The Strategic Power of Assistants

An open letter to management

Two weeks ago, I attended the 'Rolevolution' event with Diana Brandl in Basel. The event focused on how the role of assistants is going to change thanks to AI. We discussed how to use Microsoft Copilot in their daily work, the challenges involved, and, of course, what this means for the role itself. I have had the pleasure of being a lecturer at university for more than five years now. The curriculum is designed for executive assistants, and I have always been impressed by the students, as well as by how the roles have changed over time. It's clear to me that assistants won't do the same job in the future as they have done over the last two years, and at the same time, the job itself won't disappear. I asked Diana if she would be willing to share her experiences and insights with the Copilot Your Day readers. The result is a great open letter to executives who may not understand the real power of assistants. But read it by your self.

Dear Executives,

This is an open letter written with deep respect for your role and with an vital invitation to rethink how you potentially see and work with your assistant.

Nitin Nohria’s reflection on his partnership with Susan, his Executive Assistant during his years as Dean of Harvard Business School, should be required reading for every leader thinking about AI and the collaboration with an assistant. Because for me, it is a blueprint for the future.

At first glance, Nohria’s argument is about the importance of an exceptional Executive Assistant. But underneath it covers a much bigger question: What should happen to the assistant role when AI becomes capable of doing so much of the work traditionally associated with it?

Yes, AI can already draft emails, summarize meetings, coordinate schedules, prepare briefing documents, search through information, capture actions, analyze calendars, organize travel and anticipate conflicts. Soon, AI agents will be able to conduct many administrative workflows from beginning to end. It would therefore be easy for executives to reach a seemingly logical conclusion: if technology can perform more of the assistant’s tasks, perhaps organizations will need fewer executive support professionals.

Get to know Diana

Diana Brandl holds a degree in International Administration and Management. She worked as a Senior Executive Assistant and Chief of Staff for 20 years supporting C-Suite management at Sony, Mister Spex and Babbel. She is an international speaker, certified coach, and consultant focusing on New Work, Personal Branding, and Leadership. Diana is the host of the Executive Office Insights Podcast and a LinkedIn Learning instructor. She has been named Woman of the Week by the Global Digital Women and was called as one of the 45 top global voices by The EA Campus. She is a Digital Nomad and loves to work from all over the world.

I believe this conclusion misunderstands both AI and the role of the modern assistant. AI will transform the assistant profession profoundly. It will eliminate some work, accelerate much more of it and raise expectations for everyone in the profession. But the most valuable assistants will not become less important. They will become more important, precisely because AI will make execution easier while making judgment, trust, context and human connection more valuable.

Leadership does not need a human alternative to AI. Managers need a human partner who knows how to lead AI, interpret the organization and protect the executive’s attention.

Agnes Heftberger, CEO of Microsoft Germany and Austria, makes exactly this point in her recent SPIEGEL interview. When confronted with the provocative question of whether her personal assistant

“even has anything left to do,”

she responded clearly:

“Andrea remains irreplaceable. She manages my life and is therefore an important part of my life. And yes, she gets help, just like I do, in the form of AI agents.”

The calendar is not administration. Assistants call it the frontline of strategy.

One of the most important observations in Nohria’s piece is deceptively simple. A CEO’s calendar is a statement of priorities. Executives can talk about customers, employees, innovation, culture, strategy and long-term thinking. But the calendar eventually reveals what actually received their attention.

There is a difference between scheduling meetings and managing executive capacity. A scheduling system can find available slots. An assistant asks whether the meeting deserves time in the first place.

AI will become extraordinarily good at the first problem. It can compare calendars, understand time zones, identify conflicts, reorganize meetings and optimize travel. Increasingly, AI will understand preferences as well such as no meetings before a certain hour, protected thinking time on Friday mornings, twenty minutes between external meetings, no cross-city appointments on the same afternoon. This is useful but efficiency is not the same as judgment. Imagine an AI agent finds the mathematically perfect space for six additional meetings in a CEO’s week. But should those meetings actually happen?

Hire a Chief Attention Officer. But wait, you got one already!

The scarcest resource in executive leadership is no longer information. I believe it is attention. Executives are surrounded by information. Their inboxes are full, their messaging platforms never stop, dashboards update constantly and documents arrive continuously. AI will make the volume even greater because it dramatically lowers the cost of producing analysis, proposals and requests.

Ironically, the more productive AI makes an organization, the greater the competition for executive attention may become. Everyone will be able to produce more and everyone will be able to ask more. This makes the assistant’s role as a filter dramatically more important. Assistants will increasingly become the protectors and allocators of one of the organization’s most scarce resources.

Trust cannot simply be automated

Leadership can be lonely because hierarchy changes how people communicate with you. The more senior an executive becomes, the more carefully others may choose their words. Executives therefore often reveal more to their assistants than organizations realize. An assistant sees the pressure before the announcement. They know when the public confidence does not match the private concern. This creates something profoundly important: trust. Trust is not simply access to confidential information. Trust is the accumulated result of thousands of moments in which another person demonstrates judgment, discretion, honesty and care. An assistant often tells an executive what almost nobody else will. So yes, better listen. Your assistant saw the plot twist long before you did.

Executives must redesign the partnership

You have responsibility for what happens next. Do not introduce AI to your assistant by saying, “This should save you time.” Ask instead: “What could we become capable of together if AI removed 30 percent of our administrative workload?” Perhaps your assistant can attend more strategic meetings, own preparation for your leadership rhythm or build an executive operating system around you.

Nohria writes that only later did he fully understand how much of his leadership relied on Susan. Executives should not wait until the end of a role to reach that realization. Look at the person managing the flow around you today. Are you treating them as someone who manages your calendar? Or as someone who helps manage your effectiveness? Are you giving them tasks? Or context? Do they know where you are going? Or only where you need to be? Do they understand your priorities well enough to challenge your calendar? Are you investing in their AI capability? Are you inviting them into conversations where they can understand the business rather than merely administer its consequences? And, perhaps most importantly: Have you created enough trust for them to tell you when you are wrong?

Because that may become one of the most valuable capabilities in the AI-enabled executive office. The paradox of AI is that as machines become better at assisting us, we will have to become much clearer about what we actually need from human assistants. We do not need humans to compete with AI on speed. We do not need them to prove they can schedule faster, summarize more quickly or process more information. We need them to operate where technology is least sufficient and leadership is most vulnerable: judgment, trust, context, courage, relationships and care.

My closing intention for you

Do not ask whether AI will replace your assistant. Ask yourself what future role can my assistant finally step into now that AI has stripped away the administrative weight? The answer may fundamentally change how you continue to work together. AI will be extraordinarily powerful in that partnership. But it will remain a tool. The assistant is the relationship. And in leadership, relationships still change everything, right?

Key Concepts & FAQ

Frequently asked question about this article (AI-generated)

Will AI replace executive assistants?

No. AI takes over a large share of the administrative work: drafting emails, summarizing meetings, preparing briefing documents, coordinating calendars. What it does not take over is judgment, trust, context, and the courage to tell an executive something nobody else will. The argument in this episode is that assistants become more important as execution gets cheaper, because the human part of the role is the part that stays scarce. Agnes Heftberger, who leads Microsoft Germany, made the same point publicly when asked whether her assistant still had anything left to do. Her answer: Andrea is irreplaceable, and she gets AI support, just like Heftberger does.

How is Microsoft 365 Copilot changing the executive assistant role today?

Copilot already handles the volume work in an executive office. It drafts and summarizes, pulls the context out of a 40-message mail thread, prepares meeting briefings, and searches across mail, chat, and files. With agents, whole administrative workflows will run from beginning to end. The shift for the assistant is from producing output to directing it: reviewing, correcting, and deciding what actually reaches the executive. That is a different skillset, not a smaller one.

What is the difference between scheduling meetings and managing executive capacity?

A scheduling system finds a free slot. An assistant asks whether the meeting deserves that slot in the first place. AI is already strong at the first problem: comparing calendars, handling time zones, resolving conflicts, learning preferences like no meetings before 9 and protected thinking time on Friday mornings. But efficiency and judgment are two different capabilities. An agent can find the mathematically perfect space for six additional meetings in a CEO’s week, and still be completely wrong about whether those meetings should happen.

Why does executive attention get scarcer as AI makes organizations more productive?

Because AI lowers the cost of producing analysis, proposals, and requests, everyone in the organization can produce more and ask for more. Information was never the bottleneck for executives, their inboxes were full long before Copilot. Attention is the bottleneck, and AI raises the competition for it. That turns the assistant into the filter and allocator of one of the scarcest resources in the company.

What skills do executive assistants need in the AI era?

Two categories. First, real AI capability: prompting, checking output, understanding where the data comes from, spotting when an agent gets it wrong, and judging which tasks are worth automating at all. Second, the skills technology is worst at: prioritization, discretion with confidential context, reading the organization, and the confidence to challenge an executive’s calendar. In more than five years lecturing for executive assistants at university, the students who moved fastest were the ones who treated AI as something to lead, not something to survive.

Who is Diana Brandl?

Diana Brandl holds a degree in International Administration and Management and spent 20 years as Senior Executive Assistant and Chief of Staff supporting C-suite leadership at Sony, Mister Spex, and Babbel. She is an international speaker, certified coach, and consultant focused on New Work, Personal Branding, and Leadership. She hosts the Executive Office Insights Podcast and teaches on LinkedIn Learning. Global Digital Women named her Woman of the Week, and The EA Campus listed her among 45 top global voices.