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So, What Does A Chief Of Staff Actually Do

I have a wonderful Chief of Staff at my startup Athyna. You will hear from her as you read on. We do great work together. But I’ll be honest, even I don’t know what a Chief of Staff really does, or rather—what they should do?

So today we sit down with a handful of Chiefs of Staff (or is it Chief of Staffs) to understand what exactly they do do. And we are brining some data to add some layers to this salty but sweet, operational spongecake.

Before we dive in though, let’s take a quick quiz to see who in today’s tech landscape operates with—or has operated with in the past—a Chief of Staff.

Surprised by the results? … Didn’t think so. Anyway, let’s dive in and talk about the most mysterious role in technology.

Historical backdrop & evolution

Today the Chief of Staff may seems like the hottest new trend. A spicy title to hand to someone coming up through the ranks. But it is not in fact a new trend at all. The Chief of Staff has a long, illustrious history militarily.

This image below depicts Napoleon and his Chief of Staff at the time, Marshal Berthier. While Napolean and the Grande Armée were out fucking shit up—excuse the French—all across Europe, Berthier was working away on very little sleep, setting things up, so Napoleon could come in and knock them down. It was a match made in imperialist heaven.

The role was next adopted by two recent military powerhouses—Germany and Britain—but to much different effect. Germany, following the Prussian system from the early 1800s, used the role to employ strategic leaders, who would act as close counsel to the general, with the potential to command on their own when necessary.

The Brits on the other hand introduced the role in 1905, but the role was more of an organisation figure, acting as a go-between for officers and the frontline. We will explore the different levels of today’s Chiefs shortly. 

First chiefs in business

Following its military rise, the title ‘Chief of Staff’ began to float through corporate settings in the last few decades as businesses recognised the value of having a senior leader responsible for aligning strategy and operations. Very similar to its original function in government and military.

Terrence Holt is one of the first examples, serving as the Chief of Staff to the CEO of PepsiCo in the early 1990s (remember when soda was cool). This was one of the first high-profile Chief of Staff roles in a large corporation. Jeanne Holm is another, serving as the Chief of Staff for the President and COO of Dell in the late 1990s, playing a massive role in the company's success.

There are others that you could say played roles like a Chief of Staff like John Doerr—of Kleiner Perkins fame—to Intel’s Andy Grove in the 80’s and Jony Ive to Steve Jobs in the 90’s and Sheryl Sandberg to the The Zuck. But the best example of all is Ann Hiatt.

Ann Hiatt went from Executive Business Partner (let’s call it CoS) to Bezos straight into Chief of Staff for Google founder Eric Schmidt—for a lazy 12 years.

Key functions of a Chief of Staff

Before moving ahead I’d like to take a moment to introduce those who were kind enough to donate some of their time to flesh out the experience of a Chief of Staff today.

Launching partnerships, managing product integrations, people, culture, hiring and more. Katie Noonan quoted planning meetings, investor relations, partnerships, culture and special projects in her day to day.

I also loved reading about the typical day or Albert Patajo. Incredibly varied, random but also important.

My Chief of Staff at Athyna, Bea, handles a lot of our goals, OKRs and accountability, alongside documentation and organisational design.

The overall theme I saw in researching this piece is that the Chief of Staff is somewhat of a Chief Problemo Solver. Aside from some organisational rituals, the day-to-day was incredibly varied across the board. One thing was certain though, they were always working on the biggest projects and initiatives.

Next up we will look a how each of our Chiefs think about freeing up the cerebral horsepower of the leaders they work with.

How to find leverage

The idea of finding more leverage as a CEO is simple. You want to make sure you are always able to work on the most important things. Let’s look closely again at how our CoS’ think here. Starting with one answer in our anonymised section.

Jo Robyn, our only VC respondent said the following: “I see it as my number one goal to create leverage for our partners' time - that is measured by taking things off their plate and owning respective parts of the business that they were previously owning.”

And Max Kausman when asked his priorities followed up similarly; “Founders' time saved: the ability of the founders to work in their 'Zone of Genius' rather than time they're required to spend on other topics.” A definite thread here.

_{*Note: The following tweet does not really fit this section but it’s too good to push too far down this piece. Sorry, not sorry.}

When thinking of leverage though—I think the best summary of all was this one below from Belen Wagaw, who spent two years as a CoS as SAP to a head of a 19,000 person division.

If you are a leader reading this—but are not sure what you would do with additional time—think of what your personal Zone of Genius is. What handful of things are you: a) really good at, b) really enjoy and/or c) will make the most impact for the organisation.

For me it’s communications. I believe strategy, financing, hiring, communications and accountability are the five keys to my role as CEO. Thanks to my ‘Office of the CEO’, namely my Chief of Staff and Content Assistant (EA but for content) I am able to put out 3-4x the communications in ½ the time.

I believe I am building a leader brand that will be a huge driver of our organisation over the long run. So what is it for you? What is your Zone of Genius?

Levels to the game

One of the most helpful frameworks I found came in fact from Harvard Business Review, which broke the Chief of Staff role into three different levels. Let me go ahead and summarise them for you.

Level 1 - Apprentice Padawan

At the first level of the role would be somebody who is coming through the EA path and is now ready to take on more responsibility within the organisation and with the leader. Typical tasks may be preparing pre-work, handling follow-up, and sitting in on most board meetings.

Level 2 - Mentat

The next level of CoS would be one of the Mentat—someone who when called upon can add true strategic value while also being able to go and implement on the CEOs behalf. This role might be suited to someone coming through an MBA path, possibly management consulting.

Level 3 - Hand of the King

Third and final level is graduation to the King’s (or Queen’s) Hand. In this situation—if you can avoid getting your head lopped off—you are expected to sit directly aside the CEO. Here you may have come from a decade as a an exec or department head inside of big tech or another big enterprise org.

For what it’s worth, my Chief of Staff Bea, is probably somewhere in between a Mentat and the King’s Hand. She helps me execute on major projects inside of Athyna, coordinates all of our goals setting and OKRs and is the #1 person to often push-back on me related to cultural, operational and legal areas inside of the business.

She has no reports, spends one hour with me every Monday to set our goals, and came up through the ranks with us first as our Legal Advisor. Her background is employment law.

Is a Chief of Staff an executive?

One of the things that is commonly asked when thinking of a Chief of Staff is where do they sit—hierarchically—inside of an organisation? Are they a department head level, a true exec, a glorified assistant?

Well, I don’t think there really is a right or wrong answer here, as a lot depends on which level your CoS is, how mature your organisation is, and you overall philosophy.

I don’t know how much credence to put on GitLab’s scale however, because they think the numerical system we live by starts at a 4 and they also do not believe in number 13 it seems. So do your own research here.

One final thought on where the role sits is where our batch of 10 CoS’ from our research believe they will land in the next role.

It’s obviously a very small sample size but 50% of our respondents believe they will be CEO, C-Suite or General Manager in their next role. With a further 20% expecting VP or department head.

A handy resource

When prepping for this piece, I also spoke with Cedar CEO, Mackenzie Lee about how he views the Chief of Staff role. Mackenzie and Cedar know a thing or two about the role. As they actually find Chiefs of Staff for large enterprises like Barclays, Citi, Stanford and more.

One of the better resources I found in my research Was Cedar’s 44-page Chief of Staff Playbook. I hope you find it useful too.

When and how to hire a Chief of Staff

So you want to hire a Chief of Staff but don’t know where to start. This is how I’d go about it from idea to onboarding.

Future

In today’s tech landscape the Chief of Staff is going from strength to strength. A study in February of 2023 showed that there were 4,700 CoS roles in US organisations. I personally am seeing more and more often that not only does a CEO have a CoS but now we are seeing Chief of Staff to the Chief Product Officer, CRO and more.

Not only that, we are also beginning to see more and more of a trend towards having an Office of the CEO. Chief of Staff, Deputy CoS and an Executive Assistant (or two). The whole premise being that we want the executive to be able to spend as much time as possible using their head not their hands—and I for one am all for it.

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