Cameron Herold advises COOs (or senior leaders) how to manage the flood of entrepreneurial ideas so execution remains focused. He recommends an empathetic first response (“I love that idea”) followed by a short walk-and-question routine to capture who/what/when/where/why/how, assess outcomes, people/time/money required, employee/customer impact and ROI (and the spoken "PETA factor"). After assessment, the COO should categorize the idea as green (start), yellow (park for later), or red (kill), thereby validating the CEO while preventing chaotic execution.
Chapters
Every entrepreneur has a gazillion ideas. I call it squirrel, right? It's like idea to execution. Then they have another random idea, another random idea, and they're often trying to give all those random ideas to their COO in the hopes that their COO can just run with it and put them all in place. The COO's job is to say, hey, I love that idea, but let me ask you about that idea before I put it in place. Let me walk you through how a COO can elegantly save the CEO from themselves. The COO needs to be the brake to the entrepreneur's gas, or we need to be the leash to the entrepreneur's dragon. But here's the key. We can't be the parking brake, we can't screech the company to a halt, and we can't choke the CEO with a leash. So there's an art to saying either no or not now, and I'll walk you through how to do it. There's also an art to take all these great ideas the entrepreneur has and to get them off their plate. Let me walk you through how to actually do that with an entrepreneur. When an entrepreneur comes to you as a COO or as a senior leader or with a new idea, your first response should be, I love that idea. Let me ask you a few questions so I understand it. Can we just go for a quick walk and let me ask you some questions so I understand that idea or that project a little bit more. Well, right away, the entrepreneurs will be like, yeah, let's go. Let's go talk about this great idea I've got. And they feel heard, they feel validated, they feel like you're not going to debate them or question their idea on that quick little walk, whether it's walking around the office, going for a walk outside, just pacing and letting the entrepreneur pace in the room. And maybe you ask them a couple of quick questions. You're going to ask them the who, what, when, where, why and how of that idea so that you understand it a little bit more. You're going to ask them what the project looks like when it's completed. What's their best idea of a best result of that project when it's completed? What's the worst result if we don't actually run with that idea? How many people might be involved in the idea? How much money do they want to spend on that idea? How much time would they like people to be involved in that idea? And again, you're not debating them, you're just trying to understand the idea more and asking some of those questions, you can now develop the relative roi, the return on investment of the people, time and money working on that great idea that they have. After you do that, after you walk through all of those ideas with the CEO, you can ask them, will this make our employees happier? Will doing this project make our customers happier? Will it drive more profitability or more revenue or more gross margin? Right. What's the underlying core reasons for doing this project? That's all part of you understanding the idea by saying, yes, I love it. Let me ask you some questions. After you go through that, you can green light, yellow light, or red light the idea. Green light, meaning let's start. Let's start right now. Let's put it into the project plan. We'll start on it this week or next week. It might bump a couple of projects. Which ones would you like us to bump? Or yellow light, meaning it's a great idea, but not now. Maybe we'll look at it next month. Maybe we'll look at it next quarter. We're going to park it in the parking lot. And at our next strategy meeting, we'll look at the different projects that we could be working on, and that will be one that we'll vote on starting. Or it's a red light, meaning we've asked all the questions about your great idea. We both kind of agree. Seemed like a good idea. After we went through the who, what, when, where, why and how. After we looked at the PETA factor and the return on investment, we decided to kill it. But in that way, the CEO feels heard. They know that they have the idea out of their head and into a system that you can elegantly actually save them from themselves. And you can be the brake without being the parking brake, or you can be the leash without choking the dragon.
