Once more than one person supports a principal, the Office of the CEO has to be designed. Written mandates, single owners, and careful change keep it working.
An Office of the CEO is a team, and a team has to be designed. Office of the CEO roles and responsibilities need to be written down, because open scopes create crossover, inefficiency, and friction. Two people who both believe they own board preparation will either duplicate the work or let it fall between them, and the principal ends up refereeing their own support team. The Office of the CEO then does the opposite of what it was built to do.
Every seat should have a written mandate, a clear owner for each recurring output, and an agreed escalation path. That structure is what lets a small team move fast without colliding.
The outputs most often left with two owners, or none, are board preparation, investor updates, the principal’s external appearances, internal communications from the principal, and the principal’s personal affairs. Each should have one named owner, with the others listed as contributors.
The Blackbook Report 2026 groups recurring outputs by the kind of leverage they give the principal. Time protects the principal’s day for the decisions only they can make. Authority carries those decisions into the business. Information turns raw upstream input into material the principal can act on. Narrative shapes the principal’s voice and reputation, inside and out. Execution delivers outcomes that need a senior owner close to the principal.
An excerpt from the ownership matrix in The Blackbook Report 2026 for an illustrative four-seat team, the size of a larger coverage office:
EA refers to the Executive Assistant throughout the table below.
| Recurring output | Leverage | Owner | Contributors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calendar, access, and travel | Time | EA | Chief of Staff |
| The principal’s personal affairs | Time | EA | None |
| Operating cadence and decision follow-through | Authority | Chief of Staff | EA |
| The principal’s board preparation | Authority | Chief of Staff | EA, analyst, comms lead |
| Synthesis of upstream reporting | Information | Analyst | Chief of Staff |
| Briefing packs and meeting content | Information | Analyst | EA, Chief of Staff |
| The principal’s external appearances | Narrative | Comms lead | EA, Chief of Staff |
| Internal communications from the principal | Narrative | Comms lead | Chief of Staff |
| Transactions, integrations, and strategic initiatives | Execution | Chief of Staff | Analyst |
| The AI layer for the Office of the CEO | Execution | Chief of Staff | EA, analyst |
The pattern is clear. The Executive Assistant owns time, the Chief of Staff owns authority and execution, the analyst owns information, and the comms lead owns narrative. Where a seat does not exist, its column passes to the seat that covers it.
Team chemistry matters as much as individual capability. Good chemistry between two people is hard enough to find. A team of five or six operating under constant pressure around one principal is harder still.
Good chemistry means the team works well, shares information freely, and respects one another’s lanes. Poor chemistry means the team keeps breaking down and the principal ends up mediating.
Bad actors, whether political, territorial, or simply unable to work in a team, must be removed quickly. A single one degrades the whole function. Chemistry can be assessed before a hire: the candidate should meet the existing members of the team, and each of them should be asked one question. Would they trust this person with their part of the principal’s world if they were away for a month?
The Blackbook Report 2026 describes the undesigned Office of the CEO as more than one person supporting the principal with no written ownership. The signs usually appear in this order:
Any two together mean the operating model needs attention before any further hiring.
The Office of the CEO should have seasons. In a fast-growing business it should either adapt to new objectives or be reshaped for where the business is going next. The external, governmental, internal, and narrative demands on a principal shift as the firm grows, raises, restructures, or prepares for an exit.
The triggers are predictable: a fundraise or capital markets event, a change in the principal’s external visibility, a major acquisition or M&A program, a leadership transition below the principal, a change in ownership, and a decision to pursue an exit or IPO. Each changes what the team needs to be good at. A well-run Office of the CEO anticipates the shift.
Never keep a suboptimal person in the seat out of loyalty. Move them elsewhere in the business and upgrade the seat. Mistakes at this altitude can be seriously damaging, and the cost of a weak link compounds through everything the principal touches.
Equally, avoid rebuilding everything at once. Wholesale change creates political fallout, loses institutional memory, and produces exactly the inefficiency it was meant to fix. Change one seat at a time and let the team re-form around it.
In the ownership matrix in The Blackbook Report 2026, the Chief of Staff owns the principal’s board preparation, with the EA, the analyst, and the comms lead as contributors. Board preparation is one of the outputs most often left with two owners or none, so it should have one named owner written into the mandate.
The EA owns time: calendar, access, travel, and the principal’s personal affairs. The Chief of Staff owns authority and execution, including operating cadence and strategic initiatives. The analyst owns information, such as briefing packs and synthesis of upstream reporting. The comms lead owns narrative, including external appearances and internal communications.
Redesign at predictable triggers: a fundraise or capital markets event, a change in the principal’s external visibility, a major acquisition, a leadership transition below the principal, a change in ownership, or a decision to pursue an exit or IPO. Change one seat at a time and let the team re-form around it.
The full report includes the complete ownership matrix across all five kinds of leverage, and the most common hiring mistakes we see in the Office of the CEO.
Read the full report: The Blackbook Report 2026
If you are adding a seat or redesigning the team around your principal, we would be happy to talk.