If Your Exec Had to Explain Your Role Right Now… What Would They Say?

There's a conversation I keep having with Executive Assistants across Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and New Zealand at the moment.

It usually starts with something like: "I just don't feel like they really see what I contribute, it's super hard to put metrics around it, so much of my work is in the background and invisible."

And then, underneath that, something more pressing: "I'm also a little worried about what's coming."

Both of those things are worth taking seriously, because they're actually connected.

The KPMG news landed hard in the EA community recently. An entire EA pool, offshored.

And while that's one organisation's decision, it sent a ripple through a lot of people who are already watching grocery bills climb, petrol prices creep up, and wondering what their career actually looks like in two years when AI has automated another layer of the work they used to own.

I'm not going to tell you not to worry about that. Some of it is worth paying attention to.

But here's what I actually think is happening, and what the EAs who are going to be fine have in common.

The visibility problem

I spoke today with an experienced EA in Queensland. Smart, capable, clearly across everything. She'd organised national events for over 2,000 people, sat in on leadership meetings, prepared board papers. She was doing work that would make most people's eyes water.

Her boss's primary focus? Whether she'd tidied the archive room. Measurable metrics. Task completion.

She's great at her job. But terrible at making her value visible. And right now, that’s the part that actually determines whether you stay.

And an additional (but common) layer of complexity to this situation: her boss had never worked with an EA before. He genuinely didn't know what a great EA partnership looked like. He wasn't dismissing her. He just didn't have the framework to understand what she was actually doing for him.

So he defaulted to what he could measure.

This is more common than most EAs realise. Especially in organisations where the EA role is still being defined, where leadership is newer, or where (and this matters right now) there's pressure to justify every headcount.

When budgets tighten and offshoring becomes a boardroom conversation, the roles that survive aren't always the ones doing the most. They're the ones that are most legible. Most clearly connected to something the business cares about.

If the person making that decision can only describe you as "keeps things organised," you are not in a strong position. Not because you aren't valuable (you are) but because your value isn't visible. 

That’s the version of you they’re making decisions about.

Not the real one.

What the exec actually sees

Ask most executives to describe their EA, and you'll get something like:

"Really on top of things. Nothing falls through the cracks."

Which is true. And also about 30% of the actual picture.

Because what's really happening in most of these roles:

• You're making judgement calls every day about what deserves their attention and what doesn't. 

• You're catching problems before they surface. 

• You're making sure the right information lands with the right people before a decision gets made, not after. 

• You're absorbing pressure that would otherwise land directly on leadership and slow everything down.

That’s operational intelligence.

And most people don’t even realise they’re doing it.

When you're good at it, it's invisible. The work of a great EA is specifically designed not to be noticed. And when everything runs smoothly, people assume the system runs itself.

The language problem (it's fixable)

The EA I mentioned earlier is making a strategic move, when she stopped waiting for her boss to figure out her value, and is starting to intentionally narrate it.

Not cc'ing herself on emails or writing self-promotion updates. Just in the weekly one-on-one she'd secured with him, starting to describe what she'd navigated that week. What she'd caught before it became his problem. What she'd made easier.

"I noticed the supplier presentation was going to clash with two of your direct reports being interstate, so I restructured the agenda and briefed them beforehand. The meeting ran 20 minutes shorter than scheduled and you had everything you needed."

Same work she'd always done. Now he could see it.

See how this change isn't about self promotion, it's more about accuracy. Describing your work at the level it actually operates, not the level it sounds like from the outside.

Same job. Completely different impression.

What this has to do with AI and offshoring

The roles that are most at risk from automation, from offshoring, from cost-cutting, are the ones that sound transactional. Task lists. Schedulable. Replaceable.

The roles that aren't? The ones where the person is so embedded in how the business thinks and moves that removing them would create problems nobody else knows how to solve.

That's not about being indispensable through overwork. It's about being indispensable through judgement.

Through relationships.

Through the kind of anticipatory thinking that doesn't show up in a task list but absolutely shows up when it's gone.

That's what strategic EAs build.

And it starts with being able to describe it.