In a recent issue themed “The Agile Executive,” the Harvard Business Review offered a piece of advice for C.E.O.’s: hire a chief of staff. Somewhere between an executive assistant and a C-suite exec, a chief of staff is someone who “should handle several principal duties, all focused on making time, information, and decision processes more effective,” explains Dan Ciampa, a former consulting-firm C.E.O. turned C.E.O. adviser.
Anything more concrete in the way of day-to-day responsibilities is hard to glean. And yet, despite most people’s not having any idea what a chief of staff does, the job has become ubiquitous.
