We have an Executive Assistant seat on our Accountability Chart, but it has become a dumping ground for random operational tasks that our leadership team does not want to deal with, from basic bookkeeping to managing our office lease. How do we prevent this seat from becoming a chaotic catch-all that eventually causes burnout and dropped balls?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When an Executive Assistant seat becomes a catch-all dumping ground, it is a clear sign of structural weakness on your Accountability Chart. This happens because your leadership team is avoiding the hard work of assigning specialized roles to the correct operational departments.

To fix this, you must run a clean audit of your EA seat and ruthlessly enforce the rule of five core roles per seat. Write down every single task currently performed by your EA. Then, categorize them. If your EA is doing basic bookkeeping, that role belongs under the Finance seat, even if the EA is executing it part-time. If your EA is managing the office lease, that is a facilities role that belongs under Operations.

Once you have separated these mismatched roles, assign them to their proper seats on the Accountability Chart. If the person sitting in the Finance or Operations seat does not have the capacity to execute those roles, they must delegate them properly, rather than dumping them onto the EA.

Keep the EA seat focused strictly on its five core roles, such as calendar management, leadership meeting coordination, and executive communication. This keeps the seat pure and prevents burnout. By forcing your department heads to own the administrative tasks within their own functions, you preserve the integrity of your Accountability Chart and ensure that your business operates with true accountability.