Speaker 2
But that's equally not helpful. That's equally not helpful as like, oh, it was my team that made me shine. A hundred percent. But
Speaker 1
I also don't want people to get frustrated when they're working their ass off and they don't feel like they're getting what their due is, right? It could just be that you haven't connected with the right person yet who's willing to invest in you because, and that's what the great thing about a chief of staff role does is a CEO is willing to invest in you and really round out your skillset. That is the point of being in a chief of staff role. I encourage folks to look that up. I thought it was to take
Speaker 2
meeting minutes.
Speaker 1
Nope, it's not at all. That's a different type of role, especially in the tech space. The chief of staff really wears a corp dev hat. They do all of the board relations. They're responsible for putting together the entire board deck with all of the data, which gives you incredible P&L fluency. And working with the finance partners, you get to sit in and understand from a strategic perspective how the board is thinking, how the other executives are thinking. You get to play a little politics behind the scenes and understand and navigate how you can influence the CEO's vision and the execution that he needs by going to the other folks and really building a rapport with them. So there's a lot of pieces that go into being a successful chief of staff that can really round you out to be an executive at some point. And that's the path that a lot of chief of staffs are on. So
Speaker 2
you're kind of like the highest individual contributor in the company effectively as a chief of staff.
Speaker 1
Correct. Yep. You have no direct reports, but you're responsible for all the functions and all the metrics. How
Speaker 2
political is it? I mean, how much of a diplomat do you have to be to function in that role? You
Speaker 1
have to be a diplomat. I would say the balance that you need to strike is being ultimately very transparent with folks, especially when you're in a live conversation. So if there's something that you're being told that you know you're going to go and need to tell the CEO, you let that person know. You say, look, just so you know, I'm going to go use this information in this way. It's my job to help you accomplish ABC. I can't do that without filtering the information through in this way. Are you comfortable with that? Can we have a follow on conversation? How can I set you up for success? So being open and transparent, but there is a lot of politics there. When you're going through acquisitions and you're bringing in new executive team members, and then you've got, I think at one point I was sitting in a room, there were 12 executives, which is insane, but you know, six are going to get exited, right? And you kind of, you get, you get the visibility from the board and sitting in with the CEO, who's going to move into what seat and you, you understand how that really plays out. And so that was incredibly interesting, but there's, there's a, there's a high level of politics at play in that role for sure. A
Speaker 2
lot of politics, a lot of trust, a lot of accountability, probably some accountability and some information you didn't want to have. You didn't want to have.
Speaker 1
Correct. Well, there's the possible deniability. And I've done that before where I've had a CEO say to me, you know, hey, I want you to interview this person because I'm thinking of them for that role. And I've pulled myself out of that process. I'm like, look, like I, I I've done a lot for you willing to do a lot. This is just one I can't do. Um, and so, and have, you know, having your personal boundaries is good too. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Okay. So, so you, you, so you, you were lucky. Um, you should play the lot of more often. So, um, like, but, but, but, but I believe I do believe in luck, but I also believe genuinely, but I also believe that you position yourself to take advantage of that luck, right? When it comes around, you're, you're ready to strike at it. So what, what do you think, and you mentioned hard work, it might be that it might be some other factors, um, you know, taking away your, your humility hat here, what do you think positioned you to make the most out of those lucky opportunities?
Speaker 1
Yeah. So, um, I think it was my background. What, what, let me tell you what I originally wanted to do. I actually started my career at E! Entertainment Television as a producer on reality
Speaker 2
shows. Is it still around? Uh,
Speaker 1
yeah, yeah. You may have heard of it. Um, I, and I won't tell you which reality shows cause it was like season one and then that will age me and you'll know exactly where I talk soup. Yes. Oh, no, no, no, you're
Speaker 2
not that old. You're not that old.
Speaker 1
No, it was the soup when I worked there. They had graduated from talk soup to the soup, but, um, I definitely witnessed the first season of the Kardashians getting made. So, you know, um, but look, I, what I wanted to do was I wanted to be a showrunner because I was fascinated by how everything comes together and how there can be one person really responsible for pulling all the strings together and understanding from an operations perspective, how it all works, how what this person does over here affects the output over there. And it's no different for any type of operations or revenue role. You have to have that mindset. And if you don't have that mindset, it's not going to be the right path for you. So understanding how all the pieces fit together and then wanting to be the, quite frankly, I just wanted to be the person that helped bring them all together and then was able to push them. Right. I'm also not afraid of an accountability framework. That doesn't mean that I'm mean or cruel or, you know, skewer people when they just absolutely miss a number. But I'm not afraid of an accountability framework from my CEO to me. Right. In fact, I told him the other day, I said, hey, I love it when you come splash in my pond. Do that more often. Push me because it helps me push the team and it makes us better. But I'm a big proponent of having an equal accountability framework and being in a place where everyone is held to the same standards and the same goals and objectives. That's where I have been successful is when I'm working with a leadership team that fully buys into that. And again, going back to the law.
Speaker 2
Translate that though. Translate that for me. So is that your communication style? It's your tone? It's a framework that you have in place for accountability or a racy model or something? Yeah.
Speaker 1
So I think from the revenue perspective, and I think your audience will understand this, it's my chief product officer is my chief technology officer knowing at any point in time, you could actually call them up right now and you could say, how much has Mickey done in bookings this quarter? What's her budget and what's her sales target? And what's her path there? And they would all know that because revenue isn't just my responsibility. It's all of our responsibilities. Customer satisfaction isn't just my responsibility. It's all of our responsibilities. And so you can come to one of our product offsites and actually see bookings, retention, churn analysis put up on the board. But
Speaker 2
that's not accountability. That's you being able to communicate
Speaker 1
properly. That's accountability in the sense that everyone carries the revenue target. Everyone does in the organization.
Speaker 2
I see. I see. It's also just good cross-functional collaboration and being able to stakeholder and share the messaging. Um, I'm thinking more of accountability of, you know, Hey, you guys were 10, 10% below target this past quarter, this past month, or, um, you know, this campaign's not working. Is there, are there ways that you're kind of in the weeds in that sense that you're your frameworks that you apply to your team? Correct.
Speaker 1
I mean, yes. So yes, we always, we run a really tight OKR framework again, from the operational perspective, and we cascade all the way down to the individual contributors and we don't get caught up on individual contributors really having tasks more than I call them objectives and key results. People like to get hung up on what those words actually mean. Just don't. If people are saying, I'm going to go do this and rolls up to the larger objective, let them go and do, and then check in. Is this working? And is it moving the needle in the right direction? And if it's not, that's okay. It just means we need to pivot from a tactical perspective. So taking the emotions out of it and agreeing on tactics. Hey, we all agreed we were going to go close off the funnel or redefine our ICP. What that's resulted in is less sales than before. We all held hands and did that together. Now we might want to make a change and that's okay. Let's have that conversation. That's the leadership level of an accountability framework that brings everyone to the table and makes everyone feel like they have the same goals and objectives, but also they can voice their concerns. And it's okay to try something, not work, pivot, and keep moving as long as you're measuring. I
Speaker 2
take it you've read John Doerr's Measure What Matters.