An administrative assistant is required to take care of all the needs of their boss including travel arrangements, taking care of some of their personal details, and making sure that they have all the information that is necessary for their next big meeting. As you can imagine, any changes to the daily flow of work could set the planned events and tasks off track and cause the admin to scramble to put everything back together. For instance, if you have been planning the itinerary for a trip that your boss is taking and the travel arrangements must be changed due to unforeseen circumstances, you as the admin will have to find a new way for your boss to reach their destination on time and with all of the relevant information intact. A good admin will have plenty of alternatives to their original plan in the event that something goes wrong.
A plan B is essential to working as an admin. You must always prepare for the potential problem to your schedule, mechanical mishaps with your office equipment, and others not living up to their share of the work. The plan B will ensure that you always have a plan of action in the event that something happens to your original plan.
With this in mind, if you plan to work in admin jobs, you will have to learn how to plan alternative courses of action so that you can prepare for any potential outcome in your planned activity. When you do this well, the boss will just assume that you are a quick thinker. In actuality, you have prepared and planned for an unforeseen event well ahead of time.
Administrative jobs will require you to think of all the possible problems that could occur with your job. Before you begin to work on a project or plan an activity, you must consider everything that could possibly go wrong. This will be the framework for your plan B.
To be prepared always is a good trait to cultivate. There is always something that could go wrong with even the best planned event. In any job, it is wise to consider how a problem will be handled in advance so that the plan is not derailed when the inevitable obstacles come your way. Try to look down the road at the potential obstacles and what you will do to avoid them or jump over them. You will find that a good plan of action for obstacles puts you in a good position to handle almost any problem that comes your way.