Welcome back - at the time of recording this it was QUITE the week in the EA space.
Big highs and low lows.
We saw the headlines about 200 of 265 EA roles at KPG Australia being offshored to the Phillipines. Really sad and confronting news, my heart goes out to the EAs impacted. I know many EAs at KPMG and gosh they are such good people and really Good eas.
And on the flip side, the women leading tech awards - this is in the Australia and NZ space - released a list of 1000 women - heads, leads, project managers, csuite and CEO, directors and founders and engineers and …… drumroll please.
SIX EAs.
Phenomenal there’s nothing I love more than seeing incredible EA talent recognised and alongside industry colleagues not admin specific roles.
I posted about this tale of two halves on LinkedIn - ill link to it in the show notes.
So what a wild week. But from it came a lot of interesting commentary and this podcast ep actually fits in really well with it.
It’s about the concept of invisible work
If you’re an EA you know what im talking about
There is a whole layer of work happening inside organisations that most people never see.
It does not show up on project plans.
It does not sit neatly in KPIs.
It does not get talked about in performance conversations.
And yet, when it is missing, everything starts to wobble.
Ever gone on leave for a day or a week and everyone starts losing their mind or you come back to a great big mess to unstangle. That’s the work Im talking about.
This is the invisible work EAs do every day.
Reading the room.
Understanding nuance.
Managing time so bottlenecks do not appear.
Influencing in ways that quietly escalate progress.
Creating efficiencies others take for granted.
Preserving accuracy so reputation is protected.
Holding context so others can move faster.
Managing expectations so pressure does not land in the wrong places.
None of that looks like admin.
All of it is critical to how work actually gets done.
Most executives assume schedules run easily.
They see meetings in their calendar and assume the work was logistical.
There’s a need
Look for the right time
Talk to a few people
Get it in,
Send it out
Tick tick tick
They do not see the negotiation, the influencing, the expectation-setting, and the prioritisation that can take hours behind the scenes for a single meeting to land in the right place.
Literally hours. What SHOULD take 5 minutes at a surface level can take a really long time. The complexity is often hidden.
They also
Don’t t see the workflow being facilitated, the information being nudged through, the loose threads being held so things actually move.
They often don’t see seee the way EAs act as change agents, quietly ensuring new priorities and agendas are embedded into how work happens.
Because when this work is done well, it disappears.
Its barely a ripple on the surface
This is where invisible work becomes so easy to overlook.
An executive gets recognised for delivering on commitments.

their team gets rewarded for outcomes.
and the person who enabled the conditions for that to happen is rarely part of the story…..
I saw that many a time in my career - and it was true for my own work often when I was an EA
Not because contribution was small.
But because the art and science of the role is not visible to those who benefit from it.
A lot of this work happens alone, every day, in how an EA plans an executive’s world.

What they choose to surface and what they hold back.
How they quietly manage the broader team dynamic.
How they protect attention and sequence pressure.
Here is where the misunderstanding begins.
When organisations talk about making support more efficient, what they often mean is cheaper or more stretched. What gets missed is that efficiency in admin does not automatically translate to quality in decision flow. In fact, it often erodes the judgement layer that keeps things stable.
This is why invisible work is not a nice-to-have.
It is part of what holds operational stability in place.
Most performance frameworks measure output.
They rarely measure stability.
Who is holding the system together when priorities collide, when information is messy, when pressure distorts judgement.
That is where invisible work lives.
Many EAs take this thinking for granted.
They think it is just part of the job.
They don’t register that this is a specialist skill in itself. 
They often don’t realise they are making dozens of strategic decisions a day.
And because they do not name it, it gets missed.
This is one of the reasons I place such a strong emphasis, in my courses, in-house training sessions, and keynotes, on being able to pinpoint your value and communicate how you enable success.
Let me be really clear about this: its not about ego.
It is about accuracy.
Because when invisible work is not understood - the wheels fall off quickly.
Bottlenecks appear.
Teams become reactive.
Executives start working later, not by choice but out of necessity.
Noise increases.
Conflicting priorities surface.
Once an organisation tips into reactivity, it is very hard to pull it back.
Super tough. It can take months to unravel it and reset a rhythm. Longer depending how ingrained it is and the systems, protocols and disciplines that are missing.
AI adds another layer of complexity here.
AI can do a lot. It has changed the way many of us work. I use it extensively in my own business. Its changed my life. I can do about 80% more every day now.
But what AI cannot do is hold judgement.
It cannot think around corners without being prompted.
It cannot use relationships to get things done.
It cannot look across an entire system and notice what is out of place and what that ripple effect might be.
Great EAs do this instinctively.
They are generalists with deep institutional knowledge.
They spot patterns.
They synthesise information.
They hold context. Context that nobody else has
They use judgement to create ease and reduce friction.
Now - this is not traditional admin work.
This is work that protects decision quality and organisational stability.
This is also why some EAs are trusted in ways others are not.
They operate above the task list.
They understand business priorities.
They can communicate context.
They are willing to respectfully challenge when it matters.
Trust forms around that.
Over time, carrying invisible work without it being recognised takes a toll.
It shows up as resentment.
As disconnection.
As loss of confidence.
As withdrawing effort.
Highly motivated EAs often leave environments where their contribution is appreciated at a surface level, but not understood in ways that lead to meaningful development, reward, or progression.
For organisations, the risk is structural.
When invisible work walks out the door, the friction it was preventing appears.
You see this in poor handovers.
multi page documents that list passwords, preferences, and how to submit expenses.
That is not a handover.
That is a signal that institutional knowledge and context are about to leave the building.
You see it when noise increases around executives.
When teams lose focus.
When frustration rises because delivery slips.
This is why restructures, consolidation, and offshoring often feel more destabilising than expected.
When organisations restructure or offshore without mapping the invisible work, they do not remove cost.
They defer it. The cost shows up later as friction, rework, missed nuance, and pressure on leaders.
Here is the line I want to be very clear about.
The misunderstanding that EA work is simply admin is one of the biggest risks facing organisations and EAs right now.
Admin is necessary.
Invisible work is critical.
And it is the first thing people notice when it stops happening.
If organisations want to be fit for how work is actually happening in 2026, role definitions and development pathways need to be redesigned to reflect this reality.
For leaders, the invitation is to get curious about what is happening underneath the surface.
Just because you have not given your EA something to do does not mean work is not happening.
For EAs, the invitation is to understand the risk of keeping invisible work hidden.
If you cannot name the strategic thinking you are doing, it is very easy for it to be overlooked.
And in the climate we’re in we can’t leave anything to chance. You are important your work is important, and it deserves to be seen. But its up to you to make sure it is.
If you want a practical way to start surfacing the strategic thinking you use in your role day to day, I have a free checklist linked in the show notes that will help you pinpoint and articulate that work.
Making the invisible visible is one of my in-house training topics and a regular keynote focus. It is also a core pillar of the Elite EA Academy.
This work matters.
Because what holds organisations together is rarely the work that looks impressive on paper.
It is the work that quietly prevents things from breaking.
If you’re an EA listening to this and made something click for you. Share this with your team or even your executive.
I hope this gave you a different perspective on the ways that you drive performance forward and enable the success of others. - or maybe just a refresher on it.
Find all the ways to connect with me in the show notes. Let me know what stood out for you id love to hear.
Thanks for listening and I will see you in a fortnight.
