Interview with TribalScale’s Chief of Staff, Heather Page
Interviewed by: Alyssa Berbecaru, Marketing/Operations Coordinator, TribalScale
📫 Subscribe to receive our content here.
💬 Have any questions about our development capabilities? Click here to chat with one of our experts!
As the whirlwind year of 2020 started to wrap up and the tech industry started to pick up speed again, our CEO Sheetal Jaitly began searching for a Chief of Staff to add to his team.
In the search for TribalScale’s Chief of Staff, Heather Page steps in. Heather has an MBA from the Schulich School of Business, and has close to 10 years of experience in the tech industry in roles ranging from customer success, to marketplace management, and Chief of Staff. With Heather’s wide array of experience in professional services, entrepreneurship, and technology and we knew from the beginning that she would be an asset to the TribalScale team.
In late 2020, Sheetal met with Heather and they started to piece together a job description, including the development of a 30–60–90 day plan to overcome the obstacles that TribalScale was facing. Throughout this process, she also spoke with the other members of the leadership team to ensure company fit, as well as accuracy of the plan they were building. The resulting job description focused on her playing a key role in the operations team by developing accountability, and following up on company plans, goals, and strategies.
It was established that Heather would be focused mostly on relationship management for the team as a whole, as well as managing strategic partnerships and future opportunities. She would be Sheetal’s eyes and ears, pre-meditating shifts in staff and helping define hiring objectives.
In this interview, Heather answers key questions about her vital role as Chief of Staff.
The scope of the job
“The Chief of Staff is a sounding board for the CEO to bounce ideas off of without judgement or the cascading effect of that information not being flushed out.”
Being a Chief of Staff in a company with a COO or Director of Operations versus a company without that role defined (as is the case at TribalScale) is one of the main factors that determines what the role will look like. At TribalScale, because we don’t have a COO, Heather is able to keep most of those COO responsibilities within the CEO’s office. It means that her role as Chief of Staff is more hands on with the business, as opposed to a Chief of Staff that spends more time on moonshots, building partnerships, etc.
Being a smaller organization, Heather is able to get into the weeds and understand how the team is functioning, how we’re executing on project deliverables, etc. Her role allows her to dig deeper into the details than would be reasonably possible or even recommended for the CEO. And this allows Sheetal to get deep insights into how the business operates so that he can make informed strategic decisions.
Some challenges Heather was expecting
Balancing strategy
Heather knew it was going to be difficult to balance her work surrounding high-level strategy and being pulled into day-to-day details. She also knew that when making decisions she would need to prioritize long term thinking, rather than making quick and temporary fixes.
Understanding agile methodology and pair programming
To get the respect of the team, Heather would need to learn the ins and outs of TribalScale and our processes. She took the time to understand agile methodology and pair programming, their values points, how they work, and how they can benefit TribalScale’s partners. In the end, it wasn’t a huge learning curve as she had been working in an agile environment previously.
Coaching and people management
Providing the leadership team with feedback and coaching them on best practices for managing and leading their teams is an important part of Heather’s role. While she initially thought that her age would put her at a disadvantage, as she is sometimes coaching leaders that are more experienced than herself, she soon came to realize that her age gives her good insights into some of the more modern trends related to people management and team culture building. Having worked remotely long before COVID, she also has added experience in building culture remotely.
Some unexpected challenges
The number of meetings
When Heather first started, she found herself with a calendar packed full of Monday-to-Friday meetings. As she grew into the role, learned how the business operated, and started to familiarize herself with all the team cadences, she could start to prioritize her schedule and attend fewer process-related meetings.
Involvement in hiring
Heather has been playing a key role in hiring senior staff members since day one and immediately jumped into conversations and interviews that Sheetal was having with potential candidates. From the beginning of her time at TribalScale, she has been shaping our hiring process and bringing in a new dynamic of tools to help improve the interview process, especially when it comes to key senior positions.
How the Chief of Staff works with the rest of the team
Heather is constantly communicating with all members of the team here at TribalScale, not just senior leadership, and listening so that she can collect data. She has focused on implementing regular check-ins to understand how people work and what is not working for them. From these conversations she is able to bring insights to Sheetal that can be used to determine the best course of action for the company.
Heather also works closely alongside the leadership team and regularly communicates with our senior leaders including our Chief Revenue Officer, Rich Gigante, to discuss and understand business development; our VP of Product/Design, Krys Krycinski, for project operations; and our Director of Engineering, Jason Mills, for engineering perspectives and challenges.
Heather’s goals moving forward
This year Heather is focused on TribalScale’s strategic vision around professional services, and ensuring that the team is operating in line with our values of Challenge & Collaborate; Empowerment; Resilience; and Caring.
The challenges of hiring in the technology space has led to a rise in new software development agencies, often making promises to clients that they can’t keep. TribalScale’s mission is to Right the Future. As a consulting firm that brings together product, design, and engineering (including Test Engineering), TribalScale helps our client partners make strategic decisions not just about what to build, but how to build it, and how to hold their own vendors and partners accountable in the process. A big part of Heather’s focus this year is empowering the team with the right skills and information to have these challenging conversations with clients and ensure they get the value of our well-rounded expertise.
On the topic of remote work, Heather wants to continue to help make TribalScale’s remote work environment a reputable place to learn and grow. Remote work can sometimes be difficult for employees, and recruitment is a tough climate right now as we come out of the pandemic.
Final thoughts from Heather
“I am lucky to work with Sheetal because he’s incredibly open and forthcoming with information about his experiences and insights into leadership and team development. Not only does Sheetal have tons of experience in building technology companies, he has learned from many leaders who were early change makers in the tech industry. I’ve had the chance to develop an understanding of his thought process, which makes it that much easier for me to make judgment calls that I know he’ll agree with. And it also gives me advice and context to share to explain my decision making process when coaching the team.”
Alyssa is our Marketing/Operations Coordinator here at TribalScale. Her work is focused on streamlining marketing processes and activities, content creation and customer experience. Outside of work you can find her curled up with a good book or playing with her dog.
TribalScale is a global innovation firm that helps enterprises adapt and thrive in the digital era. We transform teams and processes, build best-in-class digital products, and create disruptive startups. Learn more about us on our website. Connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook!
