Volume 4: Scouting for Glue

Team sports and chess are geometric spaces. Organizations are the same, just messier. The soccer midfielder plays in space that already exists because of the geometry of the game. It exists because the field has midfield space. The glue role exists because the organization has cross-functional space.

Team sports and chess are games of strategy, where glue is essential. Organizations are messier than team sports and chess, which helps glue hide. The goal scorer is celebrated, sometimes the assist gets a nod, but the midfielder who anticipated a pass from the opponent, created a turnover, and sent the winger flying up the field into open space needs a highlight show before they get any attention. Glue work is support work, invisible and then gone.

The support nature of the Staff line of work dates back to the original General Staff created in the early 19th century. The military formalized the distinguishing focus: line advances the core mission. Staff provides specialized support. Every corporation still uses this vocabulary today. I’m borrowing that, for the second time, from “From Hierarchy To Intelligence” by Jack Dorsey, legend.

That’s the origin story corporate America inherited, then turned middle management into a transmission layer: you pass orders down, you pass results up. But the original Staff design was almost the opposite. Staff makes a visible leader more capable than they are alone.

Every principal casts a glue shadow because no one can simultaneously advance the core mission and own specialized support without eventually dropping something or burning out. A Principal’s visible leadership degrades if they are doing too much glue work, while a glue player thrust into the spotlight wonders if the other work they’re doing is even real.

Founders and C-suites are Principals, so they often get Chiefs of Staff. But their direct reports can also be Principals, for example running a business unit or carrying a brand. Glue work runs even deeper, because humans show up the same way everywhere we gather.

Relationally, the group dynamics on a small team of three inside an org of 100 can resemble a Principal and thus a need for support, even though it might be a VP, Director, and Manager: all three middle management. Demand for glue work on a team of three inside an org of 100 is low and picked up incidentally. The more cross-functional surface area, the more glue work.

Glue work is ecological. It leaves indirect evidence, like preventing bad outcomes rather than creating good ones, and everyone knows you can’t prove a negative. The better glue work is performed, the less visible it becomes, and that’s the way Jon Levy’s glue players like it.

For decades, organizations have trained juniors for goals, and more recently assists, but organizations don’t yet have a way to measure the midfielder that scores few goals or assists but covers more surface area than anyone else. Chief of Staff going mainstream is proof organizations are feeling the need, but Chief of Staff is just a title. Glue is a philosophy.

How do you scout for someone whose success is hidden inside the team’s?

You’re looking for what happened around the player. That’s not in a resume. It’s barely in a reference call unless you know exactly what to ask. Staff work is ecological and relational. You’re looking for how they move through a system, closer to how you’d scout a midfielder than how you’d hire a CFO.