Executive Assistant Triage Template
Three documents and three sheets, including Delegation Rules that withhold a category's rule until ten delegated attempts have actually happened.
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Delegation Rules
Zero bounces in 8 tries still escalates. One bounce in 10 doesn't.
Halberd Instruments, thirteen weeks of Thea Marchetti's inbound requests, 6 Jul to 4 Oct 2026.
| Category | Delegated | Bounced | Rate | Rule |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conference & award invitations | 8 | 0 | 0.0% | Escalate (n < 10) |
| Headcount & org exceptions | 10 | 1 | 10.0% | Heads-up |
At n=8, the rule of three puts the true bounce rate as high as 37.5% despite zero observed. Ten delegated attempts is the floor where a rate is trusted at all.
A request-triage guide for an executive assistant usually hands over a matrix: score each request's urgency and importance, or its stakeholder weight, and assign a zone once. The CEO Delegation Matrix scores every task on authority and leverage at authoring time and resets on a fixed quarterly calendar; Aurora's Inbox Zero triage charter sorts requests into three lanes by a rule an assistant writes down once. None recomputes a category's own zone from what actually happened the last time something in it was delegated.
Halberd Instruments' chief executive, Thea Marchetti, receives requests from outside her leadership team by email, Slack, phone and in person: customers, vendors, press, investors, conference organizers, and staff asking for an exception. Her executive assistant, Priya Anand, logged all 185 of them across thirteen weeks, 6 July to 4 October 2026, tagging each by category and by outcome: escalated direct, delegated and resolved, or delegated and bounced back anyway. A category's delegation rule comes from its own bounced-back rate, but only once ten delegated attempts exist to compute it from.
Conference & award invitations ran a flawless thirteen weeks: zero bounces in eight delegated attempts. It still defaults to escalate, because eight is one short of the floor, and the rule of three puts the true rate as high as 37.5 percent despite the clean record. Headcount & org exceptions looks worse on paper, one bounce in ten, and still clears the floor for the lighter heads-up rule. The same register is what an executive calendar audit prices by the hour: every category on it is time Thea did not have to spend.
What is in the pack
Triage Criteria
The eight categories a request sorts into, the three outcomes it can reach, and the two categories that always escalate regardless of history: investor and board-adjacent requests, and legal and regulatory notices. A board packet already holds those two subjects to the same standard.
Delegation Rules
The ten-delegated-instance floor and the three rate bands above it, with Halberd's own numbers by category and the comparison that justifies the floor: a worse-looking rate backed by enough evidence outranks a flawless one backed by too little.
Response Templates
Ready-to-send text for Auto-delegate and Heads-up tiers only, each one naming the specific variant of the request it does not cover, so a routine case never gets mistaken for one that still needs to bounce.
Request Register
One row per category: total requests, delegated count, bounced-back count, and the rule that pair earns. 185 requests and 8 categories on Halberd's own thirteen-week window.
Volume by Source
The same requests broken down by channel, email, Slack or Teams, phone, in person, so a category's real arrival pattern is visible rather than assumed.
Delegation Log
A representative sample of individual requests with a delegate, an outcome, and a short note, including at least one bounced example per category that has any bounces at all.
How it works
- 1
Send your inbound request history
An email folder, a Slack channel, a call log, or an informal running list. A single week is enough to start.
- 2
Get the Request Register
Every request tagged by category and outcome: escalated direct, delegated and resolved, or delegated and bounced back.
- 3
Get the Delegation Rules for each category
Below ten delegated instances, a category defaults to escalate regardless of its rate. At or above ten, its own bounce-back rate decides.
- 4
Apply the rule, then keep logging
Auto-delegate, delegate with a heads-up, or escalate, recomputed every time a delegated instance closes, not on a fixed schedule.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. The Triage Criteria, Delegation Rules and Response Templates, plus all three sheets, download as real files with no signup. Edit with AI is a separate, optional path that creates a free account and installs the same pack as a private workspace.
How is this different from a fixed delegation matrix like Eisenhower or RACI?
Those score a request once, by judgment, and rarely get rechecked against what actually happened. This register tags every delegated request as resolved or bounced, then withholds a category's rule until ten delegated attempts exist, so a rate that looked trustworthy at five instances doesn't get to govern anything yet.
Why does a flawless record still default to escalate?
Zero bounces in eight delegated attempts is genuinely clean, but eight is one short of the ten-instance floor this pack uses. Below that floor, the rule of three puts the true bounce rate as high as 37.5 percent despite a flawless small sample, worse than the rate that would escalate a category with a measured history behind it.
What happens to a request once Priya escalates it to Thea?
Escalation ends this pack's job, not the paper trail. If the request becomes a real decision instead of a quick reply, it gets logged the same way any Monday decision does: with an owner and a dissent field on the decision register. It does not fold back into this register as though it had been delegated.
How are press, investor and legal requests handled differently?
Press gets a narrow carve-out: a routine factual question can be answered directly, but an opinion or forward-looking question still escalates. Investor, board-adjacent and legal requests skip delegation entirely, by policy, regardless of how clean any category's history looks, the same standard an executive briefing gets held to before Thea walks into the room.
What format are the downloaded files?
Three Word documents (Triage Criteria, Delegation Rules, Response Templates) and three CSV sheets (Request Register, Volume by Source, Delegation Log), free with no account required. The documents open in Word, Pages or Google Docs; the sheets open in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets, and import cleanly into whatever email or calendar export already tracks these requests.
Find out which categories you can already trust
Send your last few months of inbound requests from email, Slack, or a call log. The first thing back is which categories have cleared the ten-instance floor and which are still one bounce away from finding out.
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