Across financial institutions and private equity portfolio companies, the pressure on technology and transformation leaders continues to intensify. CIOs, CTIOs, and Heads of Transformation are now expected to deliver integrated digital strategies, manage complex change portfolios, and create measurable value in increasingly constrained operating environments.
Yet despite these heightened expectations, many organizations overlook one of the most impactful structural decisions available: appointing a senior Chief of Staff to the Office of the CIO or Transformation Office.
While often viewed as ancillary or administrative, the Chief of Staff—when properly defined and resourced—serves as a critical leverage point. Particularly in institutions where complexity is high, execution risks are material, and interdependencies span business units, functions, and geographies, the role is foundational to success.
Our analysis suggests that a senior Chief of Staff fulfills five essential functions in high-performing transformation environments:
Execution Discipline
The CoS enforces operational cadence and accountability across initiatives. This includes maintaining strategic roadmaps, managing SLT and program interlock meetings, ensuring KPI alignment, and mitigating execution drift. In large-scale change programs, lack of cross-functional discipline—not flawed strategy—is often the primary reason for failure.
Decision Enablement
Effective transformation requires timely and data-driven decision-making. The CoS ensures that leadership has access to consolidated insights, synthesized reporting, and risk-adjusted options. This accelerates decision cycles and reduces the burden of context-switching for CIOs managing multiple portfolios simultaneously.
Stakeholder Alignment
In both regulated FSIs and private equity settings, transformation spans diverse stakeholder groups—technology, operations, risk, compliance, business line leaders, and external partners. The CoS plays a central role in aligning incentives, reconciling timelines, and maintaining strategic narrative consistency across forums.
Governance & Integration
Transformation programs often suffer from fragmented governance and limited integration between workstreams. The CoS is typically responsible for managing governance routines, chairing working groups, coordinating board-level reporting, and ensuring that transformation goals remain aligned with capital planning, regulatory mandates, and enterprise risk appetite.
Strategic Proxy
A seasoned CoS can represent the CIO or transformation lead in internal settings, freeing up leadership capacity while maintaining strategic continuity. This is particularly valuable in firms undergoing rapid growth, M&A integration, or technology modernization, where the volume of required engagement often exceeds what a single executive can sustain.
Within private equity-owned businesses, the need for structured execution is magnified. The Chief of Staff becomes a pivotal driver of the value creation plan, acting as an embedded operator who ensures that transformation activities are implemented with speed, discipline, and investor-aligned focus.
In successful cases, the CoS:
Tracks and reports value capture milestones
Interfaces with operating partners to validate assumptions and course-correct when necessary
Manages interdependencies between technology modernization and commercial outcomes (e.g., improved retention, reduced cost to serve)
Ensures alignment between C-level sponsors and delivery functions
This role is particularly critical in the first 12–18 months post-close, when the execution window is tight, and investor expectations are most acute.
For large financial institutions, particularly banks, insurers, and asset managers, transformation often occurs in a legacy-heavy, highly regulated environment. The Chief of Staff serves to coordinate activity within the constraints of:
Regulatory frameworks (e.g., Basel III, Solvency II, GDPR, DORA)
Change fatigue across business lines
Technology constraints and vendor limitations
Risk, compliance, and audit oversight processes
In this context, the CoS must exhibit fluency in both operational and regulatory dimensions, ensuring transformation remains executable without breaching internal or external guardrails.
A high-performing Chief of Staff is not an administrative assistant or a first-time manager. The role requires a unique combination of strategic acumen, operational rigor, and interpersonal fluency.
Typical profiles include:
15–25 years of experience across strategy consulting, corporate development, or enterprise transformation
Demonstrated leadership in matrixed environments
Strong analytical background with experience in performance management and transformation metrics
High executive presence with board-level exposure
Proven ability to influence laterally across business, tech, and control functions
Organizations that treat this as a developmental or rotational role often fail to realize its full benefit.
As technology and transformation become more deeply embedded in enterprise value creation, the organizational structures that support these efforts must evolve. The Chief of Staff—when staffed with senior, credible, and execution-focused talent—is a critical enabler of delivery at scale.
In environments where execution is the constraint—not strategy—the presence of a high-functioning Chief of Staff can determine whether transformation creates real value or becomes an expensive cycle of reinvention.
About Imagine Capital Group
Imagine Capital Group advises private equity firms, portfolio companies, and financial institutions on strategic execution, value creation, and transformation. We support operating partners, CIOs, and change leaders in optimizing executive structures and driving measurable outcomes.
To discuss organizational models, leadership structures, or transformation governance, contact us directly.
Tom C. Schapira
Founder and CEO
Imagine Capital Group
E: tom@imaginecapitalgroup.com
Website http://www.imaginecapitalgroup.com
