That's pretty much it. We call them executive admins these days where they exist.
And, yeah, assistants shared with a bunch of other people--as with travel agents in general--aren't really all that useful. If I'm mostly just giving fairly mechanical instructions to execute, it's probably easier for me to go online and figure out the options myself.
A secretary made a lot more sense when you dictated memos for inter-office mail and retrieving information often involved making multiple phone calls.
And, yeah, assistants shared with a bunch of other people--as with travel agents in general--aren't really all that useful. If I'm mostly just giving fairly mechanical instructions to execute, it's probably easier for me to go online and figure out the options myself.
A secretary made a lot more sense when you dictated memos for inter-office mail and retrieving information often involved making multiple phone calls.