In this video Luke Murray, a former physician turned serial entrepreneur, walks viewers through a recent meeting where he and his CEO re‑assigned their COO’s responsibilities to focus exclusively on billing—a move that could be perceived as a demotion. He begins by explaining the company’s biggest bottleneck (billing) and how the COO’s workload of 93 tasks was diluting her impact. Rather than imposing a decision, Luke first asked the COO for her own assessment of the org chart and what changes she thought were needed. This collaborative approach surfaced hidden concerns, such as fear of losing support, worries about career growth, and a desire to work with AI. Luke tied the conversation to the company’s core values—curiosity, transparency, and respect—by openly sharing that they had ideas but were genuinely seeking her perspective. He then presented a clear, value‑aligned plan: the COO would concentrate on the two most critical initiatives (billing and the related relocation effort), receive more resources per responsibility, and be given a bonus‑linked objective to develop AI‑driven billing solutions. Throughout the dialogue Luke repeatedly checked in on emotional reactions, used empathetic framing (including a “talk to the 4‑year‑old inside you” metaphor), and emphasized that the title change was not a judgment of performance. The meeting concluded with the COO feeling excited about her new focus. Luke ends by inviting viewers to share their own experiences with role changes, whether as the decision‑maker or the recipient.
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If you're a founder that needs to move someone on an org chart, maybe down a level or to a position you're worried they won't like, then this video is for you. In it, I'm going to talk about the meeting I just finished with the COO of one of my companies where she was demoted on the org chart and how it went incredibly well and could have gone very, very poorly. If you don't know who I am, my name's Luke Murray. I am a former physician. I've been an entrepreneur for about 20 years. I've done $100 million in revenue during that time, and I currently have a portfolio of companies that does $3 million of revenue per year. And I make these videos because I would like to have ambition without the bullshit, and I'm guessing you would too. So our biggest problem in our company right now is billing. We're in the medical industry, and so my COO has Actually, I should pull up the report. It's the biggest bottleneck in the whole company. Well, we realized that what needed to happen is that she needed to just do billing, 'cause she's in charge of billing, but also in charge of accounting and HR and compliance and IT. And we're transitioning, we're moving to another location and the building. And she has people that report to her, but we were realizing that that stuff took up her time more than it should. And she needs to put 100% of her focused attention on billing. And me and the CEO had already seen that this is the move that we wanted to make. But before she came, we said, hey, tell us what you're up to. And she sent us a categorized list of the different things on her plate. It was like 92, 93 things. And was she sandbagging some of that? Was some of that very minimal? Sure. But it was at least in her brain taking up space. And there was only like 5 things that we wanted to be in there at all. So Instead of showing up and saying, guess what? Framing it as, hey, we're sorry, we're going to have to just move you down to billing, basically. And the CEO is going to step into your COO role and everybody's going to report to him. Are you okay with that? The first thing we did was we said, hey, you have more things on your plate than anybody else in the company. this is our current org chart. A few people have quit. And so what do you think should happen in terms of the shuffling around of resources? And we spent a good amount of time hearing out. Obviously, we didn't even have this list of 93 things. We didn't know a lot of it, that it was even on her plate. And so she said, well, I think we should do this. I think we should do that. So that's my first piece of advice is instead of going to someone with a change, ask them and they might say, yeah, they might see it already and be on their way, and then it's their idea. And you could say, you're so smart. One of the things that she did though, and if you're asking this to a smart person, they might say it. She said, well, it feels like you guys have probably already decided, and so why don't you just tell me what you want me to do? Because I feel like I'm trying to guess what you guys want. And I told her, first of all, I didn't bullshit her. I said, yes, we have ideas about what we want you to do and what we think would be the right place for you to go. However, our number 2 core value is curiosity, and it's not on there, but maybe don't be a dick. It should be on there too. We want to know what you actually think. We are actually curious about what you can see as the COO of this company from your vantage point on the battlefield, because maybe you'll share something as we ask and remain curious, that makes our whole idea of someone stepping into your shoes or offloading your responsibilities completely unreasonable. And of course, we didn't tell her that's what we wanted to do yet, but I did say, yeah, we have ideas, but we are trying to actually live by our values. So that was the second thing, is that when she called me out or called us out on this, I just acknowledged that it was actually happening, but we were Doing it for whatever the right reasons, if you want to call it that. So ask. The second thing is, if you're, I guess, called out, you can say what you're asking. And honestly, I could have just said all that upfront. When she was done suggesting things before we shared stuff, we were like, what is your heart and your gut telling you? So this is all like intellectual. Let's move pieces around on a chessboard. What are you maybe afraid of or excited about? And one of the things she shared. was, I'm concerned that I'm going to get less support. I've really enjoyed having these folks, as I get a problem, being able to pass it off to somebody, and I'm worried I'm going to get less support. And so I told her that we wanted her to get more support on fewer things, but this was about basically giving her more resources per responsibility than she currently had? And I'm glad that I asked that question because I had some things that I thought that she would be worried about and she never brought them up ever. But if I hadn't asked, hey, what emotions are you feeling in your heart, your gut? Then I would not have found those out. So ask them about something other than what's going on in their head. So then we said, hey, what we want is for you, and we kind of showed on the org chart, you to focus on billing and all this other stuff to just come off your plate, all these other responsibilities. And then I told her, again, this could have been seen as a demotion, but it was true that this was the first most important thing. And actually the second most important thing, we're moving locations and that requires also some billing work. So it's kind of 2 things within billing. I said, the most important thing in the company and the second most important thing in the company, should be our most valuable resources. Only 2 things that she's thinking about. And so again, I could have walked in and framed this as, we're sorry that this is a demotion. Are you okay? My bad. But instead we just— you could say that this is manipulative or that we tricked her or whatever, but this is also a way to legitimately look at it, and it is how I feel. This is the most important thing, and she works harder in terms of number of hours in a day than anyone else in our organization. That's, I mean, and she's got, she's multi-talented. There's a reason she's a COO. She's earned the spot. The last thing was that I went back to her emotions. So we talked about, so she went first, what ideas did she have? Thank you. Then what emotions did she have about ways she thought things should work out? And then— I shared intellectually, this makes sense for you to be in a certain place. And then we asked her again, how does that feel emotionally? And she said, well, I'm, number one, worried that I don't want to be a medical biller the rest of my life. And number two, I am worried that I'm not going to grow. And so I thought that that meant she wanted to manage a bunch of people and have all these responsibilities. And I asked her, what do you mean by growing? And she said, oh, I want to really use AI. And so I said, okay, well, can you use AI in billing? She's like, oh, actually there is this AI tool that I haven't had a chance to work on because I've had so many other things going on that I actually will be able to use to supercharge our billing. So she didn't even realize what she was asking until I had to stop and be specific. Yeah. when that fear came up. Lastly, and this is another bit of context about her, is that she's supposed to get bonused when she is able to work herself out of jobs. She's already done that once or twice. And so I said, hey, you need to come up with a goal that you have for yourself to earn your own bonus, because billing is such a black box. Tell us what you should do in order to deserve this bonus, because I don't know enough about what you do in order to set reasonable Objectives. So what could have been, I think an old me would've said, hey, we're sorry, you're getting demoted. Are you okay with that? My bad, became, hey, what do you see on the battlefield? What changes do you think should be made? What do you feel about those changes? This is what I see about those changes. This is what I feel. And actually, this is, what do you feel about these changes? What are you worried about would happen? And then at the very end, I said to her, my biggest concern about all this is that you would feel, you would have ego around the title of COO, because she doesn't have that title anymore. You know what her actual concern was? And this was so beautiful. She's like, man, I just hope this isn't because I was doing a bad job. And I stopped in the meeting and said, hey, I want to talk to the the 4-year-old inside of you because there is no objective metric that this girl is— this grown-ass 50-something-year-old woman is doing a bad job. But I know that she grew up in a very strict household that gave her this work ethic and some of the baggage that comes along with it. So I said, hey, I want to talk to the 4-year-old in there and tell her we love her and she's doing great. And then I want to talk. And I literally said in the next breath, I said, and now I want to talk to the 50-year-old lady in there that I'm talking to and say, you have 93 things on your plate. I don't think anyone can tell you and be honest that you're doing good or bad, because I can barely count to 93, much less assess the quality of 93 things that I don't know anything about. So it went great. She's excited about her new position. And hopefully this is useful for you. I'd like to know if you're in a similar position, either in the receiving end, how has the boss— what's the worst way to do this? Maybe have you experienced that? Or in the other direction, have you just crushed it, done a really good job or done a horrible job? Let me know in the comments. And as always, thanks for listening.
