Leaders, if you want you and your leadership team to become high performers, make sure you get your Chief of Staff reporting structure right.

Let’s dive into redrawing your organizational chart with your new Chief of Staff.

Who’s the boss?

So, who should your Chief of Staff typically directly report to? There are a few possibilities here:

Your Chief of Staff can report to the:

1) CEO
2) COO

The advantage of #1 is that your Chief of Staff can establish a more intimate relationship with the CEO. The partnership can much stronger. The disadvantage is that the CEO may already have many, many reports. They don’t have the bandwidth to take on another direct report.

Advantage of #2 is that the COO is operationally minded and may have more bandwidth for career development. The disadvantage is that the COO may not always have full understanding and access to the CEO’s agenda.

In sum, consider both of these two reporting structures as you design your executive enablement team. Choose which one suits your needs best as a leadership team.

Let your Chief of Staff fly free

The worst way to set up a Chief of Staff up for success? Give them a lot of direct reports.

So who typically reports to the Chief of Staff? In large enterprises, the Chief of Staff can have the following direct reports:

1) Executive Assistant(s)
2) Deputy Chief of Staff
3) Program Manager(s)

But the most common case is that the Chief of Staff has no direct reports. They remain an Individual Contributor. This frees them up to move around the organization and remain nimble. They don’t have to worry about managing other people.

They use soft power in order to get things done. And they can easily pick up an urgent special project.

So, when you’re designing your org chart for an incoming Chief of Staff, leave the space below them blank to let them fly free.

Add Dotted Lines

Now, we need to add much more complexity to your org chart. There are dotted lines from the Chief of Staff to practically all middle managers, senior leaders, investors, and external partners.

That’s why I advocate for defining the primary, secondary and tertiary stakeholders that your Chief of Staff serves.

This can be visually represented by different thicknesses of dotted lines. You can even use color coding to graphically display the importance of each relationship.

Ultimately, this should reflect the time and energy your Chief of Staff spends with each stakeholder. So get clear on your org chart and socialize it with your company.

Then every few months, revisit your Chief of Staff's relationships with primary, secondary and tertiary folks on your team.

Recalibrate your Chief of Staff stakeholder mapping to better align with your business goals. Watch your Chief of Staff reach maximum impact.

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Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for next week’s edition.