6 steps to define Office of the CEO roles and responsibilities

CEOs: you’re stepping on a million dollar landmine if you don’t spell out Chief of Staff and Executive Assistant roles and responsibilities in the Office of the CEO. 

You’ll create miscommunication, resentment, and hurt feelings. You’ll create a turf war where your executive office team jockeys for position and special favor. Your Chief of Staff and Executive Assistant might fight over a special project - like an employee engagement survey - instead of partnering together to get it done. 

The outcome will be less growth, less speed and less efficiency, which can amount to a million dollars of lost productivity (or more). Plus we guarantee you won’t enjoy the job so much. 

Here are 6 steps to define Office of the CEO roles and responsibilities:

1. Review KPIs and OKRs for your company and your executive office

Start with your company goals: Are you looking to grow revenue? Bring a new product to market? Continue with your CEO Office goals: Do you want to improve your own LinkedIn presence? Close more strategic customers?

2. Identify the jobs to be done and analyze workload

Next, you’ll want to define the jobs-to-be-done for your Office of the CEO. This is the full scope tasks and deliverables, which can include inbox triage, board prep, special projects, calendar management, strategic advisory and much more. Analyze these jobs in terms of frequency, importance and time spent.

3. Identify your team’s Zone of Genius and Zone of Incompetence

Figure out the strengths and weaknesses of your team. Find out what they like doing and what they hate doing. Pro tip: you want to put your Chief of Staff and Executive Assistant in their Zone of Genius at least 80% of the time. Assign them work that they love doing that’s squarely in their wheelhouse.

4. Analyze your existing job descriptions and identify gaps

Take a look at your current JDs and see where the gaps lie. Are your Chief of Staff and Executive Assistant going above and beyond the JD (most likely)? Are you missing jobs-to-be-done?

5. Document new and improved roles and responsibilities

Draw up a new set of JDs and commit to new roles and responsibilities assignments. Share each JD with every member of your Office of the CEO team (as well as your C-suite) for extra clarity. 

6. Test and recalibrate your job descriptions

Test it out and see how it’s working. Revisit your JDs every other quarter or so to continually adapt to the demands of your Office of the CEO. Remember, in today’s modern business world, the only constant is change.

There you have it - 6 steps to set up crystal clear roles and responsibilities for your Executive Office. Complete these exercises to avoid a million dollar penalty of lost productivity in your Office of the CEO.

Contact us here to learn more about how to clearly define roles and responsibilities for your Chief of Staff and Executive Assistant.