What happens when administrative professionals are given the space to design their own future? Lucy Brazier reflects on the ideas and action sparked by Hack the Future
On 25 March this year, more than 200 administrative professionals from 26 countries logged on to take part in something we had never attempted before. It was the first global innovation hackathon created specifically for the administrative profession, and although we had spent months planning it, I don’t think any of us really knew what the day would produce.
That uncertainty was part of what made it exciting. For much of my career, I have been involved in conversations about the future of administration. Certain subjects recur with depressing regularity. Why do organisations still misunderstand the level at which many Assistants are operating? Why do job titles remain such a poor indication of capability? How do we attract younger people into the profession? What happens as AI changes the traditional administrative workload? And how do we change perceptions of a profession that has evolved enormously while the stereotype attached to it has barely moved?
These are difficult questions, but I had increasingly become bothered by something else.
We spend a great deal of time asking experts what should happen to the administrative profession. We don’t always give administrative professionals themselves the authority, structure, or space to design the answer.
That was where the idea for Hack the Future started.
The Premise
The premise of Hack the Future was deliberately different from that of a conference or workshop. We were not going to spend the day talking at hundreds of Assistants, nor did I want a pleasant brainstorming exercise that generated colourful Post-it notes and then disappeared into a folder. Hack the Future was intended to create work that would go somewhere. Participants would tackle real profession-level problems and develop proposals, with the strongest ideas continuing afterwards and the winning teams heading to the World Administrators Summit in Berlin in October.
The three challenges were enormous:
- How do we rebrand and reposition the administrative profession?
- How do we attract younger generations to it?
- How do we future-proof the profession, including what AI and automation mean for the work and the capabilities administrative professionals will need?
None of these subjects can be solved in seven hours. What we wanted was the thinking that emerges when the people who live these issues every day are given permission to stop reacting and start designing solutions.
Most participants had never taken part in a hackathon before. Some joined with colleagues. Others were placed into teams with people they had never met. People from different countries, sectors, organisations, and career stages had only hours to establish their strengths, allocate roles, and produce something worthwhile. Individual thinking was built into the process so everybody could contribute before the teams established a direction. Microsoft Teams gave us the meeting environment and Miro became the enormous, shared workspace in which the ideas appeared, changed, collided, and gradually became proposals.
Watching it unfold was quite something. There were inevitably some hiccups; at one point, our guidance was that if teams had lost time, they should simplify rather than starting again. That made the day more authentic. Work rarely arrives beautifully organised with perfect information, unlimited time, and everybody you need conveniently available.
What struck me most was the seriousness with which people approached the problems. Administrative professionals know this profession from inside it. They know why certain language makes sense to HR but bears little resemblance to the work. They understand which parts of the traditional image of an Assistant are still being reinforced. They see what happens when technology is introduced without properly examining the workflow, and why somebody with enormous potential may never consider administration because the profession is not visible as a destination.
That lived knowledge became particularly powerful across borders. Nobody could assume that their version of administration was universal. People had to explain what they saw, listen to how the same issue appeared somewhere else, and decide whether their idea still stood up.
The Wall of Change
At the end of the day, we asked participants one final question on the Wall of Change: “By 2030, the administrative profession will be different because today we…”
The responses were fascinating. People wrote about Assistants being recognised as members of leadership teams, clearer career pathways, stronger professional confidence, and Assistants leading AI adoption rather than reacting to it. One contribution imagined that we had future-proofed the profession before the future arrived: that we hadn’t waited for AI to replace us, but had learned it, led it, and made it work for us.
There was ambition all over that Wall of Change. “By 2030, value will be measured in decisions enabled, not work completed,” wrote one participant. Another simply wrote, “We were disruptive in a positive way.” What I saw was a profession beginning to think beyond improving the role somebody currently has and towards shaping what administration itself could become.
Submissions and Judging
By the end of 25 March, we had a huge body of work. But the part I am proudest of happened afterwards. The easiest thing would have been to declare the hackathon a success, post photographs of the Miro boards, thank everybody, and move on. There is a lot of this in business. We generate tremendous enthusiasm during an innovation day and then return to normal workload. Six months later, very little has actually happened. I was determined this would not be one of those exercises.
The submissions moved through several rounds of judging until we reached nine finalist teams, three for each challenge. They produced presentations for ES Global in June, followed by interviews throughout July. The hackathon had been about producing something under pressure. The interview phase asked whether the idea survived scrutiny. Could the team explain the problem clearly? Had they made assumptions that needed testing? Was the proposal genuinely useful? Could it work beyond their own organisation or country?
Something that began as a single day in March had become a six-month development journey, with some of the strongest growth happening in the people as much as the ideas. They were being asked to defend a proposition, accept challenge, reconsider assumptions, and communicate with increasing clarity.
We talk constantly about administrative professionals developing strategic thinking. Here they were actually doing it, on questions that could influence their own profession.
We now have our three winning teams. The team tackling future-proofing is Carolina Said, Regina Rezende, Michele Oliveira, and Andi Mynhardt. The team selected for attracting younger people into the profession is Katie Heritage, Flo Schwab, Kelly-Jayne Dulex, and Martine Serné. And our winning team for rebranding the profession is Pauline Murray, Cathy Buykx, Lamis Husseini, Avalon Chase, and Jessica Wild.
The World Administrators Summit
Between now and October, the teams will prepare to take their ideas to the World Administrators Summit in Berlin, where they will present live on 21 and 22 October. They are being coached by Peggy Vasquez, someone I have trusted and worked alongside in this profession for many years. Her role is to help them sharpen what they have, identify what really needs to be heard, and ensure the thinking is as strong as the presentation.
The real prize was never simply a trip to Berlin. It was the opportunity to take an idea that began in a frantic online working session in March and develop it until it was ready to be discussed at one of the most important international forums our profession has, alongside representatives from across the global administrative community.
And Berlin is not where the thinking stops. Whitepapers based on each challenge are planned, alongside a broader Future of Administration blueprint, with further panels, interviews, and discussions taking the work into 2027. The intention has always been to use the best work from the hackathon. There were proposals that did not reach the finals but deserve to inform what happens next.
Continuing the Journey
I have thought a great deal about why the hackathon felt different from so many professional events, and I keep coming back to agency. Our profession has spent a long time asking to be recognised. We have asked organisations to understand that administrative work has changed, HR to create better career structures, and executives to use Assistants differently. That work needs to continue. But we also must become much more involved in designing what will replace structures that no longer fit.
The Global Skills Matrix 2026 has made the scale of that change difficult to ignore. Administrative professionals are already working across projects, governance, information flow, executive priorities, AI-enabled workflows, and organisational coordination. The profession increasingly requires people who understand how work flows and can interpret competing information, recognise consequences, and help turn organisational intent into action. The hackathon showed what happens when we take that capability beyond somebody’s individual job and apply it to the profession itself.
Not every idea was perfect. Nor should they have been. Some were too big. Some needed more evidence. Some worked better in one geography than another. Some became much stronger after judges asked difficult questions. That is how serious ideas develop. We don’t need a flawless answer before entering the conversation about what happens next. We need to bring what we know, allow it to be challenged, and keep building.
Back in March, when we asked people to finish the sentence, “By 2030, the administrative profession will be different because today we…”, it felt like an ambitious question after a few exhausting hours online. Six months later, some of those ideas are heading to Berlin, others will feed into the whitepapers and the Future of Administration blueprint, and all have added to our understanding of what people inside this profession believe needs to change.
The hackathon showed us just how much thinking, experience, and ambition exists across this profession when people are given the opportunity to look beyond the demands of their own role and consider administration as a whole. We now have a responsibility to do something useful with what they told us.
Huge thanks to everyone who took part, to our judges, and to Trafo Baden, Miro, and Groundscope for supporting this initiative.
