Guest: Marlen Heske, Chief of Staff at Enpal

Episode Overview

At fast-moving companies, the problem is rarely a lack of ideas or urgency. It's that everyone is chasing too many things at once. Marlen Heske, Chief of Staff at Enpal, has made it her job to slow that down just enough to create real clarity. In this episode, she breaks down her "clarity before harmony" philosophy, why saying yes to everything is one of the biggest failure modes in the CoS role, and how she's navigated 2.5 years at one of Germany's most ambitious energy companies.

About Marlen

Marlen studied socioeconomics at the University of Hamburg before discovering the Chief of Staff role during an internship at eBay in Silicon Valley. She moved through a deliberately varied career path including academic research, Greenpeace, an HR consultancy, an early-stage interior startup, and a circular economy venture builder before joining Enpal, where she serves as CoS to the Managing Director responsible for production engineering and supply chain.

Lessons Learned

• Slow down before you execute. The first 90 days should be spent understanding the organization, the stakeholders, and the strategic direction before pushing anything forward.

• Let go of perfectionism. The 80-20 rule matters. Not everything requires a perfect output, and chasing perfection will cost you more than the 20% you're trying to nail.

• Balance patience with persistence. Choose your battles. Sometimes planting a quiet seed and watching it grow is more effective than pushing hard for immediate change.

• Build real relationships. The role only works when people trust you enough to give you candid information. That trust is built through genuine human connection, not title or proximity to leadership.

Key Takeaways

• The CoS role is one of the most flexible in any organization, shaped by company size, geography, seniority, and the specific gaps in the leadership team around you.

• "Clarity before harmony" means making trade-offs visible, doing reality checks, and resisting the pressure to say yes to everything. Your job is not to keep the peace. It's to make sure the right decisions get made.

• In Germany, the CoS role is still being adopted cautiously, with many companies using alternative titles. But adoption is accelerating, particularly in Berlin's startup ecosystem.

• The CoS is not the decision-maker. The role is to bring transparency and surface trade-offs so that leadership can make better, faster decisions with a full picture.