We've Never Been in the Same Room

THE COUL & GOLD BRIEFING · ISSUE Nº 32 · SEPTEMBER 29, 2026

The first Coul & Gold Briefing went out on Thursday 26^th March, and six months felt like a good time to look back, look forward, and also remind ourselves why we are doing this.

The vast majority of you joined us after that time, and we are very grateful that so many of you are interested in our views, thoughts, and the occasional rant. (We don’t fully understand it, but we are, indeed, very grateful.)

So, here it is, my six-month reflection. (And Rachael’s editorial commentary is in italics because I just couldn’t resist.)

I don’t want to dwell too much here, because I expect that you’re not here by chance, that you have met one or both of us, have come across us via our writing on LinkedIn,* or are a friend who is showing us some moral support. (I really thought she was only going to link to her writing on LinkedIn. It’s what I would’ve done. But she’s a lot more diplomatic than I am.)

The short version, for anyone who hasn’t come across us: Rachael started her career in the West Wing supporting White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, then held the Chief of Staff title at the Gates Foundation and, as a founding member, at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, before moving into high-growth startups. I spent nearly two decades across senior government, elected office and the commercial sector, and at the peak of my political career was Chief of Staff to a UK Deputy Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor.

Even though Rachael and I are fully aligned on the big picture, we both approach it from very different perspectives and directions. We have different experiences, different strengths, different spelling (I’m right and she isn’t. Because organization has a “z” sound. It’s unmistakable. The British are wrong yet again.), but those differences put together just work. Rachael has said publicly that this has been the most productive professional partnership she has ever experienced. I feel very lucky, and the feeling is mutual. (Notice the subtle difference. I hang it all out on my sleeve like someone from Philly would, and she’s all buttoned-up and measured in her agreement.)

If you are ever interested, or suffer from insomnia, we have a newish YouTube channel where we discuss everything and anything. No script. Rarely a plan, and even on the odd time we have one, I can promise you that we pretty much ignore it. (The plans never work. She tried to give us a loose script, and we ended up talking about documents. And not the rom-com kind. It really was like a non-habit-forming version of Ambien.)

A question we ask almost daily, usually alongside the one questioning our sanity, but we both feel that we are doing this for the right reasons.

We are doing this because we want leadership to work better: for the organisation, for the leaders themselves, and for everyone who works with them. (And we want to change the spelling of “organization,” so the Brits spell it correctly.)

Good leadership shows up in the numbers, but that is not the only place. It shows up in whether teams trust the decisions that reach them, whether good people stay, and what it actually feels like to work somewhere that values its employees on any normal day. When leadership works, the whole organisation feels it. When it doesn't, the people furthest from the top usually feel it most.

The Chief of Staff is one of the most direct levers an organisation has on the quality of its leadership, and it is also one of the most misread roles going. Misdiagnosed, misunderstood and misapplied, quite often all three at once.

The thing people get wrong is thinking the role changes from one seat to the next. It doesn’t. The organisation around it does. Most of what gets written about the job takes one organisation’s version of it, lists the tasks, and calls that the definition. So, job descriptions get copied from someone else’s task list, the role gets confused with executive support or treated as the next rung up from an EA, and perfectly capable people get judged against whatever their predecessor happened to do. (Or, worse, they get evaluated against Bob’s chief of staff down the hall who sounds like a freaking unicorn because she’s “just so amazing.”) If you want the longer version, (and the correct definition that should be the definitive one, if I do say so myself) we wrote it in The Chief of Staff, Defined.

When that happens, the organisation loses the thing the role is actually for. I have always thought of the Chief of Staff as the organisation’s omniscient narrator: (she only thinks that because that’s my line!) the person who knows every nook, cranny and fallibility of the place, and whose job, on the days that matter most, is to stop a colossally stupid decision before it leaves the room. Most days it is firefighting and triage, a lot of it invisible, with authority that is real but rarely written down. (Please, can we stop saying the chief of staff has no authority only influence? Because as Suzi rightfully pointed out in an earlier edition, you can’t have influence without authority. It doesn’t work.) You won’t find that in a job description, and most organisations don’t build the role to support it. So, the cost lands on the person in the seat first, then on the leader they work with, and then on everyone downstream of that leader’s decisions.

We think this is fixable, and we think it is a structural fix, not a question of personality or chemistry. So, we define the role properly, we measure whether people are ready for it, and we build what a Chief of Staff needs once they are in the seat. Get the role right and the leadership around it gets better. (And the employees are happier. And they stay instead of abandoning ship at the exact worst moment. Additionally, the company thrives. Suzi has a whole fascinating theory that chiefs of staff can make companies more financially sound and viable. You should ask her about that.)

That is what this newsletter is for. It is also, and I won’t pretend otherwise, what we sell. (Yes, because as my husband is quick to remind me, we have a child and we need to feed him.)

So, I said we launched this newsletter at the end of March, but that is not everything that has happened.

In April we had the pilot of the Chief of Staff Readiness Assessment, and the feedback from that and every single one done since has enabled us to build a robust, and helpful, diagnostic to answer the question of, “Do I have the wiring for this role?” (Suzi’s being modest here. For those who were employed, every person who started with the entry assessment went on to do the full assessment because they found it so valuable and informative.)

Then came a set of free tools. The JD Architect, where you can either build a CoS job description or evaluate a current JD. The quick wiring test, a free first look for aspiring CoS. And the meeting tool.

Last week the pilot cohort for the Chief of Staff Operating Program met for the first time. This is a development programme for those already in the role. (Like, do we really need the extra “me” at the end of program? No, we do not.)

Add to that the website, which Rachael deserves full credit for, and which I think looks amazing. (Claude Code deserves some of the credit, too.) And our Advisory service, for one-to-one challenges, transitions and development, with the added bonus that you can draw on the expertise of both of us, no matter who is leading the work.

Six months in reality is a really short space of time, but I can say that it has felt so much longer because of everything that we have done in that time. (Also, because we haven’t slept very much. She has four dogs, and I have a toddler. Ask me who is more certifiable. Hint: it’s not me.) So much so that I am constantly having to remind us that it has only been a few months.

The thing that surprises many people is that we have not actually met in person. We have built all of this across an ocean and a five-hour time difference, on video calls, shared documents and a WhatsApp thread that will never be made public.

That changes in October at Chief of Staff Network: Connect New York, where we will be in the same room for the first time (technically we will meet the day before, when we both arrive in the city). We will also be on stage together, no pressure there! (None whatsoever. Come for the popcorn and stay to see whether I say something wildly out of order that Suzi will have to walk-back live in the moment.)

The Chief of Staff Network has asked us to join Scott Amenta on the main stage for a fireside chat. The session is called Defining the Senior Chief of Staff: what separates a senior Chief of Staff from a capable one, and how the job changes as you grow into it. The conference runs 22-23 October at 151 West 42nd Street in Midtown, under the theme "From Force Multiplier to Builder."

If you have been meaning to go, this is your nudge. This code takes 25% off Regular Admission:

I am under strict instruction to only share Rachael’s code, which tells you a lot about our dynamic. We are both uber competitive, but I need to give Rachael the win sometimes. (She’ll tell me off for that, and she’ll be right.) If you feel strongly, mine is SUZI_COSCNY25. (Ok, first of all, I’m the one who has to load all of these newsletter editions into the platform we use which is more often than not a complete nightmare. So, it seemed only fair that I got to put my code in. Am I competitive? You’re damn right I am. Because who doesn’t like to win?)

If you're coming, reply to this email and let's find each other.

We will also have something new to announce from that stage. It is for Chiefs of Staff who are already in the seat and want an honest answer about how they are doing in it. That's all we'll say for now, so watch this space.

Something I am very proud to talk about right now is the CoS Vault.

Rachael has built the Vault, and I don’t say this lightly, it is absolutely amazeballs. (I’m completely convinced she keeps saying that I’m the one who built it so when it falls flat on its face and no one buys it, I’ll have to wither under the crushing blow of failure. Me, dramatic? Never! In need of a consistent schedule for therapy? Always!)

It exists because many Chiefs of Staff are the first their organisation has ever had. There are no peers to ask, no predecessor's files, and no agreed expectations. So, they build everything from scratch, usually in a hurry and often while something is on fire. Every minute spent building a document is an hour not spent doing the work the document was meant to support. (And, sure, Claude can build something in ten seconds’ flat. But to the surprise of no one, we’ve found them lacking.)

If you are a full-time Chief of Staff going into a new seat, the Full-Time Vault means you don't have to build your operating infrastructure while everyone watches to see if you know what you're doing. If you are a fractional Chief of Staff standing up a new client, there is a separate Fractional Vault that gives you a tested starting point for every engagement, so the first month is devoted to the client’s specific needs rather than to templates.

Between the two libraries there are 74 documents and tools, built by Rachael from practice across both our careers, including the White House, the House of Commons, and the Gates Foundation. Every playbook comes in two editions. The Member Edition explains each part with a worked example, so you are never guessing what goes in a box. The Executive Edition is the clean, fillable version you complete and hand over. Each one is built to be downloaded, filled in and used the same day. We update them regularly, and every change is dated in the changelog.

One Vault is $495 a year. Both are $895. Doors open on 1 October at 10am Eastern.

We'll see some of you in New York. The rest of you can expect a full report afterwards.

— Suzi (and Rachael)

One voice from inside the role. One from the blueprints. Same mission.