20 Powerful Lessons Every COO Should Know

So the other day I went out And I asked ChatGPT to read Cameron Herald's book the Second in Command and give me the top 10 to 20 takeaways from that book and I'm going to share those with you today. So here's number one, it's about the visionary and integrator dynamic. So the CEO and the COO have to function as complementary partners. The CEO is the visionary and they have to focus on the big ideas and the long term strategy while the COO is the integrator and and they ensure that the day to day operations and execution align with the vision. It's almost like Thomas Edison said, vision without execution is hallucination. So number one is that visionary integrator dynamic and it's critical for any company to succeed. Number two, the COO is a custom role. There is no one size fits all. In fact, even though I was such a great COO at 1-800-got junk, I I would probably be a horrible CEO for most of the members of the CEO alliance and they would probably be horrible CEOs for 1-800-God chunk because they didn't match the skills of the CEO. They didn't match the CEO's strengths, the CEO's weaknesses or the company's needs, the industry and the stage of growth. So the CEO that you're bringing into your organization has to be a custom fit for the CEO's strengths and weaknesses, the company's needs, industry and the stage of growth. That's number two. Number three, trust and communication are key. A strong CEO COO relationship is built on mutual trust, respect and constant communication. And open dialogue often aligns goals and helps resolve tensions. It's almost like a husband and wife in a traditional marriage. You really have to ensure that trust and mutual respect is key and you always have to be spending time to stay on that same page. Well, that's critical in the business between the CEO COO relationship too. Number four, the COO has to complement the CEO. An effective CEO balances the CEO's weaknesses with their own strengths. Almost like a very yin and yang approach, creating a real dynamic duo that drives the company forward. At 1-800-got junk, I was very weak at IT and finance. Brian happened to be pretty strong at IT and finance and like that stuff. But Brian didn't have the operational skills or the culture skills or the marketing and sales, didn't have the ability to bring in all the franchise systems nor did he even want to. So we really balanced each other out and that's the key is the CEO has to complement the CEO and not want to work on the areas that the CEO likes. Number five is you have to focus on company culture. I've always believed that to build a great organization, you have to build slightly more than a business and slightly less than a religion. You have to get into that zone of a cult. And the COO plays a pivotal role in building, nurturing and scaling the culture and the company culture as that organization grows. And the culture is in alignment with vivid vision, it's in alignment with core purpose, it's in alignment with core values, and it's alignment with the bhag. And the COO has to ensure that all of the people, the strategy and the plans are aligned with those four areas so that the culture really continues to emerge from there. Number six, it's about clear role definition. The COO has to ensure that they define the roles and expectations and responsibilities of not only the coo, but also the CEO. To ensure that there's no overlap and that there's no confusion and that there's no power struggles and that everyone inside of the organization knows who does what. So they have to make sure that the COO role is clear, the CEO's role is clear, and, and that every area of the org chart has clear roles and responsibilities and clear metrics and that everyone in the organization is clear on what everybody else is doing. That's really an important role. The CEO. Number seven. The CEO role evolves over time as the business scales. As the business grows, the CEO's operational shift might become more strategic. Maybe they actually are spending more time thinking about marketing or competition or AI. But the CEO role continues to evolve as they bring people into the organization and as they delegate more and as they delegate everything except genius. So let's say the company is going to double in size. The skills of the CEO need to continue to evolve as their role continues to evolve. Number eight, hiring the right coo. It's about looking for someone who aligns with your core values, your experience, and that chemistry with the CEO. You know, at 1, 800 got junk. Brian and I had a very unfair advantage. He was already my best friend. He and I had been best friends for four years. He was my best man at my wedding. So when I was starting with him, we already had a strong cultural fit together, a strong alignment with trust. And that misalignment, if you don't have that is going to disrupt the entire leadership team. So making sure that you hire the right CEO who compliments you in every single way is key. Number nine. The CEO has to drive and focus around execution while the CEO stays focused on vision and strategy and culture. Again, vision without execution is hallucination. The CEO has to stay focused on execution to ensure that the company strategies are executed efficiently, that they hold teams accountable, and that they're constantly helping people remove obstacles so that they can actually be successful. Number 10. CEOs are often unsung heroes I've often said the CEO's role is to make the CEO iconic or to shine the spotlight on the CEO to make them look good. The CEO should really try to shine the spotlight on the CEO to make them look good internally. But the CEO is often working behind the scenes to ensure the business runs smoothly. It's almost like the the play Phantom of the Opera, right? You might have three or four people that are on stage, but then you've got hundreds of people backstage that are performing makeup and music and scenery and lighting and selling tickets and marketing and selling the popcorn and making sure that the music is happening and making sure that lighting is working and the costumes. And if none of that backstage stuff is happening, the people on the front of the stage are going to be a failure. So the CEO is often looking at the backstage while the CEO is often looking at the front stage. So the CEO has to be very good at being an unsung hero. Number 11 strong financial acumen. Many COOs excel in finance and every COO needs to work on their financial acumen. At minimum, we need to understand budgeting, cash flow, the P and L, and have a fairly good understanding of the balance sheet. But the COO has to continue to work on those skills over time. And I believe that it's the job of the CFO to keep helping the CEO or COO get better at those skills. But COOs who do excel in finance and understand profitability and efficient operations and the allocation of resources are going to be a big asset to their team versus the ones who are not. Number 12. The CEO has to act as a bridge between teams. In his book Traction, Gina Wickman says that the integrator is the tiebreaker and I disagree. The CEO's job is not to be the tiebreaker. It's to help each of the business areas have good debate. It's to help each of the business areas have great discussion. It's about to help all the business areas collaborate and have that cross departmental communication. The CEO's job is to be a bridge and a gap between each of the members of the leadership team and employees and also helping Them translate strategy into actionable plans so they're that bridge in all ways. And having time inside of their calendar to think that way is really critical. Number 13, succession planning. The CEO often serves as a natural successor to the CEO or as a potential disaster plan or stopgap if anything happens to the CEO. Let's say the CEO is going through a divorce or the CEO has a major health issue, or maybe someone in the CEO's family is having a major health issue. Maybe the CEO wants to go on sabbatical for two to three months. The CEO has to be there in that kind of natural succession planning so that they can actually take over the roles and responsibilities of that CEO as needed. Number 14, managing up and managing down. The COO obviously has to manage the team that are working below them, but the COO also has to be able to manage the CEO, manage the CEOs skip level meetings, make sure the CEO is communicating, probably making sure the CEO and the board have the right information flowing up to them and the right information from the board and the CEO are flowing down to the team. So it's really a strong kind of capability that needs to be developed by that coo, is the ability to manage up and manage down. Number 15 is systemizing processes. The COO needs to be able to look at creating internal systems and ensuring that the people that report to them create the systems and processes or SOPs, to allow them to document and ensure consistency and efficiency and optimization of everything they're working on. And that the people are starting to automate processes and leveraging AI tools and technology tools inside of the organization. And it's a COO's job or to look across the organization to ensure that this is happening so that you can actually grow your revenue per employee, your gross margin per employee, and so that your salaries as a percentage of revenue decreases over time. It's a CEO who thinks about those processes that is going to help make that come true. Number 16 is somebody who can make data driven decisions. So somebody making data driven decisions ensures that they're looking at the spreadsheets, they're looking at the scorecards, they're using, balancing intuition with insights. And as a company scales, the COO needs to make sure the CEO is also thinking about data as well as trusting their gut. Very often CEOs make decisions from the hip, they're kind of winging it, they're making it up on the go, they're using a lot of their intuition. That's great in a more entrepreneurial style organization. But as the company scales. The COO's job needs to be to bring data into some of those decisions, not only at the operational layer, but also at the C suite. Number 17, crisis management. The COO has to play a crucial role in managing crisis internally and externally and to stabilize operations while maintaining transparency with the board, shareholders and employees. I'll give an example. That was when crisis management kicked in pretty hard at 1-800-got junk. This was the second year that I was there in the organization. I was the COO and we got a phone call one morning and found out that one of our franchisees had committed suicide. Brian promptly broke down. Brian had been very close to this franchisee. I'd only met the franchisee once because he was there prior to me joining the company. But Brian had a good, strong relationship with his early stage franchisee. And Brian really broke down, really found it very hard. And I said, it's okay, I got it. Why don't you take off for the day and I'll put in place the plan of what we need to do to actually get this thing going again and to make sure that we take over and we can handle things with the family and the general manager. So it was by me handling the crisis internally and externally with the franchisee that was actually a critical role that I had to play in that moment. Number 18 is aligning the leadership team. The CEO has to ensure that all of the leaders are aligned with the company's vision, their mission, their goals, that they're focused on, core values, the bhag. And it's by making sure that every single member of the leadership team is aligned, that they are consistently focusing on those areas. When everybody's pulling in that same direction, it allows the company to scale and be more efficient in every part of the day. Number 19, mentoring and coaching. I've always believed that a leader's core job is to grow people. And the COO has to actually identify leaders inside of the organization, identify talent pipeline in the future, identify emerging leaders. This is why I even launched my invest in your leaders course, is so that companies globally can plug in their management team, their leadership team, their emerging leaders into the core leadership skills. While the CEO's job needs to make sure that that kind of leadership growth is happening across the organization. Because as the company doubles in size, the skills of the management team have to double as well. And then here's the last one. Embrace servant leadership. A CEO that, that supports not just the CEO but also the entire organization. Leading with empathy, leading with humility and a focus on enabling others to thrive is the COO who's going to win not just today, but for decades going forward and into the future. So those are the core 20 takeaways from my newest book, the second in command, as ChatGPT4 believes, and I actually think it did a pretty good job nailing it. I'd love to see your thoughts in the comments below. Definitely you should go out and read the actual book because there's a lot more insights in there, but that's a pretty darn good job of a takeaway from AI. What do you think.