74: Melanie Jones on the Importance of Having a Chief of Staff
Melanie is a 3x former Chief of Staff passionate about the profession, spreading awareness on how impactful it is, and helping others get into this career path. She’s also a mom who loves watching her son grow (a 6’4 high school freshman - lots of growing going on). Her favorite way to spend an afternoon is reading a good book, when she has the time to do so.
Main quote:
We're not just problem solvers, we're problem seekers. So we say ‘what are the roadblocks coming up?’ What are the risks that we might be running into? What are the gaps that we need to fill, what bridges are we going to cross in the future?’ So the Chief of Staff seeks that out and then puts together a strategic plan for it. We’re a blend of the strategic and the execution.
Additional Quotes:
Chiefs of staff come in and create processes, they improve procedures, create and implement policies, and then hand the work off to other people.
Having a strong Chief of Staff who can be the home base, helping with decision making, making sure all the projects are running on track and getting you out of the weeds means then you can use your bandwidth to really shine.
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Transcript:
This episode with Melanie Jones is really important to listen to, especially if you are an executive director or a CEO of a nonprofit or a for profit social impact based business. The idea of a chief of staff is something that I think we think about for like the White House, right? Or for big conglomerates or big corporations, but the chief of staff holds such a special ability to help an organization reach their goals, support the Executive leader and really impact the whole organization.
So I really encourage you to listen to this with the idea in mind of what could it look like to have that kind of support in your own organization. And I'd love it if you'd share it with a friend or two. The other thing I think that's so important about the chief of staff conversation is that we need to normalize that it exists as a role that can really benefit.
And we need to normalize that by talking about it. Enjoy the conversation. Melanie Jones is a three time former chief of staff who is passionate about the profession. She's on a mission to spread awareness on how impactful it is, and is in the business of helping others get into this career path. She's also a mom and loves spending her afternoons when she can find the time reading a good book.
Mellie, I'm excited to have you for this conversation about the Chief of Staff role. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here and having this conversation with you. Yeah, I'd love if you would just start us off by sharing a little bit for the listener who might not know what a Chief of Staff is or think it's something completely different.
What is the role and what do you think are the most impactful? Parts of a chief of staff role. Yeah. So I get that question a lot because there are a lot of people that wonder what a chief of staff is. And it's a valid question because the truth is no two chiefs of staff are the same. The thing about a chief of staff, they are a strategic thought partner to their executives.
So whether that's a CEO, president, um, executive director, whoever the chief of staff is supporting, they're that strategic thought partner, they're a trusted advisor. They're a sounding board for them. They can help make decisions by proxy for that leader, um, because of course we know that when you're leading an organization, a company, you have so much on your plate, your chief of staff can come in and take those things off that maybe aren't your zone of genius.
Maybe you don't have the bandwidth for, but the biggest thing about a chief of staff is that they're a gap filler in an organization. So that's why a lot of times generalists really thrive as chiefs of staff because we have a wide breadth. of knowledge and experiences without needing to have too much of a depth in any one function.
Um, because as a chief of staff, you're coming in, maybe you see that our company is new, we need to create an HR function. So I'm going to start by recruiting and I'm going to do some of the interviewing and I'm going to handle HR until I can handle, hand it off to another person. Who can own that, um, chiefs of staff come in and create processes, they improve procedures, create and implement policies, and then again, hand those off to people.
So that's why they don't need to have a depth in anyone function, but that breath is important. And again, that's why the chief of staff. Is so it can be sort of ambiguous, but I really love that flexibility about the role. It's that you can whatever your leader needs, you can go fill those gaps for them.
We also call it like the air traffic controller. So, in any organization, there are a million things happening at once and you need someone who's just making sure, hey, all the planes are going off at the right time. No one's crashing into another. We have milestones in place facilitating that cross departmental collaboration.
So yeah, so that's what a chief of staff is. What's the difference between a chief of staff and an admin assistant or an executive assistant? Because I know a lot of people, maybe you're listening today and you are an executive director or a CEO and you're like, yeah, but I have an admin assistant already who does some of those things.
What's the difference? So your executive assistant does the things that you tell them to do, and that might be travel, calendaring, inbox management. Whereas your chief of staff, I always say, we're not just problem solvers, we're problem seekers. So we go out and we see, hey, what are the roadblocks coming up?
What are the risks that we might be running into? What are some, you know, gaps that we need to fill or things that we're going to need, bridges we're going to need to cross in the future? So the Chief of Staff seeks that out and then puts together a strategic plan for it. So we really are more on the, a blend of the strategic and the execution.
So I like to say your Chief of Staff sort of sits between, like, what a consultant might do and what an EA might do. So we're strategic and tactical, but we're not. Only one or only the other. I love that. And I would love if you could also share a little bit about, you know, because I work as a consultant, I will come into an organization, I serve as an advisor, and then I do the work, we have some impact and some outcomes, and then I leave.
I'm curious what you would say about the benefits or maybe your cautions around a chief of staff that is like as an interim or fractional, maybe And whether that's for the organization to test it out, or to bring someone in to maybe set up some of those processes, does that work, or can it work for Chief of Staff to be fractional or interim?
Yeah, I've spoken with some great Chiefs of Staff recently who are going fractional, because that is also the way of the future, the future of work, a lot of people say is fractional, and it is great. I think it's so important. That there are clear expectations in those situations because the work that a chief of staff does in order to be able to give you trusted advice, you have to build a trusted relationship, right?
That takes time in order to make decisions for the leader and to sort of serve as their proxy. Again, that takes time to understand them. There's a lot of context that has to be built. So even, uh, I tell my students like you need to have a really clear 30, 60, 90 plan. If you're expecting yourself or if your organization is expecting you like in week two to like be hitting home runs, that's just not going to happen and it's going to set up everyone for failure.
Yeah. But the cool part is when you do have a really solid 30, 60, 90 day plan, you can really like from there, like catapult out into the stratosphere, like really kill it. But yeah, that's the, the only issue with, um, fractional chief staff is that it does require so much context, unique to the leader, unique to the organization.
That makes sense. And when you were talking about, when we're talking about fractional just so that if someone's listening and doesn't know what that means, typically it's someone who will work for multiple organizations or multiple individuals in a fractional way, meaning that they are working for you a fraction of the time.
A lot of times those folks are giving you the benefit of maybe someone who's with you longer. Sometimes it's not at a fraction of the cost, though, but it does serve in that purpose. So. Melanie, I would love to have you address maybe some of the common myths or misconceptions about chief of staff roles, and it could be good or bad, what people think they might be able to do and they can't or shouldn't be expected to, or some watchouts.
Yeah, so a big one you kind of touched on earlier is this confusion between an executive assistant and a chief of staff, and that myth or that misconception is kind of twofold, because some people will say, Or your chief of staff is just a glorified EA. That is definitely not true. If it's true for anyone, that means you're underutilizing your chief of staff.
And that's where there needs to be some like adjustments in perspective and workload. But then there's also, to that same idea, there's the opposite of thinking like an EA cannot be a chief of staff. It's another thing that's not true. That kind of ties into another myth is that you need an MBA to be a chief of staff.
Again, very untrue. It's helpful to have education, but you need people who have experience and can get their hands dirty that want to roll up their sleeves and get things done. Again, it's like consulting is great because we do need that strategy and we need that input and we need things set into place, but if you're going to be a chief of staff, you're getting your hands dirty.
You're doing the work you're in it for the long haul. And so. That's where like MBAs who have one really rigid way of thinking or they've learned certain things in business school may not always be, that doesn't always translate as well. And so I have found that there's a lot of people who, like myself, I was an EA and a project manager, I got pulled into a chief of staff role.
A lot of us can survive and thrive in that chief of staff position because we built those relationships. We understand the importance of relationship building across an org, but also things like discretion, confidentiality and, you know, just being that. So that, that is the biggest misconception I run into.
Um, a few of the other ones, there's ideas that a chief of staff, you need a large staff to have one. And that's also not true. What I really love seeing are CEOs and founders who hire a chief of staff really early on, like under 10 people. And they're bringing on a chief of staff. I talked to someone recently who they had, um, their technical team and their, the founder was.
A technical founder and was like, I need someone to help me with ops and strategy and brought on a chief of staff as his like, number three hire. Smart. Yeah. So again, the chief of staff is someone who is. You, when you're leading an organization, you need to be heads up looking forward at the vision and the chief of staff is someone who can be heads down making it happen.
Yeah. And we talked a little bit before we start recording about the nuances maybe between nonprofits and for profit corporations. Um, could you talk a little bit more about What benefits it really gives in the day to day operations to that CEO, the executive director when they have a thriving chief of staff role build.
So I'll start, I'll answer that by sharing an exercise that I always tell new chiefs of staff to do. So when you start working with a leader. Ask them to just, you know, it doesn't have to be specifics, but to describe how their time is allocated. So are they spending 30 percent of their meetings, 10 percent in investor relations, 50 percent dealing with employee drama, you know, whatever the buckets they feel and sort of percentages.
Of the main buckets where they're spending their time each week, and then you want them to design. How would you ideally like your time spent some founders or some leaders are going to want to spend 50 percent of their time in meetings. Someone has been 5 percent of their time in meetings, whatever that gap is there.
Then as a chief of staff, you'll go in and fill those gaps. How do you get them closer to their ideal time allocation? And so that's why it's helpful whether it's a non profit, whether it's corporate. There's leaders who have zones of geniuses, right? And so if you're an executive director at a non profit and you are a rock star at fundraising, You shouldn't be spending your time in operations and logistics, right?
If you're a rockstar in investor relations, and you're amazing at meeting people and talking to people and sharing the vision, storytelling, all of that great stuff, that's what you need to be doing. And that's why having a strong chief of staff who can sort of be at the home base, helping with decision making, making sure all the projects are running on track and get you out of those weeds.
That's where a strong chief of staff comes into place so that you can. Use your bandwidth to really shine. That's awesome. And I'm thinking about one of the things I wanted to talk to you about as well, is that I'm a real big stickler for organizations that I work with and organizations that I don't that listen to this podcast or hear me on social media.
I talk about succession planning all the time. And I think it's really prevalent in the nonprofit space, especially with founders who are there for 10, 15, 20 years, or for even people that come as the new ed after the founder. We're not none of us were thinking about succession enough and then something happens, whether it's a death or a retirement or a termination or another reason, and the nonprofit and the board of directors, the staff is left to try and clean up and figure it out.
I'm curious what you might think. could help in a, you know, if an organization has a chief of staff, how does that play into a succession plan? And maybe you have controversial or a strong opinion on chief of staffs being named as a successor. You know, if they, it feels like they're really going to be in the business and in the operations, what do you, I would love to hear your thoughts on that too.
Yeah. So I'll share my personal story. I was a chief of staff to Arlen Hamilton and through that relationship, she was able to Share with me, trust me, understand how I think, align, you know, how we make decisions, what our priorities are, and I learned so much, and because of the nature of the trusted relationship, when she was there Wanting someone to take over her personal brand company.
She was able to trust me to give me that CEO position. And so that's another reason why I do love the chief of staff role because it is such a great launch pad into leadership. So 100 percent when you're building that relationship, you understand how the leader thinks and why. You're asking questions, you're paying attention, so you can do your job as a chief of staff, right, to help make decisions in their absence.
Or, you know, if a meeting is happening and the Leader or the executive director can't be in that meeting. You're there. You're making decisions on their behalf, right? So you're building that tight relationship. So that is a great reason why a chief of staff could be part of your succession plan Now on the other hand, there's also a strong reason to have a chief of staff Because when a succession happens, even if it's someone else external someone else internal that chief of staff has an incredible institutional knowledge That they can pass on to the new person coming in and that i've seen just it's like Chef's kiss.
It's so great when they have that person that's seen everything and also doesn't have, I'm always careful of how I say this, but sometimes different departments can have their own agendas. Right? And so, of course, the founder, CEO, leader, executive director, they have an overarching vision for the entire world.
Organization and the chief of staff works in what we call like the office of the CEO. The chief of staff is not tied to any one department. And so they also have that same, you know, like we're mentioning with a some succession plan, they can give that person like the real deal, right? Because they worked across all of the different teams.
They've worked with all of the team members. That's awesome. And so rather than just hearing from, you know, one person in fundraising or one person in this department, they kind of get all the good info. I'm just thinking about how powerful that would be for some of the organizations that I've worked with that are in crisis mode because the executive director or the CEO has left suddenly.
And you're right, no one person holds the organization's institutional knowledge and you can plan proactively as much as you want, um, but having someone like a chief of staff role, um, Would be so huge. Like you said, chef's kiss for sure. You made a comment earlier, um, that you don't feel that someone needs an MBA to be a chief of staff.
You've developed your own training that I'd love for you to talk a little bit about because it really gets into the nitty gritty of how to be a successful chief of staff. And I think what I love most about your training is it talks about how to navigate that relationship with your ed or CEO so that it can build the trust so that they can really get out and do the things they're meant to.
So I'd love to hear. Um, from you a little bit more about how that course came to be. My first Chief of Staff role was in 2010, a very long time ago. Before there was really a lot of information about it. The Chief of Staff, just a brief history, it started like in the military, you know, centuries ago, and then it's been used in politics a lot.
But it's, growing. It's one of the rap, one of the fastest growing professions as more and more people are seeing how impactful having a chief of staff can be and how much it really amplifies a leader. And so that being the case, I started in 2010, there were not a lot of resources. And like a smaller sort of regional organization went on, did some product management where I was actually serving as a chief of staff, but without the title, which is a very common thing.
A lot of people think they don't need a chief of staff, but they're actually utilizing a different employee as a chief of staff. So, um, and then I went on to chief of staff at a venture capital fund with Ireland, uh, with Ireland, and then a chief of staff at a GovTech company. And so in all of these different sizes, industries, stages.
Um, serving as a chief of staff, I realized this is really, truly different. Like, it's not just a saying when we say no two chief, chief of staff jobs are the same. And so I, I faced a lot of challenges. There were certain things, and I talk about this in the course. For instance, as a chief of staff, you are a gatekeeper.
You have to protect your leader's bandwidth and their time. And so sometimes people want to meet with the leader, and they just don't have the bandwidth. So they meet, they need to meet with the chief of staff. That can cause a lot of friction. And I'll just always be honest about that. I was in a situation that was not fun because of the friction in that role.
And so I learned a lot from those experiences. And I had some incredible, vast majority of my Chief of Staff experiences were incredible. But I thought to myself, I want to learn. I want others to learn from my mistakes. I want others to have an easier path. This. role. It's so impactful to organizations.
It's so pivotal for your career. It can be such an incredible launchpad. And so how do I open up awareness and access to this profession and make it easier? There's a big lack of confidence. People, again, with these misconceptions, Oh, you need an MBA. You need, you know, decades of experience. And the truth is you really don't.
And so. How do I help people overcome that sort of confidence barrier? Also, that was really important to me. And so that's why I felt, you know, I'm going to include quizzes and assignments and then end it with a certification so that people feel confident now they know they can do it. Right. But when they go to the hiring manager and, and actually some people don't know they can do it.
And that's like a challenge for me too, because I'm like, you can do this, you know, and so then I like that they see, hey, I've taken these, it's like 30 hours of content, um, these quizzes, these assignments. Now I know that I can do it and I can confidently present myself, um, whether it's pitching yourself for the role, which I'm a huge fan of applying for an open chief of staff role requesting an internal promotion.
If you're at an organization that doesn't have a chief of staff requesting to be promoted into that role. Um, for the requesting creation of that role. Yeah. So that, that's what led me to creating the course. I just felt like so many people could benefit from this. What do I wish I had? And then I built that.
I love that. And I'm just thinking about the person listening who is either in a decision making role, who could think about the importance of having this role at your organization. And I'm also thinking as you were talking, Melanie, about just like you said, the person who might be listening who is already doing those things.
Functions and the inner the internal promotions huge. I have a question as we kind of start to wrap up really quickly. But what does it look like for a chief of staff than to plan for their eventual transition out if they're holding so much and maybe that's not something we really have time to get into.
But do you have any thoughts about that when you're when you're holding so much information? How do you navigate when it's your time to go? Yeah, so I, I always encourage people to not hold it all in their head. So start building out, you know, Notion, Company Wiki, building out all that information, documenting all of your processes, getting everything out of your head.
There's a lot of, you know, some people say like they want to be a Chief of Staff forever because again, there's no, no two jobs are the same. You can be a Chief of Staff for five years one place, go to another one, it's a new job, you know. It's you can be at the same company as a chief of staff. It's a new job every quarter.
Um, so some people like to stay, but I really like to encourage people. Hey, use this as a learning ground. You see what all the executives and all the different departments are doing. What, where do you want to go next? And so with that being the case, yes, succession planning is so important. You know, even if you're identifying a person within the organization who you can sort of bring up and then.
When you're ready to request, Hey, I'd like to be considered for a COO role. Yeah. You have, you can say, and I've been training this, you know, project manager or this person who can come in and fill my shoes. I love that. It just would be so my, my ideal dream, uh, especially for nonprofits and social impact orgs is that they all have a succession plan that does not stop just at the ED or CEO, that it trickles down through the rest of the organization.
For sure. Yeah. And I think that's also. That's a great sort of like sell for an organization to to say, Hey, we care about your growth. Here's how when you can demonstrate to people, our current executive director started at this position. And, you know, then they went to this position in this position when you can show when you want to, like, bring new team members on and you can show that you actually.
Do you care about their career growth and you've demonstrated it by having succession plans that clearly, you know, help people to develop within the org. I think that's a great selling point. I love that. Is there anything else that we haven't talked about around chief of staff role and your expertise in it that you'd like to share?
I feel like we covered all the really great points. I've been really enjoying this conversation. I would just encourage people to. One, if you're a leader to sort of look at who am I sort of over utilizing or under utilizing, right? And who might be, who within my organization Might I be able to give chief of staff responsibilities to because if you have an EA who's incredible and so because they're incredible, you're just giving them a whole bunch of extra work and they're doing it because they're a team player.
That's not necessarily fair to them. It's not helpful to their growth. It's not helpful to your organization because eventually they're going to realize, hey, I'm doing a lot and I'm not being given like the title or the recognition. that I deserve for going above and beyond in my role. So look out for those things.
Also, if you are someone who feels like you are doing above and beyond or you want to, start, if, if you're interested in getting into a chief of staff position, start asking for more and more responsibility. Start taking things on proactively. Start building that trust so that then it's easier to You know, lead that conversation to wanting to be promoted to a chief of staff.
I love that. I love the concept of chief of staff so much. And I'm just hopeful that as you listen to this episode, rewind it, replay it, um, and really take accountability around where a chief of staff role could benefit your organization or you as an individual. We will have links to find Melanie in the show notes, including a special discount for folks that want to explore the course.
Thank you, Melanie, so much for not only being here today, but also for your dedication and passion to this topic. I envision a world where we have much more impact from Chief of Staff roles. Thank you. I appreciate it. If you are an organizational leader, board member, or a curious staff member, take the Leaving Well Assessment to discover your organization's transition readiness archetype.
It's quick and easy, and you can find it at NaomiHataway. com forward slash assessment. That's Naomi, N A O M I. H A T T A W A Y dot com forward slash assessment. To learn more about Leaving Well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace, you can also see that information on my website.
It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system. We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide, to shift culture, and to create transformation. Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hadaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a navigation guide for workplace transitions.