Why You Need a Chief of Staff
When I was first put into a chief of staff role it was in a company that had never had one in its ranks before. In an effort to learn as much as I could, I did some online research and had several conversations with generous people from the Seattle chief of staff community who were willing to give me their time. Based on the various conversations, articles, and the insights of the people who shared their thoughts with me, I’ve arrived at three fundamental characteristics that define a chief of staff and what ultimately makes them integral to any organization.
We are implementors. The motivation of the chief of staff role can be summed up in three words: get it done. As you look to focus more time on growing your company, you may need a right-hand person to take your vision and make it come to life. In fact, the need to hire a chief of staff is often motivated by an executive’s realization that they are unhappy with where they are focusing their energy and struggle to find time to spend on strategy development.
By doing a quick analysis of your hourly efforts you should start to see a pattern of those tasks that can easily be delegated to others. If you find those tasks to be administrative in nature – scheduling and coordinating meetings, filling out expense reports, managing your calendar – then what you may be looking for is an executive or administrative assistant. If you are looking for someone higher level to spearhead complex, company-wide projects, oversee a department requiring extra management, or be trusted to lead meetings on your behalf, then it’s a chief of staff you are looking for.
We are problem solvers. The chief of staff is often characterized by his or her ability to execute, and sometimes people equate that in their minds to hastiness. Although it is true that we like to move quickly, we also understand how to evaluate and create a timeline for initiatives that require a quick result versus those that need to be re-evaluated or require more thought. (A keen understanding of the company’s strategy is important for this balance to be successfully achieved, which we will get to later.)
We are solution-finders and, when presented with a problem, we will perform the due diligence necessary until we are able to see a path to completion, executing with as much speed as it takes to respect the thoughtfulness each project deserves. Our intention is not to check an item off a to-do list, it’s to solve a problem.
We are strategists. A successful chief of staff will be able to operate on both a tactical and strategic level, and we often need to switch from one to the other depending on the needs of our executive. As we implement and problem-solve we are exposed to several facets of an organization: various teams and departments, marketing initiatives and customer data, financial information and trends, high-level employee and talent management, and more. Consequently, we develop a unique perspective of a company that not many others have. This perspective will be beneficial to you as you work on setting your vision and creating a strategy for the organization. Additionally, it’s important that we remain in touch with your strategy so we can execute upon and prioritize projects effectively.
The chief of staff role is the one you don’t know you need until you’ve worked with one, then you don’t know how you got along without. Adding one to your senior team will help you focus your energy where it belongs – growing your company. Your chief of staff can help with the rest.