Unleash Leadership Power: How the Chief of Staff Transforms Vision into Scalable Success | Growth Elevated

Podcast Introduction (00:00:02)
Julian Castelli introduces the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast and its focus on tech leadership challenges.

Guest Introductions & Episode Overview (00:00:27)
Julian introduces guests Keziah Juan Stolen and James Adcock, and outlines the episode’s focus on the Chief of Staff role.

Keziah’s Background & Chief of Staff Origins (00:01:13)
Keziah’s career journey, the origins of the Chief of Staff role, and its transition from government to tech.

Chief of Staff Role Evolution in Tech (00:03:09)
Discussion on how and why the Chief of Staff role became prominent in tech, especially post-2020.

Defining the Chief of Staff Role (00:05:22)
Clarifying what a Chief of Staff does, their core responsibilities, and how the role differs from COO and admin positions.

Chief of Staff vs. COO vs. Admin (00:07:00)
Exploring the differences between Chief of Staff, COO, and executive assistant roles, and when each is appropriate.

Chief of Staff Compensation & Profile (00:08:36)
Breakdown of Chief of Staff salary ranges, experience levels, and typical backgrounds.

Fractional Chief of Staff & Talent Pipeline (00:10:37)
Introduction to fractional Chief of Staff roles and how companies can test the position before a full-time hire.

Ideal Chief of Staff Background & Skills (00:11:04)
Key skills and backgrounds for effective Chiefs of Staff, including consulting, project management, and high EQ.

Chief of Staff as a Leadership Pipeline (00:12:21)
How the Chief of Staff role can serve as a training ground for future leaders and the evolving career path.

Align, Execute, Amplify Framework (00:14:01)
Keziah’s three-pillar framework for the Chief of Staff role: align, execute, amplify.

James Adcock’s Chief of Staff Experience (00:14:40)
James shares his experience hiring a Chief of Staff and the impact on his company’s infrastructure and culture.

Chief of Staff as Change Management Leader (00:18:06)
How Chiefs of Staff drive change management, own cross-functional projects, and act as force multipliers.

Chief of Staff Problem-Solving Approach (00:19:58)
Chiefs of Staff as problem solvers who clarify, organize, and hand off projects to functional leaders.

Rhythm of Business & Deliverables (00:21:23)
The importance of Chiefs of Staff managing the “rhythm of business” and ensuring leaders focus on value creation.

Avoiding Role Confusion & Pitfalls (00:26:16)
Common pitfalls, such as role confusion, and best practices for onboarding and integrating Chiefs of Staff.

Chief of Staff Training & Development (00:28:12)
The value of upskilling, bootcamps, and coaching for Chiefs of Staff to maintain boundaries and effectiveness.

Internal Talent for Chief of Staff (00:30:25)
How to identify and train high-potential internal candidates for the Chief of Staff role.

Impact of Chief of Staff on Value Creation (00:31:38)
James summarizes the transformative impact of having a Chief of Staff on company growth and effectiveness.

Resources & Closing (00:32:38)
Keziah shares resources for learning more about the Chief of Staff role; Julian closes the episode.

Julian Castelli (00:01.019)
Good morning. This is Julian Castelli. I’m the host of the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast where each week I talk with inspirational leaders and entrepreneurs in the tech industry and beyond. guests have included CEOs and CXOs of great companies like Workfront, CHG Healthcare, Pathology Watch, InMoment, Canopy, the San Francisco 49ers and many more. This episode is brought to you by Growth Elevated. Growth Elevated is a community of tech founders, CEOs and CXOs.

who are committed to working together to share best practices and learnings in an effort to help all of us become better leaders. We do this through educational programs like this podcast, as well as our blog and of course our annual ski and tech summit where we bring tech leaders from across the world to beautiful Park City, Utah to enjoy camaraderie and collaboration in the beautiful mountains. So if you enjoy skiing and outdoors and networking with other tech leaders, please check us out at growthelevated.com.

And please subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. Today, I’m super excited to welcome Kazaya, Juan Stolen and James Adcock to the show. We are going to talk about everything Chief of Staff. Kazaya is an award-winning entrepreneur and seasoned management consultant based in Denver, Colorado. After 13 years at Accenture, where she served as the Chief of Staff and advised global organizations on sales talent and operational strategies.

She founded Vannin Chief of Staff. Through Vannin, Keziah and her team specialize in supporting private equity firms, their portfolio companies, and family offices, helping leaders scale efficiently, optimize operations, and build strong executive functions. Keziah has been recognized for her leadership and innovation, earning a spot on the Denver Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 list, and being selected for the Goldman Sachs Small Business Program, the 10,000 Small Business Program.

James is a seasoned executive and entrepreneur with deep expertise in scaling businesses across transportation, hospitality, and real estate. As CEO of MT Studio Services, he’s led the company through a significant period of growth and modernization, expanding its presence from one product service to one of the largest integrated studio service platforms supporting the film and television production industry. James is a strategic operator at heart.

Julian Castelli (02:23.471)
and he has effectively leveraged the Chief of Staff model to bridge shortfalls in operational bandwidth while building scalable infrastructure across his ventures. Good morning, Kaziah. Good morning, James. Thanks for joining us.

Keziah Wonstolen (02:36.923)
Julie, and thanks for having us.

James Adcock (02:38.827)
Good morning.

Julian Castelli (02:41.019)
Kazaya, when I first met you, you were teaching us how to effectively leverage a Chief of Staff. And that was probably three to five years ago. And I think the trend of Chief of Staffs had been going for a while there, but it’s relatively new. Am I correct in that? When did the Chief of Staff as a position become, maybe see the resurgence that we’re seeing now, when did that start?

Keziah Wonstolen (03:03.387)
Yeah, so we started the business in 2020. I’ve been in this space since 2015. So I’ve been in the Chief of Staff space for a while now, over almost a decade. This all started, as you guys probably know, the Chief of Staff role originates in the government, in politics. In the late 90s, it moved into more of a corporate role. And then we started seeing it in big tech, mid-2015 to 2020. What happened then post-2020? Yeah.

Julian Castelli (03:28.591)
Yeah, that’s when I started hearing about it. You’re right. I’ve heard about it in the presidential office, right? Chief of staff for the president. But you’re right. It kind of came into tech in the last five, 10 years. James, when did you hear the chief of staff for the first time?

Keziah Wonstolen (03:33.945)
Right. Yeah. then it became popular exactly. But then.

James Adcock (03:42.892)
Yeah, it was military and then suddenly it became the thing to have about 10 years ago.

Keziah Wonstolen (03:49.199)
Hmm

Julian Castelli (03:50.769)
Yeah, that’s what I recall hearing about too. So, because how did it make the bridge from government to tech or entrepreneurship?

Keziah Wonstolen (03:59.419)
So I think what we saw is big tech started bringing it into the leadership to support leadership in 2015 to 2020. But then what happened is post 2020, as you guys all know, the amount of change and the amount of things that started hitting a leader’s plate started to multiply in a way that we’d never seen it before, right? If you guys were both running companies at that time, the amount of change post pandemic, AI, things like that started happening. And the only…

what leaders started to do is look around and go, how can I have someone that’s gonna help me amplify myself to address all of these things because I can no longer tackle them in a 40 to 60 hour a week. So that started, think, well, what happened was after a big tech, then we saw it starting in kind of VC backed companies, post 2020. And then now we see it in private equity, state and family office. And it’s frankly proliferating across all different types of industry now. Manufacturing has historically not had this, but we’re starting to see that there as well.

And a lot of the leaders are just starting to understand how to effectively use this role. When I started the company in 2020, a lot of people didn’t understand a chief of staff, right? They started the conversation with me trying to understand what the role could do. Now I have CEOs calling me saying, I know what this role is, I want one, how can you help me find one, right? The change has been very dramatic in the last five years, but I think people are understanding how to use this role to manage all the changes they’ve had to deal with the last five years. So that’s why we’re seeing the trend increase rapidly.

Julian Castelli (05:24.945)
Well, that makes a lot of sense. It certainly feels like the amount of change and the amount of chaos that you have to manage as a CEO has continued and this may be a cheat code or a way to manage that. But there’s a lot of confusion about the role because I help us define the role. You know, what does a chief of staff do and maybe what is it and what is it not?

Keziah Wonstolen (05:38.171)
Mm-hmm.

Keziah Wonstolen (05:47.225)
Yeah, so the highest, simplest way to kind of think about it is that someone sits to the right hand of a leader, they’re in charge of coordinating the execution of the leader’s vision. And that can take on a lot of different, that can look a lot differently across leaders, right? But the three components of this role is that they’re aligning on the leader’s vision, they’re executing against the vision, and then they’re amplifying the leader. That’s at the highest level, right? But what that looks like is, you know,

Aligning is aligning on the strategic plan, right? What is the value creation plan, depending on the type of industry you’re in, but getting clear on the plan, running quarterly planning. And then execution is running your rhythm of business. So there’s a series of things that you need to do to execute against that plan. So that’s meetings and communication. Chief of Staff owns that, plush special projects. And then the amplification, which is the third part, is they’re making sure that the leader’s in the right place at the right time talking about the right things. And so all of those come together. That’s what the Chief of Staff is doing.

It is different than a COO. It is different than an admin. And we can talk about that if that’s helpful, it sits in the middle of that in terms of support for our leadership team.

Julian Castelli (06:53.925)
I have heard that question. you know, should I hire a COO or a chief of staff? And then at the opposite end, you know, should I bring my executive assistant into the meeting to help facilitate and do follow-ups or is that a role of a chief of staff? Is there an overlap on those two positions?

Keziah Wonstolen (07:01.349)
Mm-hmm.

Keziah Wonstolen (07:06.971)
Mm-hmm.

Keziah Wonstolen (07:13.465)
Yeah, so I would say that up until around 10 million, 100 people, don’t need a COO and a chief of staff, right? What we’re talking about at Bannon with chiefs of staff is strategic partners to the leader. So we’re not talking about admin. It is in no way the same career track. We’re not talking about the same thing. We are saying it’s a strategic partner. However, the typical difference as you scale up the business is that the COO then comes in, their C-suite level,

A chief of staff is not a C-suite. It is a director, typically director or VP level. They are not reporting, they are not at the C-suite level. So as you grow your business, you can have a COO who has direct reports. So the talent under operations will typically roll up into the COO. They own the cost metrics, they own the kind of the P &L, whereas the chief of staff does not do any of that. Typically they don’t direct reports, they don’t own it. They do not, no. Right.

Julian Castelli (08:01.477)
They don’t have P &L responsibility typically. They are a supplemental resource.

Keziah Wonstolen (08:07.077)
And they’re amplifying all the activities that the CEO has to do, but they’re not owning any of those. They typically own cross-functional projects. So can think about great projects for chiefs of staff to own or anything that touches all functional areas of the business. Think, how are we implementing AI across the business?

Julian Castelli (08:19.845)
Yeah, that thing that falls in between everybody with their outreached hands because it’s not anyone’s unique responsibility. To me, that’s the one area where I always thought, wow, wouldn’t it be a luxury or a great thing to have someone own all of the unowned projects?

Keziah Wonstolen (08:35.867)
Yes, but I will say that we’re seeing a lot of our clients start with a chief of staff and then go to hire a COO because also the chiefs of staff are cheaper, right? We’re talking about director VP levels. You can start to hire someone like that and then grow them into your COO. I mean, there’s a lot of different choice and that’s well also why we are seeing more of these hires happening.

Julian Castelli (08:56.401)
That’s a great point. How much does a Chief of Staff cost? I remember when I started hearing about it, I was just so jealous because I was like, man, wouldn’t it be awesome to hire someone like that? And especially, I also want you to give the background of the Chief of Staffs you bring in because these are smart people who can multitask, who come from some of the best consulting and advisory firms in the country. So give us the profile and then give us a little bit of like what it costs and who can afford these people and who cannot.

Keziah Wonstolen (09:11.835)
Mm-hmm.

Keziah Wonstolen (09:23.195)
Well, we have a big spreadsheet on whether you’re… So I’ll just say it’s very dependent on the industry, on the size and the complexity of the business. There’s a lot of dependencies, but I think rough ranges. We think about it in three kind of buckets. You have a deputy chief of staff who’s maybe five years professional experience that we see those typically in maybe smaller scaling companies. Then we have this chief of staff who’s maybe five to 10 years of experience. And then we have…

10, 15 plus years, which we call senior chief of staff. Typically we see those showing up in large global enterprise businesses. That’s how I showed up when we worked at Accenture. And there’s a lot more information around all of that. Deputy chiefs of staff, mean, 100 to 150,000 a year. We go chief of staff generally, right? If I’m gonna generalize for maybe tech companies, if you get a senior chief or a chief of staff, you’re gonna go 150 to 250.

in terms of salary and then senior chiefs of staff 250 up, right? We’ve seen, we’ve done and run. Those are big enterprise, but we’ve seen chief of staff salaries up to 400.

Julian Castelli (10:24.417)
But those are big enterprises, right? Yeah. So for our audience, let’s just bring it in for our audience. We’re talking in the growth stage. So maybe between 5 and 50 million, 50 to 150 employees. Are they looking at kind of that deputy level typically?

Keziah Wonstolen (10:43.321)
between deputy and chief of staff. I would say you could go anywhere from depending on also the equity structure, right? There’s a lot of different incentives that you can use to attract someone like this, but typically anywhere. And I’m going to give a broad range, right? Because it’s again, dependent on the complexity, but probably 140 to 250. That’s like a good range, right? But it’s director level.

Julian Castelli (10:52.613)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Castelli (11:01.361)
Okay. So it’s like you said, it’s a VP to kind of executive level role, depending on the seniority. And one of the things I found that was really interesting about your business and the way you’re facilitating people to learn and try it out is you also have fractional, which gives people a chance to say, let me see, you know, let me test this out and see if it’s worth the investment. Cause that’s a fairly meaningful executive hire.

Keziah Wonstolen (11:09.242)
Yes.

Julian Castelli (11:27.985)
So talk to me about the fractional ability to kind of test it out.

Keziah Wonstolen (11:32.399)
Well, and I think I didn’t cover like the profile, but that will lead to the fractional type of profile. Typically what we see is ex- good, good chiefs of staff, where to look for them, right? If you have, there’s three ways I would say ex-management consultants are really good at being a chief of staff because here’s, and I’m not biased because that’s where I’m coming from, but I also think what we’re looking for is we’re looking for professional project managers. We’re looking for professional change managers. Yes.

Julian Castelli (11:37.435)
Okay.

Julian Castelli (11:47.611)
Mm-hmm.

James Adcock (11:52.087)
Thank you.

Julian Castelli (11:57.145)
If people who can quickly change context and just, just, you know, they’re driven problem solvers, right?

Keziah Wonstolen (12:02.809)
Right, so doesn’t, mean, could think about the things that we want to see in the Chief of Staff. It’s project management, change management, high EQ, and we’re looking for people who are curious. And so when you think about those are the fundamentals. Another one that I’ll say is that we are looking for people with high discretion in this role because a lot of the times you are brought in as a director level, you are inserted into the C-suite. And so discretion becomes very important. Right.

Julian Castelli (12:20.783)
Yeah, right.

Julian Castelli (12:25.755)
But you’re at the C-level meeting, you’re the director, right? You’re the only non-C-level there.

Keziah Wonstolen (12:30.787)
Right. So we’re looking for all of those things. And that’s where we go back to, OK, we’re looking for X-Man. Typically, people who have done and grown up in either consulting or kind of high tech environments that were pretty competitive, I would say, right? They owned and are leading a function is what I’m looking for. Right.

Julian Castelli (12:43.727)
Right. Right. They’re used to dealing with confidential information. They’re used to learning very quickly. They’re used to diving in and solving problems. And, know, that’s another really attractive element of it. I learned about it, I heard about, you have these ex-Bain, you know, super high potential executives. And I thought, man, wouldn’t that be great? And also wouldn’t it be great as a way to kind of seed your team? Is this a career path where people can go do a chief of staff?

Keziah Wonstolen (12:53.411)
Yep, I’m working with leaders. Yep.

Keziah Wonstolen (13:06.682)
Thank

Julian Castelli (13:13.401)
you know, just fly into a new business become very, you get obviously great exposure. and then, you know, that could be, can that be a way to build your talent base over time? And my second question, but does that create, does that create conflict with the rest of the C-suite if it does like other rules about that to make sure that that’s done properly.

Keziah Wonstolen (13:19.195)
Mm-hmm.

Keziah Wonstolen (13:23.643)
For sure.

Keziah Wonstolen (13:31.835)
Yeah, so our team, going back to your other question around, we have fractional team. There are all those profiles, right? The consultants, they’re ex top five consultant firms. They come in, they can be deployed six to nine months. I mean, we, you know, they either go in as strategic project managers or actually as fractional chiefs of staff, depending on the size of the business. So that’s, that’s that profile. That’s who is on our team. And then as you go to what’s interesting after the last five years for the chief of staff career path is that you have people that are actually

Typically, historically it was, hey, I’ve got a high performer. I’m going to bring them in for two years. They’re going to learn how to run the business with me. And then I’m going to put them into a leadership position, GM, COO, business leader. What we’re seeing now is actually more of a career path around the chief of staff role. Because Julie and I work with you as the chief of staff to your business. And then I go to James’s business that’s bigger, complex. And I then take the role that I’ve learned. And then I just continually get more and more complex in the business. So some.

we’re seeing it actually a different demand now where CEOs are calling us and saying, hey, I don’t want the typical like two year spin out into a leadership position. I want someone, I don’t have time to teach someone how to be a leader. Totally. Yeah.

Julian Castelli (14:39.099)
You want an experienced chief of staff who can level up and bring that expertise to the organization.

Keziah Wonstolen (14:45.359)
Right. Because now it’s more known what the role is, right? It’s very clear to a lot of CEOs what the role is. Maybe they’ve had it before and they know what they’re looking for, going back to my kind of framework around Align, Execute, Amplify. That’s how a lot of these high tech chiefs of staff are operating. even VC BackTech, it’s known now. So now CEOs are calling us going, we want someone who’s done this before. Maybe at a smaller business, less complex, but now I want them to come and break that. Right.

Julian Castelli (15:08.271)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that shows the maturity of the role now, right? So you’re getting into an expansion of the opportunity for your business, which is exciting.

Keziah Wonstolen (15:19.279)
It is, yeah. That’s why we’ve had business. It’s good.

Julian Castelli (15:20.507)
So give me those three pillars again, align, amplify, align, and align, execute, amplify. So James, did you know that it was align, execute, amplify when you were kind of thinking around that you needed some help for your business? Tell us a little bit your story. How do you became a chief of staff curious?

Keziah Wonstolen (15:25.049)
Align, execute, amplify. Yes.

James Adcock (15:42.125)
god. Man, what a phrase. So I had various levels of exposure to the position over the last 10 to 15 years and had just kind of see it taking different shapes and colors along that timeline. But then when we started this most recent project in the studio services space,

Keziah Wonstolen (15:42.651)
It’s a great word.

James Adcock (16:10.916)
What we found was we were going into companies that were missing critical customary pieces of company infrastructure. So things like HR or job titles and descriptions, or just there being this unifying glue that holds a group or a company or a team together. Yeah, but they’ve been running for 47 years.

Julian Castelli (16:34.641)
So they were missing corporate infrastructure, sounds like.

James Adcock (16:40.437)
And they were big. Totally. Yeah.

Julian Castelli (16:40.539)
So these are family-owned businesses and they’ve just grown their old-fashioned way and you’re coming into the…

James Adcock (16:47.075)
Yeah, founder, own founder, run kind of run like an Italian restaurant. No disrespect, but like, you know what I mean? It’s, you know, Lots of lots of character. Yeah. And but like, but honestly, like so much talent and institutional knowledge within that. And I would say within like three weeks of jumping in to the trenches, we I was looking around, I was like, no.

Julian Castelli (16:51.857)
Okay. Lots of taste and lots of emotion. Character.

Julian Castelli (17:03.215)
Mm-hmm.

James Adcock (17:16.409)
Like we are, we are kind of out. Yeah, we are outgunned. And like there are so many things and there’s so many like it was like being in an episode 24, honestly. And there were just so many things that was like, my God, we’re going to have to really like, we’re going to have to really level up fast if we’re going to have a hope of doing what we came here to do. And it just so happened at the time, one of my

Julian Castelli (17:17.425)
What have you gotten yourself into, right?

Julian Castelli (17:28.241)
You

James Adcock (17:45.604)
close friends now Chief of Staff Katie was coming off of a project where she had been really running as COO, you know, that healthcare space and was looking for the next thing she jumped in. And she had never really heard of a CEO Chief of Staff. I had never really had one but I had read into a lot of the literature around it to understand like kind of what it was. And like, almost instantly, I mean, day one, she was like, right, making templates for like job offers and

just instantly kind of became, I would say the more humanizing element of our kind of leadership transition effort, where if we’re saying all these things, she’s the one that really kind of connected with people like consistently and constantly day in, out. And just like, this is your email address and this is your benefits plan and that type of thing. And the force multiplier had very early on.

Julian Castelli (18:36.101)
Mm-hmm.

James Adcock (18:43.094)
I attribute so much of our success to, and even since then, I mean, I think it’s, I, I talked, I hear, cause I had talking about all of these things and like, yeah, no, definitely that. But for us, for me, it’s been for her, it’s been really a. Able to translate that this is where we’re going to, here is what it means for you. And as a constant resource for every person in the company, be like, Hey, how am doing this?

This is not like, well, this is what we want to do. It’s very much the high EQ piece is enormous.

Julian Castelli (19:19.441)
Sounds like she’s really your vessel for executing the change management. So she goes in there, gets some infrastructure put together, then does she go and help you hire a leader for HR? In that case, that was an example. And then to move on to the next department or how, you know, what’s the sequence of activity?

James Adcock (19:37.559)
Yeah, so she’s a massive, like she is a massive HR component for us because we use an outsourced third party HR company called HR piles. Shout out to HR piles. They’re amazing. But she is the like person on the ground on behalf of that team. So she kind of owns that business unit for us and has owned that across the different companies as we’ve grown. But

Julian Castelli (19:46.779)
Okay.

James Adcock (20:06.243)
Beyond that, she is the change management kind of owner in a tectonic level. If we’re having to move, one of our businesses has, you know, 600 trucks and trailers and stuff. So if we’re having to move from one lot across LA to a different lot, she’s honestly quarterbacking that entire thing with like a month’s notice. And it’s just like done. And I, I heard it when I was hearing, cause I had talked, I really, I, I appreciated like the way she was kind of putting.

Julian Castelli (20:27.867)
Wow.

James Adcock (20:35.863)
the different responsibilities and to tie into the titles and the lanes that they kind of fall in. like conceptually, what I think about it’s like, it’s like having a spy, but not like in a bad way. Like they’re so versatile, they’re so adaptable and they’re able to really, I don’t know if spy is really the best word, but it’s like they’re able to translate and get so many things done as like a one person show and the cross-functional aspect of that. I can’t stress that enough. It really is.

The biggest piece that she does is if it touches everything, she’s a unifying point and force for something that needs to get done quickly that falls outside the scope of what a more technical subject matter expert COO might be good at.

Julian Castelli (21:10.981)
Right.

Keziah Wonstolen (21:23.003)
I think this is how we see effective CEOs leveraging the role in that if you think about it, kind of what a Chief of Staff is really good at is pointing them at just this ambiguous sort of blob of a problem, right? I have them as the CEO of a 25 % company. Yeah, it’s a blob. I know it’s a problem. It’s a challenge. need someone to look at it. And so then you point them at them at that problem, at that challenge, and then they’re able to go and

Julian Castelli (21:25.669)
Yeah, please.

James Adcock (21:39.262)
Yeah.

Julian Castelli (21:39.395)
Every company has these problems, yes.

Keziah Wonstolen (21:50.711)
understand what the challenge actually is, right? Because I think as a CEO, I know what it is. You point out they’re able to clarify that. They’re able to understand what actually is the situation that we’re dealing with. Then they’re going to establish the people, the process and the tactic that we need to actually go about solving that challenge. And really good chiefs of staff will do all of that and then tell you what happened, right? But a lot of the times if you have a more junior chief of staff, they’ll be able to like understand the situation.

Julian Castelli (21:53.714)
the problem. Yeah.

Keziah Wonstolen (22:16.207)
they’ll kind of say, here’s my solution to it and I’m gonna go do it, right? That’s what you want in a Chief of Staff. You want them to be able to be pointed at something like that, address it, and then be able to establish who is going to be the longer-term owner of this situation. Now that I’ve got it all organized, I’m gonna hand it to the CFO, the COO, whoever owns it, and then you go to the next one.

Julian Castelli (22:32.815)
Yeah, is that a rule? you try to, is best practice to make sure that the CEOs don’t just kind of accumulate a backpack full of ongoing responsibilities so that they can’t attack new ones. So they have to have an endpoint. Like they’re going to solve the problem, but then they have to hand it off to somebody and put it in the proper department, lane, org structure column.

Keziah Wonstolen (22:53.187)
Yes, most of the time, think the one of the key deliverables that the chief of staff must own, and this again, it’s different for each business, but one of the key deliverables I always coach chiefs of staff to own first is that rhythm of business, which is everything from you. You all have quarterly board meetings that you spend Sundays getting prepared for. That’s the perfect thing to start with the chief of staff taking over, helping you coordinate, getting all the information for the board deck, creating a narrative for you, getting you prepared. Because as a CEO, if you’re walking into a board meeting,

You spending the time creating the slides is not the best use of time. You being able to articulate the narrative, asking, being clear on what the board requests are, that’s the value, right? So taking that, so the rhythm of business is quarterly board meetings, monthly executive meetings, the things that we’re putting into place to execute against the value creation plan or the plan for the business, right? So have them own that whole thread. That’s a great deliverable to have them start with. And then things start, you know, as you start to manage that.

rhythm of business as the chief of staff, you’re then, you understand what is red, yellow, green throughout the business. And typically what, again, the chief of staff directive is, is James has Katie then pointed at the things that are red in that rhythm of business. And then that’s a great use of a chief of staff going, okay, here’s red, go help this team figure out what’s going on and then bring me back a report of what’s happening. The one thing I will say though, is that you have to make sure that

that the leaders of the businesses still own their functional area, right? That’s something that’s very clear when you set up a chief of staff, it’s very clear that your leadership team still owns their areas. They are still responsible for it. The chief of staff is not reporting out on the functional areas of the business because that will not work.

Julian Castelli (24:32.005)
No, right, they can’t. To me, that’s where the magic seems to be, right? Because, like you said, the board deck or whatever project that comes up, if you’re the CEO, you’ve got a couple of choices, but none of them are great. You tap your CFO or your COO or your CRO, someone says, hey, can you run this extra project? And of course, know, in entrepreneurial companies, everyone’s going to wear lot of hats and do some of that. But at some point,

You know, that’s got to have a strain on the organization. you know, I’ve been a CFO of dozens of organizations and I always did the board decks. I always did the special projects, right? But that was, you know, taken away from some of the things I might’ve been able to do, you know, driving value through the finance function. Or I’ve been a CEO and I’ve also, you know, James, let me know if this resonates with you, but I’ve also had the impulse to just take these things on myself because like I don’t want to…

You know, did you distract my CTO when he’s got to get this thing going or my head of sales, right? And to me, none of those are ideal scenarios, right? And that’s where this is the unlock is that perception, right? Does that resonate with you, James?

Keziah Wonstolen (25:29.957)
Mm-hmm.

James Adcock (25:38.24)
Absolutely. think both of those things you’re speaking to are, know, it’s always the temptation to be like the CEO mindset. I have, I’m responsible for everything. I have to own this thing. And I think to Kizaya’s point, it’s, you know, Katie is able to go in to some problem that I might not even know about. And she will go develop the solution to like 75 to 90 % of the way there. And

Keziah Wonstolen (26:06.66)
Mm-hmm.

James Adcock (26:07.53)
can then very quickly come bring something to me in a format that makes it easy to say like, yes or no, but this and then done. And she doesn’t result in her owning like the accounting department at the end of it. just like has very easily reset and tied it to where she knows we need to go anyway, but still allowed for any kind of tweaking that needed to happen there at the end before it got put into place. then like,

We’re moving on. And all of that kept me from having to dive like headfirst into it for weeks and months.

Keziah Wonstolen (26:38.041)
I think that’s great.

Julian Castelli (26:43.951)
Right. And then you’re, you know, now you’re solving big rocks, right? Like you’re solving key problems and that’s, that’s driving your value creation, right?

James Adcock (26:47.444)
Yeah

Keziah Wonstolen (26:53.711)
I think that’s one point I think I’d like to make, Julian, though, is that if you’re thinking about this role, it’s one of those where if you as the CEO think about where your zone of genius is, right, where are you going to drive the most value creation for the business? Start to think about that and then start to go back and look at your calendar of how am I actually spending my time? That’s how I mean, I’ve experienced that. You guys have probably experienced it in that. That’s why we talk about Linex Q to amplify, because if you’re actually spending the time that is driving the value creation, then that’s a good thing. But most CEOs are I think there’s some staff that it’s like,

70 % of their time is not on that. And we want to shift that to more into even like a 50-50 split. And so that’s the way that I’ve seen a really good way of you map out the zone of genius and then you start to go, this is where I should be. What’s all the other stuff that I’m doing? And then either delegate that or have a chief of staff come in to help you delegate and manage that, all the other work. So there’s lots of ways to do it, but that’s just one.

Julian Castelli (27:47.717)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I can, as a former CEO, I can totally see that being, you know, an incredible relief to have that resource and the ability to focus on execution. What are some of the pitfalls or mistakes people make? I know that something I remember feeling was, as another executive on the executive team, it feels to me like you could have some conflicts.

where people don’t know where the lines are drawn, right? And who’s doing what and you know, how do you help companies assimilate to this new structure when they’ve been in a very different structure for many years and do that change management?

Keziah Wonstolen (28:19.067)
Mm-hmm.

Keziah Wonstolen (28:29.923)
Yeah. Well, the best tech CEOs I’ve seen with Chiefs of Staff are able, one, when you onboard this, you have to communicate clearly what this job is. Why are you bringing this person on? What are their jobs? And anchor it to deliverables. I mean, I have a…

We have job descriptions, we have a set of deliverables that they should, the chief of staff should own, like I mentioned before, but you need to be that explicit with your leadership team. So that’s the first thing. The leadership team must understand what this role is because if they don’t, you will run into that issue, right? Because I’m starting to help you as the CFO plan the annual or strategic planning, but you still own the financial part of this, Julia, but how are we overlapping? So being super clear, because if you’re not super clear,

then it doesn’t work. So that’s kind of the one thing. When you’re onboarding them, do that. And then throughout the year, if the role sort of evolves, then also again, communication is key in how this Chief of Staff role shows up. But most, I mean, I will say this, that most leaders now, if you’re on a leadership team with a Chief of Staff, most really good leaders understand how to use a Chief of Staff.

Julian Castelli (29:29.2)
Mm-hmm.

Keziah Wonstolen (29:39.737)
Right? They see it as a partner. It’s not a gatekeeper to the CEO. It is a partner to get your priorities done. Right? Because if I’m sitting there going, I need this budget approved, if you can help the, if the chief of staff is in charge of prioritizing what’s on the CEO’s lap, right? You can work with that chief of staff to then help you get what you need out of your functional area. I think that’s a great way to use it. And a lot of the, the good leaders that we work with understand that and they don’t see it as a blocker or a gatekeeper. They see it as a way to enable them to help.

build, you know, grow and scale the business or drive their initiatives.

Julian Castelli (30:13.041)
See you going in.

James Adcock (30:13.096)
think one thing I would add though, just quickly on that is that one of the other things that Vannin has is this kind of like upskilling Chief of Staff Bootcamp company that Katie actually just went through like a month ago. And through that, think what, cause I was talking to you, was like, what is a Chief of Staff not? And you asked about the pitfalls of kind of the role maybe. And I don’t know if this is a pitfall so much as like a temptation to want this

Keziah Wonstolen (30:24.155)
Hmm.

James Adcock (30:42.365)
person want this role to actually own things forever moving forward because you develop so much trust in them and you see the results they’re able to like, it looks like magic. And you’re like, my God, how do I just like give this person more? And that is, again, not a pitfall. It’s really a temptation that I think like, you know, you have to be very disciplined and just like, no, it’s not. It’s outside their permanent skillset and

you know, it’s not what their role is. But that bootcamp thing she has has been very impactful for both Katie and myself and both just like being really establishing those best practices that Kazai speaks to.

Keziah Wonstolen (31:12.559)
Yeah, that’s a great call.

Keziah Wonstolen (31:26.395)
Well, I think that alludes to why we coach Chiefs of Staff too, because a lot of good Chiefs of Staff, want to help, right? When we look at the profiles that I talked about earlier, they thrive on making the leader successful. That’s what they love about the job. That’s why people want to be Chiefs of Staff. They get to sit to the right hand of these visionary leaders and they get to see how you all are running businesses. It’s a very exciting role to be a part of. However, we as Vannin like to coach them to have a framework to receive the projects, to receive all.

become so overwhelmed with all of the work that needs to be done and how do you prioritize effectively? That’s also something that’s really, you know, if you have a chief of staff, just watch out for, right? Because it tends to be something that they do, but good chiefs of staff are able to prioritize really effectively. But thanks for the chat out on the, the, the, oh, James.

Julian Castelli (32:13.881)
Yeah, so let me just be clear because I you can you can help a company find a chief of staff. You can help them find someone that’s fractional. You can help them find someone who’s permanent and then you can also train a high performer that’s already within the organization. Sounds like that’s the way I worked with Katie at your company, James. What’s the profile if I came to you and said, hey, I think I’ve got.

Keziah Wonstolen (32:22.619)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Castelli (32:37.839)
some people that I’m considering moving to the Chief of Staff role, what’s the profile of someone internally that you would advise the CEO to, hey, this is the right kind of profile, maybe this is not the right kind?

Keziah Wonstolen (32:50.191)
think anyone that is aspiring to be a Chief of Staff is a great person to join our program. We also, think typically it’s like your head of operations. It’s your head of a functional area, right? Head of marketing, head of someone that’s shown real leadership in their area. Someone that you’re looking to bring, elevate and bring into maybe the leadership team. Think about it as like a leadership training program. Someone that’s in that head up. Yep. Right.

Julian Castelli (33:12.793)
Yeah, just said you find your high, you look at your high potential people that you say this person’s a rising star, but maybe they don’t have the training to naturally ascend. So this is a way to kind of give them that both training and experience to groom them for leadership.

Keziah Wonstolen (33:26.477)
Yeah, and right. And then also help them articulate what the Chief of Staff role, what it is, what it’s not, and then the nuances to working in this capacity. think that those are great people to take our trainings. As we get more senior, then we start targeting more private one-on-one coaching with our more senior Chiefs of Staff. But the Accelerator program is a perfect way to do that.

And we’ve been doing this for, like I said, five years. We’ve worked with 300 CEOs and we’ve worked with thousands of chiefs of staff. So we’ve kind of seen, we’ve seen it all, you guys. And so I love to bring that back into the education programs.

Julian Castelli (34:02.097)
So James, let’s finish with you. Why don’t you summarize the impact of having a chief of staff in your value creation work versus not? How big of a deal has it been? Has it been part of your secret success?

James Adcock (34:16.58)
I was going to say a secret weapon instrumental, I don’t know, like nuclear power plant levels of like, like progress. It’s just, I mean that Katie, like I said, she was an entrepreneur. She was a COO. She came in kind of with what I was talking about. was like having owned just about, she owned everything kind of end end already. But, so, you know, it’s a, maybe the typical, I don’t know if typical profile, but it has been just.

Julian Castelli (34:22.341)
Hahaha.

James Adcock (34:44.892)
at whatever level you are at, it is something to look into because like I said, whether you have five people or 500, it’s a force multiplier. And it is just something that the earlier you’re able to start building it into kind of your tool belt, the more effective you’re going to be at what your job actually is. So hopefully that.

Keziah Wonstolen (35:07.747)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Julian Castelli (35:08.965)
Yeah, that’s as a CEO, what sounds so attractive. then, because I have, if again, if people listening, they become chief of staff curious, what kind of resources do you have out there where people can learn more? Where should people go?

Keziah Wonstolen (35:23.877)
So reach out, I mean, you can reach out directly to me. You can go to our website, which is vandanchiefofstaff.com, has a lot of resources. We’ve written a lot about this. We have some case studies, and we also have thought leadership. But always just feel free to reach out directly to me, and we can have a conversation.

Julian Castelli (35:42.747)
Well, terrific. Hey guys, thank you so much for your time this morning. I think this is a really exciting topic and I’m glad we were able to discuss it and shed some light into the mystery of the Chief of Staff. Thank you guys.

Keziah Wonstolen (35:54.087)
Thank you.

James Adcock (35:55.355)
Thank you, Julian.