Build Smarter and Faster with a Chief of Staff - Michelle Wu | MetaMask

thank you Dave thank you and good morning everyone thanks for coming to my talk today um so I'm just gonna take this clicker here okay perfect um so hi again I'm Michelle I'm the founder of the web 3 Chief of Staff community and also the chief of staff at metamask and today I'll be speaking about how you can build smarter and faster with the chief of staff all right so first off what is a chief of staff um just I wanted to gauge the room a little bit how many of you have either worked with the chief of staff before or know someone in that type of role Okay so light's a little bit bright but I think around like 20 percent um so I get this question probably once a day and I've spoken to a lot of different chief of staffs across multiple Industries I've read a lot of thought leadership articles and resources on the role and I would say it really boils down to these four points here a lot of what a chief of staff does is being that connecting tissue connecting people across teams connecting projects work streams um also being that air traffic controller helping guide and ensure people are moving in that same direction and then um I wanted to call out these two points here at a certain point and I think it's it does vary depending on your company at a certain point once an organization gets to a certain size there's a need to ensure everyone's up to date on the same page from a communication standpoint so that's really where a chief of staff can plug in to ensure that the company's moving forward and then also being that honest broker and confidant oftentimes we are the ones with the ears to the ground so we can channel that feedback up to leadership and be very honest about what's happening what's going well what isn't going as well so those are some main points of what a chief of staff is so why why does that matter and how is this relevant to you so this graph here is the evolution of a growing company I'm just going to see if the laser works oh yes it works okay so this is called the griner's curve um if if you're interested in learning more about it raise off hands if this seems familiar to people or if you've seen this before or you've heard of the griner's curve before okay so just a very brief overview throughout the course of building a company oftentimes there will be various stages and with each stage comes unique challenges and also opportunities and I'll just briefly go through uh each one oops wait okay oh no okay so phase one there it says growth through creativity that's usually when the company is starting off super small the the founder co-founder of super Scrappy and you're trying to find product Market fit once you are you doing this I'm sorry um once you get that product Market fit then there's phase two where you're trying to move the company in a certain direction and grow it and then at a certain point you realize okay I me and my co-founder and maybe that core team of five can't handle that workload anymore there's just not enough time and hours in the day so that's when you start reaching growth through delegation you start hiring more you start delegating your tasks as you continue growing your organization you start noticing okay now we have sub teams working but they're working really well in their sub teams but they're a bit siled people are not talking to each other and that's where you see a need for more coordination uh phase five and six is when organizations get to a larger point where you see okay not only do we need sub teams coordinating but we need function areas we need marketing to work better with engineering to work better with products and phase six is where you see growth through alliances and that's when the company oftentimes reaches an inflection point in terms of growth internally and that's when they'll start thinking through merges and Acquisitions or external Partnerships like a joint venture so from what I've seen in the web 3 space I would say that a lot of weathering companies seem to be in the phase one to three some in the like phase four ish but just so I could get a gauge of the room how many of you would you say are in like the phase one stage where you're super early trying to get product Market fit it's like you your co-founder or maybe a small team okay all right there you go one person um and how many of you are like phase two and three you have the product Market fit you're trying to hire more and you're you know you're just trying to figure it out okay a good portion of you are phase two and three phase four is okay you're hiring you have a solid team now we need to coordinate you need to you need better systems and processes to be more efficient any of one there okay couple and then anyone in the phase five and six stage that's when it's quite larger amazing and you're thinking through how to develop more function air functional Partnerships and then also maybe even m a so and I'm just gonna quickly call out here across these six stages um there's a potential for crises here and I like to call it as opportunities and what's what could be interesting or valuable for the group here is that if you know you're at a phase two you can look forward and anticipate okay maybe in the future in the next six months one year you might experience a controlled crisis and maybe you can kind of get ahead of that knowing that as your company develops it potentially might experience its type of Crisis that you can get you can uh get ahead of it there so what does that mean for you and the chief of staffroll so how do you know if you need a chief of staff and the reason I showed this slide here is because the role is intentionally ambiguous and in a way that's a superpower because depending on what stage you are in your company a chief of staff can really plug in and help you where your company needs or even you as a leadership team needs so as an example it seems like a good number of the group here is probably in the uh phase two and three so some questions that you might want to consider when you think about hiring is oops like do you need more processes and systems for efficiency are teams working like super scrappily and it's done in a very Grassroots and organic manner but at a certain point as you're hiring more does it doesn't make sense to build out something more formally um to to help the team work more effectively another one too is like are you noticing that the workload is just becoming too much and that extra work it's not really nicely fitting into like engineering or product it's it's a little bit of um a special project so a lot of chief of staffs they tend to take on the work that doesn't fit nicely within a standard functionary like products so with that I want to share how a chief of staff could be your Force amplifier and here are some questions for you as you're building out your companies and growing your organizations around whether you you think you might need one now or perhaps even anticipating your needs in the future one thing that I like to ask leaders is like how much of your time is spent on strategic creative white space work and really thinking through what is the best use of your time as a as a Founder does it make sense for you to be approving budgets does it make sense for you to be uh you know negotiating like vendor contracts or like setting up the HR System Maybe not maybe so but I think these are some important questions to think about what is the best use of your time another area that I wanted to call out is culture too uh as you're building out a company especially when it's a small core team you're really able to have and develop and Foster that culture that being said as you hire and grow more how do you maintain and preserve That Special Sauce the the elements of the culture that you want to preserve and that represents what your company stands for and I think that's also really where a chief of staff can plug in they're ensuring that from a people standpoint people are taken care of and a lot of times with web 3 companies especially in the beginning we are focused a lot on product Market fit we're focused a lot on the technology and I don't want uh I I want to call out the human element because at the end of the day people are your number one assets and I want to remind the group to also take that into consideration as well and here I want it's a call out and call out this wolf pack analogy so with wolf packs when they go hunting they are in a group every wolf hat takes on a different role they're not not everyone is a leader and that's okay they contribute their specific unique skill sets their unique strengths but they really rely on communication coordination and cooperation they have that sense of belonging on their team and they are united by a shared purpose so with that I think that's really where a chief of staff can plug in for your organization and how it could be valuable for you so with that I'll open it up for any questions thank you yes thank you um I'm curious to know more about the crises you mentioned in the in the chart like if you could spend a bit of time talking about each one yeah sure oh wait okay yes so okay so four okay so in the very beginning um you're starting your company and it's probably you and a co-founder and you're trying to find product Market fit what you'll notice is at a certain point you'll probably want to raise around funding that's where um there's a little bit they call it a leadership crisis meaning they um there's a need for people who have like fundraise before or know how to talk to talk and Pitch the VCS and kind of understand how the fundraising process works growing through Direction and delegation so once you have the product Market fit let's assume you raise money there's a little bit of an autonomy and crisis control and what do I mean by that so as a Founder right you have you're literally doing everything you're setting up HR you're doing expenses you're doing you're writing comms and emails you're working with clients at a certain point it's not feasible for you to do all of that on your own anymore and sometimes uh there's a little bit of a challenge relinquishing the control and it's for multiple reasons it could be you know sometimes people like working on specific areas but it might not be the best use of the CEO's time like maybe the CEO likes thinking through Partnerships but that's probably not the best use of his or her time at that moment and that person should probably be spending more time uh interacting with investors red tape crisis and growth crisis so these two here it means like once the organization reaches to a certain size you need to better coordinate so here is okay how do we coordinate amongst sub teams um and then also how do we coordinate across like functions too and it's a little bit of this delicate balance because one like there's a benefit in creating more processes to help teams be more effective but the trade-off too is sometimes when you have too many processes too many systems then you're stagnated by a lot of red tape so that's what they mean by this red tape and kind of finding the balance between systems and then also flexibility and autonomy for your teams growth crisis here is when your company reaches to a certain point this inflection point where like internally it's being run like a well-oiled machine but like what is that next growth opportunity um a lot of times companies here start thinking through mergers and Acquisitions because it benefits them to either Aqua hire or merge with another company versus building it from ground up and that could be through a resource standpoint or a bandwidth or even budget aspect like it makes more sense to acquire versus build internally from ground up um so so those are kind of like the the crises that companies can potentially face as they navigate these phases it doesn't hope that answers the correct question okay great um anything else yes oh oh it is on um question uh so when should a company start thinking about bringing in a chief of staff maybe from a preventative standpoint before the crises start hitting yeah that's a great question there isn't a perfect science to it what I've seen um just from my time here at metamask and then also at Google is companies tend to start looking for Achieva staff in that like phase two phase three stage um from a head count standpoint I've noticed like 50 tends to be kind of the standard number like outside of web 2 and the reasoning behind that is like 50 is usually when you start needing to build more like processes around HR thinking through like policies like mat leave um and that's really where like a chief of staff would step in and start thinking about how to how to help the organization as a whole work more effectively so there isn't a perfect number but I would say usually around the 50 Mark but then again it really depends on like what your company needs at that moment thank you great question one two three um my question is probably hard to set up sort of there is usually a problem with resources on phase one to even three so what do you think about should you grow uh your sort of one chief of staff from probably like usually people in startups they have multiple hats and probably it's a good idea to grow someone to Chief of Staff usually it could be like in technical startups could be Elites uh or you should always Target on someone from outside can you speak late on that caution so so what I'm hearing is you're asking um does it make sense to grow someone from internally or hire from externally is that what your question okay uh that's all yeah so that there's also no perfect science there um there's pros and cons to each uh the when you hire from internally what's super valuable is that person already knows like the people the systems the processes so if you up level that person that person can go like up and running right away um the potential risk there is that that person is already so immersed into the company if you're looking for someone to come in with like a fresh set of eyes and more of an objective perspective that might be a bit of a challenge the benefit of hiring externally is exactly that you have someone coming in with just like a clean slate and assessing everything that's happening overall the potential risk is that with a chief of staff oftentimes you're working with lots of teams lots of people um and with that a lot of a lot of trust and relationship influences that so as like a new person joining an organization if you don't already have that pre-established trust it might take longer for that person to ramp up in the role um within web3 what I've seen especially from the web 3 Community a lot of them have come in externally I think part of it is like web3 a lot of the companies are very new I think also the role in this industry is pretty nascent as well so I would say of the 50 people in the company in the community probably two of them have been up leveled internally versus an external hire great question thank you all right so I think with that um I will end my presentation um thank you so much everyone and thanks for coming to my talk [Applause]