Being a Chief of Staff in a Startup— The 1st 30 days
You will be surprised by the learning curve. Personally and professionally.
I knew this was an all-hands role (like how Growth Management was when I accepted my 1st job offer back in 2016) — it’s a blessing in disguise and in spirit. It’s also special because the entire routine is remote and the startup is in the pre-launch phase, something that made me extra vigilant about the whole process. As there’s no water-tight job description that mandates what you should do, the narrative becomes what you can do.
What you choose to do.
What you think is best for the team and the company at large.
What you can uniquely bring to the table.
Here’s a bunch of thoughts that I have realised by this one-month milestone, let this note nudge you to imbibe these in whatever mind space you are in now.
1. Embody Integrity
I don’t think anything else comes closer to this trait — to be legit accountable to one’s own tasks and the teams’ at large. Being privy to information that is both time and people-sensitive puts an extra responsibility to be able to use that with well thought-out discretion.
You are not the eyes and ears of the Executive team alone, you are the eyes and ears of the company.
2. Set No Non-sense Agendas
For someone who is responsible for the community governance at large, you are going to host a lot of meetings. A lot. Most of them wouldn’t have a predefined scope. The scope evolves through the pre-reads you share and the decisions of “yes/no/want to further explore” are going to arrive during the actual meetings. It becomes extremely critical to be setting agendas and clear actionable expectations from every meeting, because, let’s admit — we all are victims of video conferencing fatigue and sitting in meetings isn’t working exactly.
Work is what happens before and after the meetings.
3. Articulate, Document, Clarify — Repeat
Knowledge repository of ideas and processes need to be at one place — not only for the obvious reasons, but also to chart the evolution of your own company’s vision with each dent that that product feature/client/partnership makes.
A good chunk of my work is leveraging partnerships and here’s a little something I adopted during all of our meetings — internal and external. To have a deck that had my pre-defined outline of the scope and I take the notes live with the screen sharing on. Especially when there’s more than 2/3 people in the meeting. It worked wonders for me in two ways — one, there’s super high engagement during the calls because whatever is being said by the team member is going up on the screen — live and categorised succinctly. Two, there’s a ready reckoner on the shared agreement and the next steps as soon as the call ends. This is not MOM, mind you. Frankly, I never really understood MOMs without actionables laid out intuitively. Isn’t that the whole point of taking notes?
4. Team Sync, Team Gaps and Team Dependencies
Every few weeks, one question that our teams can ask themselves is this —
Does my business team understand what my product team is up to?
Does my tech team see where the business strategy is gearing towards?
And can the both of these answers be given in simple layperson language?
Because clarity flies through the roof amidst the jargon. Simplify. Simplify.
I’d like to believe it’s like curating a Broadway Musical. Everyone needs to be in sync — both for individual and team’s gratification. And nothing’s more sexier from a client’s standpoint, than to see the entire team be on the same page. Just imagine! No more “let us get back to you on this” ? Wow.
5. Toggle between 30,000 feet and Nanometer POV
What seems so self-explanatory is also the toughest to apply practically.
How does one swing between the font size of the text on website to the customer acquisition strategy 5 months down the lane?
With an eye to detail, thats how. The more you notice closely and from a distance, the better the individual pieces of work align and come together.
6. Seek feedback, proactively
Any intervention — technology, culture, strategy — before and after the introduction of it, one needs to understand the circumstance and the extent of engagement in which that might play out with the team. There’s only one thing to know here — Don’t assume anything.
Ask questions explicitly that will trigger implicit answers as well. Thought diversity needs more active attention.
Hosted a town-hall? Take a survey. Introduced a new tool? Take a survey. It doesn't end there. One has to action on the feedback, understand why something is perceived in a certain way and in the next steps, be as inclusive as possible.
7. Context management >> Project Management
There’s enough processes that outline how to manage projects. There’s also pre-defined parameters to evaluate the project’s success and logjams. But most companies fail not because they handle projects shabbily, but because the context doesn't get communicated through those properly.
If you distill context all the way to the last person who is working on a project, there’s very little chance that it will fail. Because now everyone knows the why and not just the what.
8. Culture is the end goal
Do a million things, if employees don’t show up to work with a happy face, pause and introspect all of those million things.
How do you ensure the workspace becomes safe, inclusive and productive?
You share ownership, not delegate. You share apprehensions, not red flags. Lastly, you share governance, not policies.
It is one thing to be employed in the COVID pandemic, and it is another to be purposefully employed as the work makes meaning over and beyond pay-checks and email monotony. I am plain grateful for that and here’s a closing thought.
