Picture a family office that began with a few trusted people doing a bit of everything. Then the family adds a second jurisdiction, a foundation, and a direct investment program. At some point, the principal decides it is time for a senior operator, and the first question is what to call the role.

Two titles come up for that role: chief of staff and chief operating officer. They sound close, but they describe two different jobs with two different bosses.

What Is the Difference Between a Family Office Chief of Staff and a COO?

A chief of staff works for the principal, and a COO works for the office.

The chief of staff manages how the principal’s time, information, and decisions move. Dan Ciampa’s Harvard Business Review article on the role was written in 2020 for corporate leaders. In it, one chief of staff describes the job as an air traffic controller, integrator, honest broker, and confidant. In a family office, that means deciding what reaches the principal, preparing each decision, and seeing it carried out across advisors, household, and family.

The COO owns how the office itself works: reporting, technology, compliance, vendor oversight, risk controls and the people who handle them.

Why the Two Roles Blur

Many family offices are initially led by people the family already trusts. Elisa Shevlin Rizzo leads family office advisory at J.P. Morgan Private Bank. Presenting the bank’s 2026 Global Family Office Report, she described many offices as lean operations run by individual decision-makers or long-serving executives.

What Happens When Neither Role Is Clearly Defined

The costliest gap is coordination that nobody owns. Law firm Morgan Lewis, in a July 2026 analysis of family office models, argues that offices relying on outside providers need one senior person accountable for tying the work together. Without that person, the family ends up with a scattered set of advisors rather than an office.

The same J.P. Morgan survey of 333 single-family offices found that a third cited overreliance on a single individual or provider as a top risk to their office’s continuity. The UBS Global Family Office Report 2026, which surveyed 307 family offices between January and March, adds that only 35% have a succession plan for the family office itself.

How Family Offices Should Structure the Leadership Team

Morgan Lewis also argues that complexity, more than asset size, should shape how an office is organized. The same test works for these two hires.

• A lean office with an involved principal and mostly outsourced functions should hire a chief of staff first, someone who connects the advisors and keeps decisions moving.
• An office running its own reporting, technology, and compliance needs a COO with formal authority over that work.
• A larger, multi-jurisdiction office may need both, with a written line between them: the COO answers for the office, and the chief of staff answers for the principal’s agenda.

Dossier Search places chiefs of staff, COOs, and senior operations leaders for family offices, and every search opens with a discovery process that maps the office’s structure and goals. If the line between these two jobs is still blurry, talk to Dossier before the job description goes out.

Dossier is an affiliate firm of Pocketbook Agency, an award-winning boutique recruitment firm placing exceptional, high-level administrative and support roles across the US in both corporate and domestic settings. Pocketbook is recognized by Forbes as one of America’s Best Professional Recruiting Firms for 2024, 2025 & 2026, as well as by Business Insider America’s Top Recruiting Firms and Inc Magazine’s PowerParter’s List. For additional inquiries, please reach out to Hello@dossiersearch.com.

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1. “Harvard Business Review article on the role”: https://hbr.org/2020/05/the-case-for-a-chief-of-staff
2. “2026 Global Family Office Report” (J.P. Morgan Private Bank): https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/nam/en/insights/reports/2026-family-office-report
3. “July 2026 analysis of family office models” (Morgan Lewis): https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2026/07/control-cost-and-complexity-finding-the-right-family-office-model
4. “UBS Global Family Office Report 2026”: https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-20260528-global-family-office-report-2026.html