Viva EA’s figure it out ability stands out at Veho

These two startup executives thought getting EA support was just about getting their calendars, emails, and travel planning in order. What they didn’t know was that no matter what they ask of her, their executive assistant can always figure it out.

Why do you need an EA that can “just figure it out”?

The idea that a CEO would be able to effectively lead a company all by themselves is hard to envision. There’s always at least one co-founder or a very early hire who can help carry some responsibilities. The same principle applies to all startup executives. 

Thinking that you can lead a team and drive your department to a successful outcome on your own is just naive. Why? Because working at a startup is like flying a plane while you’re building it: problems arise all the time, and you can’t be the pilot and in-flight engineer at the same time.

As the leader, it’s up to you to do damage control and keep everything running smoothly, but there is only so much you can do, even if you’re the brightest, fastest, most qualified person around. A pilot would never fly alone, so why should you? You need to find someone who can shoulder some of your work and deliver results as outstanding as the ones you would deliver yourself. 

What’s Veho?

Veho is a last-mile delivery company that acts as an intermediary between big shipping corporations and end-customers. As they describe themselves, “Veho is reinventing delivery and returns for the e‑commerce era by combining modern technology and innovative logistics with a customer‑centric focus.”

The New York-based tech company, created only 7 years ago, has managed to do business with customers that are a reference in their respective industries, including HelloFresh, and fashion giant Saks Fifth Avenue.

Veho’s growing numbers have put them on the map: they have hundreds of full-time employees and have successfully raised two funding rounds that brought them into unicorn territory: Their Series A closed with $125 million and only two months later, Tiger Global and SoftBank Vision Fund led their Series B funding round, which gave them $170 million, for a total of $300 million and a $1.5 billion valuation.

How can an executive assistant make you more productive?

When we got in touch with Veho, they had a clear need. They wanted one EA to support two of their executives: Yifeng Wang, the CFO, and Anthony Gregorio, the VP of Strategy and Development. Yifeng and Anthony were two executives with very different needs. 

We knew exactly what we had to do: pair Yifeng and Anthony with Marieandrée, an incredibly strong executive assistant. Her figure-it-out-ability was exactly what these two executives needed on their team, someone who could tackle complex problems without needing extensive coaching or hand-holding. This is their collective success story.

What can a CFO delegate to an EA?

Yifeng Wang, Veho’s Chief Financial Officer, has six teams under his leadership: procurement, legal, revenue operations, accounting, strategic finance, and corporate finance. When you are leading so many people, your to-do list grows exponentially. 

Yifeng was using a popular productivity framework called the Eisenhower matrix, which teaches you that, to prioritize your work effectively, you must divide it into four quadrants: urgent and important, urgent but not important, important but not urgent, and lastly, the not important and not urgent. 

While he tried to follow this practice to ruthlessly prioritize, he found himself tending to the first quadrant only: the urgent and important work. The non-urgent but just as important work kept on being pushed aside because he kept being dragged out of his work and into putting out a new fire that started burning somewhere else. 

The pitfall of this approach is that you keep on postponing important work and only pay attention to it when it cannot wait any longer, in other words: when it has also become urgent. The best way to avoid falling into this productivity trap is to delegate everything that can be delegated to your accounting virtual assistant. 

Town hall and all-hands meeting ownership

One of Yifeng’s recurring responsibilities was putting the monthly town hall together, which included collecting information, creating the deck, and facilitating the meeting for the entire finance team. As important as this meeting is for him and all the teams under him, Yifeng could not focus on making it happen because he kept on being called to deal with more urgent work. 

As a result, he ended up putting the deck together at the very last minute. What could have been a simple, and maybe even fun task to do, became a stress-inducing chore. That’s why he started delegating town hall meetings entirely to Marieandrée, a task that she took on with nothing but excitement. Immediately, she started delivering with flying colors. 

How did she figure it out?

One of Viva’s golden rules is for their EAs not to bother executives more than needed; that’s why Marieandrée knew she had to find her answers somewhere else. One of the goals of the town hall meeting is to highlight one project or update from one of the teams, so Marieandrée made sure she got to know every single member of the team and to understand what they do and why it matters. 

In that way, she can make the executive decision to choose the project that will take the spotlight, collect all relevant information, and facilitate the meeting herself. Thanks to her hands-on approach, Yifeng can now focus on attending a thoroughly put together all-hands meeting that is no longer a cause of stress.

Built a bottom-up OKR tracker

At Viva we encourage all our EAs to offer their help anywhere they can, so when Marieandrée noticed that the financial team didn’t have an OKR tracker, she offered her help. She created a comprehensive tracker that helps Yifeng move forward and measure his team’s key results. The bottom-up OKR tracker worked so well that she turned it into a template so other departments could use it as well. 

How did she figure it out?

Thanks to Marieandrée’s exposure to the CFO, she developed in-depth knowledge of the company, her executive, and his team. By putting herself in his shoes and developing an executive mindset, she quickly understood the objectives and goals of the finance department. 

Contractor billing

Maintaining a positive relationship with contractors can be tricky, and making sure they get paid on time plays a big role in the relationship going smoothly. That’s why when you’re the CFO, it’s best to delegate these kinds of chores to your executive assistant. They can make sure the billed hours are correct and the contractor receives their compensation in a timely manner.

How did she figure it out?

The talent team at Viva sources candidates with high attention to detail and we develop this soft skill, among others, during our two-month training. That’s why when this project arose, Marieandrée knew she had to review the billing hours, cross-check them to make sure there were no inconsistencies, and ensure payments go out on time, every time. 

The impact of delegating big projects to an EA

Since Mariandrée joined the finance team, Yifeng has been able to focus on high impact work. He can now devote more time to really important tasks , such as working on the AOP (annual operating plan) and the MBRs (monthly business reviews).

What can a VP of Strategy and Development delegate to an EA?

Anthony Gregorio, VP of Strategy and Development at Veho, had two very clear goals when he started working with Viva: to not drop the ball and to reduce stress. His effective delegation skills have been key to his rise in productivity since onboarding an EA.

If you don’t know where to start or what can even be delegated to an executive assistant, make sure you establish clear communication channels. Ask them directly if they have capacity and if they feel up to the task. Chances are that if you have an A-player as your executive assistant, they won’t only be willing to help, they would be thrilled to do so. Remember that the EA role is a malleable one and can only grow if you allow them to. 

Create process manuals

When startups grow as fast as Veho, some processes get lost along the way because, by the time someone puts them on paper, they’ve changed again. This was the case for the expansion team. They didn’t have a process manual and the only person who knew exactly how the team worked was Anthony. 

How did she figure it out?

At Viva, we strongly believe that every company process should be properly documented, so Marieandrée reached out to every single member of the team and documented the scope of their roles in great detail. If there was a new team member joining, they could take a look and quickly know how everything works. 

Investor lead sourcing

Veho was going to attend an event and Marieandrée offered to look for potential investors. She didn’t just do the research, she offered her opinion on which ones would most likely invest in the company, booked meetings with them, and created pre-meeting briefings on each of them.

How did she figure it out? 

One of Viva’s guiding principle is “driver mindset”. We encourage all our EAs to take ownership of everything they do, not to just wait for directions. When this project came up, Marieandrée looked into which businesses these individuals have historically invested in and cross-referenced her data with one of her colleagues at Veho in order to provide informed advice – not just educated guesses.

Email management

Anthony is not very keen on email, so Marieandrée came up with a system that saves an enormous amount of time. Instead of a couple of hours everyday, he goes through his email in 20 minutes.

How did she figure it out? 

She reads, analyzes, synthesizes, and shares a summary of his entire email in a single, consolidated EOD Slack message everyday. 

The impact effective delegation has on your state of mind

Since we started working with Anthony, his stress levels have lowered, given that his calendar has everything planned out for the upcoming 3-4 months without any overlap. 

How can you train your EA to develop their figure-it-out ability?

At Viva, we look for candidates with a highly developed figure-it-out ability, a skill that is further strengthened during our two months of training. If you have a team member who needs to improve this soft skill, feel free to implement some of the drills we use with our newly onboarded executive assistants. Ask them to:

• Schedule a meeting without much content on the purpose
• Perform a call simulation to search for office spaces
• Plan an offsite in a city they’ve never been to
• Find the best solution for a last-minute flight cancellation
• Put a board meeting deck together

Having an executive assistant means you no longer have to put fires out all by yourself. Delegate to them and with little to no input, they’ll figure it out. Ready to get your own remote EA? Let us help you out.