In this concise advisory video, Cameron Herold outlines three critical errors that Chief Operating Officers (COOs) frequently make, each of which can cost their companies millions annually and jeopardize the COO’s own employment. The first mistake is neglecting a regular, off‑site connection with the CEO, which leads to misaligned strategy, culture, and communication. The second mistake is allowing the CEO to become entangled in day‑to‑day operations; Herold advises COOs to protect the CEO’s focus by assigning clear core projects, metrics, and reporting structures, thereby preventing unnecessary meddling. The third mistake involves weak hiring, onboarding, and leadership development practices, which create bloat, low performance, and finger‑pointing from the CEO. Herold references a personal anecdote about a CEO lacking focus and promotes his online program “Invest in Your Leaders” as a solution for building strong leadership capabilities. The overall message is a call to COOs to strengthen CEO relationships, safeguard executive focus, and rigorously develop their leadership teams to avoid costly pitfalls.
Chapters
I'm going to give you 3 mistakes that COOs are making that not only cost their companies millions of dollars a year, but often also cost the COOs their job. And sometimes it's not their fault that they lose their job. But these 3 mistakes are the big ones to watch out for. Number one is the connection between the CEO and the COO is something that has to be worked on. It has to be strengthened. It's almost like the book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. If COOs are not on a weekly basis spending time out of the office, spending time with the CEO away from the rest of the team, spending time out of the office to connect with the CEO, to stay on the same page with strategy, on culture, to make sure the CEO understands the plans that you're putting in place, to talk about the problems, to go through any miscommunications, for the COO to understand the different business area that the CEO might be touching and ways that they can actually work better with those people. But time with the CEO where the COO and CEO can get on the same page, if that's not happening on a regular weekly basis, that is mistake number 1. Number 2, the COO needs to get the CEO out of the day-to-day. The more that you allow the CEO to meddle in the day-to-day, the CEO unfortunately and unintentionally causes problems inside of the business that they're not anticipating. So it's your job as the COO to get the CEO out of the day-to-day. And the way that you do that is to make sure that they have core projects that they're focusing on, core metrics that they're responsible for, and very clear reporting structures and communication structures for people inside of the organization so they don't keep talking to everybody and poking their nose into all the different business areas unless they're using skip-level meetings and following a system that you put in place. To ensure that they're doing that properly. So your job is to make sure that they're working on the stuff that they should be, the areas of their unique ability, stuff that they're really good at, stuff that they like to do, and that they're not meddling in the stuff often outta boredom and often because they're not sure what else they should be doing or could be doing. I remember years ago I was working with the CEO of a company, Jason Hennessey. Jason said, you know, everything's going so well right now, I feel like I need to go break stuff. The problem was he just didn't know what else to be focusing on. So in the absence of having core goals, core projects, core responsibilities like every team member needs, the CEO is just gonna go meddle in parts of the organization. Problem number 3 that happens that costs companies millions of dollars and often costs their CEO their job is not having really good hiring and onboarding and training programs for the leadership teams that you're bringing into the company. So often what happens is the COO starts hiring mid-level managers, starts hiring senior managers, starts building out the executive or the management team who don't often have the skills and the confidence to scale up the organization. So they end up causing bloat. They end up causing more overhead. They end up bringing in people into the business that aren't getting enough results. So if you as a COO are not really strong at the recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding and leadership development of people, you end up causing lots of problems inside of your company. I actually launched an online training program a couple of years ago called Invest in Your Leaders just for that purpose, to actually grow the core skill sets that anyone managing people needs to be strong at. So the COO needs to be really strong at bringing people into the company, making sure they're in the right seats, and then giving them the leadership skills so that they can do more in the organization. And if they don't do that, the CEO is going to start pointing fingers at the person that's running the company for them, which is that COO. So those are the 3 big mistakes that COOs need to watch out for, and your companies need to watch out for those as well.
