What do you make of tech CEOs hiring Chief of Staff roles?

After 2.5 years of research and scores of interviews with board members, CEOs, chiefs of staff, and HR executives across the globe, I just released my book, "Chief of Staff: The Strategic Partner Who Will Revolutionize Your Organization" (available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple/iTunes, and many more). In it, I give a short answer to the question of what is a chief of staff: "It is a catch-all role, filled by someone with exceptional organizational and people skills, who handles all manner of tasks not covered by an existing member of an executive's leadership team or administrative staff." The longer answer is a lot more nuanced than that. Every instance of the corporate chief of staff role is different, depending on a number of organizational dynamics, the executive's leadership style and position in the organization, and the areas that the supported executive needs help with. So, to answer your overall question, it depends. If a CEO hires a chief of staff for the wrong reasons, it can be divisive, seen as an unneeded layer of bureaucracy, and a complete waste of resources. Carefully construed and executed, however, the role can more than pay for itself in a month or two by improving the executive's productivity or mitigating the executive's risk. I currently consult on the creation of the role and chief of staff transitions, and I am planning to expand a Seattle peer group for chiefs of staff across the U.S. in March. Feel free to connect on LinkedIn or Twitter if you want to know more or discuss further.

A "Chief of Staff" role at a tech company is not only appearing for CEOs, but also at the SVP and EVP level of large companies. The best analogy for a Chief of Staff is to think about what the Vice President of the United States might do to help make the President more effective.

I will speak from my own experience. I do not run super huge company but we are growing and we have four branches around the world. We started with so called office and couple of PAs and people who did paperwork, admin support etc. One of them was in the charge, she is Chief of Staff now, she was Office manager before. It does not matter how you call it, they make your work load easier: Full admin and phone back up, I rely on them to pass me who, when called, future meetings, all paperwork done or prepared for our internal meetings, bookings, although I do not ask them to run my food shopping or buying gifts, they do all paperwork which needs to be done, they organize my schedule, they remind me what, where and who.. Gatekeepers, certainly. They block the cold calling, unwanted emails, they are acting as sorting office, people handling replies, all paperwork, answer the phone calls, check personal visits… Not the shoulder to cry on or manipulator, but certainly sounding board and an aid, advisor, someone you can consult certain things regarding administrative tasks, the person who is your prolonged arm/limb to run the office staff and other tasks around the office Often your personal assistant Often buffer between you and the managers of the departments, they get to use to storm into the office, as we grow bigger, they have to ask. Also there is a communication with international branches and it is up to office manager/chief of staff to organize this, get convo into synch, keep updates, inform each branch, inform CEO who if often out and about Sorting all problems, running company smoothly in CEO’s absence Funny enough, big SF mavericks or our smaller companies in City, London we hired chiefs of staff when we get bigger or there was more workload. Marissa Miller was late with that decision, Muskrat had just super woman PA, a lot of City/Wall Str companies appointed chiefs of staff later, but all start ups in Bay Area, average number of staff 30, wants to have chief of staff. The joke is, they have more commanders than soldiers:]] but yes, it is recent trend and very useful. BTW Marissa Millers, Muskrat’s chief of staff are very capable on their own terms, my chief of staff is a woman and she worked with me since the start of my business in 2007, online 2008. She is my right hand and I rely on her incredibly.