RM Harrison: Multiplying founder power through fractional leadership

Pauline Bertry 0:13

Hi Rem, so nice to see you. How are you?

RM Harrison 0:17

I'm good, Pauline. How about yourself?

Pauline Bertry 0:20

I'm good, I'm good. I'm so glad we are recording this.

RM Harrison 0:25

Likewise, thanks so much for inviting me to your show.

Pauline Bertry 0:29

Thank you so much. look, you know the deal by now that I start all the episodes by asking people to tell me their story. I particularly enjoy the stories that I'm hearing for the first time. so what's what's your story?

RM Harrison 0:50

well, let's see. So I am a mom, probably first and foremost, mom to a toddler who may interrupt the session.

Pauline Bertry 1:03

That's fine. I'll have two guests instead of one. I'm taking it.

RM Harrison 1:07

there you go, two for one deal. based here in Austin, Texas. and yeah, for the last couple of years I have been Focusing on fractional and consulting work, in the operations and people leadership space. That's the short version.

Pauline Bertry 1:28

all right, I love it. So then I mean I would love to know what what led you there. Like it it's not necessarily like the most obvious choice, I'd say, especially for the for the fractional selection. So how how

RM Harrison 1:42

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 1:43

did you how did you come up with this idea? Like what led you to to do what you do now?

RM Harrison 1:49

Honestly, it was circumstance. so at about seven months pregnant, I was laid off from my corporate job. And I really had kind of attached myself to this to this idea that I would be a corporate girly for the foreseeable future. Certainly, especially going into first-time motherhood, I was not expecting to be kind of thrust back into unemployment, let alone self-employment. but you know. circumstances changed and I had to to figure some things out. And so I'll say I kinda stumbled into it because at the time I needed to figure out a lot, you know, career, finances, you know, motherhood, postpartum, all of those things all at once. And a job search, you know, as you know, it's unpredictable. You don't know how long it's gonna take to land your next opportunity. and what I needed was to just know that I could earn however, you know, however, however way. So I kinda looked up. I always tell people it was pure luck, that I managed to connect with a few folks, you know, from my network, you know, folks that were from former colleagues, let them know that I was you know, open to work and at the time hadn't even really thought about like what my positioning would be. I

Pauline Bertry 3:19

Yeah.

RM Harrison 3:19

just knew like, well, I've done a bit of this, I've done a bit of that. I, you know, consider myself kind of a master, you know, with these things. And yeah, turned out what I had to offer was exactly what folks needed at the time. And that was what really kind of gave me that early momentum to to move forward with fractional and consulting work.

Pauline Bertry 3:41

But then I mean I want to ask you two very kind of tactical questions because I

RM Harrison 3:47

Okay.

Pauline Bertry 3:48

think often there is a lot of like misconception or misunderstanding around the both words that that we find in in in your story. So first of all, like what do we mean by fractional? And second of all What do we mean by chief of staff? Because in a lot

RM Harrison 4:10

Mm.

Pauline Bertry 4:11

of situations, both those terms they can mean multiple things. They can lead

RM Harrison 4:19

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 4:20

you to do like very different models, very different angles. So what is fractional?

RM Harrison 4:25

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 4:26

What is chief of staff and what does this mean in your case?

RM Harrison 4:31

Yeah. so fractional is it's basically senior executive operator kind of support. So you come in as an as an embedded operator, but literally at a fraction of the bandwidth and the cost. and so it's different differentiated from like part-time, in the sense that it's specifically a more senior role. There are fractional CEOs, fractional CMOs, you know,

Pauline Bertry 5:02

Hmm.

RM Harrison 5:02

fractional chiefs of staff. So, but the key is that these are roles that are created when a company doesn't have the revenue or enough complexity yet to support a full resource, a full-time resource. and but it's still a great way to solve for the kinds of mandates that a senior executive would solve for. So Then for chief of staff, gosh, you have seen it like several posts on LinkedIn, where people are like, if you ask 10 chiefs of staff, what does the chief of staff do? You'll get 10 different answers. And

Pauline Bertry 5:40

Of course.

RM Harrison 5:41

that's pretty true. I would say, at least in my experience, the chief of staff role can primarily serve one or two mandates, either. you know, multiplying or increasing the leaders or the or the principal's effectiveness or multiplying increasing the organization's effectiveness. and so for the principal, and in my case, because I work with founder led companies, for the founders, it's about force multiplication for the founders, right? So it is turning their vision their strategy, their ideas into execution. It's aligning cross-functionally with other leaders and you know getting folks on board with what the execution plan is going to be assigning roles and ownership and really just helping make it so that what the founder wants to accomplish can happen without them necessarily having teeth to be the one driving it all. there's so much more, you know, layered into it, but yeah, sure.

Pauline Bertry 6:53

I want to ask a question here. What is the like what is what would be the difference between what a chief of staff does to what a like chief operation officer would do for example?

RM Harrison 7:09

Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's a lot of overlap, especially in smaller companies that like the ones that I work with. but I would say some of the key differences are that again, the chief of staff is primarily there in service to the founder, whereas the COO is in service to the organization. So it gets

Pauline Bertry 7:31

Yeah.

RM Harrison 7:32

really interesting when those roles pretty much share the same seat, which is what ends up kind of happening with with my work. But

Pauline Bertry 7:40

Yeah.

RM Harrison 7:42

so you know I'll say what would be a good example? for a chief of staff, more often than not, they are you know for for like internal communications and things that like need to come from the CEO seat. That person may be responsible for supporting internal comms and you know, brokering relationships across the organization, essentially like in place of the founder, in place of the CEO. so that again, ideas are understood, that whatever the strategic goals or direction is, like that gets communicated effectively. That person also supports feedback loops, you know, from across the team back to the founder

Pauline Bertry 8:37

Hmm.

RM Harrison 8:38

seat, right? So again, they're all about like multiplying the capability of the founder as well as the the capacity of the founder. Whereas a COO is really concerned with the effectiveness of the organization itself. and so the founder's part of that, but it is, you know. looking at the organization as its own entity and what is gonna make that function efficient efficiently both now

Pauline Bertry 9:08

Hmm.

RM Harrison 9:08

and you know future tense. and so again in a smaller organization those two worlds tend to overlap. because the founder's usually much closer, you know, to the work itself. and there's honestly just less, slightly less complexity that that you're managing. yeah, I hope I did that justice. I hope I explained that well.

Pauline Bertry 9:34

Yeah. That was that was that was a great answer. and so then like in in your specific case you told me that you are particularly focused on like the the people angle of it. what what like what does it mean? What are the most like fun topics you you got to work on?

RM Harrison 9:58

Mm, so I think what I'm really motivated by is, you know, what does the operating model need to look like for a for a company to function without the founder being at the center driving it all?

Pauline Bertry 10:17

Mm.

RM Harrison 10:18

what are the capabilities and the roles? You know, what does the capacity, you know, need to look like? What are some of the operating behaviors and even like the ownership, you know, kind of model within that business. that ensures that the work can get done, that standards are adhered to, that clients are very happy and want to continue. and that the company is really fit for purpose now and, you know, on the leading edge for, you know, what's next for that given industry or, you know, what have you. Yeah, so it w you know, with people, I I work with professional services companies, so it's very much like human delivered kind of value. so it's all coordinating humans and you know, ensuring that the environment is designed to ensure that the company can function, but also the people in it are supported to be able to do their best work. so yeah, that's like kind of all encompassing what's probably the most like compelling thing about the work I do.

Pauline Bertry 11:32

But at which moment do you think this is becoming like the right time to bring someone on board to help the founder kind of multiply themselves? like what are the typical triggers, let's say, you see in the in the organizations where bringing in like a chief of staff or a fractional chief of staff, kind of

RM Harrison 12:00

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 12:00

starts making sense.

RM Harrison 12:02

Yeah, so I would say the primary trigger would be once for chief of staff in particular, once the founder has reached a point where they have completely exited Delivery. So again, I'm I'm speaking primarily from the professional services

Pauline Bertry 12:27

Of course.

RM Harrison 12:28

world. So yeah, I can't necessarily speak for other kinds of companies, but once the founder has completely exited delivery, like they figured out what the the business model actually is and you know they've been able to install you know roles across you know across their delivery org that essentially have replaced them in, you know, in in all of the client work. once they are in a position where they can really be thinking about growth and you know external relations and those kinds of things and their role has now kind of pulled them in a direction where they just can't really own the day-to-day anymore. that's often when it's the right time to bring on a chief of staff. Once they are essentially like once there's a level of complexity when it comes to managing people that they just can't handle anymore. that's typically when it's ideal to bring in a chief of staff. And so the way that'll show up is you know, they have pretty much staffed out delivery, but they're finding that it's still you know, there's some some inconsistency, you know, with with quality and how certain teams, you know, handle work versus others. they have repeatable processes built out, but they're they're seeing that the processes aren't necessarily being adhered to, you know, consistently across

Pauline Bertry 14:01

Mm.

RM Harrison 14:02

the board. you know, they have structure in place for client services like, you know, account management, those kinds of things. but they're still seeing some some issues with churn or you know, just with with with client satisfaction that they can't quite put a finger on.

Pauline Bertry 14:22

Mm.

RM Harrison 14:23

but it's just no longer feasible for them to like jump in to try to solve it. Or, you know, on the other hand, if there is some growth initiative, you know, that they're wanting to pursue,

Pauline Bertry 14:32

Mm-hmm.

RM Harrison 14:33

but it's its own sort of strategic project to research and you know, to figure out you know, what the roadmap needs to look like to get there, that's an opportunity to bring on a chief of staff who is not only they're not picking up the slack for the founder, right? And or you know, in what they're trying to do, they are essentially replicating their own capacity to be able to think about

Pauline Bertry 14:58

Mm.

RM Harrison 14:58

this direction and not take away from the very important mandate that they have, you know, of continuing to to grow the company. yeah. Does that help?

Pauline Bertry 15:12

Yeah, yeah, it does, it does. And but I'm particularly interested to get to know how is the like how is the chief of staff onboarding looks like. Because my hypothesis

RM Harrison 15:27

Mm.

Pauline Bertry 15:28

or assumption, and I mean if if I follow your like line of thinking is that basically you are becoming like a founder's not digital but a founder's twin to like to to say the i in in the right terms. So it's like

RM Harrison 15:41

Yeah. Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 15:45

if you had this like two bodies for the the hopefully the same brain and the same vision and the same aspiration. So what

RM Harrison 15:51

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 15:53

does it like first of all, what does it take from like a good chief of staff to get there to be able to be a multiplier and not like just as as you are saying, like picking up whatever's left.

RM Harrison 16:09

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 16:10

But like to to be this peer or like an a a thinking partner. And what does it take from the founder once they decide to hire a chief of staff to build one or to to grow one or to hire one that will actually be able to become this multiplier for them rather than just someone who will execute on on a daily basis?

RM Harrison 16:39

Yeah, that's a really great question. So I would say if you think about like the first 90 days, if that endpoint is that this person, the chief of staff, generally understands all of the decisions that need to happen, you know, in a given day, a given week, a given, you know, period, and when when they like when it's their call essentially versus when it needs to be escalated. So if that's the the end point, then yeah,

Pauline Bertry 17:12

Escalated to the founder, you mean?

RM Harrison 17:15

exactly. Yeah. if if that's the endpoint, then the first thirty days is figuring out or like understanding what the sort of operating model looks like. at that time. who is supposed to own what? What do decision rights like look like? kind of understanding, starting to learn how the teams function and what the operating behaviors look like, whether though they were like deliberately built out or just kind of organically and really just kind of getting the lay of the land in that way. they are starting to get some historical, you know, kind of inputs for how decisions tend to get made, where things tend to bottleneck, and really just starting to get their grounding on what are gonna be the barriers to, you know, to them being able to move things forward. and what if anything, they'll need to resolve, you know, there to to kind of unblock their own work. with so in that for 60 days, it is building relationships with people and starting to build that influence really early. starting with the senior leaders, understanding, you know, just sort of how they're thinking about their seats and you know, their responsibilities, what pains and concerns they're experiencing, and what's motivating them. you know, in terms of moving things forward. and then any other key stakeholder, yeah, just starting to build those relationships and build that rapport. Because one thing about the chief of staff is while you are in an sort of influential role, you don't necessarily have authority, or at least a not not a lot of it. Or otherwise it has to be very deliberately handed over from the founder to you, right? So oftentimes you're really just the person influencing what happens in both directions, but you're not necessarily like the authoritative presence. So yeah. So basically by the end of that 90 days, you are you've positioned yourself to be able to you know, clarify what needs to move. identify who needs to own what and make whatever decisions within your purview to get that going.

Pauline Bertry 19:52

Hmm.

RM Harrison 19:53

and then help unblock you know the work of others. align to again like everything you've you've learned and understood about you know about their particular context. yeah and and be able to move things move things forward.

Pauline Bertry 20:09

And in terms of like well from from from what I'm hearing, it it does feel like there are very kind of particular areas which are very traditionally handled by by the chief of staff. from what I'm hearing. I'm I'm definitely hearing one which is like internal communication angle. Are there

RM Harrison 20:31

Mm, yeah, for sure.

Pauline Bertry 20:33

like other any other areas that kind of have been with you through all of your clients and all of your situations in addition to internal

RM Harrison 20:47

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 20:48

comms.

RM Harrison 20:48

Yeah, so I would say organizational design and sort of related to that hiring. so identifying what the best talent needs to look like and where that talent's gonna come from to support whatever's next, whether it's continuity of the current business or growth. So, you know, whatever kind of growth initiative may be on the roadmap. even on down to leading the hiring process and interviewing candidates and, you know, putting forth candidates for for particular roles. and and making the hiring decision in in some cases, specifically within some of those core functions like, you know, operations or some like leadership you know, leadership functions. gosh, I I mean I've kind of touched it all, you know, in in my work because again I I tend to work with smaller companies and what happens with the chief of staff role is when there isn't an owner or when it isn't clear, you know, like who should own what, you kind of become the default and part of your mandate becomes You know, if the process doesn't exist, you build it and then you, you know, you staff it or, you know, you otherwise resource it. So you're not meant to own something permanently, but you take it on, you make

Pauline Bertry 22:16

Yeah.

RM Harrison 22:16

it functional, and then you, you know, you hand it off. yeah, it's yeah,

Pauline Bertry 22:19

I love it.

RM Harrison 22:23

so it's been a lot of everything.

Pauline Bertry 22:26

And are there any particular backgrounds that makes a good chief of staff? So let's say there is a founder who is like, okay, I'm listening to the Eren's episode. It seems like I'm a blocker in almost every single decision that needs to happen.

RM Harrison 22:45

Mm.

Pauline Bertry 22:48

I need to maybe get a chief of staff. I'm based in, I don't know, Germany or whatever, so likely I'll get someone

RM Harrison 22:54

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 22:55

with the local language. How do I like

RM Harrison 22:57

Sure, yeah.

Pauline Bertry 22:58

how do I think about that?

RM Harrison 23:01

I would say look for folks who obviously I think the you know the safe bet is someone with operations experience because inherently those people know how work moves, right? So and their job is very much about you know aligning people and processes and systems to get work moving forward and you know clearing bottlenecks so that you know things can function efficiently. so it's a really solid place to start. I would say someone with experience within program management, which also tends to touch a lot of different areas, you know, of business within a specific unit or vertical. and of course someone with people leadership experience, even if it's just like team leadership and not a a formal manager kind of role. but yeah, so folks who can can demonstrate that like they understand how work moves, they've built processes or improved processes. they you know demonstrate that they know how to motivate a workforce and you know have a strong background with with communications. Again, maybe not formal internal comms, but a role where a lot of sort of influential communication to help you know get buy-in and you know mobilize people like those backgrounds where that can be evident. yeah and I a part of it too will also depend on what the exact mandate is as well. So Yeah, like you know, there may be a specific area of the business where the founder is is a bottleneck and you know, that there may be like some more specialized kind of expertise that that might be necessary, like within sales as an example, sales revenue operations. so yeah, so some of it is like there's a general kind of background that you should look for and then then depending on the specific need also consider More specialized expertise areas.

Pauline Bertry 25:16

I would also assume I mean at least from from what you are describing, like management consultants in in a lot of cases would would make a very good chief of stuff. because I mean you you were describing like the the ownership angle and then people who can kind of take it, package it, leave it leave it to someone. So that that would be an interesting angle I would I would also explore although I think in some cases for for this specific audience you might get into the like advisory mindset rather than the implementation mindset. So

RM Harrison 25:59

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 25:59

that that's that's something to be to be mindful about. I also want to touch a little bit more on how does this look in in a fractional setup? so what would be the difference between like a full time chief of staff and fractional chief of staff?

RM Harrison 26:22

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I've never been a full time chief of staff, so I honestly couldn't couldn't answer that. But what I'll say is what what defined success, especially in a f any fractional role, but as a chief of staff is that you you focus on specific milestones, right? So I think if the better you're able to align your work to a strategic roadmap, right? Or strategic mandate at least, and then align your work to specific milestones that you're looking to achieve, it becomes clear essentially what like can realistically fall in your purview based on the capacity, you know, that you've

Pauline Bertry 27:11

Hmm.

RM Harrison 27:12

you've aligned on for for that scope of work. you again the whole point is that you are supporting the founder and moving the business forward in some way. Whether that is solving a problem within an existing unit or building out an entirely new one. so the job is to get very clear on exactly what you're solving for and in what time frame and letting that you know letting that shape what the the scope of the work is, you know, and also align to the capacity that you're being engaged for. a lot of what I've what I hear full time chief of staff roles is that you kind of just catch a lot of things all day and I don't know. Like I don't wanna I don't wanna speak out of turn about full time, but I think like the velocity can be a lot faster in a full time fractional role because you're just exposed to more more frequently, right? So you just

Pauline Bertry 28:13

Hmm.

RM Harrison 28:14

you can dive in, you know, into things a lot more quickly. You can stand up initiatives a lot more quickly because you, you know, you're kind of engaged at the capacity to do that. In either model, you still have to be really clear on what your priorities are and be kind of ruthless about prioritization so that you don't end up absorbing a bunch of complexity and ambiguity and then kind of left are left holding the bag. so yeah, so in either, I would say like aligning your work to whatever the strategic band-aid is, having a roadmap, building the roadmap if one doesn't exist, and letting that be the you know, the framework for how you that you like operate against in your in your time.

Pauline Bertry 28:59

Yeah, makes sense. I I love it. I want to go into the elephant of the room kind of discussion.

RM Harrison 29:08

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 29:09

I generally try to have 30 minutes without AI in the conversation. Because I know whenever we start talking about this it like takes forever. So

RM Harrison 29:19

Mm.

Pauline Bertry 29:20

Like I I could frame it very kind of specifically, I could frame it in a very open way. But what about AI? Like how does this how does this shape, change, affect, impact your role and your day to day?

RM Harrison 29:38

Hmm. Well, I'll say what it doesn't do first, and then circle back to what it does. so it doesn't replace judgment. it doesn't replace human connection and the human relationships that build trust and rapport. And that in many cases can kind of make or break how things go. but AI is phenomenal for being able to shorten, I would say shorten the productivity curve, right? Like there's it can shorten ramp up, you know, it can shorten help shorten decision making time, planning time. and just all of the sort of groundwork that you need to do just to be able to move forward an initiative. it helps streamline you know the like analysis process that often has to happen when you're looking at you know what's working versus what you know could be going better and you know making certain improvements. yeah, so I think it just it's a way to help speed up the work,

Pauline Bertry 30:59

Mm-hmm.

RM Harrison 31:02

w yeah, but without like without creating an unrealistic I would say like it speeds up the work that helps make it feasible to accomplish more faster.

Pauline Bertry 31:14

Mm-hmm.

RM Harrison 31:17

yeah, you know it's funny, I realize I don't have these conversations as often as I'd like to about like just exactly what AI does, but Yeah, that's kinda I don't know, feels like a little abstract way that I'm describing it, but that's how I

Pauline Bertry 31:29

Hmm.

RM Harrison 31:29

think about it. yeah, that it really just helps you get to the meat of the work and streamlines, you know, a lot of the foundational things, setup and building and, you know, all of that stuff.

Pauline Bertry 31:45

Hmm.

RM Harrison 31:46

that's all required before you can get to to the meat of it.

Pauline Bertry 31:49

Huh like, what are the what are the ways you you used it in in the past and that you found like the most helpful and the most fascinating?

RM Harrison 32:02

Yeah, let's see. So I'll try to give you a a concrete example. hmm, flipping through the archives. So I'll say so okay, so here's it was actually really great example. there There was this issue with with client turns that didn't seem like an issue necessarily, right? At least not on the surface. but there was this pattern with a certain kind of client that was forming where the client just never seemed happy with with the work. that was being produced. It took several rounds of iterations to get approval on things. and then for some reason or another, these clients, all within the same like category, industry and category, were just like not sticking around for very long. and it again they were there weren't They weren't all for the same reasons and you know, for like for why they didn't for why they turned. it wasn't all the exact same timing. So there weren't enough very clear repetitive things happening to easily point to like, here's what's wrong. But instead they're just all these different signals, you know, like kind of surrounding it that you know, just kind of send up the antenna a little bit, like, wait a minute, something's happening here. So, you know, I fed all of these different inputs to use Chat GPT quite a bit, to ChatGPT, just say like, you know, I I'm recognizing a pattern, but I can't point to what is happening here. help me basically validate this hypothesis I have, which was essentially there's a capability gap, you know, with the company that

Pauline Bertry 33:49

What what did you what what input did you give it?

RM Harrison 33:54

So there were some like internal kind of sound bites that folks were sharing about you know, about the team or, you know, about things that were happening, you know, on a specific account, on on those specific accounts, information about some of the timing and the the like account behavior. So how a client

Pauline Bertry 34:14

Hmm.

RM Harrison 34:14

may have come in with a set and a certain set of services. But then changed, you know, they didn't renew at the same level. They removed some services and yeah, so like just I mean, a a ton, a metric ton of various inputs about the account, the nature of the account, some of the day-to-day sort of project anecdotes and yeah, and all just kind of pointing to is there is there a a capability gap that we are missing and how do I validate or disprove right this this assumption

Pauline Bertry 34:49

Hmm.

RM Harrison 34:50

that I have about it. and yeah and so I was able to rather than have to pour over pages and pages of things, just was able to feed that to to Chat GPT and it kind of, you know, helped me make the case for and against. And you know, what are some some other avenues to consider or like what would help better validate this right beyond these inputs. So so yeah, and then you know, then building out like a a case essentially, sort of pointing to all of these inputs and, you know, the insights that f that kind of came, you know, from from the data I was seeing. and then present to to the founder and to the head of client services, like, hey, so I think we've got a capability mismatch and here are all the things that we could do to solve for it and here's how I would prioritize it. Right. So

Pauline Bertry 35:44

Mm.

RM Harrison 35:45

so that's what I mean. Like it could have taken days and days and days for me to kind of pour everything and you know cross reference the the inputs that I had and maybe schedule more conversations with people, you know, to to try to figure it out. But we'd already had the data just in kind of disparate ways. yeah. So it was it just helped to kind of shortcut that discovery and get to yeah, like a real meaningful analysis of what was happening.

Pauline Bertry 36:18

I have I think the last topic I I would love to cover. I think in in a lot of cases when the organization is kind of becoming bigger and it's growing, the this kind of chief of staff role often almost evolves into several different roles. Like as as you were saying, like you could get Like a chief operating officer, then you could get maybe someone responsible for the internal comps and all of these things that were sitting under one person, they're suddenly becoming its own departments and its own like stories and work streams, etc. So once like a person, a founder or the the chief of staff starts seeing the this happening, what is the like what is the good transition from there? How like what are the scenarios how this could develop and evolve?

RM Harrison 37:19

So how are you asking specifically how ownership gets distributed across those those new roles or

Pauline Bertry 37:25

I think it's more for the for the evolution of of the chief of staff role. So let's say

RM Harrison 37:30

Mm.

Pauline Bertry 37:30

someone joined when the company was like, I don't know, ten people, they were responsible for everything and everyone. And then

RM Harrison 37:40

Mm.

Pauline Bertry 37:40

at some point the company is 50 and then 70 and then 100 and then 200 people. And like chief of staff needs to have his own chief of staff almost. So like

RM Harrison 37:50

Mm.

Pauline Bertry 37:52

How is this how is this evolution working?

RM Harrison 37:57

Yeah, so I I've seen companies do it differently. for one thing, I don't necessarily think that the chief of staff that gets you to fifty people is gonna be the one that gets you to, you know, two hundred plus, right? So there is

Pauline Bertry 38:13

Okay, cool.

RM Harrison 38:14

some consideration for that. But I think oftentimes the chief of staff role the first evolution is that they kind of become the integrator for the rest of leadership. so whereas now you may have had the founder, you know, plus some team leads or the founder and one other, you know, senior executive. now the same vision and strategy that needs to be translated to, you know, one other senior leader that has to be translated to multiple others. and so within that, again, it's establishing who owns what and what are the decision rights and you know what does escalation you know look like within this new this new structure. That's often something that the chief of staff is gonna help build. you are introducing new operating rhythms. For leadership now that you know there are these other roles involved. So that's a lot of what the chief of staff helps to build out. and then yeah, then it it becomes a conversation about what creates the most leverage, you know, at this stage. and then what what what role, you know, what what role or kind of set of roles does, you know, does that person need to own now within this new space? So what I'll say is, you know, what I've seen quite a bit is that as new leaders come in, there still becomes the need to integrate like the leadership message and

Pauline Bertry 39:50

Mm.

RM Harrison 39:51

like kind of unify that to be able to share with you know with the rest of the team, which is why chiefs of staff tend to own internal comms or like maintain ownership of internal comms. Not always, but that's definitely something that I've seen.

Pauline Bertry 40:04

Yeah.

RM Harrison 40:07

and especially, you know, when there's a communication about like what the priorities are and, you know, what what the strategic, you know, direction is, being able to get the leadership team and you know, sort of one band, one sound, but then being able to communicate that message consistently to the rest of the team, often the chief of staff is the person who is is owning that or at least overseeing that. So yeah, I hope that's helpful. It's really just kind of comes down to, you know, to the business model. Like there are a lot of other factors that will kind of determine how the chief of staff role evolves as the company

Pauline Bertry 40:42

It was.

RM Harrison 40:43

grows. but yeah, those are a few things I've seen.

Pauline Bertry 40:47

Yeah, no, it makes sense, makes sense. maybe last question is like

RM Harrison 40:52

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 40:53

for someone working with chief of staff already, or for someone kind of feeling the pain and considering to hire a fractional or a full time that doesn't matter, role for that. what would be one advice you would give them? To help them make it a success.

RM Harrison 41:18

That's a great question. Decide Where well recognize where you may already be the bottleneck.

Pauline Bertry 41:24

Mm.

RM Harrison 41:26

get like ruthlessly honest with yourself about that. and start deciding on your own what you no longer need to own, and really what you should no longer own

Pauline Bertry 41:42

Mm.

RM Harrison 41:42

in order for things to to move forward. what I've seen is gosh, and there's so much more, but like w what I've seen that's been a a pain for me as a chief of staff is that founders don't know how to let go. and so they also don't know how to enable their chief of staff to be able to make decisions, you know, in

Pauline Bertry 42:07

Mm.

RM Harrison 42:09

you know, f in in place of them, so to speak. So, And then also being thoughtful about how they make decisions as well, right? Like just do a self-assessment, you know, of

Pauline Bertry 42:20

Hmm.

RM Harrison 42:21

how do how do things move now and how long does it take for decisions to happen and you know what actually requires your input versus just someone else having enough context or, you know, whatever. to to be able to you know to make those decisions instead and like what absolutely must cross your desk. Like just kind of take that

Pauline Bertry 42:41

Hmm.

RM Harrison 42:41

self-assessment because those are things that you actually hand over to a chief of staff. Not just like, make sure this, you know, project, this special project happens, but it's also the, you know, the other things wrapped around who owns what and who can make that call. Right. that end up becoming the the barrier to actually moving a project forward. and I would say another excuse me, another thing to consider is for yourself, just getting clear on what success would look like in six months,

Pauline Bertry 43:18

Mm.

RM Harrison 43:19

twelve months, eighteen months. Like what improves for you, what improves for the business, by bringing on this role. 'cause

Pauline Bertry 43:29

Hmm.

RM Harrison 43:29

then you're able to speak to what success looks like for that person and help, you know, again, that enables them to think about like how they're prioritizing, you know, their work and how they you know, how they're showing up with the team, like those kinds of things.

Pauline Bertry 43:45

Yeah.

RM Harrison 43:45

so yeah, those would be the two two big ones.

Pauline Bertry 43:48

I love it. That's that's an amazing advice. Thank you so much. It was very

RM Harrison 43:53

Thank you.

Pauline Bertry 43:54

it was very educational for me. I really enjoyed the chat. Thank you so much.

RM Harrison 43:59

I'm so glad. This was so much fun and yeah, I really appreciate

Pauline Bertry 44:02

It was.

RM Harrison 44:03

getting a chance to chat with you about it.

Pauline Bertry 44:06

Thank you so much. Tack soon.

RM Harrison 44:08

Thanks so much, Pauline. Bye.