Chief Of Staff

# Routing Matrix

Detailed routing rules for the Chief of Staff. When a founder asks a question, find the best match in this matrix, then apply the scoring rules to determine single-role, multi-role, or board meeting.

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## Routing by Domain

### Finance & Capital

| Question type | Primary | Secondary | Score |
|--------------|---------|-----------|-------|
| How much runway do we have? | CFO | — | 1 |
| Should we raise now or later? | CFO | CEO | 3 |
| What's our burn multiple? | CFO | COO | 2 |
| Should we raise a bridge or cut costs? | CFO | CEO, COO | 5 |
| What's the right pricing model? | CFO | CRO, CPO | 4 |
| Should we hire or extend runway? | CFO | CHRO, COO | 4 |
| What terms should we accept for this round? | CFO | CEO | 3 |
| How do we model the next 18 months? | CFO | COO | 2 |

### People & Culture

| Question type | Primary | Secondary | Score |
|--------------|---------|-----------|-------|
| Should I let this person go? | CHRO | COO | 2 |
| How do I structure comp for the team? | CHRO | CFO | 3 |
| We have a culture problem — what do we do? | CHRO | CEO | 3 |
| A leader on my team isn't working — now what? | CHRO | COO | 2 |
| How do I hire fast without breaking culture? | CHRO | COO | 3 |
| Two co-founders are in conflict | CHRO | CEO | 4 |
| How do we retain our best people? | CHRO | CFO | 2 |
| What does a good performance management process look like? | CHRO | COO | 2 |

### Product

| Question type | Primary | Secondary | Score |
|--------------|---------|-----------|-------|
| What should we build next? | CPO | CTO | 2 |
| Should we kill this feature? | CPO | CTO, CRO | 3 |
| How do we prioritize the roadmap? | CPO | CTO, COO | 3 |
| Are we pre-PMF or post-PMF? | CPO | CRO, CEO | 4 |
| Should we build vs buy? | CPO | CTO, CFO | 4 |
| How do we handle technical debt vs new features? | CTO | CPO | 3 |
| What's our product strategy for next year? | CPO | CEO, CRO | 4 |

### Technology & Engineering

| Question type | Primary | Secondary | Score |
|--------------|---------|-----------|-------|
| What architecture should we use? | CTO | CPO | 1 |
| How do we scale the system to 10x traffic? | CTO | COO | 2 |
| We have a security incident — what now? | CISO | CTO, COO | 5 |
| Should we migrate to microservices? | CTO | COO, CFO | 4 |
| How do I grow the engineering team? | CTO | CHRO, CFO | 3 |
| Our engineering velocity is dropping — why? | CTO | COO | 2 |
| What's our DevOps maturity? | CTO | COO | 1 |
| How do we handle a compliance audit on our tech? | CISO | CTO | 3 |

### Sales & Revenue

| Question type | Primary | Secondary | Score |
|--------------|---------|-----------|-------|
| Why aren't we closing deals? | CRO | CPO | 2 |
| How do we build a sales process from scratch? | CRO | COO | 2 |
| What's the right GTM for this market? | CRO | CMO, CEO | 4 |
| Our churn is too high — root cause? | CRO | CPO, CHRO | 3 |
| Should we go enterprise or stay SMB? | CRO | CPO, CFO | 4 |
| How do we expand into a new market? | CRO | CMO, CEO, CFO | 5 |
| What's our ideal customer profile? | CRO | CPO, CMO | 3 |
| Pipeline is dry — what do we do? | CRO | CMO | 2 |

### Operations & Execution

| Question type | Primary | Secondary | Score |
|--------------|---------|-----------|-------|
| Why do things keep breaking? | COO | CTO | 2 |
| How do we set up OKRs? | COO | CEO | 2 |
| Our meetings are useless — fix it | COO | — | 1 |
| How do we scale operations without hiring? | COO | CTO, CFO | 3 |
| There's a recurring bottleneck — how to fix it? | COO | CTO | 2 |
| We need a cross-team process for X | COO | Relevant dept head | 2 |
| How do we improve decision speed? | COO | CEO | 3 |

### Marketing & Brand

| Question type | Primary | Secondary | Score |
|--------------|---------|-----------|-------|
| How do we position against Competitor X? | CMO | CRO | 2 |
| What channels should we invest in? | CMO | CRO, CFO | 3 |
| Our brand isn't resonating — why? | CMO | CPO, CRO | 3 |
| How do we build a content strategy