The Chief of Staff Podcast Scaling Without Bureaucracy: How Lu Borko Builds High-Trust, High-Growth Teams
11 snips
Nov 12, 2025 
Lu Borko, Chief of Staff at ManyChat, shares her insights on scaling companies without bureaucracy, drawing from her experience at Deliveroo and Intercom. She emphasizes the importance of building systems that support growth while keeping teams agile. Lu discusses the essential elements of executive team cohesion and how to lead without authority by connecting the right dots. She also explores creating trust through vulnerability during offsites and how to resolve cross-functional conflicts effectively. Learn strategies for operational excellence and hiring for ownership in fast-paced environments.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Make The Exec Team Your First Lever
- Focus first on making the executive team effective to drive top-down organizational impact.
- Build executive rhythms and operational practices before rolling systems company-wide.
Use Quarterly Offsites To Build Trust
- Run regular in-person offsites (quarterly) to build trust and make big decisions in hybrid teams.
- Use exercises on personal motivations to explain later decision-making and foster collaboration.
Define The Ask Before Meetings
- Always set the expected outcome for a session: discuss, propose, or solve.
- Clarify the sponsor and the ask at the session start to avoid wasted time and frustration.
