Who Owns Workplace Strategy at a Distributed Company? Increasingly, the Chief of Staff

Workplace strategy used to be a real estate decision. Then it became an HR policy. At most growing companies today, it is neither. It is an operating challenge, and it usually has no clear owner.

That gap is exactly where the chief of staff lives.

In a recent Croissant webinar, Zoltan Szalas, CEO and co-founder of Croissant, talks with David Nebinski, founder of the A Chief of Staff community, about how chiefs of staff are quietly becoming the people who connect workplace decisions to culture, budget, hiring, and leadership alignment. If you are a chief of staff, a founder, or an ops leader at a distributed company, this is your playbook.

What does a chief of staff actually do?

Start with the definition, because most job descriptions get it wrong.

"No two chief of staff roles are the same," David says. But there is a common thread: the role exists to amplify one executive. Not the team. Not a department. One principal.

"A lot of other roles support the team or the organization," David explains, "while a chief of staff is all about amplifying" the founder or CEO they serve. The CEO is running in ten directions at once. The chief of staff figures out which direction matters most and clears the path.

Zoltan describes it from the founder's side: a chief of staff is a "specialist generalist." Someone who can stand up a sales process, an onboarding system, or a new market entry, get it to a working state, then hand it to a specialist and move to the next fire.

That range is why workplace strategy keeps landing on their desk. It touches people, money, real estate, and culture at once. There is rarely a workplace team at a 50 to 200 person company. There is a chief of staff.

Why workplace strategy is now a chief of staff problem

Zoltan sees the pattern from the Croissant side constantly. Chiefs of staff come to Croissant saying some version of the same thing: "We're fully remote. I need to do something with my remote people to give them an in-office experience."

The catalyst is usually cultural. Employees are isolated. Someone is burnt out. People need a place to get out of the house. The CEO hands the problem to the chief of staff, and the chief of staff goes hunting for infrastructure.

David sees the same pull from the other direction. Companies that grew through M&A end up with teams and offices scattered everywhere, and someone has to ask the operational question: why isn't the product team in Barcelona talking to the product team in New York? Companies that hired distributed need someone to design how people actually come together.

And sometimes it is even more blunt. "I've talked to chiefs of staff who are like, it's my first week and now I've got to figure out what to do with this new office," David says. Workplace strategy just becomes the main project.

The takeaway for chiefs of staff: do not treat workplace as a facilities question that got misrouted to you. It landed on you because it is a cross-functional operating problem, and you are the cross-functional operator.

How do you change a CEO's mind on workplace policy?

This is the heart of the conversation, and Zoltan tells the story against himself.

A chief of staff once came to Croissant and said: "We're fully remote, but I'm going to change the CEO's mind, and I need you to help me do that."

Zoltan admits he was not sold. She was new in the role. The CEO was committed to fully remote. She was proposing to open real budget for flexible workspace access across the company.

She won. Here is how:

1. She surveyed employees first. Before pitching anything, she collected what people were actually saying about isolation and where they wanted to work. Employees will tell an anonymous survey (or a trusted chief of staff) things they will never tell the CEO.
2. She ran a pilot, not a proposal. A contained test with real usage instead of a policy debate.
3. She surveyed again after. Before and after data, packaged for one specific audience: her CEO.

"She got the nuance of the CEO," Zoltan says. "I can convince him by doing X, Y, Z. Every CEO is different."

Asked what would change his own mind, Zoltan is specific: data, plus persistence. If it is a problem he is not already thinking about, one pitch will not do it. "It probably takes multiple times, and it probably takes a little bit of persistence and tenacity, with data."

Trust is the actual operating system

None of that works without trust, and both agree it is the defining feature of the role.

As a CEO, Zoltan puts it plainly: the chief of staff is the person you can "remove the filter" with. Half-baked ideas, things you cannot share company-wide yet, the stuff you say between meetings. A good chief of staff catches those loose threads and brings them back months later when the timing is right.

So how do you build that trust fast, especially against a power dynamic where the other person runs the company?

David's advice is refreshingly practical:

• Lean on warm paths. Existing relationships and referrals carry more weight than any application. Help a founder you already know grow their business, and they will listen to you.
• Ask to co-work before you sign. In an interview process, request an afternoon working side by side, or a long walk. David tells the story of a founder who told a candidate, "You passed the vibe test." That test is real, and it runs both ways.
• Use a how-to-work-with-me guide. Written user manuals surface what motivates each side, what annoys them, and how decisions get made, before friction finds out the hard way.

One more trust signal worth stealing: David notes that fully remote chief of staff roles had a moment during the pandemic and are now fading. Principals want their chief of staff physically present at least a few days a week, because context lives in the informal moments. Which is, of course, the same argument for giving any distributed team a shared place to be.

The recruiting signal most companies miss

David raises an angle most workplace conversations skip entirely: hiring is a workplace strategy sensor.

Chiefs of staff often sit close to recruiting. They know the headcount plan, and they hear what candidates actually say. "This week we actually signed five offer letters, and interestingly, people are excited for the company and the work, but a lot of them are talking about how they want to be in person more, or they want to have flexibility."

That is workplace strategy intelligence, delivered for free, before anyone signs a lease or a policy. If candidates keep asking whether there is an office, a membership, or a way to work near other teammates, your workplace answer is already shaping who joins. Route that signal to the principal.

Don't wait for permission

The closing note from both speakers is the same, and it applies to anyone, not just chiefs of staff.

David's biggest changed belief about workplace culture: anybody can be the internal culture and community builder. You do not need the title. You do not need to wait for an executive to declare that the company should talk about workplace strategy.

Zoltan agrees, with a founder's spin: "Don't ask permission. Go with it. Solve the problem and then bring it." Every executive has a list of problems they are quietly hoping someone will just pick up and run with. Workplace strategy, at most distributed companies, is sitting near the top of that list.

Pick it up.

The chief of staff workplace playbook, in short

• Claim the problem. Workplace strategy is cross-functional and unowned. That makes it yours.
• Survey before you pitch. Employee data is your leverage with the CEO.
• Pilot before you propose. Small tests beat policy debates.
• Mine recruiting conversations. Candidates tell you what your workplace strategy is worth.
• Build trust deliberately. Co-work, walk, write the user manual.
• Move without permission. Solve it, then show it.

Croissant helps companies manage distributed workforces with governed access to flexible workspaces, so teams get places to meet, focus, and collaborate without leases or vendor sprawl. Learn more at getcroissant.com.

Watch the full conversation:Workplace Strategy for Distributed Teams: A Chief of Staff Playbook