Inside the CEO Office: How leadership systems scale

201: In this episode, we break down why decisions inside companies often stall, even when everyone seems aligned. Tina Ramamurthy shares her experience from working inside a CEO Office and explains what happens between strategy and execution as companies grow. Tina Ramamurthy has built a career in the space between decisions and execution, where good intentions drift and effort quietly replaces strategy. She focuses on what happens as complexity increases and systems start to bend. At Babbel, she built and led the CEO Office as the company scaled from €100m to €300m on the path to IPO readiness. From the CEO Office, she designed and ran the leadership infrastructure that held it together, defining decision frameworks, prioritisation systems, and operating rhythms. She carried cross-functional work that did not sit neatly in any one team, built and led executive communications, ran board processes, and built the EA function as leadership infrastructure rather than support. She began her career at J. Walter Thompson, working on global accounts including Ford Motor Company, before founding a brand and communications consultancy with clients including Sony Music, Radisson Hotels, and the Reserve Bank of India. Across her career, she has worked with leadership teams in Berlin, New York, Melbourne, London, and India. That experience reinforced a simple reality: leadership systems only work when they reflect the people, stage, and conditions they are built for, which is why her work is designed, not templated. She is the founder of TMR & Co., where she works with founders and CEOs to build and embed CEO Offices that make strategy executable without relying on individual stamina. This includes both embedded, fractional Chief of Staff support that steps in to execute and absorb complexity, and focused build work to design and stabilise leadership systems. The work focuses on decision flow, executive communication, leadership capacity, and building high-performing EA teams. She uses AI deliberately to automate execution that does not require judgement, preserving human capacity for the decisions that matter. She holds a Master's degree in Communications from RMIT University, Melbourne. LINKS: 🔴 Watch the episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Xj0JbrD3_n0 - Diana Brandl on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diana-brandl/ - Tina Ramamurthy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tina-ramamurthy/ - TMR & CO Website: https://tmrandco.com - Executive Office Insights Newsletter: https://the-socialista-projects.com/#newsletter - Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3qBSDjTfYOG2x6qos7dKkS - Podcast on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-future-assistant/id1493106661 The Executive Office Insights Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3QH8HL8oWIC0HzHWvb5KLd Guest Picks Ben Clock - Ultimately