Chief of Staff (Mini COO)

Here’s an actual quote from a senior level Misen employee attending their first team meeting:

“That is probably the best all-staff meeting I've ever attended. Should be simple, but isn’t always. I'm rethinking my whole life now…”

So how do we get rave reviews about… a meeting? 

We are deliberate in all that we do. We start on time and end on time. We come prepared. Everyone is given time to voice their idea, opinion, or objection. We document what is discussed and decided during the meeting, so there’s no need for a meeting after the meeting. Or a pre-meeting. Or a side meeting. We make decisions. We own our areas of the business and report on them, transparently, with minimal effort. As wild as it sounds, many of us actually look forward to meetings.

What does this great-at-meetings company need now? A Chief of Staff to help us get even better as our growth accelerates.

What does it mean to be the Chief of Staff at Misen?

• Own resource allocation including people, capital, and time. If our finance team is our ref, then you’re our GM, looking simultaneously at today’s results and next year's forecast and allocating appropriately to maximize free cash flow over the long term.

• Participate in strategic decision making as an equal partner. This is unlike most Chief of Staff roles and a critical part of who we are, leading to pull VS push management.

• Drive digital improvements in both frontend and backend processes.

• Help employees take calculated risks while maintaining guardrails to minimize downside. 

• Apply our operating playbook to other companies. We expect to acquire two companies in the home space in the next two years and will be layering our process and systems on top of those organizations with you taking the lead.
  
  

To do this, you will need to:

• Be able to zoom in and out quickly. This has proven to be a highly effective strategy for Misen, making us a bad fit for anyone who can’t switch gears quickly or who doesn’t know (or have a desire to know) the details.

• Ask and demonstrate “show me” instead of “tell me.” We share data directly in native platforms instead of orphaned and doctored up in slide decks or spreadsheets. This is not how most companies operate, and this mindset shift helps avoid miscommunication, reduces translation time, and dramatically improves insights.

• Ability to motivate. While you will have no direct reports in this role initially, it is critical that you know how to motivate a team, drive outcomes with metrics, and celebrate success.

• Technical or desire to be technical, somewhere between dangerous with Zapier and writing Python.
  
  

We think you will need:

• 1-3 years in a strategy role at MBB or similar tackling a variety of subjects. Experience in solving hard problems in previously unknown fields is key. You once had to become an expert in field-scale crop water consumption estimates in 45 days? Perfect.

• 1+ years of experience directly or indirectly managing multidisciplinary teams supporting a consumer brand with omnichannel distribution

• 1+ years contributing strategy, GTM, or implementation with a finance, sales, or marketing focus driving $50M+ in annual revenue.

• To be fun and a good human being. We’re going to spend more time with each other than our significant others, making this a critical need. Off-the-charts confidence is great, ego is not.

• A deep understanding of technology or a burning desire to learn. Software remains the most efficient way to free up our time to be creative and strategic; it is critical that you understand it intimately or have the capacity to do so.

Rigid lists never work when hiring, so if you have some or even none of these but think you’re a fit, we want to hear from you. 

Is this the right opportunity for you?

• At Misen, your authority will always exceed your responsibility. We rely on defined processes to catch our mistakes, but push all employees to take intelligent risks in an effort to continuously improve customer experience. You must be comfortable taking risks and owning both successes and failures, turning the latter into opportunities to build for a better outcome in the future.

• We achieve great results by remaining informed and moving fast, which does not create a “comfort zone” in this or any position. You must be ready to trade comfort for continuous improvement and the satisfaction it produces both for our customers and ourselves.