Building Stronger CEOs | COO and Author, Jennifer Geary (Podcast 206)

Are you the kind of seasoned practitioner who's coaching an up and coming CEO, or are you a foil to their relative strengths and weaknesses? Or, you know, there was three or four roles I think, that they categorized at the time. I think for me I was seeking to almost create more of a handbook to say, look, nobody, absolutely nobody can come to this role and be a master in 16 disciplines. Right? There's just no way. And so I'm here to help you round out those areas that you may be less comfortable in and get you to at least a baseline comfort level. And after that, you can make of it what you wish. And that's between you and your CEO. And that depends on them. And it depends on their skills and weaknesses and preferences and things they want to do. You can find that, but it won't be for lack of some of the enabling capabilities if you, you know, if you take this guidance, that that was the aim.

Our guest today is the Managing Director, EMEA of Encino, Jennifer Geary. Jennifer is responsible for Encino's full European functions, as well as spearheading business expansion across the continent and into Africa and the Middle East. Jennifer has more than 30 years of financial experience in finance, technology, risk and legal across diverse industries from financial services to not for profit. Prior to Encino, Jennifer was the Chief Risk and Operations officer at Astro UK, a fintech backed by Centender. She also spent 13 years in Barclays plc, initially in investment banking, followed by wealth management, and finally as the Chief of Staff to the Group General Counsel. Jennifer holds a Bachelor of Commerce from University of Dublin and a Master's of Business Administration in Accounting from the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business. Jennifer is also the author of a book that I'm totally fascinated with and we're going to spend some time talking about today is how to be a Chief Operating Officer. So, Jennifer, welcome to the Second in Command podcast.

Thank you, Cameron. It's great to be here.

Yeah. Looking forward to diving in around this. So I stumbled across your book probably about 18 months ago, the how to be a Chief Operating Officer. And I guess curious as to why you wrote it. And can you kind of tell us some of the experience that brought you into writing the book and then we'll get into the contents of it as well.

Sure. Thank you. So I got my first role as Chief Operating Officer initially as a secondment to save the children in the uk. They needed a temporary backfill and I jumped at the opportunity. And up until then I had done a number of different roles I had trained in Dublin as a chartered accountant, so I had a pretty good grasp of the finances. I had worked in Dublin and New York in banking. I had delivered projects in Barclays and served the Risk Department and a number of different parts. And I'd also supported some of the legal department. So I felt I had a pretty good grounding in a number of the disciplines that you need to be a coo. But even still, when I went into this new role, I could not believe the breadth of the role that was at hand. I couldn't believe all the things that you were supposed to be responsible for and supposed to be in inverted commas, an expert in. And I was incredibly fortunate to have had that opportunity at Save the Children. And I was incredibly grateful. And so I did what resilient people do. I dug deep, I read, I researched, I asked everybody I knew. And gradually I figured it out and to be, you know, where I didn't have the skill sets, I found people who did to make sure that I could adequately cover the role. And when I finally, two and a half years later, had an opportunity to draw breath and just look back, I went, oh, my goodness. And I remember before I had taken the role, I did what everybody did. I went online and I researched. And I was like, where's the book? Where's the handbook? Where's the thing that I can read, I can digest, but where is it? And it just didn't exist. So when I had a little bit of time at the end of that role, I stood back, I took a breath, I counted 16, and I'm happy to be debated on that, but I counted 16 disciplines that a COO needed at least to have, you know, a baseline knowledge and understanding in. And I set about writing one chapter for each of those, each of those disciplines. And when I was done, I went to the best person I knew in that area, and I asked them to vet the chapter and to. And to, you know, make sure that I was asking the right questions and make sure that I was framing it correctly. And I did it. You know, it was the first and, to date only book that I've written. And I did it in a spirit of, I hope that this is useful to somebody coming after me, because I really wish I'd had this book at the outset.

Well, it's certainly proving to be useful, and it's getting a ton of reviews right now. And I'm going to get you to kind of share with some of your, I guess some of your core insights are. But I want you to just expand on something that you said and maybe even tell us from your perspective, what is a coo?

Oh, distilling it down. Gosh, you know, a coo. To me, when they're at their most effective, we are. I don't want to say this isn't about traveling, but I think of us as being back home on the ranch, taking care of everything, making sure that it runs smoothly and allowing all of our front facing departments and our strategy and everything else to work and just enabling all of that. And obviously dependent on the role, you can be responsible for R and D or not, you can be responsible for communications or not, and that kind of thing. But at the end of the day, it is making all of those enabling processes work so that people don't have to worry about them and people don't have to think about them and the organization can become what it needs to be.

That's, that's what I've been stumbling over as well over the last bunch of years with our COO alliance and with the Second in Command podcast is every CEO tends to be very different to your point where sometimes they run a certain area and sometimes they don't. Sometimes finance reports to you, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes legal does, sometimes it doesn't. And then there was that article that came out about 15 years ago. I'm sure you've seen that Harvard article, the Misunderstood role of the coo, and it talked about kind of the different types of CEOs. Is that what you were stumbling over when you were starting in your role as well is like, what the hell is this? Or was it different?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that article talked about sort of are you the kind of seasoned practitioner who's coaching an up and coming CEO, or are you a foil to their relative strengths and weaknesses? Or, you know, there was three or four roles I think that they categorized at the time. I think for me I was seeking to almost create more of a handbook to say, look, nobody, absolutely nobody can come to this role and be a master in 16 disciplines. Right? There's just no way. And so I'm here to help you round out those areas that you may be less comfortable in and get you to at least a baseline comfort level. And after that, you can make of it what you wish. And that's between you and your CEO. And that depends on them. And it depends on their skills and weaknesses and preferences and things they want to do. You can find that. But it won't be for lack of some of the enabling capabilities if you, you Know, if you take this guidance that that was the aim.

Yeah, I like the whole, the baseline competency as well. I've always talked about different skill sets that we have and said, you know, we need to almost get to a bronze or a silver, you know, maybe towards a gold, but we don't need to have that expertise in every area. We just need to have some competency and some. So are there some, though, that you think they need to just that every CEO needs to actually be at a gold level or like at a, a role model level versus others. Are there some that we need to be better at, you know, more equal?

Yeah, I mean, I hate to generalize because as soon as you say it, I suppose somebody could prove you wrong. I think whatever the operations of the organization are, you know, whether you're a bank or an NGO or an airline and that sort of thing, I think you probably need to have some, some good depth and capability in sort of what makes the core of the organization tick. That, you know, that's probably a rite of passage, as you can say, as you said, you know, you can have finance separate or as part, you can have, you know, risk increasingly tends to be separate. You know, legal and compliance can report independently or not, but presumably you are there ultimately to make, to make the core engine of the organization work. Work. Well, that being said, I mean, I talk a bit about the fact that if you have some of those core concepts of finance and risk and legal and compliance, you, you know, you're dangerous enough, you know, possibly even to cross sector as well.

Yeah, that it's interesting. On the crossing sector. And I'll talk about that in a second or ask about that. So on the, on the, the skills, were there a couple of areas that you were deficient in? I guess when you first started as a coo that you had to kind of quickly learn. And what would those have been?

Absolutely, absolutely. And, and first of all, you know, in making a transition from, from the banking world into the ngo, I mean, there were whole worlds around programming and fundraising that were just brand new to me, which I knew I would support as best I could, but frankly were brand new areas to me. But even within the kind of core remit of the coo, facilities management, supply chain, internal and external comms, these were, I mean, again, I had a passing appreciation of them from various roles that I had done. But all of a sudden you realize, and I was fortunate enough, for example, in facilities to have a really good right person who, you know, who did know the area very, very well, and, but, but, you know, some of these I really had to, I really had to dig very deep on and do as much reading and do as much asking. And I think, I think you have to be humble and open and use your network to, you know, to learn these areas and really listen. And then, of course, recognizing that you will never be an expert in them, to make sure that the team that you build around you has some of those compensating skills so that across, you know, so that as a team, you cover the area and cover it well.

Yeah. I want to go back again to the definition really quickly, too. When we talk about your book, how to be a Chief Operating Officer, are you also speaking to the people that maybe are in the COO role, but they're more like a director of operations or a vice president of operations or a general manager? Maybe they have a bigger title or are you really talking about the ones that their title actually matches their job description?

I think I'm speaking to anybody who finds themselves in this role or in a combination of roles or indeed aspires to, you know, to being in that role in time. Some of the loveliest, I get messages from people who buy the book and it always makes like I have a smile on my face from the rest of the day because the most common message that I receive is I'm new to role. And I found your book so helpful. Thank you very much. Right. You know, so somebody who's found themselves maybe newly promoted, clearly, because of excellence that they have delivered in whatever career path they came in to date, and they find themselves with a few gaps. And, you know, if I've helped any, anyone along the way to just round a couple of those out, then it's been worthwhile.

Okay, I got two questions that just came off of that. The one is the person who has been newly promoted to the COO against all of their peers, they're now the coo and their peers are kind of the left behind or the fallen comrades that didn't quite get the role, and there's some shock or some dismay or there's some politics maybe starting to creep in. What do they do so that they can start to be successful in their role and calm that or make sure that that's okay.

Well, and of course, even more challenging is, you know, when you get into that role and you have an absolute subject matter expert reporting into you. You know, so to take my previous example, like somebody who is the absolute guru in facilities management. Right. And knows it inside out and back to front more than you ever will. And of course. But we're not there to be single subject matter experts. We're there, we're there to be generalists and actually to understand and amplify the interplay between those departments and have them working really, really well. So it's not easy. Right, because you have to overcome some of that disappointment and some of the personalities. You have to maybe help them understand that your role is a broader one and that they can shine, they can shine with you and in fact they will be more effective in their role if the facilities guy understands what the operations team needs, understands what's happening in the supply chain, understands the growth of the organization so that they cater for staffing needs in future so you can maybe open their eyes to some of the cross functional opportunities that there are. But you've got to work hard.

Yeah. And then what about if you're hired into the organization? So there's already an existing org chart and then you're the senior person coming in. How do you make that entry in the first, you know, 90 days, first 100 days.

Sure. And it's, you know, because then you've got the double whammy, right? I mean, you've obviously been promoted. You know, you've been taken into that role because of some of the abilities that you have. But you're in a new setting and everything. And I do, you know, there are some great books out there about sort of first 90 days, first hundred days and what you do. And I refer to some of them. But again, it's a combination of understanding. And one of the things I offer in the book is sort of 10 questions to ask your CIO, Chief Finance Officer, you know, chief operation, you know, or your head of operations underneath you so that you can ask intelligent questions and start to frame and understand what's going on. And then also, of course prioritize work in the areas that maybe are not performing so well while also kind of nourishing and amplifying the areas that are working well. So yeah, it's a challenge. You've got to. The expectation is within 90 days you will have understood the whole brief. You will have looked at your team, you will have figured out which departments are performing well and which departments need a bit more support and that you have a plan to go forward. And if you get those right and if you make more good judgment calls than bad, you'll prove your value in time.

And it sounds from what you're saying that it's the emotional intelligence and people skills are almost paramount For a coo, like almost above and be. Would you say that's true or partially true? Kind of above and beyond any of the functional skills. We just need to be really good.

At people always, right? Absolutely. Always. Your role, more than anything else, you're knitting together a bunch of really, really complex functions. You have to understand and get across and work within the culture and if necessary, help with the culture. If that's not everything that it needs to be. You've got to be able to listen, you've got to be perceptive, you've got to understand where the natural frictions occur. And that's one of the things I talk about. There will always be certain friction, and typically between certain departments, you can expect some of those along the way. And you've got to be humble and you've got to listen. And so all of the other things, the functional skills, are for naught if you can't build the emotional relationships along the way.

All right, now we're not going to have time to go into all the 16 disciplines, so I'd like you to pick some of your favorites, and then we're going to have to read the rest of the book to get the rest of the story. But I want to also talk about your transition into the CEO or the managing director role. But why don't you give us some of the highlights of the, maybe the core disciplines that you like the most or just want to cover today?

Well, I was pretty clear that there were three that transcended all the C suite roles, which were strategy, culture and change. And if I ever write a second book or if I partner with people to write the box set of C suite roles, which is possible in time, my first three chapters will always be strategy, culture and change, or maybe execution rather than change. I'm working on that wording, but. And then after that, obviously it falls to the technical disciplines along the way. So my idea, my hypothesis is those three are like your foundations, right? You've got to get those. You've got to have the strategy, right? You've got to understand and understand how to work and make the best of the culture that's there. And you've got to be able to execute or you've got to be able to affect change. After that, I counted 13, and again, people will argue in and out. I talked about it, risk operations, legal compliance, and so on. I think when I come to write a second edition of the book, I think the one that will be. Well, I think there's two that will be most changed. I Think facilities management has changed dramatically in the years, even since I wrote the book a few years ago, the COVID Pandemic hybrid, working, remote, working, all of that. It just already feels so different. The leased office as a service type concept has changed monumentally along the way. And I think the other one is sustainability because that is just becoming even more core and fundamental. I think I could, you know, I think there's, there's a book or several books to be written on environmental, social and governance. So yeah, they're all, you know, I'd hate to say I have favorites because, you know, you shouldn't choose between your favorites, but they're the ones that exercise my brain at the moment.

Well, let's talk about the first three that you, that came up then. Not that your favorites. We'll just talk about three then. So tell me about your oldest child, your second oldest child and your third oldest child. We'll leave the other 13 out. So let's talk about strategy. And strategy is pretty complicated. Where do you talk to us about what strategy means, I guess to you? And then I'll give you some, one of my rough points on it. But then I want to know about where you learn it and where you practice it, where you hone it and, and how you build it into the organization.

It's, you know, the number of times I say to people, I think I even said it last week to somebody in the office that, you know, from where we are today to that golden place in the future, there's any number of routes and roads and decisions that we can take. And somewhere in there is not even the best, but a good combination of decisions. You know, go left at that fork in the road, go right at that fork in the road, do this, don't do that, that ultimately leads to success. And if you haven't got that right, all of the other work is for nothing. You can be in quotes, a busy fool, right? But something, if the strategy isn't right, something will be off along the way, right? All of your effort, your efforts won't quite land the way that they will. You know, you'll feel as if you're sort of hold below the waterline. You're pushing, you know, all the cliches, you're pushing, treacle, uphill, all of that kind of thing. And you just know something is off. Whereas you know, when the strateg is right, when the timing is right, when you've chosen your market and your segment and your go to market approach and all those kinds of things and something is working, you just feel this kind of amplifying snowball effect and all of a sudden everything is, you've got a tailwind. And obviously one of the roles of the coo, you know, you're the second in command in the organization. And particularly if you're new to role, you've got to figure out pretty quickly, ideally in advance of the role. But you've got to figure out if the strategy is right because if it isn't, you're going to have to play a huge amount of emotional and goodwill capital with your CEO, with your executive board to do something to effect change.

Yeah, and I don't think companies spend enough time on strategy. I think they spend a lot of time on planning, but they don't think past the planning or farther enough out to think about the potential what ifs and the opportunities and the scenarios. Do you build that in and then do you follow any of the, like, you know, the ancient Chinese stratagems? Do you follow any of Kyan Krippendorf's thoughts around strategy? Like do you try to recognize what's being used against you or is strategy more just sitting down and talking about the business and giving time for that?

One of my favorite books about strategy, and it's an oldie, it's by Richard Rumelt, it's a sort of a black and white book called Good Strategy, Bad Strategy and it's one of the most sort of dog eared books that I have because I just love the simplicity of what he says. And he talks about strategy being a way through a problem. You know, an honest assessment of the state of the organization where they sit, its strengths, its weaknesses and recognizing what those issues are so that you can find a way through it. It's not about ambition, it's not about aspiring to be the best this or the most admired that or anything like that. It is like, here is where we are, here's where we are today. Here's the problem that we face and here's a way through that problem. And when I, you know, you can get lost, as you say, and you can talk about strategy all day or you can default to financial planning and that kind of thing. I sort of bring myself back to some of those foundational principles sometimes is, you know, what's the problem and what's the way through that problem?

There's. All right, let's go into culture. Culture has always been my kind of my obsession. I think, I think what's culture mean to you? And then where do you go with that?

Yeah, it's you know, all the definitions of culture. I think there was a recent Harvard Business Review article that actually, which I thought was interesting, talked about culture as a series of processes which was sort of. Oh, really? You know, which was kind of like how things get done, how roles happen, how things work through. I think I characterize it as, you know, that sort of thing, the way things get done around here and that feeling, you know, that, you know, either if you're. If you're new to robot within the company, or new to the company, where you have to sort of rapidly, you have to understand and ingest and really take in the culture, and then you have to decide whether it's a helpful and a conducive culture or not. You know, hopefully it is. And hopefully, you know, your job, particularly if you're new to the organization, is to work within that culture and, you know, and use its strengths to the company advantage and move things forward. However, there can be times when you come in and you find that the culture is a bit toxic or a bit passive or it's actually not helping. And in which case you may. And again, I'm sure people will argue this one, but I believe part of the role of the COO is actually to help influence the culture in that case and to actually help drive it to a better place. And of course, that's hard, and that takes time and that takes leading by example and overt actions and all of those things to get the organization in a better place.

I had a CEO one time, and he said, well, we don't really have a culture. I was like, well, then that's your culture. And it's kind of very beige, and not even a really designer beige like Martha Stewart beige. It's like boring beige. Because your culture exists, it's just a decision as to which way you're going to take it, as you put.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think I tell an anecdote in the book about somebody who. A friend of mine who arrived on their first day in the office. They were shown to their desk. They were like, nobody took them to lunch for the day. Nobody asked them their name. And they left very shortly afterwards. There was just nothing. There was just nothing there. Nothing to bind them, nothing to see them through a tough day.

Do you ever see companies taking culture too far, where it gets a little bit culty?

Interesting. In my personal experience, no. I think where I am at the moment at Encino is a hugely strong, positive culture, one of the strongest cultures I think I've experienced. But when that Culture is founded in doing the right thing, respecting each other, doing things in the right way. It's hard to say. There could be too much of that. But yeah, I don't know. Not in my experience, let me say.

Yeah, I've just been a guest on a podcast that's coming out. It'll be coming out right around when your episode comes out. And it's on a podcast called A Little Bit Culty. And we're exploring when company culture goes too far. I think you're right. I think for the most part it doesn't. I think it has the potential to, but it's really kind of when you've got that Machiavellian leader or the dishonest shady leader that's using something.

Ah, but that, but that's a bad culture, right? You know, they, you know, that's. And I suppose, let me, let me add a quick addendum to that. Where the culture is so strong that it becomes almost exclusionary, or where certain people can't identify with it or feel they might not fit in as a result of it, then you possibly do have a problem. Right. But you know, where your culture is open and diverse but you know, embraces some pretty good foundational pillars. And of course, where it's lived as well, you know, where it's not just in the recruiting brochure, but where it's experienced and lived as well. I think that's probably a good thing.

Yeah, I think I agree. All right, so then we go into change and execution and I'm intrigued on, because when you said change, I instantly went to change management and reorgs. But then execution for me is different. So what's your thoughts around those two?

Yeah, well, so again, it's just interesting how our world evolves all the time. I started out with change, the fundamental assumption being like you have to change in order to stay relevant and agile and you've got to be able to adapt or else you die, you become extinct. But I think even in the past sort of four or five years, you know, with the growth of new fintechs and new disruptors, you find that agility is just baked into their DNA. So it's no longer change, it's just every day, you know, where we now operate in cloud based environments and you know, technical departments can make sort of 15 upgrades a day to the, you know, to the software. A change. The word just didn't seem to kind of resonate for me anymore. And it just becomes about sort of repeatable, reliable, high quality, consistent execution. So that was what was behind the pivot.

That's interesting, that's really intriguing because you're right, you're 1,000% right. And I think there's actually a book even just in that itself, that change is almost our grandparents era running a company. And as you put it now, like adaptability and change, that's an everyday thing now. That's not like a, it's not something you get. If the rate of change outside your business is better than the rate of change inside your business, you're out of business business.

Right, exactly, exactly. And I mean look at how the world is changing, you know, look at how politics are changing, look at how worldviews are changing. You just agility is where it has to be right now. So what you've got to be able to do is cope with that, take in new information, respond, adapt, move on and reassess. And so yeah, hence execution.

Okay, so then on the execution side of things where change and the adaptability is such a huge part of it, what do you think? Are your some kind of the core tenants or how do you get execution to happen? How do you get more shit done with less people faster?

That is a difficult question to answer in the generic, I think because it depends obviously on whether your role is writing software or lending money to customers or working in an ngo. It's always a right balance, isn't it, of people and capability and process and technology. And probably the first one, capability and enablement of your people is probably going to outshine the others, isn't it? You think about those capability maturity models and certainly actually that's interesting. You start out early and you're probably relying on a couple of heroes who know things inside out to work and then you start to embed processes and the processes kind of become more important than the individuals. But again, perhaps in today's adapting world, you need to have smart enabled people underpinned by good processes and tech and you've got to have those three things working really well together.

It's interesting, I like the way you kind of thought through that even as you were speaking it, because I've started to feel like I'm too simplistic with some of my views on business. So I've always believed that it's about growing the capabilities of people too. I launched a course course called Invest in your leaders where it's the 12, I think the 12 core skills that every leader needs to be successful in their role. But I've always pushed towards that instead of the underlying automation or optimization or technology side. And I wonder whether I've missed some of those opportunities by not focusing more on the automation, by not focusing more on the tech stack and maybe are we missing opportunities there? But I think what you're saying is if you focus on the growing, your people, they'll figure out the automation in the tech stack as well. Is that where you're going with it or is it we got to keep our eye on both?

Yeah, I think so. I think, you know, you've got to have, you know, you've got to have good processes in tech. That, that's kind of in this hyper competitive day and age. I think that's sort of almost table stakes. But you've got to have the smart, enabled and empowered people to know when, you know, computer says no is the wrong answer or to recognize patterns or to see early warning of, you know, something going wrong or the model becoming outdated or something like that, that. So you know, you want your processes and tech to take care of 80% of it and then you want your really smart people overseeing the top and being properly enabled to, you know, to make the right calls when they need to.

Yeah. All right, this is fascinating stuff. I want you to go back to your career as a coo and we'll talk about shortly where you've gone now as a managing director, which for North Americans is more the CEO role. So what do you think you had to work on over your career to get, get the strengths to be strong as a coo? Where were you focusing? Where were you growing?

Well, so again, I guess there's the functional capability and knowledge and that kind of thing. And that can be learned and that can be, you know, nobody starts knowing how to do those things. Those are things that can be absolutely learned along the way. I think the tougher thing is the emotional development, isn't it? And you know, in terms of the sort of character traits of a coo, there's a couple of things and I'd be interested whether these resonate with what you've heard as well. I think first of all, you've got to be absolutely happy being in the shadows, never being called out. You rarely get the praise when something goes right. You always are expected to fix it when it goes wrong. And you've got to have that sort of mentality that that is just fine. That's the role. You don't need the limelight, you don't need the glory. And I talk about as well, there's a fair bit at times of kind of stress and anxiety that you sometimes have to deal with as a coo, like, you have to deal with things like outages, systems, outages, buildings, health and safety, staff issues. And there's no getting away from the fact that those can be really challenging subjects at times. So you've got to have emotional resilience and fortitude, and you've got to stay balanced, and you've got to be able to kind of manage your emotions and then also help your team with those along the way. And I would say probably the emotional development is harder than the functional learning.

Yeah, I would agree completely. And it's interesting you talked about staying in the shadows. I've always said that the COO's job is to shine the spotlight on the CEO and make them iconic. And the CEO's job behind the scenes is to shine the light on the COO and say, wait, they're not as bad as we think. They're just making all the tough decisions internally. Their job is to make us look good, and then we're supposed to make them look good both internally and externally as well.

I think that's absolutely right. When you have those roles, when it's really nicely balanced like that, and the CEO is out there talking about the strategy, doing the public relations, being seen on TV or whatever it is, and everything is going fine in the background, then you're doing a terrific job. But you're absolutely right. The CEO has got to respect your role and has got to be seen to respect your role. They have got to say, they're doing this for a reason. I trust them. You will not see daylight between our decisions. I joke about if mom says, no, ask dad type thing. You can't have that situation where there's daylight between your decisions. So if you can get to that golden position of trust in that relationship with your CEO, that's a great place to be.

Yeah. When I was the COO and Brian was CEO of 1-800-got-JUNK, we used to laugh about that, where people would come, I'd be like, oh, they just asked mom, didn't they? He'd be like, yeah, they just asked Mom. So. And we used to say in front of the kids, we had to be that. That couple that could never be separated. And then we could leave and we could go and argue with each other separately. But never in front of the kids, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Not many CEOs make the jump to CEO. I think there's a. There's a personality profile that's different. I think there's a. Maybe a risk tolerance that's different. There's a skill set that's different. Why did you make that jump and what do you think has allowed you to make the jump, Jump over to MD from the COO role?

Yeah, it was. I mean, I had a terrific opportunity come my way and I work in a software company that sells banking software to banks. And I was very clear in the recruitment process that I was not a salesperson, I was not a marketing person. If they wanted that, there would be far more qualified people than me. But what I was was somebody who had sat in the scene of the people who had made those buying decisions. Right. The people who had to go back and justify those decisions to board or explain to a risk committee why they had made a certain technology decision or, you know, why things had gone a certain way. And that I could empathize highly with the challenges and the decisions that those people had faced and I could speak to them in their language. And I was up for it. Right? I was up for the challenge. And I think, you know, know, compared to where I was, what's new? Certainly there is a more public facing aspect to this role. And, you know, standing up on a stage and giving podcasts and speaking to people is something that, you know, I'm growing more comfortable with all the time and something that, that actually I'm finding I quite enjoy and it's fine. Also, you know, I'm in a software sales company. We have sales targets, we have growth trajectories, we have, you know, we have expectations to match. And I'm finding in myself I will never lose those fundamental tenets of kind of risk and compliance and good process and wanting to, you know, make things better and all that kind of thing. But, but I'm enjoying the. I'm enjoying the challenge. I'm finding myself, you know, really leaning into it. But, yeah, might not be for everybody. I don't know. I'm certainly. I'm a year in and I'm really enjoying it so far.

Do you think your book, how to be a Chief Operating Officer, did that help you, you know, as a platform or a marketing piece for you to get this role? There was some added credibility there.

I think that perhaps a little bit. I, you know, it's, you know, not everybody kind of sits down and takes it. I think lots of people start a book and it's, you know, it's something to kind of finish and get it out there and hopefully there's some useful stuff in there. So, you know, it's. That's not why I did it. But you know, it's a nice, it's a nice thing to, you know, it's a nice thing to say that you did. And you know, I still dip into it every now and again when I'm looking for some, looking for some inspiration.

So I want to, I want to go Back to the 22 year old Jennifer. She's, she's kind of graduating from University College Dublin. What advice would you give yourself back then that you know to be true today you wish you'd known back then?

Oh gosh, let me see, I was just starting out as a chartered accountant and then I was going to go to New York and oh, look, I don't know, I think, you know, we, we all probably tell ourselves to, you know, looking back, just like relax a little. It'll be okay. You know, there's definitely some of that, I think if it doesn't sound too, too sort of, you know, hippie and mindful. I think really, really listening to yourself and listening to the things that give you energy, it probably, you know, took me a little while to, to really find my, my sweet spot. And the stuff that gave me passion and, and what I've probably learned in, in recent and wiser is the thing that's giving you energy is where you need to be right now. Because that's your gut instinct saying to you, you have a capability here and there's a need. So for example, I'm spearheading something with Encino at the moment on environmental and social governance because one of the fundamental pillars of COP26 in Glasgow was mobilizing the world's finance in the direction of environmental and social good. And that speaks to two things that I know, right? It speaks to the world of financ and technology and it speaks to the world that when I went and worked at Save the Children that I feel so passionately about doing better in the world and helping out and moving money in the right direction to hopefully address some of the issues that we have in the world. And so right now that gives me enormous energy because it's that Venn diagram of what I know and what I think is needed right now. And when you can find those things, I mean, that's, I talk sometimes about catching a wave as well. It's a little bit like that as well. I'm a very bad surfer. But the idea that you just, you know, you're your surfboard with the skills that you have and you see a wave coming and if you can ride that wave, that's usually successful, it's amazing.

You're right. And you're amazing because it doesn't feel like work when you're doing that right. When you're working in that genius or unique ability, it's incredible. Jennifer Geary, the author of how to Be a Chief Operating Officer and the managing director for Encino, thank you so much for sharing with us today on the Second Command podcast. Really appreciate the time today.

Thank you, Cameron.

That direction is what the team is actually looking for so that they can choose where they want to go and what they need to get done. And so him giving that when Bill gives that very clear vision for everybody, it really helps set them in their motion, because otherwise people would get too scattered. Right. And so one of Bill's unique abilities is.