Chief of Staff
A strategic partner for your organization and boost for D&I
While the chief executive officer (CEO) may be the guiding hand of a company—and the first to receive praise or blame—they can’t do it all alone. The demands of today’s business world are more than any one person can handle, given the massive flows of information, complex intersocial dynamics, and diverse skill sets required for a company to succeed. That’s why many are turning to the services of a chief of staff (CoS).
Tyler Parris
Founder Tyler Parris, Coaching LLC
A CoS is a business generalist, usually with some depth in one or more areas of expertise, who helps a CEO and leadership team (the “staff” in chief of staff):
Set and achieve strategic objectives
Make the highest and best use of their time
Make and execute great decisions
Execute and oversee work that has no clear departmental owner
Develop and retain good people
What makes a good CoS is highly contextual, though, and usually means a lot more than just being a business generalist. An Internet of Things (IoT) startup, for example, might require someone who can bridge software, hardware, and science teams with business teams such as marketing, sales, and finance to facilitate complex, cross-functional discussions about go-to-market decisions, or the best way to structure the organization to achieve goals. A private equity or venture capital firm is much more likely to look for deep financial and business acumen.
Often confused with an executive assistant and a chief operating officer (COO), almost all chiefs of staff fall somewhere in between, and might carry out parts of those other roles while also leading or supporting:
Strategy and planning
Operations or execution
Communications
Human capital
Finance
Special projects
Let’s take a closer look at the role a chief of staff can play in each of these areas.
Strategy and Planning
Nuala Anne Connolly
Former chief of staff, AIG Japan Holdings KK
A CoS proactively brings together the right stakeholders to have the right conversations about where the company is headed, assess organizational readiness, generate solutions where there are gaps, develop and iterate plans, and help drive execution. Currently, chiefs of staff are leading their teams through the transition, remotely, of these processes.
Operations or Execution
In some organizations, a CoS is a de facto chief operating officer. They concentrate on the internally focused people, processes, and technology issues that enable the organization to balance speed, agility, and efficiency. In organizations that have a COO, the CoS parachutes into problem areas to fix broken processes, people, or technology issues in support of the COO, or where the COO doesn’t specifically own them. A CoS also is more likely to work on outward-facing matters, such as investor, press, or regulatory relations.
Communications
Whether on their own or in partnership with a communications team, a CoS helps the CEO and leadership team deliver consistent messaging across a variety of audiences, such as media, investors, donors, boards, and employees.
They do this through different types of communications, such as crisis and reputation management, social media and community engagement, all-hands meetings and emails, and departmental town halls. A CoS might even manage an executive’s leadership brand beyond the company, coordinating their philanthropic or civic engagement.
Human Capital
Wendy Cheong
Former chief of staff to the president, Moody’s Investors Service
Whether on their own or in conjunction with a head of human resources, a CoS evaluates and addresses needs, strategies, and solutions related to people gaps, organization design and structure, and talent brand.
Finance
A CoS will contribute to business reviews, strategy, budgets, and operational planning. They might even oversee budgets or profit-and-loss statements themselves, although this is less common.
Special Projects
Does a merger, acquisition, spinoff, or office move pencil out? What would a strategic shift in X direction look like for us?
Questions such as these require inputs from finance, legal, and other business teams that are heads-down delivering on today’s priorities but might not cleanly fit under the purview of one of those departments. Nor might the CEO want them distracted with such questions more than is necessary, because they would be kept from fulfilling their highest priorities.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
If the leadership at the top of an organization values diversity, equity, and inclusion, the CoS can be a great conduit for driving it.
First, a CoS can encourage diversity of thought by being a safeguard against groupthink for the senior leadership team. They have the relationships and political capital in the organization that enable them serve as an information broker. That’s important because it enables the CoS to bridge all the agendas in the room—both spoken and unspoken—and, at the appropriate times, the sources of resistance that may surface with dissenting points of view. This could mean calling on someone who wants to give what might be an unpopular viewpoint, or it might be raising that viewpoint on behalf of others if it could be politically inexpedient for them to do so.
The CoS can use skills of facilitative leadership to shut down dominators and elicit input from quieter contributors in the room. They can also make sure that underrepresented groups are invited to the meeting and present at the discussion. All this ensures that issues are dealt with thoughtfully. In these ways, the CoS plays an important role in diversity and inclusion.
As Wendy Cheong, former chief of staff to the president at Moody’s Investors Service, explained: “People from diverse backgrounds often have experience in, and sensitivity to, communicating with people of varied ethnic and social groups, which makes them particularly suitable to the CoS role. Organizations should take advantage of this by putting such people in a CoS role to help promote the benefits of diversity of perspectives at the executive leadership level.”
“People from diverse backgrounds often have experience … which makes them particularly suitable to the CoS role.”
A CoS can also drive culture change by first defining and articulating the values for the company—if they haven’t already been defined and articulated—and then backing them up with concrete action. A CoS in New York City real estate recently did just that, helping her leader articulate the organization’s core values and then holding people at all levels accountable, whether that meant putting diversity goals into hiring for every role or making sure restrooms have period-care products, or otherwise making the organization a welcoming place for as many people as possible. If the leadership does not value these things, it can be tough for a CoS to make much of a difference in these areas.
Path to the Top
It has become a poorly kept secret that the CoS role can be a fast track to the executive ranks. Some companies use the role as a leadership development program for those with high potential. Anecdotally, the role is one way for people underrepresented in C-suite positions, namely women and minorities, to gain access to those top roles. While stories abound, I launched a research stream on this question in 2019 to find out if the stories were supported by data. I have not yet proven or disproven the premise.
Nuala Anne Connolly, former chief of staff at AIG Japan Holdings KK, explained: “What is clear is that a person will not be successful without the right skills, regardless of any dimension of diversity they represent. More importantly, talent who demonstrate in an organization that they can get things done should be considered for this role. And when they can get things done, and effectively manage a host of relationships at all levels of the organization, then a CEO can feel confident they will deliver success.”
If you’re a mid-career professional seeking a CoS position, earning this role involves translating your current and past experience to the specific needs of the company you want to work for. In other words, don’t just read the above areas and say, yes, I have done some of those, so I’m a CoS. Study your target organization. If they’re an IoT startup, you might want to think about—and be ready to talk about—how you’ll not just coordinate cross-functional work but also keep up in technical conversations, and how you’ll bridge technical and business teams as well as manage complex supply chain issues. If you can’t, don’t apply for the role.
To have the best chance of finding a position, understand why there is so much variety in the chief of staff role from one instance to the next. Look up McKinsey’s CoS archetypes or Dan Ciampa’s three levels of CoS. Know which type of CoS role you’re seeking and target your search around that one.
If you’re not ready to make the leap yet, think about—and ask for—the kinds of experiences or projects that can get you ready.
THE JOURNAL
Vol. 58 Issue 4
A flagship publication of The American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ), The ACCJ Journal is a business magazine with a 58-year history.
Christopher Bryan Jones, Publisher & Editor
