Collaboration

• I have a deeply held love for collaboration, co-creation and consensus building — it’s part of why I know that I want to spend the next phase of my career! As I can often come to the table with prior experience or a strong sense for what should be done, I have modulated my participation over the years to favor listening and synthesis of other’s ideas prior to sharing my own. That is to say, I try to gather as much information as I can from others before sharing my opinion, which means that I may not be the fastest person to make decisions in all instances. This is not an inability to do so, but rather a more productive work mode that I have practiced over the years. If you need a decision quickly, just say so.

Delegation

• While loving to roll up my sleeves and get shit done on my own, as a generalist I am best served by knowing instead which individuals and resources are most appropriate to task on a project rather than owning everything myself. My unique talent here is in the orchestration or coordination, not only of my work but of others, and managing delegation of resources to achieve goals. This process of synthesis and collaborative production is part of what I love about company building.

Autonomy

• I prize the value of my own autonomy as much as I believe that giving trust and autonomy to others is a crucial way to build a culture of ownership and high performance in teams. I am not a miro-manager, but I am also not afraid to step in and help define a path forward if there is a lack of clarity or if decision paralysis presents progress. I also believe that the best way to know another’s work and trust in that autonomy is to spend time early on working alongside (and directly on) other team member’s responsibilities. This is especially true when my ability to support organizational development requires a more intimate understanding of day to day operations across functions than many other roles.

Accountability

• I take task and project ownership and action item responsibilities seriously, as much above as below. I have experience with principals who are timely and thorough as much as I do clients who I have waited weeks on to receive basic information or input. You can guess which help me to have the greatest impact. In this way, accountability to support what we need of each other, regardless of seniority, is a form of professional respect to colleagues and company alike. It also means that, while things do come up last minute, I don’t like being caught with conflicting priorities if we could have been better prepared.

Metrics

• Measurement enables planned progress, and where we can put a number to something we should try to. But I also believe that the things that we cannot measure are incredibly important, like culture, how people feel, etc. Otherwise, I am strong at interpreting and utilizing data to inform decision making, but not so strong if I am responsible for generating, manipulating or preparing data myself. In practice this means that I have a preference for companies to create and maintain internal operational dashboards whenever the time spent to systemize something will have an ROI within a quarter.

Strategy

• My own professional strengths, ability to succeed and curiosity can all be summarized by what in ecology (as above, so below) is called the edge effect. The greater the size and number of the boundaries / interfaces between ecologies, the greater the demonstrated rates of speciation and overall biodiversity. Strategy is, by my own definition, the ability to effectively synthesize information into valuable actions from across multiple domains in novel ways. The greatest impact I can have on any organiztion is as a mechanism for strategic synthesis and action across the numerous and dynamic contexts faced by a growing startup.

1-on-1s

• For high frequency routine meetings, I like for progress, updates and action items to be documented and shared in advance. Time spent synchronously should focus on items better discussed verbally, like any changes, questions, challenges and personnel (or personal) updates, not on reiterating what’s written according to shared framework.

Groups

• My goal is usually not to contribute directly but to improve group meeting outcomes through facilitation: their structure, time, topics and contributions. My dialogue training and practice makes this a fun part of the job, even when conflicts arise. I rarely if ever come into a discussion with an entrenched opinion, but rather strive to bring the best out of others’, their contributions, and to help facilitate decision making within whatever mode of governance we have decided to employ for that particular setting.

Email

• I read and write quickly, with a high capacity on email, but don’t believe that long emails or email threads are productive. Individual emails lack transparency and group threads are messy, easy to ignore and often lack accountability. I read most emails within the hour, so you can assume that something has been seen, read and understood within a day of sending. If an answer is required, please be explicit, as I won’t automatically do so otherwise. More information is better, so adding me to CC or an FYI is always appreciated.

Chat

• I like to keep one-to-one or group comms short and to the point, and anything requiring more than a few lines often means it should be taken up in a synchronous setting or by asynchronous video/audio messages, which I have historically used Loom for. On the flip side, longer or more frequent one-to-many communications are a great way to build trust and transparency across the company and I would expect to support you in these comms.

Feedback

• I like regular feedback (giving, receiving) as a mechanism for learning, the smaller the interval the faster we can establish trust and improve the collaborative dynamic between us or any subset of team members. In addition to the longer sessions of our established operating rhythm, I like to spend 1-2 minutes at the end of 1 on 1’s on feedback relevant to the prior week / period and on expectation setting or clarification with respect to the next. As a proxy for you with other teams, leaders or skip-level meetings, I will collect, organize and share feedback that is related to you or that pertains to the company at large.

Facilitation

• On a fundamental level, I’m concerned with how people are doing, at work and home, and how it influences their ability to be present, positive and do their best work. I want to develop cultures of openness and trust and have always achieved this through dialogue. I believe that the Chief of Staff has a real opportunity to humanize the leadership function, both amongst ourselves but also for the whole company as we scale. Not only do I need to be your confidant in this, but I would strive that others too feel they can come to me.

Up-skilling

• The best startup roles are dynamic, frequently changing and oftentimes ambiguous, where learning from peers and through established communities of practice are a top early priority. I have recently been through the Chief of Staff Network’s next Fundamentals course in fall 2023, and I would want any future employer to generously sponsor program and peer learning opportunities so that I can continue to grow adjacent to the immediate demands of my new role.

Having fun

• I take work seriously and I don’t have patience for people who are casual or flippant with respect to our goals and how we achieve them. With that said, I need to be having fun with those I work with. The more difficult the moment, the more important it is to be able to laugh in the face of proverbial hardship. The more we trust and respect each other, in our work and interpersonal dynamic, the easier it is to have fun in our time together.