You Don’t Have a Workload Problem
When ownership is unclear, work does not disappear. It accumulates until it lands with the most capable person in the room
There is a particular kind of organisational friction that is often misdiagnosed as a workload problem.
On the surface, it looks like excess. Too many meetings, too many requests, too many moving parts competing for attention. The natural conclusion is that there is simply too much work to be done. However, in practice, that is rarely the root cause.
More often, the issue is that responsibility has not been clearly defined. Work exists, but ownership does not. In that vacuum, tasks are not completed, decisions are not progressed, and accountability becomes non-existent. The work itself does not disappear; it simply moves around until it settles with the person most likely to resolve it.
In many organisations, that person is the Executive Assistant - i.e. YOU.
We all know this is not what you were brought on to do. It is a function of proximity, visibility, and competence. Executive Assistants see what is moving, what has stalled, and what is at risk of being missed completely. You are often the first to notice, and usually the most likely to intervene.
Over time, this creates the appearance of a workload problem. The volume of activity increases, calendars become saturated, and work becomes increasingly reactive. However, the underlying issue is not capacity. It is the absence of clearly defined ownership structures.
Ownership Drift and Its Consequences
In well-functioning organisations, responsibility is explicit. Decisions have clear owners and progress can be traced back to accountable individuals.
In less structured environments, responsibility is implied rather than assigned. This creates what I describe as ownership drift: a gradual erosion of clarity around who is responsible for what. Honestly, it drives me bonkers.
Ownership drift emerges through language and behaviour that avoids direct assignment:
“Can someone take a look at this?”
“We should revisit this next week.”
“I assumed that had already been picked up.”
In work environments, the most reliable individuals generally become the default owners of unclaimed work. They pick up tasks, close gaps, and ensure continuity. While this behaviour is often rewarded in the short term, it creates a long-term dependency. The organisation begins to rely on informal intervention rather than formal accountability. How many times have you thought “this place wouldn’t run without me”?
Executive Assistants are particularly susceptible to this dynamic. You effectiveness, responsiveness, and cross-functional visibility make you a natural point of escalation for unresolved work. Over time, you become the informal operating layer of the organisation - coordinating, clarifying, and progressing activity that has no clear owner. You become the glue holding everything together.
How Ownership Gaps Manifest in Practice
The consequences of unclear ownership are rarely abstract. They appear in consistent and recognisable patterns across organisations. I’ve seen it time and time again.
Meetings are scheduled without defined objectives, and preparation becomes an afterthought (if done at all!). In the absence of a clear owner, the responsibility for shaping the meeting - its agenda, its participants, and its outcomes - falls to whoever is closest to its logistics. In many cases, that is the Executive Assistant. What begins as a scheduling task evolves into end-to-end ownership of the meeting’s effectiveness, or “cat herding”.
Projects exhibit similar patterns. Workstreams are initiated without clear accountability for progress. Updates are inconsistent, deadlines shift without acknowledgement, and risks are surfaced late. To compensate, someone must create visibility: tracking status, consolidating updates, and identifying blockers. Again, this responsibility frequently sits with the Executive Assistant, not because it is formally assigned, but because it is necessary. How many times have you become the default PM for something you weren’t even involved with at the start?
Even routine operational activities, such as travel coordination, reveal the same dynamic. Without clear ownership of priorities, preferences, and constraints, planning becomes reactive. Changes are managed in real time, information is held informally, and efficiency depends on individual memory rather than system design. Over time, you become the repository of operational knowledge and the de facto owner of its execution.
Across each of these examples, the pattern is consistent. Work expands until someone contains it. In the absence of defined ownership, containment becomes an informal responsibility.
From Absorption to Ownership
Addressing this issue does not require working harder or setting arbitrary boundaries.
Firstly, you need to stop unconsciously absorbing work that lacks clear ownership. This does not mean refusing to engage, but rather recognising when responsibility has not been defined and resisting the instinct to compensate immediately.
Secondly, begin deliberately owning specific operational domains - those that create clarity, consistency, and momentum across the organisation.
This distinction is critical. Attempting to disengage from all unowned work is neither practical nor effective. However, selectively owning the right areas enables Executive Assistants to move from reactivity to proactivity.
Ownership Creates Leverage
The most effective Executive Assistants do not attempt to own everything. Instead, they focus on the operational layers that enable the organisation to function coherently. Which is easier said than done - if you’re like me, you just take on more and more because you know if you don’t do it, no-one will.
One such layer is the meeting operating system. When ownership is established at this level, meetings are no longer isolated events but part of a structured approach to time and decision-making. Objectives are defined in advance, agendas are standardised, and actions are tracked consistently. The result is not simply better meetings, but more effective use of executive time.
Another critical layer is decision tracking. In many organisations, decisions are made but not documented, leading to repeated discussions and inconsistent execution. By introducing a lightweight system to capture decisions, their context, and their owners, continuity is established. This reduces rework and reinforces accountability.
Project visibility represents a third layer of leverage. While project management may sit elsewhere, visibility often does not. Creating a single source of truth for status, ownership, and risks ensures that issues are surfaced early and addressed proactively. Your role as EA in this context is not to manage delivery, but to ensure that delivery is visible.
The executive operating cadence is equally significant. Without a structured approach to priorities, time allocation, and follow-up, even senior leaders default to reactive behaviour. By establishing a consistent cadence - weekly priorities, aligned calendars, and meaningful check-ins - you can enable a more strategic mode of operation.
Finally, information flow underpins all other activity. In environments where communication is fragmented, clarity is compromised. By structuring how information is shared, summarised, and accessed, you can reduce noise and enable more effective decision-making.
Each of these layers shares a common characteristic: they do not rely on authority, but on consistency. They are systems that, once established, reduce dependency on individual intervention.
The Strategic Shift
When ownership is applied, your role evolves.
The focus shifts from responding to issues as they arise to designing environments in which issues are less likely to occur. Work becomes more predictable, accountability becomes clearer, and the organisation becomes less reliant on informal coordination.
This is the distinction between being busy and being effective. It is also the distinction between operational support and operational leadership.
However, this shift requires visibility. Many EAs are already performing elements of this work, but in ways that are informal, undocumented, and therefore fragile. Without explicit ownership, these systems depend on individual effort and are difficult to sustain or scale.
Formalising ownership - naming it, defining it, and making it repeatable - is what transforms isolated actions into organisational capability.
