What is an Executive Business Partner (EBP)?

What is an EBP? An Executive Business Partner. 

And what does that mean? Let’s define it by comparing it to the Executive Assistant (EA) role.

First and foremost, the admin world is a very gray, cloudy, undefined, ambiguous, isolated space that is unlike any other role in the company and is uniquely positioned unlike any other role in the company. Like one of my first tech execs said to me (and he was an interim exec which is a large part of why I think he saw it this way), “you’re a protected fish swimming with the sharks.” A lot of execs don’t know how to use you, one admin’s scope could look widely different from another, the pay can vary widely for reasons no one can give a straight answer to, there often isn’t a career ladder, you rarely ever get included in the feedback review and performance cycles in the company, you don’t have a core team, your work is often invisible until you make a mistake and then everyone sees it, depending on the type of exec you have you may have to work miracles on a daily basis, depending on your exec you may be a personal punching bag, people are constantly trying to go around you or over you and often show you little to no respect, you are constantly talked down to and treated as a second class citizen, you get criticism far more than praise, and you are always supposed to show up with a smile on your face and a can do positive attitude. 

Now I don’t say that to rag on the role. I love being an Executive Business Partner. I almost feel like it’s not even work. I wake up every day loving what I do. But, like with anything, there are downsides to the role and those are just some real and honest realities of what it’s like in the day to day and to show how little structure and clarity there is. Quite frankly, the admin world is like being a singular force of enthalpy in a hurricane of entropy. You are triaging all day and things continue to hit the fan.

Depending on your executive and how the role is structured, your world might be a world of pure quantity. No matter how smart you are about the way you work, it’s a sheer numbers game and you can’t efficient-cize your way out of it. There are roles, though, in the admin world where you can, with the right tools, rules, structure and eye for efficiency, create a lot of order out of this chaos and make it so you aren’t constantly drinking from the firehose and feel like you actually have a modicum of control over your day. For me, that happened in my career when I went from being an Executive Assistant to an Executive Business Partner [link out to “How I created more structure in the EBP role”]. 

I think of the administrative hierarchical ladder looking something like this: 

• Secretary / front desk
• Office manager
• Administrative assistant 
• Executive assistant
• Administrative business partner
• Executive business partner / Sr. EA
• Sr. Executive Business Partner
• Leadership / Executive Operations
• Chief of Staff

This is by no means a hard and fast line – things are very nebulous in the admin world and everything is very subjective to what sector you’re in (example: tech vs. government), what company you work for (example: Series A start up vs. a public company), how much that company values the administrative / support team, what kind of champion the support team has inside the company, and what kind of executive you work for. 

The business title of Executive Business Partner is very much a new trend and something I have only seen in tech but maybe that’s already changing. To me, it’s different from an Executive Assistant in a series of ways (and please note that this is me talking about each role in general – there will always be exceptions or those that the following does not apply to): 

1. The Executive Business Partner title alone nods towards the duality of the role: more traditional Executive Assistant work partnered with more strategic and operational aspects of the Chief of Staff role.
   1. The Executive Assistant in of itself can see an immensely wide range of scopes. There can be an EA that is a 1:1 ratio with a largely self-sufficient executive who does some light calendaring, takes notes, does some All Hands deck skeleton building, and maybe some offsite support but there’s someone else in the org who runs point on that just because that’s what that EA walked into (this list is not necessarily reflective of that EA’s abilities but perhaps that exec’s needs). There can be another EA in that same company that is supporting the CEO which right there denotes an extensive mandate and that’s not factoring what kind of hands on or hands off the CEO is, how many other roles are supporting the CEO (comms, operations, HR, etc), and if there are other admin roles in the office of the CEO. And these two roles share the same title: Executive Assistant. 
   2. The latter EA role, if there isn’t a lot of support, and for a CEO might be a bad example, is much more akin to an Executive Business Partner. You have to wear many hats to ensure the success of your executive, you have to be everywhere at once and be the eyes and ears of your exec, you have to take care of the tactical things like calendar management and travel arrangements to more strategic things like owning your organization’s operational cadence, offsites and summits end to end, budget or a portion of the budget, headcount management and some data modeling. The role operates at both the micro and macro level and is both tactical and strategic. You alternate between planes and have to do so seamlessly and efficiently and keep everyone else on track and on cadence. 
2. In tandem with the higher level and more dynamic scope, ( for every job listing I’ve seen) it is almost always comes with a higher base than an Executive Assistant position.
   1. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Executive Assistant positions will for the most part be solidly in the $85-95K range – maybe $100K if you are getting into the more established companies like AirBnb and Meta or more established start-ups (like Series C or D). 
   2. On the other hand, Executive Business Partner roles are more in the $120-135K range with a rare but still present few that are in the $150-180K range.
3. It is often treated much more like the right hand of the executive.
   1. Although an Executive Assistant can be (but is not always) in the room to help with notes, following up on action items, helping facilitate meetings or offsites, scheduling follow-up meetings, etc, they are more often than not there as order takers. They have a very clear mandate that is tactically focused and execution oriented. As with many assistant roles, Executive Assistants have access that most others in the company do not but their access is access for facilitation-sake. 
   2. On the other hand, Executive Business Partners are in the room but are actively participating in the discussion, running the agenda, proactively writing down action items for others – not just when the action items is called out and asked to be captured, influencing the conversation and the direction it takes, moderating and sometimes mediating, and owning portions of the agenda or offsite. They are there in a much more strategic and forward / future thinking capacity. They can also sometimes step in as the exec proxy on personal preferences, standard of excellence for output and work product, and guiding the Staff on the best course of action because they know their exec the best. 
4. The Executive Business Partner is much more the confidante, even advisor, and a study in the psychology of the executive.
   1. Depending on if it’s a 1:1 ratio of admin to exec or if there’s a triangle or office of the executive (where there’s a Chief of Staff in the mix with the Executive Assistant), the Executive Assistant role is often someone that the exec can lean on but the rely on, trust and seek advice from is not a norm. There are definitely EAs who are those things for their execs but there are plenty who are not as well. Remember, there is a world of politics up there in the executive hemisphere that most people don’t see and your exec is a human at the end of the day. They going to have thoughts, opinions, frustrations, allegiances, drama, the works but a different clip and a different altitude. How much you can step up and help them in that world, I find, massively differentiates whether you are more of an Executive Assistant vs. an Executive Business Partner. 
   2. An Executive Business Partner knows what is going on in the exec’s world and is not only scheduling the meetings and doing follow up but knows what those meetings are accomplishing and what it means if the goals of those meetings are or are not achieved. They are more involved in the successes and failures of their executive and have skin in the game, per se, in making things happen. They are accountable for much more of portions of their executive’s deliverables and depending on the trust shared, there may be very little to editing from your pen to the executive suite discussion or presentation. Your exec will go to bat more often for what you have shared with or have prepared for them, they will take big and potentially adversarial stances on topics because of data or write-ups you have provided them. As an EBP, the safety net and layers of others’ review and quality assurance is much lower. 
5. Who the peers are and the interactions you have with whom as an Executive Assistant are often very different than those as an Executive Business Partner and resultantly your brand is very different.
   1. As an Executive Assistant, and depending on who you’re an EA to, you may talk to other execs that are not your own (but more likely their EAs unless you’re the only one in the company or it’s a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio and there are like 2 of you) about tactical things such as scheduling or having to reschedule or logistical things about upcoming travel. This will likely be the extent of your interaction and if you’re anything like me when I was an EA, you sat and re-read your Slack to them 15 times and then said a little prayer before sending. They may or may not know your name and will be less likely to have a strong opinion on your performance or the calibre of employee you are. Your brand will be much smaller and weaker.
   2. As an Executive Business Partner, you engage with basically managers up. You don’t talk to ICs much, depending on the company size and your mandate, you may not even engage with line mangers that much and your regular interactions are with Directors and up. You come to them with asks and you are able to answer their questions without having to first go to your executive. Instead of being the relay messenger, you may be the one who originated the need to go to them in the first place and you simply got your exec’s approval (or maybe even that wasn’t needed). Not only that, you likely interact with Directors and above cross-functionally as well. All of these folks will have consistent interaction with you and your work product and will therefore have a more likely than not strong opinion of you, your brand, and your value to the company.

These are just a handful of ways the roles are different and these are by no means inclusive of everything. As I mentioned earlier, every exec, role, and company is different, and this is just how I have seen the two roles in general in the 7 different tech companies I’ve worked at. 

Hopefully this helps create a more clarity on what exactly an Executive Business Partner (EBP) is, where they fall in the admin world, and how they’re different. 

Have thoughts and opinions on what an EBP is or what my thoughts on the topic are? Would love to hear them! Share them in the comments below.