As a Chief of Staff, I thought I would begin sharing my knowledge in a series of posts on how to be most impactful and best serve the principal (the person to whom the Chief of Staff reports) and the company you work for. (FYI, this is from my experience working in early-stage startups, and not everyone will be best served by this approach as every organization and staff are different.)

This first post will be about how to best approach the first 90 days in the CoS role. This period is important to begin on the right foot, not only with the principal but also with the executive level team (ELT) and the organization as a whole. (Particularly since many who operate alongside a CoS may not know exactly what the role is about.)

These are some of the processes and initiatives you can introduce in your first 90 days as a Chief of Staff. For simplicity’s sake, I’ve broken this down into “the 3 R’s” – Role, Relationships, and Reputation.

Role

1. The first thing to do is articulate your roles and responsibilities and write them down on a single piece of paper. (This should have been laid out in the job description and your interview process).
2. Then work with your principal to rank and prioritize them so you both know the core bullseye of your responsibilities.
3. It should be considered a “living” document and will likely change over time, but at least you both have a basis to point to and work from.

Relationships

1. Make it a point to introduce yourself to the rest of the executive team to form productive relationships with them. While your title may be “Chief of Staff to the _____ (insert principal title here)”, your job is to make the entire executive team more productive and successful.
2. You should also familiarize yourself with the work of the executive team and vice versa (sharing your “one-pager” with them) so they understand your role, your background, and who you are as a person; and you should do the same for them as well, learning about each of them in turn.
3. You should ask them what they think are improvement areas for the company and what is going well, and get their recommendations on who else on their teams you should be talking to and forming relationships with.
4. You should have a 1×1 meeting with your principal’s EA at least once a week to figure out and plan how to best support the principal.
5. Then you should have a 1×1 meeting with your principal at least once a week to get aligned on the projects and key priorities to focus on for that week (I like Monday mornings for at least 30 minutes to make sure we are completely in sync for the week ahead).

Reputation

1. In the first 30 days, all eyes will be on you. So it is crucial to over-communicate and over-deliver.
2. You should generate small, early wins that you and your principal can celebrate. The more you both can point to these, the more others will understand your role and the impact that you can have in the organization.

What is your opinion? Feel free to contribute in the comments below.

Keywords: #chiefofstaff #cos #first90days

Please feel free to share/repost/retweet. Also posted on LinkedIn.