If you hired a chief of staff to be your leadership team’s star athlete, don’t let them languish on the bench. At many organizations, chiefs of staff are meant to execute high-wire strategic work. But the job is often reduced to: glorified project management, executive cat-herding, and catering to the CEO’s whims. They compensate for bad work design through effort and influence, carrying big expectations with no real authority.
In this episode, Rodney and guest co-host, Sam Rothkopf, lay out the first move toward becoming an organization built to benefit from change: Recharter your chief of staff as the leadership team's work designer. They dig into the three jobs most chiefs of staff currently hold; why the role should serve teams, not single leaders; and the authority they need to put business strategy into motion and free up executives to do the work only they can do.
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Mentioned references:
Miraval Rosé
Casamigos
"built to benefit from change ep": AWWTR Ep. 52
"failure of the ways of working ep": AWWTR Ep. 50
Mia Wise
00:00 Intro + Check-In: Favorite Celebrity Endorsed Product
03:13 The chief of staff already exists, but does the wrong work
06:49 The chief of staff today: admin, project manager, influencer
11:02 Why chiefs of staff are prone to burnout
16:46 Chiefs of staff are everywhere in tech orgs, with no power
22:26 The reframe: serving the team, not the leader
25:44 Building your “shelves”
28:57 Operationalizing strategy, for real
32:47 Playing “favorites’ around who is leading the strategy
37:21 The CEO's first hire
42:07 The authority the role actually needs
46:07 Tooling, comms, and where the team does its work
49:17 Wrap: more moves next week
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
