The Cost Benefit Analysis of Executive Assistant Work
Work smarter, not harder, and screw the $25 late fees.
When I first started out as an Executive Assistant in tech, I thought that saying “yes” to everyone and helping anyone who needed or asked for help was what I needed to do to be a great EA. I wanted to be the unspoken backbone of the company. The person whom anyone could come to with a question because I had the answers to everything. The person who could solve problems for folks and take things off their plate so they could focus on making our company successful. The person who could make the somewhat impossible, possible.
I remember handling a dozen people’s expenses in Concur (back when receipts had to be scanned in (yes, scanned) and everything had to be added manually and expensed individually). I recall being on the phone with United and Korean Air and credit card companies for hours trying to get a refund on cancellation fees and late fees. I remember printing menu cards everyday for our incredible company cafeteria. I remember taking Ubers and running personal errands for people so they wouldn’t have to spend time away from making our company successful. Like literally, that was how I saw my role - here, let me do the menial tasks for you so that you don’t have to waste time doing it, and instead you can focus on “making our company successful”.
In retrospect, I’m grateful for all those opportunities. I think it helped me gain a reputation of being reliable, trustworthy, hard working, and ambitious. I never felt that anyone was taking advantage of me and my willingness to help them, though who knows, maybe some were. But I truly believed that my job was to take care of everyone so that they could do what they needed to do and what they were hired to do. To me at this time, being an EA was synonymous with being a glorified Generalist. That’s just what I thought I was supposed to do and who I was supposed to be.
Then the company got really busy. Suddenly, I supported 4 executives. And physically, I just couldn’t help everyone anymore. So naturally, I had to start saying no. I was never good at it - the saying no part. I actually burned out every 4 months from overworking, and it would take one instance of someone simply asking “how are you doing?” for me to immediately respond with a waterfall of tears because they caught me at the perfect time of hormone imbalance (well, they probably didn’t think it was perfect timing). I could name a few people (luckily, it’s less than 5) who were the recipient to my uncontrollable tears which truly did come out of nowhere.
But I digress. Eventually, I couldn’t be on hold for an hour with airlines and credit card companies trying to get a refund for $25 or even $150 (my executive at that time actually told me to forego all the late fees and cancellation fees, said they weren’t worth my time, which empowered me even more to just let those small things go). I didn’t have time to research and compare prices for a hotel for my exec’s future travels, I just had to go with the closest nice hotel nearest to our office in that country. I couldn’t spend time trying to negotiate the best deal for car service. I couldn’t do everyone’s expenses for them. I couldn’t print menu cards anymore.
And that’s when I realized that EAs need to operate with a cost benefit analysis system in mind.
If a task costs less than your hourly rate, you should outsource it or ignore it.
If a task takes up too much of your mental and emotional space and energy and takes you away from your priorities, then say no and don’t do it.
If a task adds little to no value to your own work, your executive’s priorities, or to the company’s success, then don’t do it.
If you’re spending a ton of time trying to save a few hundred bucks, it might not be worth it - think about what else you could be doing during that time that could be more beneficial to the company.
With all that said, I don’t think I could be where I am today if I hadn’t helped and said yes to everyone back then. It pushed me to my limit, which was great, because I could see and feel where my threshold was for stress (mentally and physically). But most importantly, it helped me build tons of relationships with people all throughout the company in different departments. It helped me build my reputation and with that reputation, I was able to start saying no to people and start focusing on being an EA, which I eventually realized there was a whole other side to.
When junior, less experienced admins now ask me how they should say no to people and tasks without coming across as rude, in my head, I say “you have to earn your right to say no” because I really believe that to be true. But out loud, I tell them about this cost benefit analysis approach and leave it in their hands to figure out the right delivery. That seems to be the most PC answer… at least for now, anyway.