THE COUL & GOLD BRIEFING · EDITION 22 · 21 JULY 2026
The Chief of Staff role has communities, courses, and certifications. What it still lacks is the condition judgement1 actually needs: an honest read of how you operate, and somewhere to work on it against consequences you own.
A CFO belongs to a profession with a century of infrastructure behind it. Peer bodies, technical standards, a dozen other people who have done the job to call when something does not add up.
You have a certificate.
That is roughly the state of professional development for the role with the widest view of an organisation after the person running it.
Most of what is sold as Chief of Staff development is built for people who do not hold the role yet. Courses to become one, playbooks for the first ninety days. Step through the door into the actual job and the market thins to two shapes: certify or convene. A credential to put after your name. A few days in a room, out of the operating rhythm, working through case studies about other people's organisations.
Some of that earns its keep. Networks matter, and so does time out of the rhythm to think. But none of it develops the thing the role runs on.
Judgement does not develop in the abstract. It develops when your reading of a situation is tested against consequences you own, in front of people who know your terrain well enough that a tidy version of events will not survive contact.
And there is a precondition even that depends on: an accurate read of where you actually are. So where would yours come from?
Your executive is not calibrated against a standard. They are calibrated against their own needs. If you are useful to them, you are doing well, which is not the same as knowing how you operate.
Your leadership team each see one facet of your work, from inside their own domain, and only the visible facets at that. And the work that matters most stays invisible by design: the drift you caught early, the conflict that never happened, the decision that did not wobble. None of it shows, until the day it fails.
You cannot develop against measures like these. Not because the will is missing, but because the information is. The blind spots stay blind, because nothing in the format examines them.
So improvement in this role needs two things the role structurally denies it. An honest external read of how you are operating. And somewhere to work on what it shows, because a read without the development that follows is just a report.
So we built it.
The Chief of Staff Operating Program is both halves, built together. It begins with an independent read: a diagnostic of how you are operating across the twelve capabilities the role turns on, built to find the blind spots the seat hides from you. Not a performance review. Not a 360 run by the system you already sit inside. An outside reading of you, measured against a standard rather than one executive's needs.
Then twelve weeks of working on what it finds. A cohort of no more than twelve Chiefs of Staff, over three months, on the specific gaps the read turns up in each of them and across the group. There is not a course with a fixed syllabus, it is fully bespoke to the people inside the room. The work runs on your own organisation, in real time, against consequences you own, in front of a small group who know the terrain well enough to test your reading of it. Which is the one condition judgement needs, and the one the rest of the market cannot manufacture.
It is led directly by the two of us. Not facilitators, not a platform, not a workbook. The people who built the framework and have lived the role, reading the room week by week.
Never, and nowhere.
When did you last get an independent read on how you operate, and where would you have taken it if you had one? If the answer is never, and nowhere, you are in the majority. It is a problem, and now a solvable one.
If you are in the role, the founding cohort is open now. The full details are here:
And if you work beside a Chief of Staff rather than sitting in the seat yourself, send them this. It was written for them.
Suzi Coul
The Coul & Gold Group
© 2026 The Coul & Gold Group · coulandgold.com
1 Rachael just wants to acknowledge that because Suzi wrote this as a Brit, she’s spelled judgment incorrectly (aka the British way). We hope you enjoy this post regardless.
