The CEO’s Secret Weapon: How Great Leaders and Their Assistants Maximize Productivity and Effectiveness

Praise for The CEO’s Secret Weapon

As my executive assistant, Jan managed my ever-changing calendar, voluminous correspondence, and all contacts with the public at large. Because I travel constantly, I counted on her to act as my personal representative to the public, media, and corporate office. In a typical day, she spoke to the most influential people in the world, including our clients, who always felt special because of her genuine and professional manner.

—Tony Robbins, Author, Entrepreneur, and

Peak Performance Strategist

As Jan Jones’ assistant at the Tony Robbins organization, I was the direct beneficiary of the invaluable advice she shares in this book. From Jan I learned to remain calm and professional even under extreme pressure. The pressure was on her but she made me feel an integral part of the Chairman’s office. Because of my experience working with Jan, I was later able to confidently step into my role of directly assisting Tony. In other words, I owe her a lot.

—Veronique Franceus, former assistant to Jan Jones and

Tony Robbins; Associate Learning Specialist, R&D Learning,

Bristol-Myers Squibb

Jan holds herself to the highest standards. Her values are evident in the way she runs her own business. She’s written this book so others can benefit from her actionable strategies, ideas, and tips. I am one of Jan’s biggest fans. Read her book now so that the results she creates for her clients will be yours.

—Michael Hutchison, Host, Dunn & Bradstreet TV show

CredibilityLIVE

"Jan Jones has produced a compelling reason for executives to read her book and then follow her advice. The stories, examples, and research she reveals explains in detail the best way for executives to dramatically get more done, increase their results, and improve their productivity. And they can do all of this in less time by leveraging their tasks and letting go of activities they shouldn’t be doing. The CEO’s Secret Weapon convincingly proves that hiring and retaining the right executive assistant is one of the most practical and powerful things a CEO or business owner can do. Jan Jones explains the why, helps determine the right criteria, and even delves into how to interview, hire, and train the best right arm person for an executive. It’s down-to-earth, practical, and an honest look at a good thing to do."

—Doug Carter, President,

Carter International Training & Development

This book is a master class in how to lift and leverage the vital yet often overlooked relationship between leaders and the great people who support them to be their consistent best. It’s about creating the winning synergy, support, and savvy that can transform your business and life. I’ve benefited greatly from Jan’s sage insight on this topic and am thrilled she’s now sharing her mastery with the world.

—Matthew Cross, Fortune 100 Strategist & CEO,

LeadershipAlliance.com

The CEO’s Secret Weapon

How Great Leaders and Their

Assistants Maximize Productivity

and Effectiveness

Jan Jones

THE CEO’S SECRET WEAPON

Copyright © Jan Jones, 2015.

All rights reserved.

First published in 2015 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®

in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN: 978-1-137-44423-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jones, Jan, 1955–

The CEO’s secret weapon : how great leaders and their assistants maximize productivity and effectiveness / by Jan Jones.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-137-44423-3

 1. Administrative assistants. 2. Office management. 3. Leadership. I. Title.

HF5547.J66 2015

651.3—dc232015010484

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.

First edition: September 2015

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Ron

My Secret Weapon

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1 What an Exceptional Assistant Can Do for You

Chapter 1 Your Executive Assistant Is Your Secret Weapon and Business Partner

Chapter 2 What Is an Executive Assistant, and Why Do You Need One?

Part 2 Crucial Characteristics of an Exceptional Executive Assistant and Why They Should Matter to You

Chapter 3 Your Ultimate PR Person

Chapter 4 Your High-Performance Administrator

Chapter 5 Your Expert at Execution—Getting Things Done

Part 3 Hiring an Exceptional Executive Assistant

Chapter 6 Getting Started: Identifying Your Needs

Chapter 7 The Interview: Identifying the Exceptional Assistant

Part 4 How to Set Things Up: Laying the Groundwork for Maximum Productivity and Effectiveness

Chapter 8 Great Leaders Are Accessible and Constantly Build a Relationship with Their Assistant

Chapter 9 Great Leaders Relinquish Unnecessary Functions

Chapter 10 Great Leaders Give Assistants the Resources They Need

Chapter 11 Great Leaders Communicate

Chapter 12 Great Leaders Treat the Assistant as a True Professional

Conclusion The Future of the Executive and Assistant Relationship: Are You Up for It?

Notes

Recommended Resources

Bibliography

Index

Foreword

When Jan Jones asked me if I’d be willing to write a foreword for this book, I didn’t hesitate. I am willing to share my perspective not because it is a nice thing to do, or because it is a good tribute to my Executive Assistant of 24 years. I agreed to share my thoughts because of the immense value and importance I place on my Executive Assistants who, in my world, are true business partners.

I arrived in Silicon Valley in 1991 to take on a position with Cisco Systems as their Senior Vice President of World Wide Sales and Operations. While I was new to California, I was not new to sales and not naive to the critical role an Executive Assistant plays.

My expectations for what I needed in a support role seemed, at first, to be lost on the Cisco recruiter I was working with. They kept sending me applicants that I felt were strictly secretarial in nature and average at best. These were not unqualified candidates—any one of them that I interviewed certainly could have done my expense reports and answered phones; however, my expectations were much higher. I was looking for an Executive Assistant who could be strategic in their thinking, who could connect dots and connect people, who could think three steps ahead and anticipate what would be needed, and who could read me and anticipate what I would do and think. I was interviewing my seventeenth candidate (much to my recruiter’s dismay) when Debbie Gross came along. Upon meeting her, I knew right away that she had the skills I was looking for and our chemistry was a match. I didn’t need much time to even think about it. The day she interviewed with me was the day I made her an offer. Now, 24 years later—20 years of which I have been CEO—Debbie has been my right hand throughout my Cisco career.

Trust is such an important factor for any true partnership. From our first day together, I let her know that my office, files, and everything in my business life were hers to manage and that I had complete trust in her capabilities. But like any relationship, it needs time to grow and develop. Not everything was easy for either one of us in the early years. I am a very fast-paced individual who moves quickly from one thing to the next, including traveling almost three weeks out of any given month. That alone was a challenge for Debbie in terms of getting to know me, my preferences, and my overall business needs. But with time, she began to know me better than I sometimes know myself.

As CEO in a dynamic industry, priorities and schedules are constantly shifting. One of my requirements for my Executive Assistant is to remain flexible at all times, knowing I might change something or move in a different direction in a heartbeat. Debbie has this mastered and shares with me that she now makes it a point not to expect things to always go the way they have been planned. When Debbie remains calm in a fast-paced changing environment, it helps me remain that way as well. We even use a private signal, a touch on the shoulder, which we give to each other when one of us notices the other is becoming a bit stressed. This brings about an awareness that we are running hard, as I like to say two wheels off the ground, and it is vital as a team that she and I be seen as calm, confident and in control among our employees.

One of Debbie’s goals I appreciate the most is her constant desire to understand the business and more specifically my priorities— asking me questions when she wants clarity on how I think, where I’m focused, and where to place her attention. Because of this curiosity, I count on her to use excellent judgment and make informed decisions for me and my office. Because we have been partners for so long, she has an uncanny knack of connecting dots, even when it is not clear how one piece of business coincides with another. Her ability to have that radar has been extremely beneficial time and time again. Equally beneficial is her ability to think three steps ahead.

Debbie is excellent at being the filter that knows what is appropriate for me to be involved with and what is able to be deflected and handled another way. When I travel, or even just on any given day in the office, I know and trust that she has scheduled me appropriately, with the right people, at the right time, for the right reasons. This alone has allowed me to be extremely productive and focused on the important things a CEO needs to be focused on.

She is also my eyes and ears of the organization. I often rely on her to tell me what the employees are feeling, how the organization seems to be functioning, or how she feels I am doing. As a CEO, we are often surrounded by people who will tell us what they think we want to hear, not always what we need to hear. But I can always count on her to be candid with her comments to me. She knows my innermost strengths and limitations, and she remains a trustworthy confidant that I can rely on. That is really important as a CEO and leader, given that it can be quite lonely at the top.

Debbie’s humility and compassion are some of her best qualities and are ones I find to be essential in her role. She builds great rapport with everyone we come in contact with internally and externally, from the board level all the way to the janitorial staff. She has also developed a world-class Executive Administrative team, both for me and for the rest of the company. She is seen as a top leader and spokesperson in the administrative community, and this is something I have great respect for. She has a network of strong relationships, which not only earns her great respect from my CEO peers, Cisco’s executives, and the administrative community, but also makes her extremely effective in getting things done.

Debbie literally runs my life from a business perspective and is seen as an extension of me. As in any partnership, we have certainly had our ups and downs, misunderstandings, and challenges; however, we have grown stronger because of it. I firmly believe we are true business partners and friends, and I am proud of our accomplishments together as a team. I could not do this job without her. I believe every leader needs to be thoughtful and strategic in their choice of an Executive Assistant. The right partner is a true strategic advantage and a critical success factor for any leader in today’s rapidly moving and complex business environment.

JOHN CHAMBERS

Executive Chairman

Former Chief Executive Officer

Cisco Systems, Inc.

Acknowledgments

Inever expected that writing acknowledgments would be so hard. After all, I just want to say thank you, so why is it so difficult to find the words?

I started this project a few years after I left my position as executive assistant to Tony Robbins, the author and peak performance strategist. But growing a new business usurped much of my time and the book kept ending up on the back burner for years, despite my husband’s constant inquiry of how’s that book coming?

One day, I mentioned to Chester Elton, the New York Times best-selling author, who is very popular with my clients, about my book’s start-stop journey. Shortly thereafter, he called to say he’d talked to the Executive Editor, Laurie Harting, at publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, about the book and she was interested in the project. Laurie and I connected, a contract was signed, and I was committed. No more back burners for this book. My first round of thanks goes to Chester, for his thoughtfulness, and to Laurie, for guiding and educating me with a gentle hand. Chester and his coauthor, Adrian Gostick, have been overwhelmingly generous to me, always finding time to offer advice and encouragement. To my editor, Shawn, thank you for your encouragement, responsiveness, and commitment to getting me across the finish line.

My deep gratitude to Mr. John Chambers, the Executive Chairman of Cisco Systems for agreeing to write the Foreword to this book. He has painstakingly encapsulated the sentiment and message of the book to perfection, using his long-running relationship with his dynamite assistant, Debbie Gross, to demonstrate the value of the executive-assistant relationship and why it is something worth cultivating. Debbie, you are exceptionalism personified and a true representation of the exceptional executive assistant I write about in this book.

Dr. Ken Blanchard not only gave me time at his office but also invited me to his home, where I spent many hours in the company of this compassionate and generous man. A special thank you to his long-time assistant, Dana Kyle, whom I’ve known since my days with Tony Robbins. Getting me so much face time with Dr. Blanchard was all her doing.

Greg Renker and Pat Shepherd at Guthy-Renker, you have been supportive and generous all along. You have given me mountains of encouragement and cheered me on. My deepest thanks to you. Greg introduced me to Dan Kennedy. Dan has high-paying executives lining up for months to speak with him. Because of Greg, I was granted immediate access to Dan. Sharing all the insights Dan gave me would be a book in itself.

Thank you to all the superb assistants who interviewed with me, checked in on my progress, and continually wished me well. Your contributions have made this book possible. Thank you to all the executives who generously gave me their valuable time. Even though I’m sure they did it to showcase their exceptional assistants, of whom they are justifiably proud, I am truly honored that such important and busy executives saw the value of participating in this book.

Numerous people interviewed with me whose names don’t appear in the book. How I wish I could reveal to you who they are, not only because many comprise a who’s who of assistants to the world’s top executives but also because they deserve recognition for the outstanding support they provide to their executives day in and day out. Alas, confidentiality agreements and company policies conspire to keep them anonymous, so they will remain unnamed, but will always have my gratitude.

For unrelenting follow-up on my behalf, thank you to Jessica Alfonsi, Meredith McIver, Jim Blasingame, Adam Fidler, Lyn Stenftenagel, Penni Pike, and Gail Abrahamsen. To Victoria Rabin and Lucy Brazier, thank you for the introduction to some very special assistants. Thank you to my dear friends and fellow professionals, Matthew Cross, Barbara Lehman, Judy Arnold, Michael Hutchinson, Doug Carter, Theresa Biggerstaff, Veronique Franceus, Lorraine Ryan, Suzanne Kelly, and Gayle Atherton, who contributed valuable suggestions and championed me throughout this process.

Love and thanks to my husband, Ron, for lovingly offering common-sense input and guidance, even when I was strongly resisting it. Thanks to my sister, Cheryl, and her family for their love and support. Gratitude and love to my parents, for giving me strong values, a solid work ethic, and for teaching me to always be dependable. I use these lessons in my life and work every day.

And thank you to you, dear readers. I’m passionate about the role the exceptional executive assistant plays in the life of the executive and the business in which they work. I want this book to give you insight into the psyche of this special breed of individuals and the vital role they play in helping to make their executive more effective.

Introduction

The Persistent Assistant Who Helped Launch an Unprecedented Cultural Revolution

Her name was Marion Keisker. She was the tireless assistant and office manager to Sam Phillips, who owned and operated Sun Records.

One busy Saturday afternoon in July 1953, a shy young man came into the Sun Records office at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis, to record a couple of songs. Marion told him he’d have to wait for her boss to return to make the recording. While waiting, she struck up a conversation with him.

What kind of singer are you? she asked.

I sing all kinds, he said.

Who do you sound like? she asked.

I don’t sound like nobody, he said.¹

Marion went back to her work, but when she had a little break, she decided to go ahead and record the young man herself. He got set up in the studio at the microphone and started to record. Marion would say later,

About halfway through the first side, I got a very strange feeling. I can almost literally say that the hair began to prickle on the back of my neck, which is a very strange sensation, a very exciting sensation and although we never kept copies of any personal records that were made of that sort, I grabbed up a tape that was handy, an old paper tape and put it on our Ampex machine and started it. But the thing that I noticed particularly was a Negro feel to his voice, a Negro quality to his voice, and suddenly I remembered Sam saying on many occasions that if he could ever find a white man who sang like a Negro, he could make a million dollars.²

The young man took the acetate recording home, apparently as a gift for his mother. Marion took down his address and telephone number so that she could get in touch with him, and wrote across the paper: ELVIS PRESLEY. GOOD BALLAD SINGER. SAVE.

This is how Marion Keisker recalled her first meeting with Elvis Presley in an interview she gave to BBC Radio 2 for one of their Sold on Song Top 100 episodes.

Elvis returned to Sun Records in 1954 to make another recording. In Sam Phillips’ own words, he didn’t think the young man really had the kind of voice he needed for his purposes. Basically, he had a beautiful voice, Phillips recalled. In fact, too beautiful.³

As Sun received dubs for new songs and looked for artists to perform them, Marion got in the habit of saying to Phillips, How about the boy with the sideburns?⁴

Phillips said that with Elvis it wasn’t going to be easy. Until July 5, 1954. That was the day when Elvis, guitarist Scotty Moore, and bassist Bill Black recorded That’s All Right Mama. It was an instant smash when disk jockey Dewey Phillips played it on the radio in Memphis.

It would be trite to say that the rest is rock and roll history. In fact, Elvis’ music ushered in a cultural revolution that swept the world and inspired the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, and virtually all the famous rock and pop musicians today. Elvis’ music crossed cultural barriers and eventually paved the way for a whole host of black artists to gain popularity with white audiences. Today, we don’t give this a second thought. But in the 1950s, it was nothing short of revolutionary.

We give the credit to Elvis for changing the face of popular music and culture, which he did. But Elvis himself gave credit to Marion Keisker for discovering him. She recognized in him what her boss had repeatedly said he was looking for.

Marion, it seems, knew what Sam Phillips was looking for before he knew it himself. She had the foresight to keep Elvis’ name and address. She was persistent in putting Elvis’ name up as a singer when songs came in. Today, the Sun Record Company website states, Years later, Elvis would be quick to remind anyone who would ask that it was in fact Marion Keisker, not Sam Phillips, who saw his potential.⁵ Through her persistence, Elvis finally got his big break.

In his book Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, author Peter Guralnick writes that at the 1971 Jaycees Ten Outstanding Young Men event in Memphis, where Elvis was honored as one of the Outstanding Young Men in America, Marion Keisker was in attendance. Elvis took her over to his wife, Priscilla, and introduced her saying, The lady I told you so much about, and added, You know, she’s the one who made it all possible. Without her, I wouldn’t even be here.⁶

Marion went on to make her mark in broadcasting, theater, and the burgeoning women’s rights movement as a founder of the Memphis chapter of the National Organization for Women. Elvis biographer Guralnick told me Marion was not the usual executive assistant. He’s so right. She, and many of the assistants you will read about in this book, is not considered usual in the context of being routine. But in the context of what many executive assistants are, should be, and should aspire to become, she