Leah Warwick: Hi everyone, I’m Leah Warwick, and you’re listening to The Admin Edge. Here at the American Society of Administrative Professionals, we offer AI training while also emphasizing the importance of human discernment and amplification. Few know this better than Lisa de Melogue, EA to the CEO at Marco Polo and a trainer at our event, EA Ignite.

Let’s listen in to Lisa on the show floor at EA Ignite, talking with Lydia Davidheiser from ASAP. Lydia speaks first

Lydia Davidheiser: Welcome to the podcast, Lisa.

Lisa de Melogue: Thank you. Excited to be here.

Lydia Davidheiser: Yes, we’re so excited to have you. And today we’re talking about something very important. A big conversation in the industry right now is AI. But of course, on this podcast, I would love to cover with you how it’s really taking over parts of the job that are maybe becoming time-consuming or repetitive.

So we’re calling this episode, AI Came For The Parts Of Your Job That You Hate. And I must admit, I spied on your LinkedIn earlier, and I found a quote that I would love to read everyone because I think it really sets the tone for this episode and what you believe when it comes to this new technology.

You work for Marco Polo, which is a tech company, and you say, “At Marco Polo, there’s a strong expectation that we embrace AI-first thinking in how we work. I use AI in nearly every part of my role.” And so what I want to ask you first is, in our recent State of the Profession Report, which for those who don’t know, it’s a free benchmarking report on our website, this year we surveyed over 5,000 admins, 285 executives, and 223 HR professionals.

We saw that AI usage has skyrocketed. Almost 77% of admins are using it, but less than half feel confident actually integrating it into their work. So I’m curious, Lisa, does this gap surprise you?

Lisa de Melogue: You know, it really doesn’t, just because of the EAs that I talk to, there’s a few factors that are contributing to that.

One is it’s just such a huge learning curve. We have all these different tools we hear about. We have all these different ways of doing things. We’re hearing about it at the conference. We’re hearing about it from our peers and social media, all these places. And so we’re bombarded with all this information and all this advice of what we should be doing, and I feel like it’s just overwhelming.

And it’s hard to know who to listen to, where to begin. You know, “How do I really integrate it for myself?” That’s one part I think that’s contributing.

Then the other thing is, there’s just the level of fear, of like, “I don’t know what to do. How do I do this? What if it doesn’t work for me?”

Or they’ve tried it and it hasn’t worked out the way they expected it to, and so they just kinda wanna give up.

And also just another huge common fear is job security. You know, “If I automate too much, am I not gonna be needed anymore? Or am I gonna be completely replaced in my role?”

Those are all really valid fears. I feel like, with all that coming together, that’s what’s contributing to that gap.

What I’ve seen and experienced for myself is, it starts with that first win, that first “wow” factor of when you do something with AI. It just makes your life easier, and then it snowballs from there.

For me, it’s taking a screenshot of my exec’s itinerary and of an event they’re gonna go to. There’s many days and many events, and they need to know where to go. They’re not gonna look at that piece of paper. It was taking a screenshot of that, and AI helped to automatically stick it into their calendar without me manually entering everything in.

Most of us have that kind of scenario, where we have to do that. So to see that happen within minutes is like, “Wow.” That’s to me where it was like, “Whoa, where else can this take me?”

I think it’s just about experimenting and taking things one step at a time to help close that gap.

Lydia Davidheiser: Absolutely. And you touched on something really important, which is the honest truth, that there is a lot of hesitation. There is a lot of fear when it comes to AI, especially in the industry right now. Where do you think the profession is falling behind when it comes to adopting these tools?

Lisa de Melogie: Once you get the confidence and you build those couple tasks, the couple tasks that you’re gonna automate, that’s great; but I think people then stop there. They don’t go further.

And the question that you need to ask is, “What happens next in that workflow?” We don’t just have one part of a workflow.

For example, if you are using AI to help summarize meeting notes, what do you do with those meeting notes? Well, you probably have action items, so have AI create action items. Have it create tasks for you in your task program at work. There’s probably follow-up communication that happens, right? Have it draft the communication. It’s got the context of the notes, and you can give it more context about your company, too. You can be giving this information to AI to help it help you, which is amazing.

And then another one is event planning. We all probably plan events, team offsites, that kind of thing.  Take a messy spreadsheet that has all these travel logistics and maybe sessions that you’re gonna be building, and instead of manually cleaning and organizing and formatting it, just upload that spreadsheet to AI and say, “Help me make this better.” And it’s amazing what it comes up with, not only that you thought of, but it’ll come up with other ways, and it’s like, “Wow, I never thought of having this there.”

That’s what’s so amazing to me. It’s going from generating stuff for you to actually thinking with you. And that right there, is where people are not realizing that it’s out there, they can seize that.

Lydia Davidheiser: Yeah, that is such an important step. And you already provided such great examples; but for someone who feels overwhelmed by all the options, how would you recommend they start integrating AI into their workflow in a way that actually feels manageable, if they don’t know where to start?

Lisa de Melogue: I’d actually start with the frustration, not the tools.

Asking yourself one of two questions. One would be, what’s something that I do over and over and over again? And maybe I can reduce some time with doing that task. So, it’s gonna be something that’ll make it more efficient, or even just completely automate it.

It could be taking all the travel details for your exec for a trip and creating a nice itinerary, like a beautiful snapshot itinerary. Again, something we manually would be doing, but that’s a manageable thing and most of us have that to do.

Another one might be building a report, and there’s multiple sources. So instead of you having to go to the different sources, you’re putting all that into AI, and it’s creating that report for you. At least it’s a starting point, too. It’s not just starting from a blank page.

The other question is, what is something you don’t like doing? We all have parts of our job we don’t like doing, so what’s that thing that you’re like, “Ugh, I really don’t wanna do this?”

For some people it might be expense reports. Some people don’t like that. So you can have AI help with that. For me, I don’t like writing. I love that I have an AI chatbot that writes for me for the most part.

Whatever it is that you don’t really enjoy, start there. Just go into your AI tool and say, “Alright, this is a part of my job I really don’t enjoy. Can you help me automate this?” And it has answers for you. So, you don’t have to have the answer. You just have to have the want, the need.

Lydia Davidheiser: Absolutely, and using it to your advantage. But not all tools are created equal. There’s so many out there. What’s the difference between AI that saves you a few minutes versus tools that genuinely change how you work and potentially save you hours?

Lisa de Melogue: I would say it really comes down to mindset. A mindset shift of being open and curious and just wanting to experiment.

Again, if AI helps you with one thing, asking that next question of, “What else can it really help me with?”

We all have huge ownership in everything we do as EAs. We want our exec to be happy. We want everything to be perfect. And that’s a strength. That’s part of what we’re good at. But it also can be a hindrance in a way, because then we feel like we have to be part of every single part of the process.

If you stop and really think, “Do I need to be a part of every step of this process?” the answer might surprise you. You probably don’t need to be.

The shift right now is going to an agent. Having an agent run in the background doing these tasks with you, or even without you. As long as you’re overseeing, you’re creating it, but having it run without you.

An example of that in my work is meeting prep. It used to involve eight steps. When you stop and you map it all out, it’s eight steps just to do meeting prep.

So right now, I have an agent that checks my exec’s calendar for any meetings that are external next week that she might need prep for. Then it checks if they’ve met before. If they’ve met within the last six months, she might not need prep. But if they’ve never met, of course she would.

And then, the coolest part is that it creates a task, tags her, and says, “Do you need meeting prep with this person or these people?” Waits for her answer. If she says, “Yes” for any of those people, it then kicks off research. It gets the LinkedIn profile, the company info, finds commonalities between my exec and that person, and then it finds recent news, podcasts, whatever.

And then it’s actually creating the prep doc, in the format she wants, and creating the task, day of, for her to review it.

It was eight steps I was manually doing. I took myself out of that workflow, how amazing is that? So powerful. And that didn’t take any coding or engineering.

I just opened up my AI chatbot, I use Claude Cowork, and explained: “I have all these steps. I want to make it better. What can I automate?” And it walked through.

And of course there was testing, and all that time to do that. But to me, it was worth it.

The other big thing, I think it’s so helpful, is to build a habit of having a list of AI ideas.

Because you’re going to get these ideas from the conference here, social media, everywhere, and you’ll hear something and go, “Yeah, I want to try that.” But you don’t have to time to do it right now.

So, keep a list, in whatever format you want. But you have to block time on your calendar every week, you have to take time for yourself.

It’s really important to do this. Because if you don’t make space for yourself, then you are going to fall behind.

And when it comes to that time, open up that list, and see what comes out as the most important, the most sticky to you at the moment, and just do it.

Start small and do that. But if you do it every week, it’s really going to build that muscle. And then you’re going to build that confidence really quickly.

Lydia Davidheiser: Right. Thank you, Lisa, so much for sharing all those practical examples. We know listeners will definitely take that to heart and they can implement that right away.

I wanted to touch on a listener question that was submitted by one of our community members. They write: “I’m worried that the more I automate, the more my executive will wonder what I’m actually doing all day. How do you handle that?”

Lisa de Melogue: Yeah, totally a common concern, and very understandable, right? Because we are automating so much, so then it’s like, well, “What am I doing in my role? Or what are they thinking I’m doing or not doing in my role?”

I think that automating doesn’t remove value. It just shifts the value. So, think about things that require judgment, that require awareness and relationship building.

As EAs, it’s a deeply human-based role. They [executives] rely on us for judgment and emotional intelligence, intuition, context, things that AI doesn’t have.

AI doesn’t know your business, it doesn’t know your exec, in the ways that you do. It doesn’t know your culture. It doesn’t know all these different things, right? The nuance behind decisions that are being made.

That’s why I really feel like AI is here to augment, not to replace. It’ll make us better at what we do, especially the things that we don’t like to do or that we don’t feel like we do as well.

So, when you’re freeing up that time, you really are able to reinvest that into higher value work: anticipating needs, improving processes, solving problems before they arise. That’s what execs truly value, and these are the things that only humans can do.

Lydia Davidheiser: Wow. What a powerful note and a way to end this episode. Thank you so much, Lisa, for joining us here on The Admin Edge. Where can our listeners find you online?

Lisa de Melogue: I’d love to connect on LinkedIn. That would be great. And I do want to add that for me, my real breakthrough with AI was taking a course. I took the Carve AI for EAs course. It wasn’t just the tools and ideas that come from that, which are great. It’s a community, a workshop, a class, surrounded by people that really have the same growth intuition. It’s learning amongst your peers and growing in your skills.

Lydia Davidheiser: Thank you again, Lisa, for your time.

Lisa de Melogue: Yeah. Thank you. It was fun.

Leah Warwick: Audio editing by Warwick Productions, with audio and video production by 5Tool Productions.

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