What I wish I knew when I started

- So when I think back on the last five years, there's a number of things I've learned and wish I knew when I started. First and foremost is to pace yourself. You're going to come in with a lot of energy, and a lot of ideas, and it's important that you don't exceed the organization's ability to take those ideas. And so bring others along with you in that journey as you achieve that change in the company. Number two is to use the CEO's name sparingly. Don't go around saying, Jeff needs this or Jeff needs that. The CEO asked for this. When you do that, you lose your power. You become a messenger. And I got advice from a colleague early on is to think of the CEO's name as a four-letter word. In this case, Jeff literally is a four-letter word, so it helps. But use it sparingly and only when you really need to. If it's really urgent, or if it's really a crisis mode, and it's clear that you have to communicate it with the CEO's name. The third is to be really clear about you want to get out of experience. And to be intentional about how you spend your time. So have a good sense of your career goals and that will help you spend your time in the chief of staff role in the right ways. So for instance, I was really interested in learning about investor relations, and so a few years ago, I asked our investor relations team to join them on a quarterly earnings cycle. And so I had a chance to kind of ride shotgun and learn how that team works and to see if that would be an interesting career path for me down the road. So take the time, understand those career goals, and use that to your advantage and shape the experiences that you have in that way. Fourth is to spend time learning with other chiefs of staff. It can be a pretty lonely role. There's not a lot you can talk about publicly, and so take time to learn how others at other companies or within your company think about their roles and share best practices. And just recently I was sitting down with the chief of staff and the chief transformation officer at NetApp who reminded me of a great lesson that she learned. The chief of staff role has to be like Switzerland. You have to be completely neutral and objective in your role. And I think that's just one example of how I continuously learn from my peers as well. Lastly, be generous with gratitude. I think in this role, you're going to be interacting with a number of different people across the organization. And you're going to see how they all come together to accomplish the goals. Because you're in this unique role, often without a team, in a way, everyone's on your team. And I think it's really important to take time to recognize those efforts from the folks around the company and to share your gratitude, to share those kudos with them and to help them feel appreciated for the work that they're doing as well.