Assemble, a nurse-founded and built start-up, needed to find someone with business context to step in, identify performance-based insights, and act on them so that they could bring their focus back to founder work. They needed a CoS. In selecting a firm to provide a Chief of Staff, Wes (CEO & Founder) knew that he was looking for fractional staffing to test out a hire and make adjustments accordingly. Co-founders Tessi and Wes interviewed several Chief of Staff firms, but at the end of the day, there was only one winner: Keziah Wonstolen and Vannin Chief of Staff.

Wonstolen dug deep into Assemble’s needs and pain points, making sure that she fully understood the role of the Chief of Staff for the organization going forward.

“It felt a little bit like matchmaking in that she wanted to understand what the projects would look like…[so she could] then select the perfect fractional Chief of Staff who had the right skill set, the right approach, and the right qualities to be able to solve those problems and really jump in and support Assemble.”

Soon after that call, Assemble onboarded Chief of Staff Dawn McDougall.

McDougall’s three main focus areas included tracking hospital launches, defining processes for nurse creators, and helping the founders define and take action on team culture.

1. Hospital Launch Tracker

One of the first projects she worked on was a system to track the launch of new hospitals that signed on to Assemble as customers. The tracker had hundreds of moving pieces, and McDougall oversaw all of them. Not only did she build a system that had clear owners at every stage of the process, but she also held daily 15-minute standups with everyone responsible, organized a postmortem to update it continuously, and then built out a template for future hospitals to onboard to Assemble.

“I sat with [McDougall] for 30 or 45 minutes, and within a day or two she put together a launch tracker that factored in the cost of the event, people required for the event, utilities required for the event…all that sort of stuff, including…the people responsible [for every step],” says Jules.

This tracker helped streamline the customer onboarding process and gave Assemble insight into how to improve their offering in unique ways that further resonated with their customers.

2. Creator Processes

Another project Dawn spearheaded was the creation of project management processes for nurse creators. She designed a user flow for creators and coaches to submit work, ask for information, and get necessary support from the Assemble team member overseeing the creator-coach relationship. Her system built in markers for timeliness and transparency that made the entire nurse creator journey simpler and more intuitive. 

“She created a lot of workflows we still use that are immensely powerful for being able to stay up-to-date in support of our nurse community,” says Tessi.

3. Culture

Last but not least, McDougall significantly impacted Assemble’s culture. A lot of companies wait until they are larger to invest heavily in culture, but McDougall created an intentional, fun action plan for this small organization. Among her changes: Friday talks where team members share about a topic of interest to them, introducing profile photos on Slack so everyone on Assemble’s remote team could see each other’s faces, and creating a unique Assemble emoji for Slack.

Assemble’s engagement with Vannin Chief of Staff resulted in a 30% cost reduction in their hospital launch. The launch was accelerated from a one-month timeline to a one-week timeline. Their staffing abilities were streamlined, which enabled more national launch opportunities. The team’s willingness and ability to collaborate increased, as evidenced by the increase in the number of project channels and Slack activity. 

After engaging with Dawn McDougall and Vannin Chief of Staff, Assemble is better prepared for day-to-day operations and major growth and expansion. They’re continuing to work with McDougall, whose latest work includes GTM project management and even more up-leveled support.