your home base. On the last seminar, we were actually changing travel for one mission president and his wife, while participating in the final leg of the event, an Area Council.

Just to spice things up a bit, I have been involved with the development of an employee website, which involves learning a Microsoft based software, called Sharepoint. We refer to the website as LDS Teams. While a considerable amount of effort was put forth in creating this website, it does not work that great for an Area Office, since our communication needs are mostly centered with mission and district presidents, who are not employees, so they ended up having no access to the site. We discovered that after we developed it.

The newest piece of software is DecisionPoint. I may have described this briefly in a previous post. DecisionPoint is proprietary software developed by the church to support the PBO or the Presiding Bishopric Office. Here is where all of the big temporal decisions of the church are made, about 20,000 a year. The software program provides a way to manage agendas, minutes and action items that come out of the meetings. We started using DecisionPoint for the Area Office about a month ago. Up until that time, whenever the Area Presidency met, I would take notes, jot down a few that I thought were important enough to be called a minute and log action items, all on LDS Teams. Now, this entire process is managed with DecisionPoint. Instead of having about 10 to 15 minute items a month, we now capture approximately 100. These minutes must then be distributed to those who submitted items that made it to the Area Presidency's agenda, along with action items that tied to the minute. This is a whole new world.

The software was developed based on the processes used in the PBO. These are highly refined processes for making sure that each discussion point, conclusions, decisions and next steps are carefully recorded. The Lord's house is a house of order. We are endeavoring to put ours in order. Of course, the software is new, so somethings still need to be tweaked, but there are no bugs. Everything works, everytime. That is a blessing.

This has radically affected how I consume my available time. At the present, I am quite overwhelmed and feel the pressure of many time sensitive documents. Most items the executive secretary works on takes a week or two to get through the system, so you need another system to keep track of where you are with your tasks. Thus, my little To Do list that I created and described on a previous post.

So it has been quite a journey up to now. I think I have probably gotten my arms around 80 percent of the job. The "deer in the headlights look" is less frequent these days. The days go fast. I am looking forward to when I can do more executing than learning. But that day should not be too far off. Hopefully, for the next executive secretary these process will be better defined and the learning curve not as steep.