Chief of Staff
What can an AI chief of staff do for a CEO who can't yet hire one?
the Office of the CEO
Who buys, and why.
- → The CEO is the bottleneck. Every thread the founder personally holds is a thread the company waits on, every decision queued behind one inbox, every commitment chased by memory.
- → A human chief of staff costs $150k-$300k and is out of reach for most SMEs. The function is not. What was a senior hire is now an interim team.
- → It is the same synthesis-and-follow-through work that devours executive weeks, now performed with a job description, a manager and a record, not a $35-a-month assistant nobody manages.
The roles.
Composed from the competency library. A Strategist seat and a Governance seat ship as standard.
| Role | The job | Ceiling | Headline KPI | Readiness |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cadence Lead | Runs the weekly leadership rhythm. Writes the Monday Report, chases every commitment, surfaces what is slipping before it slips. | A2 (read) | Commitment follow-through rate | Proven |
| Briefing Analyst | Pre-read packs before every meeting, board-deck first drafts, market and competitor scans, long-document synthesis with sources. | A2 (read) | Briefings shipped, on time, true | Proven |
| Inbox & Diary Chief | Triage, drafted replies for approval, routing. Defends deep-work time, schedules and preps every meeting. | A1 | CEO hours reclaimed | Standard |
| Follow-through Chaser | Tracks every action item across the company, nudges owners, escalates blockers. Nothing goes quiet. | A1 | Open actions closed on time | Standard |
| Memory Keeper | Holds the vault: decisions, owners and context, so nothing is re-litigated. Answers "what did we decide about X?" | A1 | Decisions logged and retrievable | Standard |
| Comms Scribe | Drafts talking points, investor updates, all-hands notes and internal comms in the CEO's calibrated voice. | A1 | Approved drafts per week | Proven |
The autonomy ceiling, stated plainly
The Office of the CEO prepares, synthesises, chases and remembers. It does not decide, commit the company, sign anything or act outside caps enforced in code. The CEO keeps every decision; the team owns the orchestration and the preparation that used to eat the calendar. Authority is capped in code, not by trust, and revocable in sixty seconds.
The wedge.
The two most sellable seats sit here. The Cadence Lead, because a Monday Report and a follow-through rate are measurable in week one. And the Inbox & Diary Chief, because reclaimed CEO hours are felt the first week, not argued in a slide. Both are baseline-friendly and regulation-light: persistence, drafting and synthesis, performed with a personnel file and a manager.
Questions buyers ask.
Will it make decisions for me? +
No. The team prepares, synthesises, chases and remembers; you decide. Drafts come to an approval queue, synthesis comes with sources, and authority is capped in code, not left to trust. You are never one bad output away from a committed mistake.
Is my most sensitive information safe? +
Per-client isolation by design; the team works with its own scoped identities, never yours; every action is logged and attributable; access is revocable in sixty seconds. The vault is yours and fully portable to you.
How is this different from a $35-a-month AI assistant? +
A tool is something you manage, integrate and judge yourself, with no job description, no manager and no record, exactly the unmanaged AI that fails quietly. GRABS places a managed team on a fixed term, with a Monday Report, a 30/60/90 review and a measured track record. You buy staffing, not software.
How is it priced? +
Like staffing, anchored to the day rate of the human interim equivalent. Fixed term, defined outcomes, no per-seat fees and no employment overhead. Anchors are published when set.
See if you are ready for the Office of the CEO.
Two minutes, ten questions. Then book a scoping call to compose the team against your calendar and your commitments.