The Rise of the Corporate Chief of Staff
Nowadays, it seems that everyone from AOL to Zirtual employs Chiefs of Staff, or CoS, for their CEOs, a trend that has been on the rise in the 21st century. Chiefs of Staff are no longer just for the President or politicians. They fill a variety of roles and are often vital to the success or failure of the executives they support. To understand why, let’s examine the key functions and activities of a CoS. If you break down the title you’ll find that it’s also an acronym of the three key areas in which a CoS is best leveraged: Communications, Operations, and Strategy.
Communications: CEOs don’t have time to put all their ideas, thoughts, or notes into text or email, let alone read the responses, so a CoS must closely manage communication for the CEO, make sure all relevant messages are relayed and appropriate follow-up is taken. A CoS also communicates with the CEO’s direct reports differently so the relationships they establish may help translate unclear directives, clarify the intent and purpose of such, or help guide them to the appropriate outcome or deliverable.
Translating the CEO’s priorities and goals is constant work for a CoS, which makes sharp communication skills desirable in coordinating leadership. Chiefs of staff play an integral part in most organizations where leadership seldom has much time to spend together, helping smooth out rough edges or gathering alignment. The CoS consistently makes sure everyone is in the loop and moving forward.
Operations: Since there are other team members designated to support the CEO, and logistics to be managed, the CoS should be adept at managing team operations and making sure all roads are well-paved for the CEO’s activities and ideas to proceed unhindered. This may mean executing on the CEO’s vision for company meetings, establishing the agenda for leadership or board meetings, or developing other internal processes and procedures to ensure that things are handled efficiently. Especially in newer and smaller organizations, a CoS may be the company’s first HR executive, responsible for helping create the culture and building a talent pipeline to support it.
Strategy: Finally, strategy is what sets a CoS apart from an executive assistant (EA). A lifelong EA may instinctively know who is a priority, what meetings are necessary or the best time to travel, but strategically thinking about aligning all the CEO’s competing priorities and opportunities is rarely a priority, or even a requirement, of executive assistants. A CoS is necessary to wade through what makes it onto the schedule and what gets filtered out, as there is always a question of what gets a yes versus what gets a no. I face that decision every day as I evaluate interview and speaking requests, invitations for conferences, dinners, meetings, and calls that run the gamut from awesome opportunities to just a pile of sales pitches and donation requests.
Since a Chief of Staff operates above executive assistants, they have an awareness of the corporate strategy, areas of strength for the organization that can be leveraged or concerns that should be avoided, and determine how, what, or sometimes who is best to deploy for specific situations. A CoS reevaluates how the CEO is spending his or her time, where efficiencies can be introduced to save time and money, and generally help to make sure objectives are as easy to achieve as possible.
In many organizations this role serves as an opportunity for a junior executive to be groomed for larger management positions, or, in a fast-growing environment, to support the founder before being deployed to run another venture or unit that needs to be aligned with the CEO’s vision. Notably, Reid Hoffman has had his chiefs of staff move on to higher roles in the organization, co-author books, and blog about their experience in this pivotal role.
A CoS can initiate change, manage talent, or simply interface across divisions. What’s most important is that they derive their value from their ability to best leverage their CEO’s time. It can be hard for an organization to swallow the idea that a chief of staff won’t introduce ineffiencies, hierarchies, redundancies, or create a lack of clarity, but a CoS who is a strong communicator, with operational excellence and strong strategic thinking can navigate the complexities and maximize a CEO’s bandwidth, which is invaluable to any organization.
Originally published on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rise-corporate-chief-staff-blair-nichols/