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Hi friends,
Hope you had a restful July 4th (or at least avoided any firework-related calendar emergencies 🇺🇸).
This week, I’m handing over the mic to someone I deeply respect in the EA world — Kelly Muñoz, Founder of EAs to the Rescue. She's taking over this issue with a must-read perspective on something we all feel but rarely name: the difference between your EA playbook and the handbook you leave behind.
It’s smart, validating, and packed with insights that remind you just how much strategy lives in this role. Enjoy, and don’t forget to forward to the EA who needs to hear this.
With love, and lots of coffee ☕
Chrissy
✨ The Inner Office
A private Slack community for the sharpest EAs in the game.
If you’ve ever felt like the only one solving complex problems behind the scenes — this space was built for you.
The Inner Office is where high-performing EAs, Chiefs of Staff, and ops pros come to trade strategies, templates, war stories, and wins.
Inside, you'll find:
Strategic conversation that respects your intelligence
Private AMAs with operators like Cortney Hickey (EA to CEO at Zapier)
Plug-and-play templates for everything from calendar audits to exec onboarding
A brain trust that actually understands what it’s like to run the business behind the business
No BS. No noise. Just your people, finally.
🧠 Playbooks vs. Handbooks - There’s No Such Thing as a Universal EA Handbook
I have “written” both.
The playbook lives in my head. I could create a template for it; however, it is the years of pattern recognition, gut instincts, and personal frameworks I have built from doing this work again and again across different orgs. I have systematized this knowledge over time, even if it mostly lives in instinct. The playbook is transferable in principle, but it still needs to be interpreted in practice. It is how I know what to do even when no one tells me.
The handbook is what I leave behind. It is the day-to-day blueprint that helps a team function after I am gone. Calendar logic. Vendor contacts. Internal dynamics. Which meetings matter, and which ones only exist out of habit.
The playbook helps me step in. The handbook helps others carry on.
No one ever asked to see the handbook while I was at any specific organization. And they were never supposed to see the playbook; it only works in motion.
What does exist, and what has served me consistently across industries, is the EA playbook: the internal, experience-based set of strategies I have built through lived practice. That is what helps me step into a new role and gain traction fast. But it is not cut and paste or one size fits all. It requires judgment, context, and nuance.
📘 Playbooks: Built From Experience
Playbooks give EAs a way to land quickly, understand the landscape, and begin to adapt; they require discernment. That means knowing how to problem-solve based on what the role, the executive, and the organization actually need.
The playbook also expands over time. As you gain more experience, especially across industries or company stages, your strategies evolve and sometimes that means the level of executive you support also evolves.
That said, do not get hung up on titles. Every executive has different scopes of work, and theirs ultimately become yours. Depending on the industry and individual, your playbook might include navigating investor relationships, managing board logistics, supporting high-stakes hiring, or liaising directly with clients and strategic partners. These types of duties are typically associated with C-Suite leaders but often show up at the SVP level as well. Handling them expands your knowledge base and strengthens your playbook, and ultimately, increases your value.
Examples of playbook strategies I carry with me:
30-90 Day Quiet Audit
I observe before changing anything. Who gets looped in too late? What constantly moves on the calendar? Where’s the real source of friction? This helps me prioritize the right fixes, not the obvious ones.
Calendar Forensics
Reviewing 4–6 weeks of past calendared activity tells me how an exec’s time flows, what drains them, and where the hidden patterns are before they even say it out loud. This allows me to start the conversation where improvements can be made.
Default-to-Draft Rule
I assume that starting a draft is almost always more helpful than asking for one. Agendas, slide decks, and recaps save time and sets a tone of ownership.
Relationship Building + Stakeholder Mapping
Early on, I learn names, titles, direct reports, and what projects key people are working on. I track my executives priorities alongside the organization’s larger goals. That context shapes how I communicate, what I prioritize, and how I show up in rooms where my presence adds value. EA Hack: get to know the facilities and IT teams ASAP. If you’re in office and need a quick fix, having a solid relationship with someone who can help immediately is worth its weight in gold.
Escalation Translation
When you hear something like “This is a mess,” do not just fix the mess, but study it. Take mental notes. What led up to that moment? Who was involved? Were there blockers or miscommunications? Could something have been flagged earlier? These observations often live in your playbook - and eventually - in your handbook as patterns to track and prevent. Use these moments to shape future strategy.
📂 Handbooks: What You Leave Behind
Handbooks are for the people who come next, or the people who need to fill in during your absence. When you are out on vacation, out on leave, or off to a new opportunity, a handbook gives visibility into what you were managing quietly every day.
Some of what I include:
Meeting Cadence + Context
Standing meetings, why they exist, and how to prep the exec for each one.Preferences Log
Travel routines, communication quirks, dietary details, and what not to do (often more important than what to do).Vendor + Tech Info
Key contacts, access points (via password manager), and what to flag when things malfunction.Calendar Ground Rules
Who can be moved, what gets protected, what to prioritize when time gets tight.Comms Templates
Create messaging samples like intros, follow-ups, and decline messages to help maintain consistency. These should reflect your executive’s tone, but only if that tone builds trust and momentum. If their style tends to ruffle feathers, use it as a reference point, but lean into professional, collaborative language that protects relationships rather than strain them.
If you’re lucky, your handbook gets used while you are on vacation. If not, it will be opened once you leave. And when it is, your team will start to realize how much you were holding and the details you focused on to make the day-to-day for your executive run smoothly.
Done right, a handbook builds trust during transitions and beyond. It is not just a backup plan. It is a quiet record of how much strategy lives in administrative and operational work.
🧭 Final Thought
The best EAs operate in both lanes:
The playbook that you started. It is not universal, but transferable in principle.
The handbook helps others after you carry on.
They are never the same. They should not be.
One helps you adapt. The other helps them survive without you.
About The Author
About EAs to the Rescue
EAs to the Rescue is a vibrant, global community for Executive Assistants, Chiefs of Staff, Office Managers, and other admin business support pros. We connect, collaborate, and cut through the noise by sharing resources—so every member can thrive, no matter their industry, years of experience, or location.
🔗 Find us on:
LinkedIn: EAs to the Rescue
Instagram: @eastotherescue
TikTok: @eastotherescue
🎶 Song of the Week: Levitating by Dua Lipa
Because sometimes your only job at the all-hands is to keep morale high and the Zoom chat unhinged.
This week’s pic, plus these two feel-good bangers, come straight from Kelly’s go-to playlist for all-hands energy:
Can’t Stop the Feeling! – Justin Timberlake
Blinding Lights – The Weeknd
Levitating – Dua Lipa (aka your power walk anthem)
🎧 Follow our Office of the EA All-Hands Playlist on Spotify to cue up confidence, even when the Wi-Fi isn’t.
Not All AI Notetakers Are Secure. Here’s the Checklist to Prove It.
You wouldn’t let an unknown vendor record your executive meetings, so why trust just any AI?
Most AI notetakers offer convenience. Very few offer true security.
This free checklist from Fellow breaks down the key criteria CEOs, IT teams, and privacy-conscious leaders should consider before rolling out AI meeting tools across their org.