AI can summarize a meeting. 

It can draft an email, prepare a briefing, organize information, identify action items, and increasingly manage pieces of a calendar. 

Honestly? Thank goodness. These were all parts of our job that we didn’t love anyway. 

So it’s reasonable to ask: What happens to executive support when technology can do more of the supporting? 

We don’t think executive support disappears. 

We think the work changes. 

Start with the work, not the role 

The conversation about AI often starts with jobs. Will AI replace Executive Assistants? What about Chiefs of Staff? Which roles are safe? 

We think there’s a more useful question: What work should humans still be doing? 

Take meeting preparation. 

Today, someone might gather materials, pull previous notes, identify open items, create a briefing document, and send it to the executive. 

AI can already do parts of that work. And it will likely do much more of it in the future. 

But knowing that the executive is walking into a sensitive conversation with a colleague they’ve known for 20 years? Knowing that a seemingly minor agenda item is connected to a much larger organizational issue? Knowing what the executive is likely to care about that isn’t written anywhere? Bring us in, Coach. 

The task is preparing the briefing. The value is understanding what the executive needs to walk into the room prepared. 

Efficiency isn’t the only goal 

There is an obvious opportunity to make Executive Offices more efficient with the advent of AI. And, guess what, we should. 

An Executive Assistant shouldn’t spend an hour manually assembling information that technology can produce in seconds. A Chief of Staff shouldn’t have to search through five documents to reconstruct a decision that could be surfaced immediately. 

But freeing up time only matters if we’re thoughtful about what fills it. 

The opportunity isn’t to do the same work faster. It’s to reconsider the work altogether. 

The human work becomes more important 

Executive Offices contain an unusual amount of work that depends on context: Who needs to know? What isn’t being said? When should the executive get involved? When shouldn’t they? Which relationship needs attention? Should we follow the process or is this the moment to make an exception? 

Technology will get better at helping answer these questions. But judgment, trust, discretion, influence, and relationships remain central to executive support. 

In fact, as more administrative and information-processing work becomes automated, those capabilities should become a larger part of the job. 

The best Executive Assistants may spend less time managing logistics and more time exercising judgment. 

The best Chiefs of Staff may spend less time collecting information and more time interpreting it. 

That’s not the disappearance of executive support. It’s an elevation of it. And we think it’s an elevation we can get excited about. 

This requires Executive Offices to change 

Here’s the catch: You can’t introduce new technology into an old operating model and expect transformation. 

If an Executive Office has unclear responsibilities, inconsistent processes, information scattered across systems, and no shared understanding of how the executive wants to operate, adding AI won’t fix those problems. 

It may make some of them faster. 

Before asking what AI can automate, organizations need to understand how their Executive Office actually works. 

What information does the executive need? How does it reach them? What decisions require their involvement? What processes happen repeatedly? Where is time being spent on low-value work? Where does human judgment matter most? 

Then technology can be applied intentionally. 

The Executive Office has always been people, process, and technology 

For a long time, executive support has been heavily associated with people. 

Need more leverage? Hire an EA. 

Still overwhelmed? Add a Chief of Staff. 

But people are only one part of the equation. 

An effective Executive Office is a combination of people, process, and technology working together around the needs of the executive. 

AI changes the balance. Some work that once required a person may not anymore. Some processes can become significantly simpler. And some roles may evolve as a result. 

That’s a good thing! Because the goal was never to preserve a particular collection of tasks. It’s always been to make the executive more effective. 

Don’t automate the wrong Executive Office 

There’s a temptation right now to start with technology: What can we automate? What AI tools should we use? How can we make this faster? 

Those are useful questions. But they come second. 

First ask: How should this Executive Office work? 

Then determine what people should own, what needs a process, and what technology can do better. 

The Executive Office of the future will almost certainly have more technology in it. It may also require fewer manual tasks and different capabilities from the people who work there. 

But the need for someone to understand the executive, exercise judgment, navigate relationships, anticipate what isn’t obvious, and help translate intent into action isn’t going away. 

If anything, those things become more valuable when everything else gets easier to automate.

Photo by Tara Winstead