How the Chief of Staff Role Shaped the Leader I Want to Be

Begin with intentions and calendar-driven action. Set your intentions for the week, then protect time to address questions and align priorities. Use calendaring to lock in routine: morning checks, midday updates, and a reflective end-of-day review. Keep access to the right data and people for answering challenges until clear answers emerge.

As a leader, the Chief of Staff role built discipline and a habit of listening first. It forced autonomy while ensuring we remain aligned with other teams, keeping the cadence of decisions clear and grounded in facts. In practice, I would address questions from the team with concise reports and focus on answering the toughest issues rather than chasing noise. This focus helps my rise above noise and keeps the organization resilient.

To translate the CoS influence into daily practice, I build a routine around calendaring and habit. I create a clear path for addressing concerns with a compact set of steps: capture the questions, assemble data, draft the answering path, and share a brief report. I cultivate access to the right people and data so I can act until we reach alignment. I post updates on linkedin to invite input from other leaders and to keep expectations visible.

In conversations, I test my intentions in real time: I record a few habits, then lean into love of the work and the team. I savor eating together during retreats or lunch rounds to surface candid feedback. The cadence of calendaring and a steady discipline earns trust, and the autonomy I grant other leaders follows a growth mindset. The rise of collaborative power becomes tangible when owners show up with clarity and accountability.

Ultimately, this experience shapes the leader I want to be by keeping intentions and team needs in focus, turning questions into concrete steps, and maintaining space for autonomy. The daily cycle of calendaring, eating with the team, and addressing concerns builds trust with peers and prepares me to rise to new challenges. I’ll continue to share progress on linkedin to invite collaboration from other teams and keep the organization moving intentionally.

Practical takeaways from Fidji Simo’s Chief of Staff journey

Recommendation: Run a 60-minute weekly alignment with the top five stakeholders to translate strategy into concrete actions; maintain a searchable decisions log and share updates with everyone. The log becomes your single source of truth about what was given, what was taken, and what was expected.

Conversations across product, design, and operations surface gaps early and keep the mission in view. Include women leaders in planning sessions to diversify perspectives, strengthen decisions, and sharpen tactics.

Adopt startup-style tactics: two-week sprints, fast experiments, and crisp success criteria. Define a decision boundary for each cycle so teams can compute outcomes quickly and leaders move with speed.

Create a knowledge base that ties decisions to outcomes. Document what was done, what worked, and what didn’t, then share lessons so others can build on proven moves rather than reinventing the wheel.

Align incentives with the mission by mapping authority to impact and match ownership to outcomes. When teams can see how their work contributes, engagement rises and delivery accelerates; also celebrate small wins and recognize consistent contributors.

Measure impact with a lean dashboard: cadence, cross-functional alignment, and decision-speed. Use the data to tune tactics and drive accountability that scales to facebooks-level operations.

Set clear priorities aligned with top goals

Set three priorities that map to your top goals, and protect a morning 90-minute block to advance them. Order tasks by impact: high, medium, low. Start with a very small deliverable that moves the needle and build momentum with each next step. Use simple tools: a one-page plan, a checklist, and a dashboard for quick access to the metrics that matter. This routine creates real progress instead of busywork, with a little magic of focus. under this framework, drift is minimized. solution helps keep planning tight.

Content-backed priority guide: for each priority, state the proposed outcome, the owner lead, and the success metric. Share with teams و give access to the content dashboards. Review notes from facebooks groups or pages where stakeholders are active, and collect input in a concise weekly log. These steps keep everyone aligned and prevent drift.

In your morning routine, execute a 4-step sequence: 1) quick check-in with leads, 2) deliver the agreed 1-page piece, 3) post a 60-second update to the team chat, 4) review the next actions. rise to the challenge by tracking progress and adjusting daily. Use the tools you chose to track progress and record early lessons in a shared space. If a task stalls, connect with the right teammate, adjust scope, and get back on track before mid-morning to protect momentum.

Weekly cadence: celebrate small wins, surface blockers, and decide the next steps. These actions give the team clarity, raise accountability, and help everyone thrive. If a plan stalls, teams shouldnt drift. Given a few minutes each week, teams adjust priorities. Avoid overloading teams with low-value tasks; instead, reallocate time and resources to the next high-impact item, keeping a healthy pace.

Translate strategy into daily routines and rituals

Begin each day with a 15-minute front line alignment block to translate yesterday’s results into today’s priorities. Draft three aligned priorities, assign one decision to each, and specify a single measurable next step for each. Keep the plan open for quick adjustments and share it with the core team to ensure reach. Keep the front of effort visible to the team.

Ritual 1: Turn strategy into a one-page brief and a 3-item agenda using chatgpt. Feed the morning priorities into chatgpt, generate a concise brief, and post it in your team chat. This makes decisions easier and keeps everyone open to the same expectations. Use a creative touch to tailor the briefing for different audiences.

Ritual 2: Three decision windows each day. Allocate 60 minutes: morning triage, post-lunch review, and end-of-day wrap. Use a simple impact x effort rubric to decide quickly. Think about how to frame the decisions so you can act with power and move fast, preventing back-and-forth.

Ritual 3: instacarts batching. Group similar requests, batch into one working block, then execute the tasks in that block. This reduces switching costs and keeps execution high. Maintain a shared doing board to track status and visibility.

Tools and learning. Build a small toolkit: a notes app, calendar blocks, chatgpt for briefs, and a simple feedback loop with direct reports. Having these tools lets you believe you’re delivering with clarity and speed, and invites creative input from the team.

Zero friction tactics: aim for zero back-and-forth after the morning window by confirming decisions early and using a single source of truth. This accelerates execution and keeps teams moving with confidence.

Measurement and depth. Track ends achieved vs planned and log what didnt work and what to adjust. The deeper look reveals patterns experienced by your team; teams have been noticing faster decisions and clearer expectations.

Open culture and reach. Maintain open channels with frontline teams, stakeholders, and partners to broaden influence and reach broader goals. If you wanted broader influence, invite more cross-functional voices.

If you didnt commit to these routines, you wouldnt reach the full impact.

Foster fast decision-making with structured processes

Recommendation: implement a simple Decision Brief and a public Decision Log to move very fast, with clear owners, deadlines, and evidence. Establish a decision line that shows who decides, what criteria, and when it ends. Use facebook-like feedback across staff and the founder’s office to surface input without slowing the next steps. This approach keeps things open, focused on a solid solution, and helps the team go deeper while moving at speed.

• Decision Brief (simo): one-page canvas with problem, options, recommended solution, owner, deadline, metrics, and risk.
• Decision Log: public, searchable record with id, title, owner, date decided, deadline for outcomes, options considered, rationale, evidence, and impact notes.
• Decision rights and escalation line: assign ownership by domain (strategy, product, people) and outline how to escalate when alignment stalls.
• Timeboxing and cadence: set 24–48 hours for small choices; 5–10 business days for larger bets; review actual time vs plan weekly.
• Feedback and learning: gather input through facebook-like channels, synthesize in the log, and share a brief takeaways summary across staff.
• Culture and accountability: keep the log open, celebrate fast decisions that deliver measurable outcomes, and ensure the founder stays aligned with frontline teams next to staff.

Develop teams through feedback, coaching, and accountability

Here is a concrete recommendation: institute a 12-week cycle of feedback, coaching, and accountability, with two hours of direct coaching each week and a shared plan that ends with a measurable outcome. This structure gives clarity, keeps the team focused, and turns intent into real change. It also creates zero tolerance for vague feedback. Shes invited to co-create the plan, so whats needed comes from thinking and dialogue, and I can see myself contributing meaningfully.

To execute, use a three-part approach: showing feedback, targeted coaching, and mutual accountability. I love watching teams shift through this process. Feedback should be specific, timely, and linked to observable behavior. Coaching blocks include practice, routines, and peer learning. Accountability means the person owning the action items and the manager tracking through a check. Align on what is true: the expected change, what is being watched, and when to check. Individuals become more capable as thinking and discussion drive growth.

Process details: operate with a weekly 60-minute session plus a 15-minute pre-check with peers to gather input from others, ensuring the plan reflects the subject and the team. During the last week, collect feedback from stakeholders to refine the plan. The approach relies on a simple scorecard showing progress on skills, behavior, and outputs. The table below captures who does what, when, and how we measure success.

Lead cross-functional collaboration during high-pressure phases

Recommendation: Establish a 15-minute morning cross-functional alignment across teams to lock priorities, ownership, and decision points before the rise in urgency. This cadence will become a default in our operating rhythm and will help teams understand across what needs to be done.

The leader understands across functions where decisions live; in each cycle, assign owners for critical decision points and label urgency so someone is accountable for resolution. This structure helped reduce friction and ensured the team moves at speed, even when pressure is high. At least one update per function is delivered before noon. This routine has been proven to be effective in non-crisis periods as well.

Use lightweight tools and a first-party data approach to guide choices. Maintain a decision log, and for each entry label urgency and outcome so the team can keep digging into root causes quickly. This approach is vital across the cycle and has helped optimize speed and reduce duplication across workflows.

To optimize speed, rebalance capacity during peaks by reallocation from non-critical areas and by bringing in someone from another function when needed. This keeps momentum and prevents bottlenecks from slowing the work. Avoid going against the data; if the signal shifts, adjust promptly.

Draw inspiration from real-world examples, including how celebrities coordinate on complex productions; the discipline is about process, not ego. The routine should be visible across the organization and become part of the culture, with daily checks that run throughout the coming weeks. This approach understands that the right ritual reduces chaos and is wanted by teams because it clarifies priorities and accelerates outcomes.

Metrics to track include cycle time from decision to action, escalation rate, and blocked-item resolution. Target a 20% speed improvement in two sprints; measure impact by reduced rework and faster go/no-go decisions. The process has been validated by teams and remains adaptable to different contexts.