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Conclusion: Traps, Challenges, and Learning Points
Kai Miller
5 min read
As with all of the Chief of Staff Executive Education at the University of Oxford programmes, participants returned to their organisations with different perspectives, better questions and new ideas.
Prioritise purpose action, not words
Obviously you support your principal in public and decisions after they have been made. Behind closed doors and in advance, you challenge and question. But you accept the final conclusion even if you continue privately to disagree with it.
Support and agreement, however, can too easily turn into empty cheerleading: vocal encouragement but with no underlying action.
This is particularly the case when it comes to the idea of purpose. While many hours can be spent worrying about how to phrase a purpose statement, the point of the purpose is to clarify what the organisation is there to do and to guide decisions. It does not need cheerleading: it needs using.
One participant revealed how they were trying to make sense of this:
'I'm struggling with impact versus purpose. And in what my role as a chief of staff is. Is it to focus on purpose? Because I can do that every day, you know, do the cheerleading, the ‘we have to graduate every kid’. The impact is that, you know, 30% of our kids are not graduating.'
They answered their own question: if the purpose of the organisation is ‘to graduate every kid’ then the role of the chief of staff is to work with the leadership team and the organisation to align their processes and capabilities to help every kid to graduate. Reminding people of the purpose is not ‘cheerleading’ but ensuring that it remains front and centre of decision-making.
Work closely with your principal but remain separate
In the report of our Harvard Business School Executive Education Programme in October 2023 we touched on the contradictory nature of the relationship between principal and chief of staff.
The principal is both the source of the chief of staff’s formal authority and the check on their activities: a chief of staff can go nowhere that their principal does not want them to go. They are subordinate to the principal, and yet many people within the organisation will listen to them on the assumption that they speak with the principal’s voice. Navigating these contradictions takes a thoughtful approach and a nuanced understanding of where power comes from and how it can be used.
'The thing to note on the power and authority point is not conflating your boss’s and the principal’s power with your power.
And just having to earn that authority and respect from the people that work for you or that you work with as well. Earning that trust and authority and power from your boss and realising that in a lot of situations without your principal, you might not have much power in this role.'
Many descriptions of the chief of staff/principal relationship have described them as ‘two sides of the same coin’ and ‘yin and yang’. A close partnership built on trust is vital to making both roles work, and chiefs of staff have talked about the importance of creating a ‘mind meld’ with the principal.
And yet participants in our executive education programmes have always talked about the expectation that they will challenge and question the principal, sometimes even telling them that they are wrong.
The question is how to be simultaneously close enough to achieve a mind meld and separate enough to tell the truth. This requires the chief of staff to develop and nurture enough power on their own account to equalise the relationship.
'If power is a resource, how can you invest in that and develop that for yourself, independent of your principal? Because sometimes you'll be acting on their behalf. Other times you will be speaking truth to that power. So that means you have to operate independently by definition.'
It also takes political skill. Even when the principal has specifically invited challenge and asked the chief of staff to act as a Devil’s Advocate, it does not mean that they will like hearing an opposing or dissenting view. And in expressing one, the chief of staff is risking their personal political capital, reputation, and credibility.
Professor Trevor advised that a successful approach might involve showing and not telling, including providing evidence.
'If you're trying to encourage a mindset shift in your principal to recognise the complex options around some of the thorny issues that we were talking about today, show them, show them how it is different. Provide evidence, let them choose for themselves rather than having to take it on faith from you.'
Think connection and alignment
Conversations in early programmes revealed that chiefs of staff often described themselves in terms such as ‘fixer’, ‘doer’, and ‘orchestrator’. They felt fulfilled when they accomplished things but did not need the external validation of a senior leadership title. Indeed they often derived satisfaction from watching their principal or other leaders take credit for achievements which they knew to be their own.
Rather than fixating on their leadership identity or place in the hierarchy, chiefs of staff are action-oriented, and interested in what needs to be done to achieve organisational goals.
'The part of being a smart chief of staff is knowing when to rely on relationships, get stuff done.'
But they are not simply tacticians. What the chief of staff can do that no one else in any other role can is facilitate connections and nudge behaviour throughout the organisation, from the leadership team to the front line.
'When you look at an organisation structure, there is all this white space between the different departments, between the boxes. And it’s the chief of staff that’s navigating all of that – up, down, to the sides, everywhere.'
It is that ability and comfort with ambiguity that joins the strategic to the tactical, leadership to followers, and enables alignment.
'Maybe there is something about the chief of staff role which really … maybe alignment is the outcome of ultimately everything we do.'
