From the course: Become a Chief of Staff
Strategic initiatives
- Strategic initiatives are discreet projects that you lead or co-lead on behalf of the CEO and the executive team. Some examples from my time at LinkedIn include codifying how we do quarterly planning across the organization. As well as more recently helping our CEO drive the integration of LinkedIn and Microsoft following our acquisition in 2016. These projects can range from a one week, urgent turn around to a multi-year transformational effort. Regardless of the duration and the intensity of the project, I think there's three best practices. The first is to engage the right stakeholders across the organization. I had a mentor tell me before I took this job that when you're in the Chief of Staff role, no matter what you do, someone else in the organization is going to feel like you're doing their job. And I think this is really important to understand because whenever you're starting one of these projects, take the time to loop in and to bring in the right stakeholders. The first thing I'll do is ask each exec team member who they want from their team to be a part of our cross-functional project team and make sure that they're looped in form the very get go. Number two is to make sure you drive awareness on your projects. So, that means weekly updates to the executive team, talking about the project during your staff meetings, and making sure everyone is super clear about the current status and next steps to the project that you're working on. Third is transitioning that project to the organization, so in a way you have to work your way out of the job. But that's the right thing to do for the company. In order for this project to succeed, you need someone in the organization who can carry it forward as part of their day job full time. And so the sooner you can identify that person or that team who's going to take this on, the more chances you have for continuous success.
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