Hi {{first_name|there}},
This week we're featuring a new podcast with Sarah Kislak, who spent nearly a decade at Box going from executive assistant to Chief of Staff to product manager. It was a great conversation, and she shared a framework I keep coming back to: if you walked into an emergency room, what would you notice first? Your answer reveals a lot about how you naturally solve problems.
Also in this issue: global chapter launches in Brisbane and Sydney, a London and San Francisco mixer, plus two free hands-on AI workshops for operators.
🎧 If you walked into an emergency room, what would you notice first?
That's the question Sarah Kislak poses in this week's episode, and your answer says a lot about how you solve problems.
An operator walks in and sees inefficiencies. Three-hour wait times. Not enough staff at intake. Bad documentation between shifts. They want to make the system faster, more stable, more predictable.
A product manager walks in and asks a different question entirely. Why are all these minor cases clogging the ER in the first place? Maybe we need an urgent care zone. Maybe we need something upstream that helps people figure out if they even need to be here.
Neither lens is better than the other. But knowing which one you default to? That's powerful self-awareness, especially for a chief of staff trying to figure out what's next.
Sarah spent nearly a decade at Box, starting as an EA in a rotational program and eventually becoming Chief of Staff for a 1,000-person engineering org. From there, she made the leap to product management. Not because she was chasing a trendy title, but because she realized the problems she was most energized by looked a lot more like building than optimizing.
One thing she shared that really stuck with me: as a chief of staff, your ideas often come pre-approved. You're executing on decisions that already have air cover. As a PM, nothing is pre-approved. You have to create the conviction yourself. That shift can feel like a loss of power at first, but Sarah argues it's actually where the real growth happens.
She also drops a great format worth stealing if you’re working alongside other Chiefs of Staff at your org. A weekly "two-by-two" where both chiefs of staff and principals sit in one room to pressure-test cross-functional work together.
Worth a listen whether you're PM-curious or just want to sharpen how you think about your own problem-solving instincts.
🌏 Global Chapter Meetups
Brisbane Chief of Staff Network Chapter Launch
📅 Wednesday, March 18
📍 In-person
🔗 Register here
Sydney Chief of Staff Network Chapter Launch
📅 Wednesday, March 25
📍 In-person
🔗 Register here
London CoS Mixer
📅 Wednesday, March 18
📍 In-person
🔗 Join us
San Francisco Chief of Staff Mixer
📅 Wednesday, March 25
📍 In-person
🔗 RSVP
Singapore CoS Meetup & Fireside Chat
📅 Thursday, April 9
📍 In-person
🔗 Sign up
🤖 AI-Focused Sessions
Two practical AI workshops are coming up for operators who want to ship, not just theorize:
Building with AI: A Non-Technical Guide to Shipping Real Software
📅 Wednesday, March 18
📍 In-person
🔗 Details
How AI Agents Actually Get Work Done
📅 Thursday, March 26
📍 In-person
🔗 Learn more
And if you're ready to go deeper:
Chief of AI Fellowship
📅 Starting Thursday, April 2
🔗 Apply now
📚 Learning & Development
Chief of Staff Launchpad (May-June cohort)
📅 Starting Tuesday, May 5
🔗 Enroll
The March-April Launchpad cohort just kicked off on March 10, and we're already opening registration for the next cohort.
🌍 More Upcoming Events
best,
Scott
Founder, Chief of Staff Network & BizOps Network