Chief of Staff Role#
TL;DR; The Chief of Staff (CoS) extends the capacity of the Executive Director (ED) by identifying the crucial challenges or opportunities across the org and closing those gaps. They work across all Flight Levels, prioritizing opportunities to ensure that strategic outcomes are operationalized.
AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY#
Unblock strategically important initiatives - The CoS works with the ED to identify critical initiatives that need moving forward then provide direction and extra capacity to move them forward.
Provide decision-making (by proxy for the ED) - They make decisions on behalf of the ED, attend strategically important meetings on their behalf and use coaching conversations to transparently guide decision-making and cross-functional work in teams
Uplevel senior team members - In conjunction with the People Lead, the CoS helps uplevel senior team members enabling them to operationalize their systems of work and to effectively support their team members.
FAILURE MODE#
2i2c doesn’t have information or any warnings to know that it’s getting to a funding/financial crunch (like July 2024).
KEY OUTCOMES#
Advise and support Executive Director (ED) and leadership team
Provide ED with feedback and guidance to build his leadership stance, particularly in operationalizing strategic objectives and to help scale 2i2c’s operational practices
Be connected to all the teams to have oversight of challenges and improvement initiatives
Ensure coaching (including 1:1s) and feedback conversation happen between line-managers and their peers
Help to equip line managers and team members with the tools necessary to have crucial conversations
Provide support (in tandem with the Delivery Manager) to increase other teams’ capabilities and capacity to deliver
Support organizational goals setting
Provide the Executive Director and other leaders with thought-leadership and solution-ideation
Provide “burst” capacity to rapidly acquire knowledge or skills needed by leaders, to make strategic decisions or drive projects
Co-create defining and measuring KPIs across the organization
Ensure organizational systems of work exist and are effective
Co-host and support the creation ceremonies
Participate in organizational future state design (including conversations pertaining to hiring and termination of staff)
LINE-MANAGEMENT#
The Chief of Staff reports to the Executive Director.
KEY TOUCH POINTS#
Executive Director
Business Development Leadership
Product and Services triumvirate
Key community governance teams (e.g. Catalyst governance cohort) and leadership partners (e.-g. Yo from OLS)
CS&S Operations: Dr. Kena Mayberry
3-MONTH GOALS#
Current: Review end of March 2025
Key Business Intelligence information is known
There are Flight Level-3 decision-making processes and outcomes are effectively - communicated with the teams
Information from different business-areas is readily available for the monthly updates by the Executive Director