A chief of staff can set your startup business up for success by ensuring you focus on the right priorities. Here’s how.
Key takeaways:
- A chief of staff can strengthen your business by keeping the focus on top priorities
- They offer valuable skills like leadership, people management, high-level decision-making, and strong communication
- One of their key roles is to improve systems and processes so that founders have more time and energy to focus on key objectives and results
- A chief of staff creates synergy within your organization by facilitating a smooth flow of information
- Chiefs of staff can provide unique and valuable insight that aids your company’s growth due to their roles as multifaceted strategists with a broad view of your organization
- Moreover, they can tackle special projects on your behalf from start to finish
A chief of staff, whether fractional or full-time, is an extremely valuable asset for startup businesses. They help founders get more done, become more productive, and achieve a broader impact. Chiefs of staff ensure that your attention, time, and energy are directed to areas that align with your KPIs for optimal business growth.
Your chief of staff serves as a multifaceted strategist who provides deep insight into your organization by identifying areas of improvement and suggesting directives. They also help you see important projects through to completion. Experienced chiefs of staff improve communication and visibility across your organization, reduce delivery challenges, and act as your sounding board.
Chiefs of staff are pragmatists with good judgment and business acumen. They spotlight quality data, help you make connections, establish root causes, and frame decisions, improving your overall decision-making process.
For the best chance of success, startups (and, indeed, any organization) need a right-hand person with excellent people management skills, who can make high-level decisions quickly under pressure, and who champions the organization’s strategic vision. That’s precisely what a chief of staff brings to the table. Here are five ways a chief of staff can strengthen your startup business.
1. They free up your time, allowing you to focus on top priorities
Chiefs of staff help you save much-needed time to focus on your startup’s objectives and KPIs. They take non-essential tasks off your plate and establish systems and processes to help you use your time wisely. This helps you concentrate on priorities and projects that will help your startup grow.
Experienced chiefs of staff can tackle multiple projects without missing a beat. They can prepare you for board meetings, help you manage budgets, create systems to automate repeatable processes, and more. Instead of drowning in delegatable tasks, startup founders can focus on the more important aspects of planning and strategy.
2. They ensure a smooth flow of information, helping your organization become more efficient
A chief of staff can stop regular bottlenecks by implementing a system for the smooth flow of information within your organization. They do this with a predetermined prioritization process. When information flows through your chief of staff, they break it down and create a more contextualized and organized executive summary highlighting critical points. This helps you stay up to speed with important developments in your organization and make decisions faster.
Your chief of staff also helps cultivate your relationship with senior management and the rest of your team. They help you develop executive communication processes and calendars so that your leadership is transparent and every team member feels valued. This creates more synergy within your startup business, further strengthening it.
Moreover, chiefs of staff act as trustworthy advisors. They provide unbiased and unfiltered opinions on events happening within and outside your company. You can trust that they have your best interest (and that of your entire organization) at heart since they don’t have ties to specific departments.
3. They provide multifactorial insights into your business
Hiring a chief of staff with experience in multiple startup businesses can ensure you don’t operate in an echo chamber. They will act as a sounding board, bringing a different viewpoint and fresh ideas into your business. You’ll have an extra set of eyes to look at things from a different perspective and catch anything you might be missing.
Chiefs of staff have broad content knowledge across departments. They integrate exposure to topical business issues with explicit knowledge of your startup to provide relevant feedback and insights. They identify connections between projects, departments, and people, helping you improve your organization’s efficiency and decision-making process.
4. They optimize your strategy and decision-making process
Founders can easily get caught up in strategizing and developing the best possible outcome for every decision. However, weighing every decision on your own isn’t efficient or sustainable. A chief of staff filters the decisions you have to make, shifting your focus to strategic decisions that align with your objectives and key results, aka OKR goals.
You’ll have more time to think through critical decisions with a chief of staff acting as your right hand. Moreover, you’ll have the reliable counsel of someone equally as knowledgeable about your business when making difficult decisions. He or she will enable you to make optimal decisions faster and develop the best strategies for your startup business.
5. They handle special projects on your behalf
As your startup grows, you will encounter special projects you need help with. It could be a conference presentation, product development or release, or a fundraiser. Whatever the case, a chief of staff is the ideal candidate to spearhead special projects on your behalf. You can focus on your startup’s top priorities and provide input on special projects when needed or during their final stages.
Strengthen your business with Chiefly Consultants’ chiefs of staff
Chiefs of staff improve information flow, maximize your time, provide multifactorial insights, tackle special projects on your behalf, and optimize decision-making. They positively impact your business and are extremely resourceful in critical areas. They help your organization become more efficient, allowing you to focus on your vision of scaling your startup business.
Ready to take your startup to the next level? We’re here for you.
Chiefly Consultants is a team of highly-skilled, humble, analytical thinkers who thrive in solving complex problems. Our chiefs of staff have significant experience helping startup founders (some of them have been founders, themselves) and C-suite executives build successful businesses. Contact us today to learn how we can strengthen your business.
