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[upbeat music] Hey there. Scott Amenta, the founder of the Chief of Staff Network. Welcome back to the Chief of Staff podcast.

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We're the leading professional community for chiefs of staff, helping them to accelerate their careers via cohort-based programs, live events, conferences, networking, and more.

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You can learn more about our membership events and courses at chiefofstaff.network.

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On today's episode, I'm joined by Itamar Milimed, Senior Director and Chief of Staff at Empathy, a company supporting families through some of life's hardest moments with a mix of technology and human care.

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We discuss what it really means to manage up as a chief of staff and how to anticipate your CEO's needs, act as their stunt double in key moments, and measure your impact by the decisions you take off their plate.

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Itamar shares how he built deep context coming from BizOps, the tools he uses to stay ahead, and how he navigates disagreement while still fully committing to the final call. Let's jump right into it.

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Itamar, welcome to the podcast. Nice to have you here. Thanks, Scott, and great to be here. I'm excited to learn more about kind of your background and role as a chief of staff.

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I frankly am even more excited to learn about Empathy, because this is a business that, if I'm thinking back five, six years ago, before I was working on Chief of Staff Network, was almost exactly the thing that I was kinda pitching to a different co-founder at the time, and something that surely the world needed, and I'm glad to see it happen.

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Let's talk about your role, let's talk about the business, and I think most importantly, let's talk about your relationship with your principal and how you manage up. Yeah. That's a exciting one.

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Yeah, definitely Empathy is a unique one, one of the reasons I joined and, you know, made me feel there's a greater good to do.

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So more than just being impactful and being helpful to my principal, it's also making people's lives a tad less overwhelming. Yeah, especially in some of the hardest moments of life. Exactly that.

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Let's talk a little bit about kind of your role. You started in a BizOps position at Empathy, if I understand correctly.

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How has that kind of evolved, and what does chief of staff mean for you in the context of the organization today?

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Obviously, it's the evolution of my role within the company, but also the evolution of the company as a whole.

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I joined about a year in after the company was founded, still trying to figuring out the best product market fit and the best go-to-market, uh, approaches.

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So it was a lot about learning, adapting, building processes, but also building context. We've really found a great, uh, go-to-market and kind of embraced by the life insurance space.

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We're not insurance folks, so we had to learn about the jargon and verbiage. So a lot of it was about intaking context, but also dispersing it throughout the company so everyone can speak the language.

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And obviously, the classic Swiss Army knife of, uh, there's a fire drill over there, there's a fire drill over there. Go figure it out, build the process, and ship it over.

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And a year and a half ago when I stepped into the chief of staff role, it was, uh, more about, I'll call it alignment at scale.

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So how do I make sure that there's alignment across the organization in what's going on, but also in the priorities.

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Everything that my principal, who is the co-founder and CEO, everything that he sees as a priority, making sure that it's priority for others.

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And at the same time, it's also about making him more effective, more efficient, and more impactful with the same 24 hours that we have, but he needs to make so much more in those, uh, 24 hours.

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Yeah, so you're really there to kinda maximize that capacity, even double it effectively. You talked a little bit about firefighting in a BizOps capacity.

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Do you feel like you've kinda shed those responsibilities in your chief of staff capacity, or has some of that carried over?

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Where do you kinda find that split between firefighting and kinda being that strategic alignment partner? I often call it either a firefighter or a plumber.

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[laughs] Those thing that are stuck and you need to unclog them, naturally the BizOps and the chief of staff share the common theme of manage yourself out of the job.

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You're doing something, you're building a functionality within the company, and at, when time comes, someone comes and take it out as a, either as a full-time job or a part-time job.

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But I definitely took that firefighting and clear calendar, there's something going on, you need to just make sure that stays the same, and it is part of what we do.

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I love that idea of kind of working your way out of the position, especially in a quickly growing company where those roles may not exist yet, right?

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And you're kind of, like, filling gaps for a little while, but you're really there to make sure that you're not there forever.

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[laughs] You would not be a chief of staff probably if you were doing that position for too long, whether it's running the People Ops team or standing up go-to-market or, you know, helping to run product or even engineering in some cases.

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And I think that's also why I think a must-have trait for a good chief of staff is to have zero ego. Like, if you come with an ego and you kind of think, "This is my baby. I, you know, nurtured it.

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I took it up," at some point you need to give it to someone else, then that makes it kind of a hard thing to do. When you don't have that, it's much easier. It's part of the game.

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You're, you're attuned to just do this and move on, and in a way that's, I think, what's exciting about this role. You're always context switching.

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You're always jumping and learning a new thing, a new, uh, capability, a new, uh, prowess that you need to adopt.

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One of our goals today was to talk a little bit about this kinda tight-knit relationship between chief of staff and principal. It's obviously one of the most important factors.

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I would argue even more important than chief of staff to organization, right?

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Like, your principal kind of determines, and that relationship determines not just your scope as a chief of staff, but how much visibility across the organization you might have, what the path to success is in terms of upward momentum as a chief of staff.

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You know, where does that glass ceiling kind of come into play? So let's talk a little bit about that relationship. I imagine that was kind of built in the early days for you at Empathy in your BizOps role.

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Were you working closely with the CEO kind of from day one, or did that evolve over time?When I came, there was a head of biz ops who was my manager, and he was kind of part biz ops, part chief of staff.

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Again, not that easy to delineate between the two, but at some point he moved to the sales organization and I stepped in into the full-time chief of staff and reporting directly to the co-founder and CEO of Empathy.

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And what is your kind of operating rhythm with your CEO look like today? What, what is a typical week for you two?

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We have a couple of, uh, scheduled syncs, which would be to go over kind of key priorities, key projects, mostly to discuss and kind of brainstorm or make sure that we have the right context, less about going over the priorities.

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I think a year and a half in, I can tell the difference and tell the priorities pretty upfront. I don't need that just to align on priorities or like, "Let's make sure that we do this. Let's make sure that we do that."

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It's more about the real discussion. So that's the synchronous times that we have, and obviously throughout the day, throughout the week, we'll find five minutes in here and 10 minutes in there to sync on ongoing basis.

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In addition to that, we probably use every shape and form of communication channel that we have to share more ideas and, you know, surface things, or even to put a spotlight in somewhere within the organization, within the activity that requires attention from either of us.

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Like, make sure that you notice this one, and there's something going on in here may be worth you jumping in and making sure it aligns. So that would be more async.

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I think at this point there's an idiom of, like, talking with your eyes. I think we're about aligned that if someone says something very short, very concise, the other understand what the context is.

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So you've gotten to a point where verbal communication is, is sometimes not even necessary. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, it's kind of a bonus. Would you say that your communication styles have kind of always aligned?

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And, and I get that there's obviously the kind of mechanisms or mediums by which you're communicating, but in terms of style, are you guys pretty similar in that regard, or have you had to kind of adopt and change some behaviors on both sides, right, him and you?

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I actually find it that we have the right blend of similar and different styles, and that's how I believe it should be by design, so the principal and the chief of staff are not too homogeneous in their style, but rather can stimulate a more fertile discussion.

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In my case, a lot of similarities both in communication style and in values.

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There are also some differences, and it did require me to make some adaptations when I, uh, stepped into the role, especially when it comes to speaking with, uh, specific audiences.

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It's mostly relevant in the case where I need to act as a sort of a stunt double and represent my principal or the company, and where a more cohesive communication style was needed. I love that concept of a stunt double.

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Not a metaphor I've heard before, but it, it makes a lot of sense. As that stunt double, how do you think about going about learning, in this case, your CEO's priorities, preferences, blind spots even?

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Again, maybe the bonus of stepping into the job from within rather than coming on as an external hire is that you have a lot of the context of the company, but also of the leader and principal, like the general stuff of how he's perceived and how he likes to present and so on.

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You're less aware of the behind the scenes, and that's probably what you need to ramp up.

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I think for me, you know, four things that I need to do and to make sure that I am set for success within the role was context, so we covered that.

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I think I had it pretty much covered, but that's also part of my strengths of, like, in taking context and remembering it. Then obviously preferences, and for that, I asked a lot of people.

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Like many other leaders in, in, uh, the world, my principal has a few people that worked with him for many years, so I asked them, like, what his preference, how he likes to communicate, what not to do, what to do, and so on.

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That helped me a lot at the early days. Then tone, again, observing, shadowing, being that stunt double.

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Preparing for being the stunt double is just like being on the call, see how he tackles tough questions, see how he changes my email draft and so on, and always that feedback loop.

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Always keeping learning and seeing what he comments on, what he pushes back on to make sure that I'm always in lockstep with him. Yeah, it's an excellent point.

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We often talk about new chiefs of staff going on this, quote, unquote, "listening tour" and, you know, paying close attention to what the CEO is saying as their priorities, what the rest of the executive team are saying are their blockers, priorities, you know, things that they could use support on.

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I heard from a chief of staff yesterday that she actually took all the notes from that listening tour and then played it back to the room as a presentation for everybody to see, which is very kind of bold move, but, you know, I think really interesting as a way to really, like, step into the role and say like, "Look, I'm not afraid to have kind of hard conversations, and there are no secrets here.

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Like, we're gonna be an open book." And if I have to help to kind of facilitate that, that's kind of the role of the chief of staff.

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I'm curious, are there other signals that you paid attention to, other people on the executive team? You mentioned having spoken to other people that your CEO worked with. Were those external to Empathy?

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They were mostly internal, not that many, uh, externals.

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I think other signals are reading through the calendar is always helpful, seeing patterns, seeing kind of where there's, like, repetitive items, and maybe asking about them, but also anticipating stuff, like he likes to do this and that on, on the Sundays and so on.

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And then obvious- obviously seeing where he's dialed from a communication perspective. What is something that he'll like to comment on? What is something that he would be more, you know, assertive on when he comments?

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Like, what's something that ticks his box for the good way? What's something that fires him up and so on?

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And when I think of what's keeping him up at night, it's always about KPIs and what we defined as key KPIs, and I need to bear in mind where we stand against them, so I know if we're on track, then maybe it's a good thing to discuss some more challenging topics and vice versa.

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That helps set the scene in many ways.I think the calendar point is actually an excellent one and probably a, a super underrated point of information that any chief of staff kind of start gathering today.

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Shared calendars are a load of info in terms of where people are spending time, what people are focused on, and what matters most to them in terms of kinda where they're putting that energy.

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That doesn't mean you need to manage your principal's calendar, but you should certainly have access to it and you should almost always be looking ahead, you know, further ahead than they probably are, because, you know, it's really helpful to understand, like, okay, this person's spending a lot of time on external partnerships.

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Maybe that's not a good use of their time. Maybe I can take on some of that, or maybe our head of partnerships should be doing more of that him, him or herself. Again, I'm not managing, uh, my CEO's, uh, calendar.

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He has an EA, but I'm definitely helping him maximize the impact of his day-to-day, whether it's giving him, uh, slack and coming to him and say, "Hey, I have this one." Like, "I have this one covered.

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You can skip it, or you can join and listen, but I'll speak. I'll take the lead." And at the same time, like, contacts, briefings, what is the right amount of context that he needs?

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What is sufficient enough so he has everything covered, but not too much information so he has cognitive load? I don't wanna pool every piece of information.

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I wanna make sure that I nail it right to the points that are important, will be covered, and, again, anticipate, stay ahead of the curve and say, "Okay, maybe you should discuss this and that."

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Again, that's where the real impact comes in. You know? Maybe even join the call, write a follow-up, and suggest a follow-up a minute after. That could be, like, the closing the loop perfectly.

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Not that easy because you have your own calendar to manage, but that's probably where 100 out of 100 would be like. Yeah, totally, and there's huge impact to be gained there.

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You used the key word here, which is anticipation, and in anticipating the CEO's needs, how do you think about this in terms of managing up, and what does that actually look like in practice with your CEO?

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Chief of staff is probably one of the jobs that has the hardest KPIs to define. What is a KPI that you wanna define, and how do you measure yourself out of, uh, for success?

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We're oftentimes giving ourself a very hard time of I'm not doing enough, I'm not heard enough, felt enough, and so on.

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So to me, one of the KPIs that I try to measure myself against is how many decisions I took off the plate of my CEO, how many decisions I made instead of him, for him. I think that says it all. You're not a blocker.

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You're not a firewall. You're a filter.

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You wanna make sure that some information doesn't go through the doorstep, instead stops with you, you make the decision and so on, and others are filtered out, maybe in a formatted version, maybe they're concise and so on.

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Anticipation is definitely a key, especially around key events, meetings, conferences, board meetings. It's setting the framework. You know, "I wanna do this and that for that event. Let's do this and that.

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Let's travel on that date. Make sure you have one day to recover. You have a gap in your calendar. Maybe you should attend this forum. This and that person would be there."

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Again, no CEO is not thinking about those things 24/7, so if you can reduce cognitive load by 10% and that 10% would be spent on actually thinking, you know, what's the strategy of the business, what's gonna change the trajectory of this deal that is not going that well for now, I think that's exactly the area where the chief of staff adds tons of impact.

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It's a great point to think about your metrics of success as a chief of staff as removing kinda systematically the number of decisions, critical decisions often, that your CEO, principal needs to make.

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Given your background in bizops, has that come pretty naturally to you, just kind of parachuting into problems already and making probably hard decisions within teams that you had less context about, less background and experience in, but, you know, having just kinda solved difficult things in real time and then moving on to the next part?

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This part of the job definitely came more naturally to me, being new to a domain, learning it from the ground up, and being knowledgeable enough to make a decision quickly, knowing that it will sustain the forces of a fast-growing company.

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I think that part of the job is what was easier for me to just continue doing what I did before, probably asking the right questions, why does it matter, what's the goal, and what's the quickest way to get there.

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Usually, I find these three together kind of solving the problem altogether. I'm also curious, as you're making these decisions, kinda deciding what to or not to bring to the CEO, do you keep a diary of these things?

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Do you keep kind of a running log? How do you look back quarter by quarter or year by year at kind of, all right, what are the things that I actually achieved as a chief of staff?

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I have a pretty, you know, long log of decisions and questions and topics and discussions. You're spread across so many different areas within the company, having a systematic second brain is probably a key to any of us.

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I didn't find a system, templatized one that I can just adopt. I had to build it my own.

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But you need to keep log of all your discussions with your principal and all the external meetings and internal meetings and projects and so on. It's a work, but it's a work worth doing.

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I think especially the conversations that you're having with your colleagues, with your executive team that may end up resulting in a decision or just may end up unblocking someone who was kinda stuck in doing their workContinuing on, you know, reducing momentum those conversations are very often the dotted lines, if not the hard line directly to the kind of final result and you will very rarely as a chief of staff get credit for that final result, but you certainly had an impact along the way, and it's important to at least recognize it for yourself.

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It is something that you can bring back at the end of the year to talk about in your final review, what did we accomplish this year? How do I measure myself as a chief of staff?

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And I think in terms of building trust with your CEO, reflecting on some of those stories can have a huge impact on kind of where you proceed as a chief of staff going forward. Yeah. Credit is not what we are here for.

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That's probably, uh, not part of the job, but you're right that- Plus one to that. [laughs] Yeah.

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But you're right that it's both the self-reflection and self kind of, uh, acknowledgement of I'm actually doing a really good job.

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I'm actually moving the needle to someone or for the organization as a whole, and then, yeah, at the end of the year, coming back, discussing or quarterly... I usually like to do a quarterly check-in.

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That's something that I'm pushing for. Shouldn't be a full-fledged feedback, but where should I improve? Like, from your perspective as my principal, as a CEO of this company, where would you like to see more impact?

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'Cause I can stay up at night and think to myself, "I could have done this better or this less, be less obsessed about this," but coming up front and asking for feedback I think is a good advice that I tried to use across my career so far.

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Is there a moment that you can reflect on kind of thinking back a time that you were able to kind of get ahead of an opportunity or a problem before the CEO asked for it?

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I could definitely think of many, but maybe to name one, there was a recent board meeting that happened right after a very packed few weeks of high-profile conferences where my principal was fully focused on to task on taking the stage and on business meetings, so I had to think as if I'm him, as the one who's presenting to the board, and what do I wanna highlight, what do I wanna cover, how do I wanna cover it, the various kind of questions that we are usually doing together, but I had to kind of play it in my mind the two sides of the table.

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And it ended up really well, allowed my principal to make the most out of those conferences without compromising the quality or the messaging of the board meeting itself.

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We've been talking a lot about obviously your role as a chief of staff, your relationship to your principal.

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I think we'd be remiss not to talk about Empathy because it is an incredible business, a very interesting business, and I think the shape of the business probably plays a role in kind of how your relationship has been shaped with your CEO.

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I'm curious, can you just tell us a little bit about Empathy, and then we'll get into some more questions tying this all back? Yeah. Of course.

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So Empathy is a company built around a simple but, uh, very ambitious idea of bringing elevated support to families who are dealing with life's hardest moments, helping them with the full range of emotional and administrative challenges that are often, uh, intertwined and made harder by the other.

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These are areas mostly untouched by innovation and where we see how technology can really make a difference.

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We started this by setting the standard in supporting around the loss of a loved one, helping families save time, money, and stress with, uh, clarity, with guidance, human care, all powered by compassionate technology.

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From there, we are expanding into more of those hard moments in life, including legacy planning, including, uh, navigating a leave of absence, and more of those in the future.

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The overarching mission is to help build a more resilient society one hard moment at a time and help families not to move on, but to move forward.

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And we're looking to bring a global tech-driven solution to these very universal challenges. Today, Empathy works with dozens of leading financial institutions, including many Fortune 500 and 100 companies.

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That includes life insurance companies, wealth providers, and retail banks who are looking to provide full continuity of care.

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And we're also working with numerous progressive employers who are looking to show their true colors to their employees in the moments of truth.

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We operate across the US and Canada and, as of a few weeks ago, the UK as well.

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I feel like it's so rare that you hear of technology companies actually solving real problems, not just [laughs] problems that we've made up along the way, and this is certainly one of them, so commend to kind of all of your team for working on it and creating what at least it seemed from the outside to be a really impressive product.

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You're obviously working in one of the most, like, emotionally sensitive spaces, and I'm curious, how does that context of kinda what the company is doing and your customers and kind of the situations that they find themselves in, does that context shape the way that you and your CEO work together and kinda how you make decisions together or as a team?

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From a grand scheme of things, we always keep our users top of mind, just knowing that these are not just random people. These are actual families during their most vulnerable, sensitive moment in their lives.

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How that translates into, uh, operating principles, it's mostly about being extremely obsessed about the details. Eventually, you understand you cannot mess up. You have one moment where you really need to show up.

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Empathy is a B2B2C company, so we also work on behalf of large financial institutions like New York Life and MetLife, so we also carry kind of the burden of them supporting their own customers and families.

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So if I need to boil it down to how we operate, it's really about making sure and making the greatest amount of attention to every small detail that could end up being a meaningful impact on the way that we show up.Are there situations where balancing the operational performance of the product or the revenue side of the business may get in the way of kind of the ethical or emotional responsibilities of the service that you're offering?

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Does that play a role in kind of the decisions that you and your CEO need to make? Is that something that is a ever a point of friction that you're trying to work your way around?

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It's very rare it's a point of friction just because we say it upfront to our partners, to ourselves, that the best interest of the user is what's top of mind for us.

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When there's a potential decision or a friction, we know what's the answer. We nip it in the bud by saying it upfront, so no one can challenge that.

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It sounds like the organization's values are very rooted in kind of the way that the whole company operates. I do imagine that there probably are situations where you do disagree with your CEO.

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What does that conversation sound like? Is that just you and him? Is that typically kind of brought a little bit broader or like in the executive team room?

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How does that kind of work if you're just don't see eye to eye on a particular thing? I think the disagreement is part of the game. It's not something that we need to shy away from.

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It's not something that we need to be afraid of. We have our own opinion. He or anyone else has their own opinion. At the end of the day, there's two scenarios.

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One, that you're sensing that this is maybe your voice wasn't heard because it was not substantiated, you need to bring more evidences, you need to, you know, maybe visit it in another day where there's a clearer scene, or you disagree and commit.

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Both ways are possible, and I don't keep track of, uh, whether this was chosen or the other, but I know that when there's a point where I feel I need to stress that point, I'll make sure to bring my best foot forward and, you know, support that decision or my feeling with more evidences, more examples, so he can understand why I'm thinking that way.

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Yeah. I think the disagree and commit kind of verbiage is the most important thing. Certainly, the best teams I've worked on and, and I've seen even from the outside are able to take that to heart.

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Well, they take it in stride, and they never let kind of the personal feelings of the fact that we've disagreed get in the way of the fact that we've also committed to doing this, and, and we're all gonna execute it at a hundred percent and, and give it our best.

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And as you said, it's very much not a keeping score, who's got the most points on who disagreed the most or agreed, you know, got their way. Yeah. And there's also, again, no hard feelings and no ego.

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So you don't carry that weight any further. That was the decision.

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If you're not, uh, comfortable and/or maybe if you're not sure, you can ask why that was the decision maybe in another day, maybe in another week, but that should be like, "That was the decision.

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We're fully committed to it. I wanna support my principal to be at its best. I'm fully dedicated to this path, even if I don't fully agree with it at this point," and I move on.

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Going back to the beginning of our conversation, we talked a little bit about your kind of biz ops experience, firefighting, right, swooping into projects.

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Once you've disagreed and committed, where does your role as chief of staff carry on in pursuing that decision? Are you the implementer, the enforcer? Are you the actual person executing that decision very often?

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Are you the person going team to team and setting context for why that decision was made? How do you kinda think about where your time is best spent?

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Maybe needless to say, but regardless, once you've disagreed and committed, when-- once you left the room, there's one voice. Like, there's no two voices. There's no like, "He said this, but I said that."

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Like, I'm full alignment with that decision. Whether I'm the implementer, the executer, or whether I just like make sure it happens really depends on the job.

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We have, uh, formed an office of the CEO who's carrying specific types of tasks within the organization, but if this is something that has to do with product or with people or with finance or with business and has, you know, a known and dedicated person, then I would just make sure that this decision is implemented and carried out, and if not, maybe I'll be the one who's doing it.

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I'm gonna ask because you mentioned it, in this office of the CEO, I imagine that's you, obviously your CEO, executive assistant. Are there any other operators that kinda make up that room? Yeah.

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We do have two more operators, one that is focused on strategy and one that is focused on initiatives that are helping us build that muscle of strategic projects or, you know, dedicated incubation that is just about throwing pasta at a wall until there's maturity and conviction.

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So we do have that team that is, uh, slightly more expanded.

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I think this is kind of the newest flavor of chief of staff and office of the CEO organizational structure that we're seeing, and it's always interesting to kinda hear a little bit of the inside of kinda how that's working or, or sometimes not working for you all.

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But that setup seems definitely not unique, but certainly something that we're seeing more of.

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There's definitely, um, a place for that, the trade-off between having a larger, unique type of team within the organization that is not part of the regular teams.

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So the larger that team is, the higher the need for alignment and context sharing 'cause there's more action and more creation that goes on within the office of the CEO.

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You'd need to over-index on sharing the information on what's being done, why is it important, why is it within the office of the CEO and not without the office of the CEO.

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It just make it much more needed to share that information. Yeah.

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And I imagine just kinda having a, a dedicated strategy or insights persons can add some complication in terms of, okay, well, what is our data team doing, or do we have another strategy biz ops team, and how does that not kind of fit within this office of the CEO role?

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Where do we kinda draw that line?Exactly. And, you know, there's a lot of ways to solve it. We're thinking of a few. It's also pretty new function within the team.

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The office of the CEO is a real team, so we're still, uh, kind of a work in progress, but feel like it's bringing a lot of value, and we always need to refine how it's immersed into the day-to-day activity.

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This may have already answered one of my last questions here, but is there anything that you've kinda learned or changed your mind about when it comes to the chief of staff and CEO relationship, and maybe this office of the CEO, like, is the future and, and that's one of the things that you've kind of evolved into?

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Is there anything else that comes to mind? I think what I learned about being a chief of staff is the importance of wearing many hats and changing them, but also having the ability to speak in several voices.

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'Cause one time you're the stunt double, one day you're the good cop, the bad cop, one day you're on a sales approach, one day you're the analyst. You always need to change.

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You need to change pretty quickly because one meeting ends and the other starts.

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So the context switching and voice switching is, I think, a key trait that you need to develop if you wanna be a highly impactful chief of staff. Yeah. Excellent advice.

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Anything else you wanna kinda summarize or share with the audience? Maybe one effective principle for managing up. Anything that you've learned along the way that has kind of built your relationship with your CEO?

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There's no replacement for time, so quick wins could be statistics, but there's no real replacement of spending time and really listening carefully to how your principal is operating 'cause a few month in, if you're really into that learning curve, you'll be in a whole different space.

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It's not just about context, it's not just about knowing him or knowing about him, it's really paying close attention and spending the time to listen, to read, to talk, that you're in really close alignment with how he thinks and how he operates, and then I think the real impact kicks in.

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Itamar, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, Scott, for having me. It was a pleasure. Thanks again to Itamar for joining and for giving us a candid look inside his chief of staff to CEO relationship at Empathy.

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Two ideas I thought worth revisiting. First was the idea that your impact as a chief of staff can be measured by how many decisions you quietly remove from your CEO's plate.

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Second was that there's no substitute for time and proximity when it comes to truly learning how your principal thinks and operates.

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As you go back to your own role, consider where you can better anticipate your CEO's needs this quarter and where you might disagree, then fully commit.

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If you found this episode useful, share it with another chief of staff and keep the conversation going. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.

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