The Quiet Collapse of the Secretary Role - and the KM Warning

Fifty years ago, nearly every manager had a secretary. The role was essential and ubiquitous. Today, it’s a fraction of what it once was.

Consider the numbers: since 2000, the U.S. has lost more than 1.6 million secretarial and administrative assistant jobs, nearly a 40 % decline. 

(Source: https://bit.ly/49UY1rg)

The tasks didn’t vanish; they were absorbed by software or by the managers themselves. What remains for secretaries is more complex: coordinating projects, anticipating executive needs, and handling integration work. But there are far fewer of them.

KM is on a similar track

 Current KM tasks may, in the coming future, be increasingly handled by embedded AI or self-service flows. Employees themselves will become direct contributors, consumers, and curators of their own knowledge. This means that even though knowledge and humans remain critical in the loop, KM as a profession might shrink dramatically in its traditional form, unless we reinvent it.

Here’s the sobering parallel: as the secretary role shrank in headcount, so may the number of pure KM roles, even if they evolve. The decline is real. The need for high-leverage KM work is real. 

 The disappearance of secretaries wasn’t totally a failure. The disappearance of current KM tasks might be the same. The challenge is not to defend what we do now, but to invent what we must do next.