The Chief of Staff is an organizational architect.
Corporate America keeps filing the job under administrative support. I have spent 25 years arguing otherwise — in the Clinton White House, at the CFPB, at the Gates Foundation, and now at The Coul & Gold Group, where Suzi Coul and I build the instruments that tell a leader what their operation is actually doing.
Nine functions hold the role up. Cut one and the seat starts drifting toward the calendar.
A White House, a startup federal agency, a global health philanthropy, a Dutch manufacturer: every organization I have worked inside needed the same nine things from the person one seat over from the leader. The org chart keeps changing and the functions never do.
When a company files the seat under senior support, the failure is predictable and it is rarely the fault of the person in it. Information gets withheld from the role that needs it most, authority gets capped so nobody in the building gets "too" powerful, and then everyone concludes the job has no future. What it was missing was a shape.
I write about that shape. Weekly, in The Coul & Gold Briefing, and several times a week in public on LinkedIn, where people are welcome to tell me I am wrong.
Three places I actually am.
The Coul & Gold Briefing
Weekly, on the Chief of Staff role and the architecture of leadership. Free to read, paid if you want to keep it going.
Where the argument happens in public a few times a week. Come disagree in the comments.
The Coul & Gold Group
The practice. Advisory and instruments for executives, for the Chiefs of Staff beside them, and for the search firms that place them.
Twenty-five years, mostly one seat over.
The White House
Special Assistant to John Podesta while he served as Chief of Staff to the President, and afterward as he built the Center for American Progress.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Deputy Chief Technology Officer and Chief of Staff to the CIO. Hired the first in-house development and design teams in the federal government; several of those people went on to start 18F and the U.S. Digital Service.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Traveling Chief of Staff to the President of Global Health. Bangladesh, Kenya, Thailand, Japan, Mexico, France, Canada, the United Kingdom.
The Coul & Gold Group
Co-founder with Suzi Coul. Advisory, instruments, and the Chief of Staff Operating Program we run together.
Keynotes, retreats, and executive sessions.
This is the part of the work I want more of.