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When Work Doesn't Fit the Mold, a Chief of Staf...

When Work Doesn't Fit the Mold, a Chief of Staff Steps In

This was presented at Support Driven Leadership Summit: https://www.supportdriven.com/leadership-summit-oakland

When you have a lot of work that doesn’t clearly fit into the organization chart reporting lines, a Chief of Staff may be the right person to help better execute on cross-team collaboration and your strategic vision.

In any department, team and individual responsibilities are typically defined and scoped. What happens when work doesn’t fit that scope or crosses lines in messy ways? It often falls to the head of a department, but a single person only has so much time and already has a stack of other problems. While a “Chief of Staff” is often used to describe someone reporting to an executive, whatever the title you choose for your cross-team collaboration leader, having an individual in such a role can improve efficiency, and strategic planning and execution. We’ll briefly talk about what a Chief of Staff is, how we’ve used Chief of Staff at GitLab, and how it can apply to your support organization.

Full script available at: https://cynthiang.ca/2023/11/14/presentation-when-work-doesnt-fit-the-mold-a-chief-of-staff-steps-in

Cynthia "Arty" Ng

November 14, 2023
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Transcript

  1. Cynthia "Arty" Ng Staff, Strategy & Operations (Chief of Staff

    to CEO Team) When Work Doesn't Fit the Mold, a Chief of Staff Steps In
  2. Outline • What a Chief of Staff is • Where

    a Chief of Staff might fit • Why/When you might want a Chief of Staff • How to get a Chief of Staff
  3. About me • Experience wearing “multiple hats” • At GitLab

    5+ years • CEO Shadow (2 weeks 2021-12/2022-01) • Acting Chief of Staff to CTO (2022-11 to 2023-01) • Internship for Learning (x2) with Chief of Staff to CEO Team (2023-03 to 2023-10) • Staff, Strategy & Operations (Chief of Staff Team)
  4. GitLab as of 2023-11-01 • 2083 team members • Fully

    remote in 65+ countries/regions • 135 in Customer Support department • 24x5 support and 24x7 emergency
  5. Answer these questions • Do you have a significant amount

    of work that doesn’t “fit” under existing teams? • Do you find yourself trying to delegate that work without success? • Do you think to yourself that you and your leadership team could be more effective and doing more “strategic” work if you simply had more time?
  6. What is a Chief of Staff? “The chief of staff

    generally works behind the scenes to solve problems, mediate disputes, and deal with issues before they are brought to the chief executive. Often chiefs of staff act as a confidant and advisor to the chief executive, acting as a sounding board for ideas. Ultimately the actual duties depend on the position and the people involved.” - Wikipedia
  7. Range of role 1. Project management and task prioritization. 2.

    Manage relationships and be a communication liaison. 3. Strategic thinking and problem analysis. 4. Anticipate and mitigate problems. 5. Grasp and add value to the leader’s vision. Adapted from: The Case for a Chief of Staff by Dan Ciampa, Harvard Business Review (May-June 2020)
  8. Where does a Chief of Staff fit? “It’s someone who

    runs the function for everything that doesn’t belong in a function.” - Sid Sijbrandij Chief of Staff partnership with the CEO, GitLab Unfiltered
  9. Support example VP Support Analytics QA Operations Regional Chief of

    Staff • Americas (AMER) • Asia Pacific (APAC) • Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA)
  10. Support work examples • Training • Internal documentation: organizing, auditing

    • Preparing for non-product changes • Process/workflow reviews and improvements • Projects: evaluating vendors, migrations, other research
  11. Benefits • Save time • Better internal communication • Better

    decision making • Increase leadership’s impact • Increase effectiveness and productivity
  12. When to consider a Chief of Staff • Poor communication

    flow • Inefficient or slow decision making • Needing to increase productivity • Inefficient workflows and processes • Spending a large amount of time “putting out fires”
  13. Communicate the role • Clear list of responsibilities ◦ If

    managing a team • Level of skills and results • Clearly delineate from other roles • Experience in domain area • Examples at GitLab ◦ Chief of Staff to CEO / Team ◦ Director of Global Readiness
  14. What is a Chief of Staff for? “A [Chief of

    Staff] should handle several principal duties, all focused on making time, information, and decision processes more effective.” - Dan Ciampa The Case for a Chief of Staff, Harvard Business Review