Leveraging Leadership

Q&A: Balancing Tactical and Strategic Demands as a Resource-Constrained Chief of Staff

• Emily Sander • Season 1 • Episode 198

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Emily answers Nicole S.'s question about how to balance the tactical and strategic sides of the Chief of Staff role, sharing examples from both startup and large company experiences. She covers ways to prioritize, how to have conversations with your principal about trade-offs, and offers practical advice like delegating, automating, and asking if all tasks are necessary. Emily also explains why it’s important to regularly check if you’re spending your time where it matters most.


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Who Am I?

If we haven’t yet before - Hi👋 I’m Emily, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. After a thrilling ride up the corporate ladder, I’m focusing on what I love - working with people to realize their professional and personal goals. Through my videos here on this channel, books, podcast guest spots, and newsletter, I share new ideas and practical and tactical tools to help you be more productive and build the career and life you want. 

 

Time Stamps:

00:50 Balancing Tactical and Strategic Responsibilities
01:36 Company Stage and Role Dynamics
03:53 Challenges in Shifting to Strategic Work
05:06 Conversations with Your Principal
07:04 Making Strategic Decisions
07:42 Prioritizing Tasks and Trade-offs
11:15 Delegation and Automation
11:56 Evaluating Tactical Work
12:58 Adapting to Company Changes
15:03 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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We have a listener question from Nicole s in Nashville, Tennessee. Nicole says, what tips or guidance do you have for balancing the chief of staff's tactical and strategic responsibilities? It feels like I'm always pulled down into the tactical work because our organization is resource constrained, but I know I also need to play a stronger role focusing on strategy. Finding the balance is tricky. Exclamation point. It sure is, Nicole. It is indeed. but this is a fantastic question'cause this hits almost every single chief of staff. In my experience, in my personal experience as chief of staff, I was. Constantly purposing in and out of strategy and tactical. So I was going in and out of strategic stuff and tactical stuff and strategic stuff and tactical stuff, and that was a constant flux and flow. The ratio and percentage of time I spent in each and the duration in each would change and evolve over time, and I'd have to be adaptable. But there was always a mix. And I've seen this with pretty much every single chief of staff I've spoken to with, I'm trying to think, with rare exception, most chiefs of staff will have some mix of this. Now, the exact mix and how that, how that shows up is gonna be different. The biggest deciding factor for that would be company stage. So. Intuitively, you can think about startup world. Chief of staff is often doing two roles, if not three, four, or five that might show up in their title. That might just show up. In reality, they're doing a lot of the tactical functional work as is pretty much everyone else at the company in that stage. I've had chief of staff at large global companies where, where their work is primarily principal management and taking the communication and direction and guidance from corporate and rolling that down to their org. So let's say like a, I have chief of staff who is supporting an SVP at a, at a Fortune 500 company, and basically in that company that SVPs have like a little fiefdom they run and it's, it's a organization unto itself, but the corporate. Is is sitting on top of all of the SVPs and they push stuff down to their organizations. So this chief of staff is working very closely with their principal. They're taking guidance and direction from corporate. They're also coordinating with other organizations across the company. And that's a big deal, that scope and that range. It's like global, different regions. That's a big deal. And, and I've had a chief of staff, this was a while ago now, but he was, a chief of staff for like a regional head of something, something, of like a specific geography. And his main task was coordinating with this third party basically. But this third party was critical for the entire corporation. So his one. Region happened to be the one to coordinate with this third party, but he was, he was coordinating across the, the corporation. So anyway, long, long way of saying there's a different mix at different stages of companies, and so it, it's always a mix of tactical and practical. I think at a startup, the tactical pieces might be like, hands on keyboard. I might actually be coding for our program here. I might actually be writing our social media posts and then the, the tactical work at a global company will look a bit different. So just getting that out there to kick off the conversation. There's always, there's almost always a mix. So to your question, I'm curious around what is. Preventing you from moving into more strategic initiatives. So, so you said I get pulled down into tactical work, but I know I also need to play a role focusing on strategy. So I'm curious, what is preventing you from doing that? Some common things I've seen here are sometimes people hold themselves back in a way. Um, I'm not sure how much of this is happening for you, but I've just seen folks. Uh, who are familiar with the tactical work. Maybe they came from a role where they were doing the tactical work, and so it's familiar, it's comfortable. They can do it in their sleep. In previous times, that's what made them successful. That's the way they added value. Um, and they need to progress into more strategic initiatives. Sometimes it's overwhelmed, like, oh my gosh, now I have like 57 things and it's all overwhelming and it's all scary and I don't know where to start and I don't wanna start. So I default and go back to the familiar tactical pieces. So that's an element to look at if that is happening for you. If you're like, Emily, that's not my problem. My problem is I'm more than capable and more than ready to be more strategic. Other external elements, people, personalities, uh, pressures, whatever are holding me back. If that's the case, then the first thing I would say is if you can have a conversation, if you have a relationship with your principal, where like, yep, we can have a conversation around where my role lives and what the trade-offs are of the type of work I do. I would just have a conversation at your next one-on-one or if, if your principal likes a little prep for that stuff, kind of give them a heads up that you'd like to talk about this. Come with some ideas and some recommendations of course, or some reasons why you're recommending what you're recommending. But I think the, the showing trade-offs is a good move. And this, this is, and what I mean by that is, you know, if you're asking me to do this and I can't do this, this, and this, and it's not a necessarily like an emotional charge, like moral judgment, like you're making me do the tactical stuff versus the strategic stuff. It might just be, Hey, I'd love to support that. I think that's a great idea. In order to do that effectively, I need to pause X or I need to delegate Y, and that's just demonstrating the trade-off that you're making. I'm, I'm more than happy to help you with what you need or what you want, but just here's the trade-off and at least have that conversation and at least get that out there. If you want to follow up with, here's why I think X and Y need to be the priority and why they're more important and why it would be best to have me stick to those, then you could have a follow up very easily in that type of conversation or make a recommendation towards that. And sometimes if, sometimes it's easier to bring this in a group conversation. Like if we are going to get to our company goals that we've set out for ourselves in the next 12 months, we need to be focusing on more strategic pieces of the puzzle here. So it might be it's not necessarily me personally, it might be a we thing. Uh, it depends on the situation. Again, you, you're closer to it, but just throwing that out there. Sometimes it's a, Hey, if we're gonna make it to where we wanna be, we, we are all gonna have to lift ourselves out a little bit. And inherent in this is a decision, this is important. At the crux of strategic, tactical, what's my scope? What's my role? I always have a hundred things to work on. What do I pick is a decision. It's a decision. Nerd, alert, root word of decision is to cut decision. And scissor have the same root word. You have to cut something out. So we're doing this, not that. We're deciding we're doing this and we're not doing that. Wait, wait, wait, wait. We have to do that. Well, we have to do that. That's important. That's really important. Okay, let's talk about it. What's more important? Is something urgent or something important? Does something move the needle for the company in the next six to 12 months? Or does something meet our deliverable for tomorrow? Is it this or is it that? And sometimes, oftentimes that's not a good feeling. It's like, oh no, I wanna do all of it. I wanna do both this and that. And it's like, uh, like ideally, yes, if you had unlimited budget, we would be doing this, that, and the other thing, but we don't. And that's the reality. So we have to choose. We have to decide is it this or is it that? Let's get all of our cards on the table, let's get all of our trade-offs on the table and make a really good informed decision about this. And sometimes saying no is important, sometimes saying not right now. That's a common one by the way. So you could say, um, let me just make something up. So we would love to have the upgraded automated internal process, but do we need to have that right now? Do we need to have that right now? Well, technically no.'cause we have a workaround process that's working now. Everyone knows it. It's working now. Okay. So therefore we don't need that right now. Would we like to have it now? Sure, absolutely. But we don't need it. Okay. So can it be delayed and pushed for six months? Yes. Okay, it doesn't feel great, might not feel great, but now we're able to lift ourselves out to do these other things. Having those types of conversations or framing up those types of conversations is good. So I think one of your ins here, Nicole, might be to kickstart some of those conversations. Um, another way to go about that is to say what is, or what are the unattended strategic pieces that aren't being done? Whereas like everyone might be mired down in the tactical stuff and oh my gosh, you guys right here, like, if we did this, that would open up a whole bunch of doors. Or we need to do this big thing to set the foundation for all the things that we have to do to get us to where we wanna go. It. So take a step back and say, what's not being done? I. What's being left on the table that we're not doing as a company or that I'm not doing as a chief of staff. So again, it can be a group thing, a we thing, or it can be like, oh, you know what? When I take a hard look at that, that's a me thing. I'm not doing that. I'm not stepping up into that. What is being left unattended? And that might be your way in. And along with that, if everyone knows what needs to happen, but it's just not being done, then just starting the thing. And this can be like a inform, not request type of deal, or it could just be like, just do it. Like, don't even just, just start doing it and then it's done. And sometimes when you just start doing the strategic thing, the tactical stuff kind of takes care of itself. And what I mean by that is it's like, oh, actually everyone's. Up into this strategic thing, they don't even care about the tactical stuff like that. Didn't really need to get done. Oh, okay, that's not actually important compared to this. Or it might be a forcing function to say, okay, this is clearly most important. Everyone's getting excited about the momentum and this and this thing about this unattended strategic initiative. And so it's a forcing function to like, okay, we have to get this tactical stuff done. Let's delegate that. Let's automate that. Let's get a data entry resource, or use AI or what have you. So what are, what is the unattended strategic piece you can fill and start doing? And that might just put everything else into place on a tactical level. You could also ask yourself, who can help me with the tactical stuff? I don't need to be doing all of it. Who can help me with that? Do we have an internal team member? Is there a part-time person or a project based person or a part, you know, a fractional person we can bring on? Who can help me with that? Can AI help automate that? Can I delegate it? Can I automate it? Can I not do it? Do I have to do it at all? Or like, really? Like, I don't use this. Does anyone use this? Let's not do it for a week and see if anyone says anything. Let's not do it for a month and see if anyone says anything. Does this need to happen? Do I have to do it? Am I the only person who can do this? Or are there seven other people I can think of right now that can do this? So those are some questions to ask as well. Another way to think about this is there are gradients of tactical work. Meaning, meaning asking yourself, is this$10 an hour tactical work? Is it a hundred dollars an hour tactical work? Is it a thousand dollars an hour tactical work? I mean, there's lots of different types, types of tactical work, some tactical work needs to be done, and maybe you are the only person to do it, or you are the best suited person to do it right now at this stage of the company. And so you just wanna be, um, you just wanna be strategic about which tactical work you take on. so there we go. so that's another frame to look at it through. we've gone through a lot here. Is it urgent? Is it important? Am I the only one who can do it? Who can help me? What's the right mix of tactical and practical for right now? And by the way, I think asking that question. On a pretty regular basis is a good practice for any chief of staff because it will change, especially if you're, if you are in a startup situation or a small to medium business situation, that can change pretty rapidly. It, it changes and morphs in a, in a larger established global company, but probably less rapidly, uh, the velocity of the change is, is less. and I've had chiefs of staff who, who we've gone through this exercise.'cause this is a good question, Nicole. We've gone through this exercise of tactical and practical and then strategic big picture, long-term stuff. And sometimes we're right now you're, you're in the good spot. You're like, you're in the range that you need to be in. It's always a range. It's not a fixed box, but you're in the general range you need to be in now, now in three to six months, if that product launch happens. roles change, including yours as chief of staff. Hey, hey, in six to 12 months if that big merger goes through everyone's roles change, including chief of staff, there's gonna be a huge reorg. And those can be catalyst moments for propelling you into a new level of chief of staff or a different part of being chief of staff and being cognizant and aware of those. And also with that comes the, within that new element or level of chief of Staffness, what is the mix of strategic and tactical in that version? So those can be things you can be thinking about. something I really like about your question, Nicole, is. There is a consequence to staying too tactical, too long. There's an impact to that. You, you lose your, your strategic leverage, you lose your strategic, uh, influence in a way. So being cognizant of that, which you are, you're asking this question, which I think is good. I think asking yourself that question on a regular basis is a good practice to get into. Am I generally where I need to be as chief of staff for this stage of the company, for my principal right now, for my executive team makeup right now? And that changes and evolves. But generally speaking, like not pitch perfect, it's not, nothing's perfect, but am I generally where I need to be? Yeah. Yeah. I'm doing a pretty good job. Okay, cool. Or it's like, hmm, you know what? I really need to move more in this area. Okay. Good to know. Good to have that conversation with yourself. Good to ask that question. And one thing I'll leave you, Nicole, with, and the listeners with is it's also a good practice to. Normalize that conversation with your principal and executive team, and that can be about your chief of staff roles specifically or about like us, the WE conversation as a group. Where do we need to be? If you can make that just a regular, like, not like, whoa, this is outta the blue conversation. If you can work that into. Look, if we're trying to meet these goals, here's where everyone needs to be at and we're all moving and we're all changing and like let's just talk about that and make sure we're coordinated and make sure we're good to go and make sure we're making some some good and sometimes tough decisions. But if you can make that a normal course of conversation, I think that's a really strong position for a chief of staff to be in. I think that adds a lot of value to the chief of staff themselves, to the principal and the larger executive team. So Nicole, I hope that's helpful. Thank you very much for your question. And for anyone listening, if you have a question that you would like answered on an episode, then please drop it in the comments, shoot me a note on LinkedIn or email me directly at Emily at Next level coach and I'll catch you next week on leveraging leadership.