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Issue 26: From Government Chief of Staff to Startup Chief of Staff
Highlighting the common threads that run through civic and commercial Chief of Staff roles ✨
Welcome back, aspiring and current Chiefs of Staff!
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This week’s issue is guest authored by Matt Creel. An MPA graduate and current MBA student, Matt spent 15 years in government as a Chief of Staff, senior staff, and lobbyist and another five years in startups ranging from seed to Series C. Matt also operates a multi-disciplinary consulting business, Iowexas Group. He lives in Austin, TX, with his wife and two dogs, and spends his free time golfing, gardening, smoking BBQ, and learning new skills.
In this week’s issue, Matt goes into detail about his time as a Chief of Staff in politics: a role that, in Texas during the legislative session, is known to get to work at 6AM and get home at 10PM (and sometimes even 2 or 3AM the next day). Having served as a Chief of Staff to multiple members and worked in several startups, Matt is uniquely positioned to share insights into how the political Chief of Staff’s skill set is a great match for startups of all sizes.
What skills can political Chiefs of Staff translate into startups?
Despite knowing that the Chief of Staff role originated in government and military, most founders and CEOs don't really know what a political Chief of Staff does, much less how that person could add value to their startup.
A good Chief of Staff is simultaneously a servant and a leader, putting everyone before themselves and doing whatever is necessary to protect the organization and its team members.
In politics, each office is its own little company, and the member (a term for a legislator) is like the CEO. Often, they are a CEO in their regular jobs. In most states, legislators also hold a full-time job outside their elected duties, making the Chief of Staff incredibly important.
💼 Customer Success and Account Management
I can honestly say that while working in startups, I have never had anxiety about customer calls. A career in politics over-prepared me for the work's volume and personal nature. At its core, working for an elected official is customer success, but it's more difficult than being in CS for a startup. Why?
Members are elected by voters who become constituents. Businesses call them customers. The members I worked for represented almost 200,000 customers. Some represent almost 1 million.
So, the first thing that stands out is sheer volume. Few startups have a customer count anywhere near that size.
Second, and most notably, the nature of the conversations is unique. The “easy” calls are your standard casework calls. They merely involve navigating the government bureaucracy to solve customer problems.
At the other end of the spectrum are the calls about policy. In politics, everything is an existential crisis for the customer: “Matt, I want to share my opinions about the abortion bill being voted on today.” I'd wager nearly every startup team member would rather discuss an account renewal with a customer whose costs increased by 50%.
Put another way, I'll bet no one has ever taken a day off work to travel to your office and publicly protest your latest software update.
Lastly, there's a personal aspect. To be overly reductive, startup customers are CRM entries located across the country or the world. In politics, the customers are your neighbors. They see you at the grocery store and want to share their deeply-held views.
When frustrated, startup customers grumble, hang up the phone, and go about their day. In politics, the customers all tell someone. They tell their neighbors, post on Facebook, tweet, etc.
So if a Chief of Staff is coming from the government realm and is now responsible for managing the success of customers and following up, the function feels much less daunting that before.
🔨 Project Management
Legislators write bills and try to pass them. The Texas legislature meets for 140 days every odd-numbered year. In the most recent session, 11,807 pieces of legislation were filed. That doesn't factor in amendments, bills that weren't filed, letters to constituents, speeches, interviews, and other work products. Each item is subject to hard deadlines and strict rules that govern what can be done and when.
In other words, a Chief of Staff is responsible for leading or taking action on hundreds of projects at any given moment and monitoring thousands of others simultaneously.
This could be as simple as having dozens of conversations, or as in-depth as reading the legal text of the legislation and communicating all the details to relevant parties, including the member, who will discuss it with the public, the press, and other stakeholders.
A Chief of Staff must also try to anticipate the thousands of variations that could happen to that bill over its 5-month lifespan. The details of managing this process could be a novel of its own.
All of that is true for bills that are one paragraph long, but bills are also frequently anywhere from 10-50 pages, or longer. Coordinating these bills into projects with milestones, key updates, and deadlines all falls under the bucket of project management.
💪🏼 Team Building and Management
Elected officials have limited budgets out of which they hire staff, pay for office supplies, etc. So, they mostly hire young, inexperienced people who are fresh out of or still in college to save on costs.
This then means that a Chief of Staff often becomes the one to take this relatively inexperienced team under their wing and teach them how government works, a daunting task for even the most efficient startup.
In a matter of 5 months, I have taken a blank canvas when it comes to government knowledge and taught them how the government is structured, the legislative process, how to read and analyze complex legislation, identify problems, research solutions, and communicate complex topics they have had little exposure to (think tax policy or federal health care benefits) to people for whom that is an emotional issue, and more.
The harsh reality is that you have about 60 days to get this organization functional - not unlike the quick onboarding that happens at startups because everyone needs to hit the ground running. Before long, the time pressures of the 5-month long session will limit your ability for hand-held coaching. You need to make the team knowledgeable, efficient, and self sufficient within a matter of weeks.
Meanwhile, when I have worked for members in their first term, I am also guiding them along the path of how this all works. I am simultaneously the junior staff's trainer and the CEO's sherpa, managing many personalities while creating cohesion so that the team can function well together.
⚙️ Dealing with Complexity and Strategy
"Matt, I just talked with [Customer Name]. Something about a shipping port not releasing some product in a warehouse. Can you call them and figure that out?"
This is a real-life request I once received. It's probably one of the easier ones because they rarely come with this much information. But this can go any of 100 or more directions, so, where to start?
The Chief of Staff drives every aspect of this process, making almost all the strategic decisions and taking executive action. In some cases, the Chief of Staff can delegate this out to one of the previously mentioned staff members with zero experience, in which case they are also the trainer and coach of the project.
Oftentimes as a Chief of Staff, you’re asked to take a project or initiative and run with it. You’re given a general guideline of what needs to get accomplished, but it’s up to you to define success and self manage. You need to make the call on when it’s better to roll up your sleeves and tackle the project yourself or delegate to others, but realize that ultimately the outcome is still your responsibility.
💎 Operating Under Pressure and Within Short Time Frames
"Matt, I just got a call from [name of billionaire customer] about something we are voting on in about an hour. Can you work with him to figure out what's going on so I can know how to move forward? I'll text you his number, he's expecting your call."
One hour's time to learn a complex topic, interact with the customer about it, and deliver that information back to the boss in an actionable way that walks the line between keeping the (wealthy and influential) customer happy and advancing good policy.
Easy right? It’s not always a billionaire (though sometimes it has been), but this general scenario is very common.
Solving this dilemma takes a rather remarkable combination of patience and urgency. The patience to work with the customer on every single issue they want help with, and the urgency to pounce on it right away. It also takes expert-level prioritization and delegation skills.
A hallmark skill of an effective Chief of Staff is the ability to parachute in and gain context quickly. It’s why you see Chiefs of Staff with a variety of backgrounds and “non traditional” career paths. It’s actually this “windy road” of experiences that lends itself well to having a broad knowledge set to help connect the dots across a variety of functions and departments.
In short, the only thing that is the same from day-to-day for a political Chief of Staff is the promise of chaos. The timing of events is never the same, the issues all change, impactful decisions have to be made instantly, and one wrong move can mean that you spend the next two years explaining to a major customer group why something happened the way it did.
Many founders and CEOs dismiss Chief of Staff candidates who come from a political background because they don't understand that world, and that can be fair because few people understand it. Political Chiefs of Staff may not have direct experience in your industry, but I assure you they can figure it out and handle the pressure. In reality, being a Chief of Staff is more of a mentality than a specific set of hard skills or experiences.
Moreover, I see many startups that work with the government in some capacity. I also see lots of startups that aren't interacting with their state or local (and federal, as well) governments when they very much should be. For these organizations, a political Chief of Staff should be a primary focus when evaluating candidates.
Hope you found the latest issue of this newsletter helpful. We’re looking to you for future newsletter topics! If you have any questions around being a Chief of Staff, tactical takeaways that you can apply, or other curiosities about the Chief of Staff role, submit a question below and we’ll answer it in a future newsletter issue:
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Additional Chief of Staff Related Reads:
Unlocking Organizational Excellence: The Power of Systemizing Decision Making
What Does a Chief of Staff Do? Duties, Key Traits To Look For, and More
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👋🏼 Until the next issue,
Clara
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