Do You Need a Chief of Staff, an Executive Assistant, or Both?
As a leader, you’ve identified an important need:
“I can’t keep doing it all. I want to contribute at my highest level, but I need support in order to better align my time and energy with my priorities.”
So where do you start?
Two key roles, a Chief of Staff and an Executive Assistant, are great options to consider. While both positions can help free up your focus and take things off your plate, there are notable differences in the scope of their support.
A Chief of Staff is a senior-level strategic partner. A CoS might manage projects across an entire organization, working with a variety of stakeholders and staff. The CoS can lighten an executive’s load by taking over team management, meeting preparation, or leading high-stakes projects and partnerships. This role often serves as a right hand to the CEO, connecting the dots between key members of the organization and providing a unique “bird’s-eye-view” across teams and departments.
An Executive Assistant is a strategic gatekeeper and master of details. An EA ensures things run smoothly behind the scenes, so an executive’s focus remains on high leverage work. An EA supports inbox management, email tee-ups, calendar management + scheduling, travel logistics, event coordination, expense management, CRM support, and more. This role often serves as an accountability partner and gatekeeper to an executive, protecting and maximizing their time.
We often speak with leaders who see value in engaging these two roles in tandem, but don’t have enough demand to bring in a full-time person for each role. This begs the question: what is the best solution when you need a bit of an EA and a bit of a CoS?
One great option is to engage part-time solutions for both.
33Vincent and vChief have had the opportunity to work together to support clients with both virtual Executive Assistant and virtual Chief of Staff services.
A Case Study From the Field
Camelback Ventures is an example of a mutual client of 33Vincent and vChief. Camelback was in fairly early start-up days when they engaged both organizations to form “the Office of the CEO.”
Aaron Walker, CEO & Founder | Camelback Ventures
What are the benefits of having each (CoS and EA)?
It’s hard to think in the micro and macro, but having an EA and CoS allow you to do both more effectively as a CEO. Although both people support and interact frequently with the CEO, the EA is more focused on logistics, planning and management of the CEO specifically, while the CoS takes a broader, more organizational and strategic approach to the CEO role.
You could say the CEO is like air traffic control. They are setting the route and keeping the whole field of view in mind. The CoS is the first pilot, who knows how to manage all the controls and is in constant contact with the CEO. The EA is the second officer. This person handles a lot of detail and has the capability to stand in where needed. There have been times when the CoS was at capacity and the EA could handle those tasks - that is huge.
How do they (CoS and EA) work together?
Beyond brief daily check-ins, the EA and CoS work together on an as-needed basis. Explicit conversations about roles (both the EA and CoS roles as well as the broader team’s roles) early on in the partnership helped set the stage for success especially when it came to the “who does what?” question.
How did you know you wanted both a CoS and an EA? (Aaron Walker, CEO & Founder at Camelback Ventures)
“My CoS and EA were brought on at about the same time when Camelback Ventures was growing quickly and I needed quality support, but wasn’t ready (nor had the capacity) to hire full-time people. I could have combined the roles into one more full-time person but the mission of both jobs is different. It would have been more forced. With the part-time, virtual solution I got two individuals who are specialized and excellent at their distinct roles.”
Your virtual Executive Assistant typically handles:
Email Management
Calendar Management
Travel Planning & Management
Updating Processes
Expense Management
Organizing Files (Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, etc)
Contact Management / CRM Support
Catering Orders
Providing summaries of action items
Password management
Strategic Thinking, such as:
Ways to maximize Executive’s time
Backplanning tasks to goals and milestones with Executive
Creating standard operating procedures (SOPs)
Your virtual Chief of Staff typically handles:
Aligning a leader’s time with their priorities at a strategic level
Strategic planning & monitoring key performance indicators
Large-scale cross-organizational project management
Speechwriting or creating CEO presentations
Creating or streamlining systems and processes
Hiring & HR systems
Budget creation & management
An Executive Assistant and Chief of Staff could collaborate directly on::
CEO communications
Project management
Event or meeting planning
While there are a few tasks that overlap between the Executive Assistant and Chief of Staff roles, the majority of the work is specific to each role and would benefit from having two separate entities handling separate workflows. Leaders who are concerned that there may not be enough work for each role to take on should consider initially hiring on a part-time basis, with the option of increasing workload and employment terms as each role develops. Having both a virtual Executive Assistant and a virtual Chief of Staff in your corner can truly add to the success of your organization.
Madeleine Niebauer is the Founder & CEO of vChief Virtual Chief of Staff, which offers part-time and interim chief of staff support to start-ups, nonprofit organizations, and businesses of all sizes.
Casey Putschoegl is the Co-Founder & CEO of 33Vincent, which helps high-performing leaders enhance their impact by matching them with world-class, virtual Executive Assistants.
At 33Vincent, we pride ourselves on the remote community we’ve built and the engagement we see between our team members. If you’re looking for an Executive Assistant’s help to engage your fully remote team (and so much more–like freeing up your time to focus on what matters most) let’s talk about how a 33Vincent EA can support you! Are you ready to elevate your impact by delegating to an EA?
33Vincent has many other resources to help you maximize your time and communication with your executive assistant.
