Jeremy Burrows, longtime EA, author of The Leader Assistant and host of The Leader Assistant Podcast, explains how calendar auditing turns your work into data that matters to leadership.
It’s one thing to tell your executive they’re spending too much time in internal meetings. It’s another to show them a chart with the exact numbers, broken down by quarter, compared against business results. That’s the difference between managing a calendar and managing it strategically.
Data changes the conversation
Tracking your executive’s time (auditing where it actually goes) keeps everyone honest. It gives your executive a clear picture of how their time aligns with their priorities, and it gives you the evidence to make the case for change when it doesn’t.
Consider this scenario. Your organisation hit its sales target in Q1 when your executive spent 78% of their time in sales meetings. In Q2, that dropped to 24% and the target was missed. With that data in hand, the conversation with leadership about Q3 priorities becomes much easier – and much more credible.
Tracking your executive’s time is one of the most tangible ways an EA can affect the organisation’s bottom line. It also cements your position as a strategic partner rather than a scheduler.
How to set it up
You don’t need a complex system to start. One approach that works well is a workflow using Google Calendar, Zapier, Google Sheets and conditional formatting.
When an event ends on your executive’s calendar, Zapier automatically creates a row in a Google Sheet and logs the details – title, description, length, location, type, attendees and date. From there, you edit what’s already captured, apply formulas and build tables and charts to report an overview to your executive each quarter.
The manual clean-up is minimal compared to auditing by hand. What used to take days can be done in a fraction of the time.
AI tools, including Gemini and Claude, can also assist with calendar analysis. And dedicated time-tracking tools are available if you prefer a more automated approach. Be cautious with tools that need your executive to trigger them manually every time they switch tasks. In practice, most executives won’t sustain that.
What to do with the data
At the end of each quarter, sit down with your executive to review the numbers. Look at what’s encouraging and what’s not. Are they spending time where the organisation needs them most? Did low-priority meetings make it onto the calendar that shouldn’t have? What does the weekly structure look like?
Use the conversation to make an action plan for any adjustments to the schedule going forward. Over a six or nine-month period, patterns emerge that are impossible to see week by week.
If you’re not already gathering this data, your executive’s next annual review is a good moment to make it a goal. Research which tools will work best for your setup and ask your executive specifically what they’d like to track.
The calendar is where your executive’s priorities either hold or collapse. The data tells you which one is happening.
leaderassistant.com
