Under the new communication policy, employees are encouraged to present ideas with appropriate humility. Statements should begin with “perhaps,” “just a thought,” or “I might be mistaken,” followed by several qualifying clauses to ensure no unintended confidence is detected. Direct proposals are discouraged, as they may create the impression that someone knows what they are doing.

Managers report that the new policy has significantly reduced the risk of disagreement. Meetings now proceed smoothly, with ideas dissolving gently before they reach the point of decision.

The organisation remains perfectly aligned — mainly with uncertainty.

A global organisation proudly announces a new strategic initiative dedicated to discussing how learning might be improved. The programme includes workshops, steering groups, cross-functional dialogues, and a multi-year roadmap for reflection. Participants will explore what could potentially be done differently in the future, once sufficient alignment has been achieved around the concept of change.

Early indicators show strong engagement, with hundreds of hours already invested in framing the conversation. Implementation remains outside the current scope.

The organisation continues to learn — primarily about how to avoid doing so.

Men over fifty. Women over forty. Straight men. Independent women. Non-binary someone. People with limited mobility. Planted chicken. Everything now comes pre-labelled, pre-processed, and safely stripped of inconvenience. The label does the seeing, so no one has to.

We’ve perfected the art of naming without noticing. Language grows more careful as attention grows thinner. Somewhere between accuracy and virtue, the person quietly disappears.

Everyone is accounted for — except you. And me.

We fear they are different, yet pray they’ll fix everything.

The situation is under control. The situation is resolved. The threat has been eliminated. A deal has been reached. Progress has been made. Everyone agrees.

Except, occasionally, no one does.

Reality, it seems, has developed an unfortunate habit of not aligning with statements. One side declares completion; the other denies awareness. Outcomes are announced before they occur, confirmed before they exist, and repeated until they sound familiar enough to resemble truth.

In the end, reality remains stubbornly unconvinced.

Amen, you’re muted.

Life 1 – Work 1, draw after extra time.

Innovation per minute: down; appearances of being busy: stable.

Analysts announce, with grave conviction, that this year is the worst — or the best — depending on lunch. Markets “look strange today,” just as they did yesterday and will tomorrow. Signals are spotted, patterns declared, and predictions made with the confidence of weather forecasts in a hurricane. Beneath the jargon hums a simple truth: the economy is a mood swing with graphs.

Money, it seems, is the most successful fiction ever traded as fact.

Every organisation has them — the prophets of what should have been. They know every failed project, every flawed strategy, every misstep of management, and narrate them all with retrospective genius. Their vision stops exactly where action begins. In meetings they nod wisely in silence; outside, they rewrite history for sport. Their KPIs are decorative, but their confidence — bulletproof.

In theory, they could fix everything; in practice, they’re busy explaining why you can’t.

They arrive late, lose files, and forget what was said — and somehow, they thrive. In a world obsessed with order, they’ve turned disorganisation into charisma. Their inbox is a modern art installation; their desk a topographical mystery. Yet executives adore them for being “visionary” — proof that if you’re scattered enough, people call it genius.

Apparently, the secret to success is never knowing where anything is.

The modern manager no longer leads — they hover. Every email, draft, and spreadsheet must bear their sacred touch, for chaos might ensue if employees finish tasks without supervision. Revisions are mandatory, not for improvement but for ceremony. Control, after all, is the purest form of insecurity; authority merely its stage costume.

Productivity dies quietly — under the weight of someone else’s cursor.

They message you once a quarter to lament your mutual absence, usually while ignoring your last unanswered text. When meetings happen, they’re late — not fashionably, but existentially. Time bends around them until somehow you’re apologising for their delay. Their friendship thrives on inertia, powered by nostalgia and poor calendar management.

Some connections aren’t broken — just permanently buffering.

Having opinions is out; distributing them is in. The new social hierarchy rewards those who interrupt your peace to offer direction you didn’t request and can’t use. Advice-giving has become performance art: a declaration of existence through verbal interference. In a world where silence is free, people still prefer to pay with credibility.

When everyone’s a mentor, no one listens.

In a world where people speak three languages before breakfast, a few still guard the gates of pronunciation with missionary zeal. They correct others mid-sentence, mistaking accent for error and curiosity for incompetence. Somewhere between colonial nostalgia and grammar anxiety, they find purpose — saving vowels, one humiliation at a time.

Fluency was never the goal; conformity was.

The myth of artificial intelligence crumbles under the simplest experiment: ask it a vague question. The machine, loyal to a fault, will fetch precisely what you didn’t mean. Panic follows, followed by the realisation that ChatGPT isn’t enacting some hidden logic — it’s merely enacting your own chaotic instructions. Once you stop, clarify, and think like a person instead of a search term, the so-called AI instantly evolves from fool to philosopher.

Turns out the upgrade was never in the model — it was in the user’s brain.

We speak of work–life balance as though life were a weekend hobby occasionally interrupted by employment. The metaphor is perfect: one foot in a spreadsheet, the other in a yoga pose, waiting for equilibrium that physics never promised. The secret, of course, is not balance — it’s remembering both feet belong to the same person.

Life 1 – Work 1, draw after extra time.

If a newly met suit-and-tie person asks me this question, I share that I am an Executive Assistant to the CEO. And more often than not, I see their eyes light up with recognition. So I know that no further explanation is necessary – the person in front of me is very much aware of what does it mean to be an EA.

I used to struggle to explain what I do to people outside of the white-collar world. Lately, I don’t feel the urge to explain to them what being an EA means anymore. I state that I work as an office employee.

Funny, but some acquaintances have not the slightest idea about what my job is. Some of them are even patronising me. I suddenly find myself listening to a person trying to explain to me how does strategic planning work or what does the project management mean. Some even suggest that, with a little effort, I will develop a career and stop being just a secretary, welcoming visitors and bringing coffee. It makes me smile :)

When I meet my fellow EAs, I see that I am not the only one facing the same issue. We are all in this together. 

For all of those who think Executive Assistants are only bringing coffee and sit still making the meeting room look pretty – welcome to The Wonderful Life and Adventures of an Executive Assistant. I believe Mr Defoe would not mind my loose interpretation of his book title.

So who the heck are Executive Assistants?

There is a bunch of names for various administrative employees – receptionists, secretaries, team assistants, administrative and staff assistants, personal, executive and strategic management assistants. If you are not familiar with the work they do, they are pretty much interchangeable for you. Even if you encounter an Executive or Strategic Management assistant (I’ll stick to EA further on), you’d most probably expect this to be just a fancy name for a secretary. 

There is very little chance you would trust the assistant in front of you to be in full control of the CEO’s life. You might find it hard to imagine that this person decides which meetings CEO will attend, prepares all speeches, reports and presentations, acts as a sparring partner and acts as a point of reference for practically everything. 

I think it’s the assistant part which plays us here. We look at assistants as at juniors, someone, who just started with their career. We tend to want to talk to a manager because a manager certainly has more experience than an assistant. We think a manager is better equipped to help us.

What if I told you that you are wrong? What if I told you that being an Executive Assistant means you are managing your manager – planning, prioritising, organising, drafting, checking, finalising and sometimes even executing every facet of manager’s daily work? 

And some of us deal not only with work but also with yachts, cars, dogs, nannies, holiday houses abroad, dietary requirements of family members, gifts for partners and spouses, reading lists, dry cleaning, groceries, landlords, medical prescriptions and ringtone preferences. Making sure the kids are timely picked up from the nursery, keeping track of next week\’s schedule and drafting a business proposal for funding at the same time and with the same level of quality is not something everyone can do.

The retinue plays the king

attributed to Niccolò Machiavelli

To be continued..