The Chief of Staff of the future

What does the Chief of Staff of the future look like?

In this newsletter, we write about a few predictions of what the Chief of Staff might look like in the next 5-10 years.

Environment

Let’s start by describing the environment for the future Chief of Staff.

Remote and asynchronous work is on the rise. Technology demands are increasing.

Meanwhile, the workforce itself becomes more fluid, with employees onboarding and offboarding at higher frequency. Contractor usage is constant.

Finally, cross-functional projects are the norm. In short, workplace complexity is going up and up.

In parallel, the rise of AI tools help executives and their enablement team complete mundane tasks, freeing up their time for higher priority initiatives.

Roles & Responsibilities

The roles and responsibilities shift based on the new normal described above.

The Chief of Staff manages stakeholder relationships with many more internal employees, contractors and external partners.

Re technology, they leverage AI tools to get more lift in their job. They also train their leaders on how to use AI to solve their own problems on their own.

Finally, there’s a larger emphasis on Change Management since there are several parallel, multi-threaded workstreams happening at the same time.

Skills

With the rise of AI, hard skills are less important.

Soft skills are in demand. These can include relationship building & conflict resolution, as well as empathy & communication.

Managing down complexity is the most important skill of them all.

Leadership

More than ever, the Chief of Staff needs to have a scrappy, can-do attitude.

They know that the only constant is change, and they do whatever it takes to get things done.

They must be in touch with themselves as a professional, know their strengths and weaknesses, and be able to raise their hand for help.

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