Yorm Ackuaku came onto the podcast planning to argue that Chiefs of Staff own culture. By the time we hit record, she'd changed her mind, and where she landed is a sharper way to think about what this job actually controls.
🎙️ Who owns culture?
Yorm Ackuaku has spent more than a decade as a Chief of Staff, most recently to the CMO at WeightWatchers and before that at Vista and Citi. She supported four leaders through a run of leadership changes, and she came out of it with a clean view of who owns what. Leaders own the values, the priorities and the behavior everyone watches. HR owns the policies and the engagement measurement. The Chief of Staff owns the rhythm in between: the forums where questions get answered, and the cadence that keeps what a leader says this month consistent with what they said last month.
I'd argue that's the harder seat, because a rhythm can do damage without anyone noticing. Yorm is precise about what goes first.
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Culture rarely breaks down all at once. It kind of erodes through hundreds and hundreds of small moments. It's meetings getting quieter, fewer people challenging ideas, more side conversations, less willingness to experiment.
Yorm Ackuaku, former Chief of Staff to the CMO, WeightWatchers
None of that shows up on a dashboard, and all of it plays out in the meetings a Chief of Staff designs. In this episode, Yorm breaks down how she runs that rhythm: three team principles that turned into an all-hands so popular they had to turn people away, a compliance-training haiku that sent engagement through the roof, and the hundred-plus conversations she held in her first sixty days in one role. Her reasoning for that last one: "trust is what makes process work."
🚀 Launchpad: two days left to join the next cohort
If you're a new Chief of Staff, the only one in your org, or an operator already doing the work without the title, Launchpad is built for you. The next cohort runs October 14 to 15, with live office hours on October 16, and enrollment closes this Friday, October 9.
It's one intensive week designed around a day job: on-demand lessons, two live workshop days with faculty who've held the seat, and four modules covering the CoS operating system, strategic execution, influence and communication, and AI and your career. You finish with a capstone you take straight back to work: your own CoS Operating Plan.
Enrollment closes Friday, October 9.
🗽 Chief of Staff Connect: New York is two weeks out. October 22 to 23 at 151 West 42nd Street, with 150+ senior Chiefs of Staff. The full agenda and speaker lineup are live. 👉 See the agenda and get your ticket!
📅 Upcoming events
📍 This week
Next two weeks
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OCT
15
THU |
Chief of Staff AI Buildathon
Berlin · In person
Bring the workflow that eats your week and build the fix with peers at Ojin AIxHaus. |
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OCT
17
SAT |
Mumbai Chief of Staff Meetup
Mumbai · In person
The India chapter meets again, this time on how to make strategy travel across a complex organization. |
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Coming up
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NOV
19
THU |
Leading Without Authority
Virtual
Theresa Friend on building the influence to move work forward when nobody reports to you. |
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Yorm and I closed on a point I’m still thinking about: culture shows up most in moments of transformation, and teams are always watching.
If you're absorbing a lot of change right now, our October 29 roundtable with Victoria Farris, Leading Through Change, is a good place to talk it through (open to PRO members only).
