Any administrator should excel at:

• Providing information to supervisors, co-workers, and subordinates, as well as communicating with people outside the organization, representing the organization to customers, the public, government, and other external sources. This information can be exchanged in person, in writing, or by telephone or e-mail.
• Maintaining information files and processing paperwork.
• Recruiting, interviewing, selecting, hiring, and promoting employees in an organization, and getting them to work together to accomplish tasks by encouraging and building mutual trust, respect, and cooperation.

Innovators will usually have four main goals:

• Developing or creating new applications, relationships, systems, or products.
• Providing creative ideas or artistic contributions.
• Keeping up-to-date technically and applying new knowledge to your job.
• Benchmarking, experimenting and testing novel approaches to solving problems.

• Developing and maintaining an institution’s registration, cataloging, and basic registry keeping systems, using computer databases.
• Providing information from the institution’s holdings to other curators and to the public.
• Training and supervising curatorial, fiscal, technical, researching, and clerical staff, as well as volunteers or interns.
• Negotiating and authorizing the purchasing, selling, exchanging, or loaning of collections.
• Planning and conducting special researching projects in area of interest or expertise.
• Conferring with the board of directors for formulating and interpreting policies, for determining budget requirements, and for planning overall operations.
• Attending meetings, conventions, and civic events for promoting using of institution’s services, for seeking financing, and for maintaining community alliances.
• Scheduling events and organizing details, including refreshment, entertainment, decorations, and the collection of any fees.
• Writing and reviewing grant proposals, journal articles, institutional reports, and publicity materials.