The Chief of Staff's Standing Work

Before you set up an AI version, it helps to know what the human job looks like.

A chief of staff works for one person, called the principal. In a company the principal is usually the chief executive. McKinsey has the clearest public picture of the job. Its forums with more than 200 chiefs of staff, held over five years, and a 2024 podcast with senior partner Andrew Goodman describe the role the same way: it exists to make the principal as effective as possible.

The work can be administrative (calendars, paperwork, logistics) or strategic (shaping priorities, preparing decisions). Where it sits depends on the organization and on the relationship between the two people.

A 2020 Harvard Business Review article by Dan Ciampa, "The Case for a Chief of Staff," starts from one premise: leaders need more support than an executive assistant can give. An assistant handles the tasks you hand over. A chief of staff watches the whole flow of work around you.

In studio terms, an assistant books the studio for the olive-oil bottle shoot. A chief of staff notices that the shoot date leaves only two days before the client's catalogue deadline, and tells you before it becomes your problem.

Two duties take up much of a chief of staff's day.

Information flow (McKinsey also calls it "paper flow") means preparing and filtering what reaches the principal, including the material behind key decisions. Not everything gets through, and what does get through arrives ready to act on.

Air traffic control is Andrew Goodman's own phrase for managing the principal's workflow: keeping actions and activities moving in the right order so nothing collides.

Picture a Monday with 40 new emails. Among them: the olive-oil client asking whether the revised label will arrive before the shoot, a retoucher asking which version of the bottle file is current, a stock-library newsletter, and an automated invoice reminder. Filtering puts the label question and the retoucher's question in front of you and leaves the newsletter for later.

Air traffic control sees the order. The retoucher can't start until the client approves the selects, and the client can't approve until the review call on Thursday. So Thursday's call is the item that controls the whole week.

A chief of staff joins meetings so the principal arrives prepared, and keeps a record of what was said and agreed.

It also provides peripheral vision: being the principal's eyes and ears so there are no surprises. McKinsey notes that senior people tend to bring the boss only good news, so a good chief of staff also reports what is happening on the front line.

The third part is the calendar against the business cycle: lining up time with the cycles that drive the work. McKinsey suggests setting time aside weekly, if not daily, to scan the horizon and prepare for important events.

Apply it to the olive-oil job. Before Thursday's review call, someone scans the next two weeks and sees the catalogue print deadline. A prep note lists open questions. During the call, someone records that the client approved the stone setting but wants the cap darker. Afterwards, the recap goes out and the actions are tracked.

Peripheral vision is the second shooter saying, offhand, that the location's permit hasn't come through. Nobody would raise that as bad news, but you need to hear it before Thursday.

One chief of staff in McKinsey's forum held the principal to five or six priorities, split into outward-facing (clients, market) and inward-facing (how the operation runs). Everything else gets ranked against them.

Another kept a three-column list: now, soon and never. The never column records things that came up but won't be done. Writing them down means they aren't forgotten and don't come back as surprises. Say the olive-oil client floats an idea for a short video version and you decide not to take it on this season. It goes in "never" with the date, so it doesn't come back as something you supposedly promised.

Follow-through means tracking what was agreed until it's done. At a handover, a chief of staff also writes a plan that documents key past decisions. For a studio, that's the record of what the client approved and when.

McKinsey also describes the chief of staff as an adviser and sounding board who gives candid feedback and challenges the principal when that's appropriate.

The limits matter as much as the duties. McKinsey names several.

• It does not decide for the principal. Scope and decision rights (who may decide what) should be agreed explicitly at the start and revisited as the role changes.
• It does not blur whose voice is speaking. People answer a chief of staff because of borrowed halo authority, meaning the boss's standing rubs off on them. So the chief of staff must be clear about when it speaks for itself and when it speaks for the boss.
• It does not play politics. It sits with the leadership but stays independent of it.
• It does not isolate the principal. Guarding time is part of the job, but the principal shouldn't end up cut off.
• It does not make itself the story. One chief of staff told McKinsey the job is to make the principal look good, not yourself.

In a studio, the riskiest of these is deciding for you. If a client asks for a fourth review round, only you can say whether it's included, charged or declined.

A solo photographer or a studio of three has no chief of staff, yet the standing work is all there. Inquiries need sorting, shoots need scheduling, review rounds need consolidating, and releases, delivery specs and invoice reminders all need tracking. Usually you do it at 11 p.m., between exports.

In this course, you are the principal. Clients, assistants, retouchers and second shooters are the people around you: the ones who send information in and receive decisions back.

Over the next lessons you'll hand some of the chief of staff's standing work to an AI agent. The model fits because the human role already has the right shape: filter, sequence, prepare, record and follow through, without ever taking your seat. The same rule applies in every lesson: the agent prepares; you decide and send. That covers prices, approvals, emails to clients and every image decision.

Next lesson, you'll map these duties onto your own jobs, shoots and deliveries.